Flight of the Outcasts

by Alister E. McGrath

  Julia, walking beside him, was positively gleeful. It was strange to be called here again, certainly, but the tingling in her fingertips told her that an adventure was at hand. And whatever dangers might lie ahead, she was free of school and grades and horrid Bertram and horrider …

  The contented sounds of munching that came from behind reminded Julia that she and Peter were not alone on this adventure. She turned and saw that Louisa had already seen fit to break into one of the hard loaves of bread. She had broken off a large chunk and was carrying it in her fist, gnawing off big bites as she walked.

  “You did just have Christmas dinner a few hours ago,” Julia reminded her. “And we might need that bread before long.”

  “Need it for what?” Louisa asked, her mouth still half full of crumbs. “I thought we were trying to get home. Aren’t we going home?”

  “Eventually, I suppose,” said Julia. “But before we do we need to find out why we were called here in the first place.”

  “We’ll be whipped for being out so long.” Louisa tore off another chunk of bread with her teeth. “At least the two of you will. I’ll tell Mummy that you made me come along and you promised me sweets and then you left me out in the woods. And then she’ll send you both to that special school for horrid children and you’ll never be allowed to come home on holidays ever again.”

  Peter was about to say something particularly nasty—Julia could see it in his face—but before he could open his mouth the three of them heard a very different sort of sound indeed. It was a woman’s scream, high and loud. And it was coming from just over the ridge.

  CHAPTER

  5

  Peter and Julia didn’t need to look at each other. They were both running, running as fast their legs could carry them, running with all their strength toward the beach and toward the sound of that scream.

  Louisa fell behind almost at once. She had never been an athlete and didn’t have Julia and Peter’s endurance, besides which she was still chewing and hampered with the satchel of food. When she finally caught up, red-faced and breathless, the satchel slapping against her side, Peter and Julia were crouched behind a grouping of bushes, whispering and pointing at something she couldn’t see.

  “What is it?” Louisa asked. She threw down the satchel and peered over the bushes at the crest of the ridge. They were standing at the top of a dune that went down to a sparkling sea, and there was a ship on the sea … but that was all she saw before Peter pulled her down roughly into the long grass.

  “Stay down!” he hissed. “We can’t be seen—don’t you understand that?”

  “But maybe someone down there will know how to get …”

  “Quiet!”

  Louisa closed her mouth, sat down roughly on the ground, and began to cry. Peter gave her a withering look, resisting the strong urge to kick her, and went back to spying on the beach.

  “Just there—no, there,” said Julia, pointing. “See? The woman who screamed—she must be with them.” Peter nodded. A longboat had just pushed off from the beach, and in it they could just make out a few bedraggled figures being rowed out to sea by six uniformed guards. “But where are they going?”

  “Look,” said Peter. Julia cast her eyes over the horizon and saw a schooner anchored out in the deep water. It was riding high in the water, its sails billowing out from three enormous masts. The longboat nearest shore was one of a dozen that were rowing steadily toward it, all of them full of the same guards and their bedraggled prisoners.

  “What will we do?”

  “Do? We’ll go home—home to Mummy and … and Bertie!” Louisa was blubbering helplessly on the tall grasses behind the bushes.

  Peter raised an eyebrow at his sister. “We should have left her at the castle,” he muttered.

  Julia chose to ignore him. “Those guards, taking all the people … why are they taking the people?”

  “I don’t know,” Peter replied. “But I’ll bet that’s why we were brought here.”

  Julia nodded, her eyes still fixed on the schooner. “But how do we find out where they’re going? Unless they happened to leave a boat behind we can’t very well follow.”

  Peter’s eyes scanned the shoreline. “There are some reeds down there. We’ll cut them up and swim, breathing through the tubes. It’ll be like snorkeling!”

  “Very clever, Peter. And if we should get tired, or if we can’t keep up with the ship?”

  “Ah. I see the difficulty.” The longboats had almost all reached the schooner now, and Peter and Julia watched from a distance as the prisoners were boarded onto the ship. People they had known, perhaps, or the children of those they had known. It was a long, slow process—the prisoners did not seem particularly eager to board the schooner—and only one of them at a time could climb up the flimsy rope ladder. But finally it was done, and one by one the longboats were hoisted back onto the schooner.

  “We should go down to the beach,” said Peter. “See if they left … anything.” Julia nodded and rose. Louisa was still blubbering.

  “Louisa, we don’t have time for this,” Julia said sternly. “Some friends of ours are in trouble, and we need to help them, and if you stop crying you can help them too.” Louisa looked out from between the fingers she’d been sobbing into.

  “All right,” she said.

  Perhaps you have once had some occasion to run down a dune—during a family holiday at the beach, perhaps. If so, you will understand the exquisite pleasure that comes from the sensation of tripping and falling as you run, the hot sand squeezing between your toes as you fight to stay upright. You know the ecstasy of tumbling over and over, your feet never quite catching up to each other, until you collapse at the bottom.

  Peter, Julia, and Louisa did not have such an experience as they descended the dune. They were trying to be careful, and they were trying to be quiet, and most of all Julia and Peter were trying to keep Louisa from hurting herself and starting to cry again. It was, Peter muttered to himself, just like having a child hanging about.

  There was nothing to be seen on the beach. No prisoners, no guards, no longboats, and nothing that would give them a clue as to where the invaders had come from and where they were taking their prisoners. A few footprints on the beach, and that was all. Peter kicked his right foot savagely and a spray of sand burst up into the air. A dead end.

  “I wish Gaius were here,” Julia said, looking out at the schooner. It had hoisted its anchor and was turning toward the horizon, its billowing sails filling with wind. “Should we go to the garden, do you think?”

  “What garden?” asked Louisa. She looked positively overwhelmed, and Julia began to feel a bit sorry for her. It was worse for Louisa, Julia thought. She didn’t know anything about this place, and here she was thrust into the middle of everything.

  “The King’s Garden,” Julia said. “It’s a place sacred to the Lord of Hosts, and if we go there we might find some clue about all of this.”

  “Lord of Hosts?” Louisa asked, bewildered.

  “He’s—well, he’s the one in charge around here,” Julia explained. “We can’t see him, but he’s watching over everything, and I think he must have been the one who called us.”

  “Come on,” said Peter. “Let’s go the garden. Things usually tend to happen there.”

  The garden wasn’t far from the beach, and the path through the woods had been cleared since last they’d walked it. The terrain was level and there was a sweet breeze whistling through the leaves, and had it not been for Louisa the walk might have been pleasant indeed. For they couldn’t have been ten minutes into the journey when she started to complain.

  The sun was too hot, the ground was too hard, the birds were too loud, the bag was too heavy. At this last Peter valiantly took the satchel of food, finding it noticeably lighter than it had been when first packed. But a moment later Louisa decided that she’d been walking too long. She sat down against a tree and began to cry.

  “I think we should leave her here,”
Peter told Julia unsympathetically. “We’ll never make it to the garden at this rate, and she’ll be safe until we can come back for her.”

  Julia was, truth be told, inclined to agree, but she shook her head. “You know we can’t just abandon her. And besides, we’ll all be safest in the garden. It’s not far.” She went to her stepsister and put out a hand to help her up. “It’s not far, Louisa,” she said again.

  And indeed it wasn’t long before they came to the garden. The familiar silver glow welcomed them in, but once inside its borders Peter and Julia found that the garden was, as it had been the first time they’d seen it, badly overgrown. Vines and weeds had grown wild and untended, strangling the buds of flowers that had once bloomed there and choking off the life of the garden in their thorns. The great fountain in the center of the garden had run dry, the stone basin encrusted in mosses and lichens. Peter and Julia felt that they had stumbled upon an ancient ruin, long neglected, its purpose all but forgotten.

  “This is it?” said Louisa. “This is your precious garden?”

  Julia was too upset to answer. Peter shuffled his feet on the ground, kicking aside a mess of vines. “It didn’t look like this when we left,” he said. “It’s been left to rot. I can’t think …”

  And just at that moment something rather extraordinary happened.

  There was a sound above them in the sky—the sound of the beating of massive wings. Peter, Julia, and Louisa looked up to see a dark blur which quickly took on the shape of a bird—a falcon, Peter said under his breath. It pulled its wings tight into its body and plummeted toward them, landing with a dull thud near the stone throne at the other end of the garden.

  All three of the children had gone absolutely white with terror as the bird came down, for it was like no falcon they had ever seen. It was absolutely enormous—the size of the dragons in fairy stories, Julia thought with a start. Each of its golden eyes were the size of the children’s entire heads, and one snap of that enormous beak could have broken their backs.

  “Back up,” said Peter slowly, never breaking his gaze with the falcon’s eye. “Slowly. Into the trees.” Evidently even Louisa knew that this was a time to be silent, for she obeyed without the usual protesting and weeping.

  The bird saw that they were moving and twitched its head to the side. It beat its wings once, and the children could feel the rush of air on their faces.

  “Do we run?” asked Julia in a low breath, and Peter was about to answer when the falcon lifted its head, opened its beak, and let out a terrible screech. And Peter and Julia would have run—would have run until the breath left their bodies—had Louisa not chosen precisely that moment to faint dead away.

  CHAPTER

  6

  The falcon was coming toward them, its mighty talons crunching into the earth with every step it took. Julia fell to her knees and began shaking and slapping Louisa with all her might, desperate to rouse her and run away, run anywhere.

  “We’ll have to carry her,” Peter hissed, but it was already too late. Julia felt the darkness of a shadow overhead, and she looked up to see that the falcon was upon them.

  It bent its head down so that it was level with them, and Peter stood tall, taller than he had ever stood when facing his father, staring straight into that cold golden eye. Julia could see that he was quivering and his face had gone absolutely white, but his gaze did not waver. And as he stood and waited, the falcon turned its neck once again and brushed the top of its head against Peter’s cheek.

  Peter gasped and staggered back as if he’d been struck, stumbling back onto the grass, but then he looked up at the falcon and thought maybe, just maybe, that it seemed to be waiting for him. He reached out a hand and—slowly—carefully—touched the crest of its head, just behind the eyes.

  The falcon let out a sound that might, in a cat, have been described as a purr. It opened its beak and let out a series of short squawks. Peter reached out his hand again and stroked it harder this time, running his fingers through the dark feathers.

  “Careful,” whispered Julia in the softest breath she could manage. Peter shook his head, his gaze still locked with the falcon’s, as he ran his hand over the bird’s head and neck, and then all the way down along its wing.

  “It’s all right,” Peter said. “I think it’s all right.”

  The falcon squawked again and bobbed its head up and down, then shuffled its feet back and bent down so that its back was level with Peter’s shoulders. Peter ran his hand along the length of its back, stopping just before the long tail feathers. “I think we’re meant to ride him,” he said.

  Before Julia had time to protest Peter threw his arm over the top of the falcon’s wing and scrambled up onto its back, his feet jostling to get a foothold. Finally he was perched triumphantly on top of the falcon, swaying a bit as the bird adjusted its position, and he grinned down at Julia.

  “Nothing to it,” he said. “Climb on up!”

  “I don’t … Peter, I don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Julia’s gaze was still locked on that sharp beak. But he reached his hand down to her and hoisted her up, and before she knew it she was sitting behind Peter with her arms tight around his waist, wondering if that beak could still reach them back here.

  “It’s all right,” Peter said again. “We were meant to come here to the garden—you were right! The Lord of Hosts must have sent the falcon. It’s better than a ship. We can ride him all the way to—to wherever those ships are headed.”

  Julia’s only response was a tightening of her grip around Peter’s waist. Defeating dark lords was one thing, but flying up over the sea? What did the Lord of Hosts expect of them?

  The falcon rose to its feet, and Peter and Julia found themselves swaying on its back as they struggled to find a grip. Julia looked down. The ground seemed very, very far away. And then she gave a little cry, for Louisa was still crumpled in a heap where she’d fallen.

  “Louisa! Peter, Louisa’s still down there! We need to get her up here …” But just as she spoke, the falcon picked Louisa up in one of his great claws, beat its wings twice, and rose into the air.

  Julia screamed as they mounted into the air and grabbed at anything she could hold onto—Peter, mostly. Peter had crouched low as they ascended above the trees, and then, seeing where they were going, he threw out his arms and broke into a yell.

  All of Aedyn was laid out before them. Looking around, Peter was able to see the castle, and the garden, and suddenly all the trees became a great mass of green forest. The coastline approached, and Peter could see the harbors and inlets and rivers that came in from the sea.

  They flew over the dune and the beach and then they were at sea. The air changed—it was colder, with the salt spray hovering above the waves, and it must have been this that stirred Louisa out of her faint. Peter and Julia, riding low over the falcon’s back, felt the bird shift its position in the air. And then they heard a familiar scream.

  There were no words in it yet — just a long, high-pitched shriek. The falcon was getting its balance, adjusting to the writhing girl in its talons. Julia stuck her head over the edge as far as she dared and could just see the edges of Louisa’s braids flinging themselves out from her head.

  “It’s all right!” Julia cried. “Hush, Louisa! It’s safe!” But if Louisa heard her there was no indication, and it was a long, long time before the screaming stopped. After a time it was replaced by a dull whimper and the occasional sob, and bothersome as it was for the two children riding on the falcon’s back, even Peter had to admit that riding in a giant falcon’s claws could not be the most comfortable way to travel.

  They rode over a quiet sea, the salt breeze in their hair and the sun high above them. Foam-tipped waves crested beneath them, and a few brave seagulls scavenged the rocks over which they broke. There was no land on the horizon, just more water and more waves, but occasionally Peter and Julia caught a glimpse of the schooner that they were following. The falcon stayed far away from it—perh
aps it understood that they had to stay out of sight.

  “Where do you think it’s taking us?” asked Julia. She had to shout — the wind rushing around and above them almost took her words away with it.

  “Don’t know,” Peter yelled back. “The nearest land is Khemia, but there couldn’t be anything left there. No people, at least. Not after the volcano erupted and everyone fled.”

  This exchange was met by a renewed whimpering from Louisa.

  The falcon moved through the air swiftly and steadily, as if the very breath of the Lord of Hosts was at its back, but it was a long, long time before Peter and Julia saw anything on the horizon other than water. The sun began to sink low in the sky, and with it the air burst into a kaleidoscope of oranges and purples. And in the moment that the sun slipped below the horizon, in that magical moment when it is not quite day and not quite night, Peter felt Julia slump against his back and loosen her hold on his waist. She had fallen asleep.

  He leaned forward and gripped the falcon’s neck all the tighter, and though it did not make a sound, Peter felt warm and comforted all through his body. The twilight faded into night, and one by one the familiar stars of Aedyn winked into the sky. Peter looked up at them and breathed a prayer to the One who had called them, though he did not even know what to pray. He lay there for what seemed like hours, awake and yet not awake, feeling the warm body soaring beneath him, watching the winking of the stars and waiting for what would come.

  CHAPTER

  7

  Dawn had just begun to touch the sky when Peter began to feel a change in the bird’s flight. It had tucked its wings in closer to its body and was beginning, he felt instinctively, to descend. He reached behind him and touched Julia’s leg, shaking it just enough to rouse her. She sat up straight and yawned, removing a hand from her brother’s waist to rub her eyes.