by P. J. Sky
Keshia gripped the webbing. Stretched taut, it felt like steel. She hobbled to her feet on the stretched canvas and got a footing between the canopy’s tethering. She remembered it snapping away before and she shuddered. She looked up and ahead, far in the distance, across the vast red plain, a column of grey smoke curled high into the sky.
Don’t look down, don’t look down…
One foot and handhold at a time, she climbed around to the outside of the balloon, over the edge of the emptiness.
Once on the other side she froze. She pressed her face against the webbing and closed her eyes.
I can’t do this, she thought. But it’s my fault, I have to.
She remembered clinging to the edge of the canvas, her legs flailing behind her. She felt sick.
“You’s can do it,” said the old man.
She opened her eyes. Ari was grinning at her. “You’ll be right.”
Keshia tried to smile. Shivering, she got her feet in the webbing and, one handhold and footstep at a time, she began to climb.
The outer surface of the balloon was soft and reflective, like a canvas covered in a thin sheet of tin. The webbing, by contrast, was taut over the balloon like steel, and it didn’t give at all as Keshia climbed it.
The balloon was shaped like an upturned pear and Keshia was starting at the bottom. As she climbed, the balloon bulged outwards until Keshia hung underneath the balloon’s curve. With each handhold, Keshia repeated her mantra.
Don’t look down, don’t look down…
Her head started to ache, her muscles burnt, the webbing tore at her fingers, and she could feel the weight of her body pulling her down. If she let go now, there would be nothing but the rope to stop her falling into the emptiness below her.
Don’t look down, don’t look down…
One step at a time, she climbed higher and higher.
At the top of the curve, Keshia paused to get her breath back. She wheezed on the hot, thin air. She looked to either side of the balloon. The sky stretched out, pale blue and empty, with only a faintest smattering of red dust. Her eyes fell to the horizon, where the white haze met the subtle curve of the flat, red plains. And there in the distance, that column of grey smoke, reaching for the heavens.
Don’t look down.
Keshia’s eyes snapped back to the metallic face of the balloon. She hugged herself close to the webbing, elbow looped inside the lines.
She was breathing hard, but it was as if there were no air to breathe, and in this moment she realised she’d never felt so alone. Here, there was no one to help her. She had stranded herself. She could carry on climbing or she could go back down, but either way, she was still here, hanging on the side of the balloon. Either direction presented the same solitary challenge of the climb across the emptiness.
I shouldn’t have pulled that lever, she thought. I was so stupid. And now the balloon is sinking and it’s all my fault.
She felt the rope pinch around her waist.
You’ll be right, the rope’ll catch you.
But she felt giddy with the thought of falling. She was exhausted and she buried her head against the balloon.
I can’t do this, she thought. It’s too far. And I’ll only mess it up more. I’ll make it worse like I always do. I should just stay here, out of the way.
She could feel her mind drifting. She closed her eyes and it was almost as if she could fall asleep here. Then she heard the gentle pop-pop of the explosions below.
Come on, she told herself, snap out of this. You can do this Keshia. You have to do this. Otherwise the balloon is going down and it will all be your fault and you won’t have made it up to Ari. And worse, you’ll be going down there, to the war.
She thought of the soldiers and tanks as they entered the convent and the burning dormitories and the blood spreading out across the chapel floor and she shuddered.
And besides, if you go down there then you’re never going to get your hands on all the half-moon coins you can carry. No paying off the syndicate and no life of riches, only broken legs and a short drop with a hangman’s noose around your neck.
She unhooked her elbow and began to climb, higher and higher.
I must be almost there, she thought. Not too much further, just a few more steps.
She was now almost vertical, clinging to the farthest outer curve of the balloon. The wind blew locks of frizzy hair across her face. The balloon started to bow back, and there was the tear. The opening was almost the length of Keshia’s body, straight down in a clean cut. The fan must have flown right over the top of the balloon, slicing it on its path.
Keshia pulled herself up alongside of the tear. She hugged the webbing, closed her eyes and exhaled slowly.
It’s all right, she told herself. You’re here. You made it. Now, just tape up the tear and climb back down, as easy as that.
Carefully, she removed one arm from the webbing, the other still firmly hooked between the steel line and the balloon. She slipped her hand into her pocket.
She couldn’t feel the tape.
Her heart jumped. She opened her eyes and fished around inside the pocket but it wasn’t there.
A heat formed in her chest and she started to shake again. She took hold of the webbing and released her other hand. As she thrust the hand deep into the other pocket, she looked down.
The world stretched out below, a vast, giddy canvas of insanity. The grey and orange clouds bloomed like mushrooms across a sea of red dust. Thick columns of black smoke bled from the burnt and bruised earth.
Keshia’s head spun.
Her fingers found the tape and she drew it from her pocket
Her eyes began to blur.
The tape danced on her fingers and before she’d even realised she’d lost her grip on it. She saw it float in the dead air, as if time stood still. With both hands, she reached out to grab it.
Briefly, the webbing snagged her feet.
The ends of her fingers scraped the reel of tape, and then she was following it down into the empty air and the balloon was disappearing beneath her feet.
Chapter 9
The rope pinched hard against Keshia’s waist and she felt like she was being snapped in two. She found herself suspended upside down with her frizzy, tangled hair hanging down towards the burning world below. She could feel the blood pooling in her skull. Acidic bile moved up her throat and she felt like she was about to vomit.
Below, the reel of tape spiralled downwards towards the angry earth.
Keshia craned her neck towards the deck of the balloon. Upside down, Ari stared back at her.
“Well, ya fell for that one.”
The rope felt like it was squeezing the air from Keshia’s lungs.
“Ya just gonna hang around there all day?”
Keshia fumbled for the line that attached her to the deck. Her sweaty fingers slipped on the rough flax.
Her head throbbed. Dizzily, she tried again and got hold of the coiled flax. Her head now felt like it was twice its usual size, as if all her blood had filled it like a well. Then Keshia saw Ari start to pull the rope in from the other end. In the final tug, Ari reached out and grabbed Keshia’s waist and hauled her onto the deck.
The old man smiled. “We got more tape.”
Ari undid the rope from Keshia’s waist but she didn’t meet Keshia’s gaze. Then she slid it around her own waist. Ari took the second roll of tape from the old man’s fingers and thrust it in her pocket.
Ari looked at the old man. “Just make sure the rope’s fixed, will ya.” Then Ari climbed out, over the canopy, and onto the webbing.
∆∆∆
Beneath her clothes, around Keshia’s waist, angry welts were starting to form. She felt like her body had been stretched out and all her major organs relocated to the upper and lower parts of her torso. The pain that formed beneath her forehead had morphed into a deep, giddy ache. With her thumb and forefinger, she pinched the bridge of her nose. From it, thin blood started to drip.
>
“Tis okay, ya tried,” said the old man. His eyes were kind and gentle. He reached into his pocket and passed her a yellow handkerchief. The silk-like material looked like it’d never been used. The old man winked at her.
She started to feel angry with herself. “I don’t think there’s any prize for trying.”
“Betcha got a shock,” continued the old man, as if he’d not actually heard her. He scratched his leather like scalp. “First time I got up there, I fell down too. Betcha insides feel like they’s all jumbled up. I’ll tell ya a secret — they’s never really go back where they belong, but next time that makes it all the easier.”
Next time, thought Keshia. There isn’t going to be a next time. Next time I’ll stay on deck. Next time, I won’t step foot on a balloon at all.
“There isn’t going to be a next time,” she said.
The old man nodded. “Ya never forget ya first fall, that’s for sure.”
Out of the corner of Keshia’s eye, off the side of the balloon, she spotted a rising projectile, like a small rocket followed by a trail of pure, white smoke.
The explosion felt like it might burst Keshia’s ear drums, and it was followed by a brilliant plume of yellow light. Keshia lay on the deck, a fine hum in her ears. And she was back in the convent, shrapnel raining down across the street, shells bursting like fireworks, red and angry, and strangely beautiful. The wall of the baker shop tipped outwards onto the waiting bread line that each day since the start of the famine had gradually grown. Screams; shouts; a disconnected baby’s cry.
Keshia looked at her hands, sticky with blood. Sticky with her blood. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. She tasted iron.
The lines groaned.
Keshia shook her head, dispelling the images that forever lurked in that hidden place in the back of her consciousness.
“Flack,” said the old man. “The Mulga’s shootin’ at us.”
A second explosion rattled the deck. Smoke burnt Keshia’s nostrils.
“I…” began Keshia, looking up from her hands. “I thought you said they couldn’t get us.”
The old man had returned to his wheel and spun it to the right. The lines creaked. Keshia wondered if the rudder even worked without the motors. Perhaps it only gave the old man some false sense of control in a world of chaos, like trying to control when and where an army might strike you, whether you were on the deck of a balloon, queuing for bread, playing cards in your dormitory or being forced to pretend to pray in a chapel by a mother superior who moments later would be dead.
“Well,” continued the old man, “we’re lower now, and maybe they got city weapons.”
Leaving the wheel, the old man clambered across the strained canopy and peered over the edge.
Keshia imagined his head being torn away by one of the rising projectiles. She saw it now like a dream; his skull exploding, blood splattered across the silver surface of the balloon.
The old man looked back at her. “Like’s I thought, weapons from Alice. Didn’t expect it mind, but there we’s have it.”
A third explosion burst right in front of them. Little bits of metal showered across the deck.
“That were close. We’ll be right though, you see.” He winked at her.
Keshia wanted it to stop. She slipped her hands over her ears as another explosion rumbled across the deck.
∆∆∆
“Dag it.”
Below her feet, Ari saw the explosion plume, hot and angry. Little bits of metal shrapnel scattered across the silver surface of the balloon. In the thin air, she gasped and pulled herself up another rung of webbing. The air smelt burnt and tasted like the inside of the mine.
Stupid child, she thought. I should have left her back in Bo. When we get to the mine, she’s staying with the balloon.
Ari hooked her elbow through the taut webbing. She was close to the tear now.
And we didn’t pull up quick enough. We let ourselves get too close and now they’re shooting at us. That was the captain's fault.
She pulled herself up another rung.
It’s always the same, if I want something doing, I always gotta do it myself. Might as well be up here on my own.
Hang on, she thought, I am up here on my own.
She reached the tear. She looped her elbow through the steel webbing and fished the tape from her pocket. Biting the end with her teeth, she unravelled the tape. It stuck to her lip. She pulled her left arm around the webbing and pressed her face against the silver surface of the balloon.
Another explosion ripped through the air and Ari winced. The world fell silent. The angry heat burnt her shoulder. Ari focused on the tape. It was all caught up on a perfectly good section of balloon fabric.
“Dag it.”
Elbows looped through the webbing, she tried to pull the silver fabric together, but the tape stuck to her elbow, her face, her fingers, bits of balloon, bits of fabric, and in fact anywhere except where it was needed.
“For Maka’s sake.”
Slipping, Ari lost a footing and kicked out into the nothingness below. The tape unravelled further, twisting around her fingers. She pulled at the fabric. The tear opened up and for a moment she could see inside the great, hot interior of the balloon. From inside, light shone through the cream canvas and the metal webbing left a cross hatch pattern. It was like a great, spherical hall floating in the dust clouds. Far down at the bottom, and strangely beckoning, the burner glowed orange like a desert campfire.
There was another explosion. Ari’s heart jumped. The whole balloon listed over sharply and Ari found herself lying facedown against its outer surface. Through the tear, deep down at the bottom of the balloon, she saw a tongue of orange flame dance across the inner surface and begin snaking its way up the inside. The webbing slackened and Ari lost her grip.
Ari found herself floating above the balloon.
The balloon fell away, a vast silver mountain in the sky, flames and smoke curling up its sides. The rope around her waist tightened and she was falling too.
∆∆∆
The old man turned to Keshia, his eyes wide. “Onto the canvas, flat as ya can, an’ hold on.”
As the deck slid sideways, Keshia lost her footing. Slipping across the metal surface, she threw herself onto the remaining canopy. She gripped hold of the tethers and pressed her face to the canvas.
Above, the inferno raged. Tongues of flame tore through the balloon. Keshia could feel the heat bear down on her, thick and heavy, like a storm in full bloom.
Keshia looked up to see the old man’s blade flash like a flaming sword, as if wielded by Camael expelling them from Eden. Back and forth, like the arc of a trebuchet, the old man hacked away the burning lines. He turned his attention to the rope that still linked them with Ari.
Tears welled up in Keshia’s eyes.
The old man brought his blade down and the rope severed.
Keshia buried her face into the canvas.
∆∆∆
Wind whistled past Ari’s ears and toxic fumes burnt her throat. The vast, red world below grew closer and closer, hard and unforgiving; a land forever punished under the endless burning sun.
The rope slackened.
Briefly, Ari felt as if she was floating. Through the billows of grey smoke, the balloon bulged beneath her like a writhing, silver-scaled animal. The flames disappeared, and the great, steaming balloon spread out below like a giant pillow.
As billows of smoke engulfed her, Ari plummeted into the last remaining bulge of hot air.
Chapter 10
Starla squinted into the harsh sunlight and watched the hazy figures in their white robes moving on their knees along the furrows. They pressed seeds into the tilled earth and covered them with a black ash-like dust. No one had yet asked Starla to help them, though she wondered if ultimately they would. Until then, she could see little reason to volunteer.
Starla had arrived at a shallow ditch. Clear water trickled along the bottom of the ditch
and people came and dipped buckets into the water. This was the farthest edge of this place; not a wall but a ditch she could easily cross. Beyond, the wasteland stretched to the horizon, flat and red. Nothing else seemed to be holding her here, but Starla knew from bitter experience how hard it was to cross this dead sea of dust.
Looking back towards the mine, she let her eyes drift to the thick column of grey smoke that curled upwards into the sky, as if from some still active volcano. No one here seemed concerned by it, but it drenched the whole area with a distinctly burnt odour.
I need to find out where I am, she thought, if I’m going to find a way to escape this place and get back to the city.
Many questions surrounded Starla’s thoughts; she wasn’t even sure if she was a captive. The people here seemed to want to help her, just not to help her get back to the city. They’d tended her injuries and they gave her bread and water. It wasn’t exactly the standard of life in the city, but Starla had experienced worse. Now her strength was returning, but the wasteland still stood between her and whatever direction she’d need to take to get back to the city. It was no surprise that the communicator embedded in her arm didn’t work here, and since she’d woken in this place she’d seen no advanced technology of any kind. Instead, the people here farmed and prayed and ate and slept and talked of something called The Morning Star. Starla still wasn’t sure what this was but it seemed important to these people.
But other questions filled Starla’s days. She stretched out her right arm which still ached from the minor injuries she’d sustained in the crash. Had the crash been an accident, or something deliberate? Had these people somehow brought her aircraft down? This mystery kept her wary of those around her. And where was Janus? Had he, or anyone else, survived the crash? Would he come after her somehow?
Poor Janus. He was always so… attentive.
What had happened between them had been a mistake; one Starla had regretted almost as soon as it had happened. It wasn’t just that Starla worried for her family’s legacy but that, in the end, loneliness wasn’t love any more than pity. For a while, solace had seemed like what she needed, and perhaps it even felt like love if only for a moment, but then the flame faded and she was left with all that obvious longing he couldn’t hide and she no longer felt.
