By the time he reached the bottom of the hill, he was a hundred and fifty feet up. Experimentally, he swung his feet a little to the left. The glider dipped slightly and turned. Soaring over a clump of trees, he felt a sudden lifting as an updraft caught him.
Up he went—ten, twenty, thirty feet—and then slowly began to settle again.
The landing wasn’t easy. More by luck than by skill, he came down in the long grass of the meadow with no more damage than a few bruises.
He sat for a moment and rested, his head spinning with excitement. He had flown like a bird, without his stick, without uttering a word. There were other ways than magic!
His elation suddenly faded with the realization that, while gliding down was fun, the way over the Wall was up. Also, and of more immediate importance, he was half a mile from the cave with a contraption so heavy and unwieldy that he could never hope to haul it all the way back up the hill by himself. If he didn’t get it out of sight by morning, there was going to be trouble, serious trouble. People took an unpleasant view of machines and those who built them.
Broomsticks, he decided, had certain advantages, after all. They might not fly very high, but at least you didn’t have to walk home from a ride.
“If I just had a great big broomstick,” he thought, “I could lift the Eagle up with it and fly her home.”
He jumped to his feet. It might work!
He ran back up the hill as fast as he could and finally, very much out of breath, reached the entrance of the cave. Without waiting to get back his wind, he jumped on his stick and flew down to the stranded glider.
Five minutes later, he stepped back and said:
“Broomstick fly,
Rise on high,
Over cloud
And into sky”
It didn’t fly. It couldn’t. Porgie had lashed it to the framework of the Eagle. When he grabbed hold of the machine and lifted, nine-tenths of its weight was gone, canceled out by the broomstick’s lifting power.
He towed it back up the hill and shoved it into the cave. Then he looked uneasily at the sky. It was later than he had thought. He should be home and in bed—but when he thought of the feeling of power he had had in his flight, he couldn’t resist hauling the Eagle back out again.
After checking the broomstick to be sure it was still fastened tightly to the frame, he went swooping down the hill again. This time when he hit the thermal over the clump of trees, he was pushed up a hundred feet before he lost it. He curved through the darkness until he found it again and then circled tightly within it.
Higher he went and higher, higher than any broomstick had ever gone!
When he started to head back, though, he didn’t have such an easy time of it. Twice he was caught in downdrafts that almost grounded him before he was able to break loose from the tugging winds. Only the lifting power of his broomstick enabled him to stay aloft. With it bearing most of the load, the Eagle was so light that it took just a flutter of air to sweep her up again.
He landed the glider a stone’s throw from the mouth of his cave.
“Tomorrow night!” he thought exultantly as he unleashed his broomstick. “Tomorrow night!”
There was a tomorrow night, and many nights after that. The Eagle was sensitive to every updraft, and with care he found he could remain aloft for hours, riding from thermal to thermal. It was hard to keep his secret, hard to keep from shouting the news, but he had to. He slipped out at night to practice, slipping back in again before sunrise to get what sleep he could.
He circled the day of his fourteenth birthday in red and waited. He had a reason for waiting.
In the World within the Wall, fourteenth birthdays marked the boundary between the little and the big, between being a big child and a small man. Most important, they marked the time when one was taken to the Great Tower where the Adepts lived and given a full-sized broomstick powered by the most potent of spells, sticks that would climb to a full six hundred feet, twice the height that could be reached by the smaller ones the youngsters rode.
Porgie needed a man-sized stick, needed that extra power, for he had found that only the strongest of updrafts would lift him past the three-hundred-foot ceiling where the lifting power of his little broomstick gave out. He had to get up almost as high as the Wall before he could make it across the wide expanse of flat plain that separated him from the box canyon where the great wind waited.
So he counted the slowly passing days and practiced flying during the rapidly passing nights.
The afternoon of his fourteenth birthday found Porgie sitting on the front steps expectantly, dressed in his best and waiting for his uncle to come out of the house. Bull Pup came out and sat down beside him.
“The gang’s having a coven up on top of old Baldy tonight,” he said. “Too bad you can’t come.”
“I can go if I want to,” said Porgie.
“How?” said Bull Pup and snickered. “You going to grow wings and five hundred feet up and your kid stick won’t lift you that high.”
“Today’s my birthday.”
“You think you’re going to get a new stick?”
Porgie nodded.
“Well, you ain’t. I heard Mom and Dad talking. Dad’s mad because you flunked alchemy. He said you had to be taught a lesson.”
Porgie felt sick inside, but he wouldn’t let Bull Pup have the satisfaction of knowing it.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I’ll go to the coven if I want to. You just wait and see.”
Bull Pup was laughing when he hopped on his stick and took off down the street. Porgie waited an hour, but his uncle didn’t come out.
He went into the house. Nobody said anything about his new broomstick until after supper. Then his uncle called him into the living room and told him he wasn’t getting it.
“But, Uncle Veryl, you promised!”
“It was a conditional promise, Porgie. There was a big if attached to it. Do you remember what it was?”
Porgie looked down at the floor and scuffed one toe on the worn carpet. “I tried.”
“Did you really, son?” His uncle’s eyes were stem but compassionate. “Were you trying when you fell asleep in school today? I’ve tried talking with you and I’ve tried whipping you and neither seems to work. Maybe this will. Now you run upstairs and get started on your studies. When you can show me that your marks are improving, we’ll talk about getting you a new broomstick. Until then, the old one will have to do.”
Porgie knew that he was too big to cry, but when he got to his room he couldn’t help it. He was stretched out on his bed with his face buried in the pillows when he heard a hiss from the window. He looked up to see Bull Pup sitting on his stick, grinning malevolently at him.
“What do you want?” sniffed Porgie.
“Only little kids cry,” said Bull Pup.
“I wasn’t crying. I got a cold.”
“I just saw Mr. Wickens. He was coming out of that old cave back of Arnett’s Grove. He’s going to get the Black Man, I’ll bet.”
“I don’t know anything about that old cave,” said Porgie, sitting bolt upright on his bed.
“Oh, yes, you do. I followed you up there one day. You got a machine in there. I told Mr. Wickens and he gave me a quarter. He was real interested.”
Porgie jumped from his bed and ran toward the window, his face red and his fists doubled. “I’ll fix you!”
Bull Pup backed his broomstick just out of Porgie’s reach, and then stuck his thumbs in his ears and waggled his fingers. When Porgie started to throw things, he gave a final taunt and swooped away toward old Baldy and the coven.
Porgie’s uncle was just about to go out in the kitchen and fix himself a sandwich when the doorbell rang. Grumbling, he went out into the front hall. Mr. Wickens was at the door. He came into the house and stood blinking in the light. He seemed uncertain as to just how to begin.
“I’ve got bad news for you,” he said finally. “It’s about Porgie. Is your wife still up?�
�
Porgie’s uncle nodded anxiously.
“She’d better hear this, too.”
Aunt Olga put down her knitting when they came into the living room.
“You’re out late, Mr. Wickens.”
“It’s not of my own choosing.”
“Porgie’s done something again,” said his uncle.
Aunt Olga sighed. “What is it this time?”
Mr. Wickens hesitated, cleared his throat, and finally spoke in a low hushed voice: “Porgie’s built a machine. The Black Man told me. He’s coming after the boy tonight.”
Uncle Veryl dashed up the stairs to find Porgie. He wasn’t in his room.
Aunt Olga just sat in her chair and cried shrilly.
The moon stood high and silverlit the whole countryside. Porgie could make out the world far below him almost as if it were day. Miles to his left, he saw the little flickering fires on top of old Baldy where the kids were holding their coven. He fought an impulse and then succumbed to it. He circled the Eagle over a clump of trees until the strong rising currents lifted him almost to the height of the Wall. Then he twisted his body and banked over toward the distant red glowing fires.
Minutes later, he went silently over them at eight hundred feet, feeling out the air currents around the rocks. There was a sharp downdraft on the far side of Baldy that dropped him suddenly when he glided into it, but he made a quick turn and found untroubled air before he fell too far. On the other side, toward the box canyon, he found what he wanted, a strong rising current that seemed to have no upward limits.
He fixed its location carefully in his mind and then began to circle down toward the coven. Soon he was close enough to make out individual forms sitting silently around their little fires.
“Hey, Bull Pup,” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
A stocky figure jumped to its feet and looked wildly around for the source of the ghostly voice.
“Up here!”
Porgie reached in his pocket, pulled out a small pebble and chucked it down. It cracked against a shelf of rock four feet from Bull Pup. Porgie’s cousin let out a howl of fear. The rest of the kids jumped up and reared back their heads at the night sky, their eyes blinded by firelight.
“I told you I could come to the coven if I wanted to,” yelled Porgie, “but now I don’t. I don’t have any time for kid stuff; I’m going over the Wall!”
During his last pass over the plateau he wasn’t more than thirty feet up. As he leaned over, his face was clearly visible in the firelight.
Placing one thumb to his nose he waggled his fingers and chanted, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, you can’t catch me!”
His feet were almost scraping the ground as he glided out over the drop-off. There was an anxious second of waiting and then he felt the sure steady thrust of the upcurrent against his wings.
He looked back. The gang was milling around, trying to figure out what had happened. There was an angry shout of command from Bull Pup, and after a moment of confused hesitation they all made for their brooms and swooped up into the air.
Porgie mentally gauged his altitude and then relaxed. He was almost at their ceiling and would be above it before they reached him.
He flattened out his glide and yelled, “Come on up! Only little kids play that low!”
Bull Pup’s stick wouldn’t rise any higher. He circled impotently, shaking his fist at the machine that rode serenely above him.
“You just wait,” he yelled. “You can’t stay up there all night. You got to come down some time, and when you do we’ll be waiting for you.”
“Nyah, nyah, nyah,” chanted Porgie and mounted higher into the moonlit night.
When the updraft gave out, he wasn’t as high as he wanted to be, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He turned and started a flat glide across the level plain toward the box canyon. He wished now that he had left Bull Pup and the other kids alone. They were following along below him. If he dropped down to their level before the canyon winds caught him, he was in trouble.
He tried to flatten his glide still more, but instead of saving altitude he went into a stall that dropped him a hundred feet before he was able to regain control. He saw now that he could never make it without dropping to Bull Pup s level.
Bull Pup saw it, too, and let out an exultant yell: “Just you wait! You’re going to get it good!”
Porgie peered over the side into the darkness where his cousin rode, his pug face gleaming palely in the moonlight.
“Leave him alone, gang,” Bull Pup shouted. “He’s mine!”
The rest pulled back and circled slowly as the Eagle glided quietly down among them. Bull Pup darted in and rode right alongside Porgie.
He pointed savagely toward the ground: “Go down or I’ll knock you down!”
Porgie kicked at him, almost upsetting his machine. He wasn’t fast enough. Bull Pup dodged easily. He made a wide circle and came back, reaching out and grabbing the far end of the Eagle’s front wing. Slowly and maliciously, he began to jerk it up and down, twisting violently as he did so.
“Get down,” he yelled, “or I’ll break it off!”
Porgie almost lost his head as the wrenching threatened to throw him out of control.
“Let go!” he screamed, his voice cracking.
Bull Pup’s face had a strange excited look on it as he gave the wing another jerk. The rest of the boys were becoming frightened as they saw what was happening.
“Quit it. Bull Pup!” somebody called. “Do you want to kill him?”
“Shut up or you’ll get a dose of the same!”
Porgie fought to clear his head. His broomstick was tied to the frame of the Eagle so securely that he would never be able to free it in time to save himself. He stared into the darkness until he caught the picture of Bull Pup’s broomstick sharply in his mind. He’d never tried to handle anything that big before, but it was that or nothing.
Tensing suddenly, he clamped his mind down on the picture and held it hard. He knew that words didn’t help, but he uttered them anyway:
“Broomstick stop,
Flip and flop!”
There was a sharp tearing pain in his head. He gritted his teeth and held on, fighting desperately against the red haze that threatened to swallow him. Suddenly there was a half-startled, half-frightened squawk from his left wingtip, and Bull Pup’s stick jerked to an abrupt halt, gyrating so madly that its rider could hardly hang on.
“All right, the rest of you,” screamed Porgie. “Get going or I’ll do the same thing to you!”
They got, arcing away in terrified disorder. Porgie watched as they formed a frightened semicircle around the blubbering Bull Pup. With a sigh of relief, he let go with his mind.
As he left them behind in the night, he turned his head back and yelled weakly, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, you can’t catch me!”
He was only fifty feet off the ground when he glided into the far end of the box canyon and was suddenly caught by the strong updraft. As he soared in a tight spiral, he slumped down against the arm rests, his whole body shaking in delayed reaction.
The lashings that held the front wing to the frame were dangerously loose from the manhandling they had received. One more tug and the whole wing might have twisted back, dumping him down on the sharp rocks below. Shudders ran through the Eagle as the supports shook in their loose bonds. He clamped both hands around the place where the rear wing spar crossed the frame and tried to steady it.
He felt his stick’s lifting power give out at three hundred feet. The Eagle felt clumsy and heavy, but the current was still enough to carry him slowly upward. Foot by foot he rose toward the top of the Wall, losing a precious hundred feet once when he spiraled out of the updraft and had to circle to find it. A wisp of cloud curled down from the top of the Wall and he felt a moment of panic as he climbed into it.
Momentarily, there was no left or right or up or down. Only damp whiteness. He had the feeling that the Eagle was falling out of control; but he
kept steady, relying on the feel for the air he had gotten during his many practice flights.
The lashings had loosened more. The full strength of his hands wasn’t enough to keep the wing from shuddering and trembling. He struggled resolutely to maintain control of ship and self against the strong temptation to lean forward and throw the Eagle into a shallow dive that would take him back to normalcy and safety.
He was almost at the end of his resolution when with dramatic suddenness he glided out of the cloud into the clear moon-touched night. The upcurrent under him seemed to have lessened. He banked in a gentle arc, trying to find the center of it again.
As he turned, he became aware of something strange, something different, something almost frightening. For the first time in his life, there was no Wall to block his vision, no vast black line stretching through the night.
He was above it!
There was no time for looking. With a loud ping, one of the lashings parted and the leading edge of the front wing flapped violently. The glider began to pitch and yaw, threatening to nose over into a plummeting dive. He fought for mastery, swinging his legs like desperate pendulums as he tried to correct the erratic side swings that threatened to throw him out of control. As he fought, he headed for the Wall.
If he were to fall, it would be on the other side. At least he would cheat old Mr. Wickens and the Black Man.
Now he was directly over the Wall. It stretched like a wide road underneath him, its smooth top black and shining in the moonlight. Acting on quick impulse, he threw his body savagely forward and to the right. The ungainly machine dipped abruptly and dove toward the black surface beneath it.
Eighty feet, seventy, sixty, fifty—he had no room to maneuver, there would be no second chance—thirty, twenty—
He threw his weight back, jerking the nose of the Eagle suddenly up. For a precious second the wings held, there was a sharp breaking of his fall; then, with a loud cracking noise, the front wing buckled back in his face. There was a moment of blind whirling fall and a splintering crash that threw him into darkness.
Beyond the Barriers of Space and Time Page 30
