The Flying Sorcerers

We were aloft for the rest of that day and most of the next, before we again had to dump ballast. Purple always waited until we had sunk below a certain level before he would throw any away. Otherwise, he said, we were just wasting it. “The idea is to stay aloft as long as possible,” he explained.

We were standing in the front of the boat looking down at the glass-colored water. All was blue and red with the fairytale quality of double daylight. Above, massive cloudbanks covered half the sky, the multi-colored sunlights painting them in gaudy hues and stark relief. Purple eyed them with a worried frown. “I hope the weather holds up,” he said.

The blue sun hesitated on the horizon, then winked out, leaving everything rose-colored. The silence of the upper air was perfect, but for the sssssss of the bicycles and the low chanting at the rear of the boat where Shoogar was trying to change the direction of the wind. It was northeast again, and the boys were pedaling west.

“How much longer do you think the voyage will take?” I asked.

Purple shrugged, “I estimate that we are covering fifteen miles an hour, maybe twenty — that is, in the direction we want to go. If we had a steady wind we could cover the whole fifteen hundred miles in three full days. Unfortunately, Lant, the winds over the ocean are most erratic. We have been journeying for three and a half days and still no land is in sight.”

“We were becalmed for a full day,” I pointed out. That did not help any either.”

“True,” he admitted, “but I had hoped —” He sighed and sank down onto a bench.

I sat down across from him. “I don’t see why you should be so impatient. Your test flight took at least this long.”

“Yes, but we didn’t go that far. Then the wind was blowing west, and we were swept over the mountains. We spent the whole three days just coming back.”

“You were fighting the wind?”

“Oh no. It had died away by that time, but we needed to figure out how best to handle the boat in the air — and then we had to prove to Shoogar that his sails wouldn’t work. It took a full day just to rig them, and then Shoogar would still not be convinced. He made us try over and over and over again. He kept insisting that the airpushers needed something to push against.

“All the time we had those damned sails up,” said Purple, “We were powerless to fight the wind, so we were blown even farther away. Shoogar didn’t want to let us bring them in, but we would have never gotten home otherwise. Once we got organized though, we made good time, and later on the wind gave us a push too.”

“You weren’t over the island the whole time, were you?”

“Oh no. Just before we started pedaling for home we were getting very close to the mainland. There was a very excited crowd there on the beach, but we didn’t try to approach.”

“It was well that you didn’t — they might have stoned you or worse —” I started to tell him what Gortik had said about; the mainlanders, but a distant cough of Elcin interrupted.

Purple started at the sound. His eyes went wide and he leapt to his feet. “Thunder!” he yelped.

“What? What about it?”

“Thunder means lightning, Lant!” He was leaning forward, shading his eyes with one heavy hand. Frantically he searched the sky and the blood-colored clouds. He didn’t see what he was looking for and moved nervously backward to peer out across the side. He began climbing up into the rigging for a better view.

Abruptly there was another KKK-R-R-u-umpp, this time noticeably closer.

Purple yelped again. He didn’t wait for a third ,cough, but swarmed up to the top of the rigging and began untying the windbag nozzles.

“What is it?” both Shoogar and I cried.

“Thunderstorm!” he screamed. “Get up here and help me! Wilville, Orbur! You too!” My sons abandoned their posts immediately and began climbing inward.

“I don’t understand,” I said confusedly, “what is the danger?”

“Lightning!” shouted Orbur. He was already into the rigging.

“You mean lightning strikes airboats too?”

“Especially airboats — remember what happened to Purple’s housetree? We have to land and drain all the hydrogen out of the airbags. The slightest spark and we’ll all blow up!”

He didn’t have to repeat himself. I followed Wilville up the ropes. Shoogar was right behind me. Purple had already untied three of the bags and was working on a fourth. The airboat lurched sickeningly. I could not tell if the sinking sensation I felt was me or it.

There was a flash of light and another crashing slam. It was directly above us. We were headed right into the storm. Purple was muttering wildly to himself, “Damn the bloody — I should have thought about emergency deflations! Orbur, this is too slow and we will never get all the gas out of the balloons through the nozzles. Somebody is going to have to climb up to the top with a knife and cut holes to let the gas out! We’ll patch them up later —”

“Not now,” I yelped. “If you cut holes now, we’ll fall!”

“No, not now — after we hit the water,” shouted Purple. “We can’t risk doing it in the air or the balloons might rip!” He untied another nozzle. Seven of them were waving free now, spewing their precious hydrogen unseen to the reddened thunder.

Another crash of light and sound limned us in stark relief — and sparked us all to move still faster. The black water below rushed up at sickening speed.

“Tie off the balloons,” shouted Purple. “Slow our descent!”

Orbur swung precariously from a rear mast section, Wilville only a few yards away. A frantic Shoogar clung to the bird’s nest platform. Purple and I were in the forward section of the rigging. All of us were grabbing furiously for the free swinging hoses.

The wind whistled and shrieked. I pulled at the aircloth hose and wrapped it around itself. I swung out on the rigging grabbing for another.

“Hold on!” screamed Purple. Wait —”

A precious moment of stillness while we fell through the angry sky. Still too fast, too fast — were we slowing at all?

Another crash of thunder — this one closest of them all. A second flash of whiteness.

Purple was a stark silhouette. He was grim-faced, but suddenly stern. He stared at the uprushing water with no sign of emotion. Had he miscalculated? Would we hit the water too hard?

The image of a splintering airboat filled my mind — why had I ever come on this god-cursed journey?

“Ballast!” he shouted and disappeared from his post. For a moment I thought he had fallen, but with the next crash of thunder I saw him below, tugging at the ballast bags. Wilville was already there, just emptying one over the side.

“I’ll help!” I hollered, but he yelled back, “Stay where you are, Lant — it’ll be safer — tie off the airbags! Don’t release any more gas until I tell you to!”

He cast about frantically then, looking for things to throw overboard. His eye lit on a pile of cloth — “What the —?”

Shoogar yelped from the rigging, Those are my sails!”

“Good!” And with that, he snatched them up and heaved them over the side. Shoogar began screaming curses, but they were lost in the loudest crash of all.

The spare windbags followed the sails, as did half our food and water. Wilville had emptied all the ballast bags by now and was helping Purple.

We were still falling. A sickening sensation in the pit of my stomach told me were about to die.

Purple called for me to unreel a windbag nozzle, but not to untie it. What was he planning? He grabbed it as it fell, and hooked it to his funnel. He had a ballast bag between his legs; he plunged the nozzle and battery device into the bag of water. I saw him turn the battery up to its maximum release of electrissy. Great gulps of gas roared up the hose — the windbag expanded terrifically.

Purple waved to Wilville. “Get up in the rigging!” he bellowed. “It’ll be safer!”

I could see long streamers of foam below us. We were falling at little more than a fast gallop — the sea was a wall of blackness — I could see the individual waves — Cra-a-ack — the boat smacked down with a great splash that sent water in all directions. For a sickening moment all the ropes were slack — then they snapped taut again as the balloons leapt back. There was a yelp from behind me — Shoogar — I turned in time to see Orbur lose his grip and fall into the water, but he surfaced again almost immediately and began paddling for an outrigger.

Wilville was climbing down from the rigging then to see if Purple was all right, but the magician was screaming: “The balloons! The balloons! We’ve got to finish deflating the balloons!”

“Then you’d better disconnect that!” pointed Wilville.

Purple looked, saw his battery and funnel device lying in a puddle of water at the bottom of the boat. The puddle boiled. Purple yelped and leapt for it.

The boat rocked as Orbur climbed into it, his fur plastered wetly to his body. He started up the rigging to join us, then stopped. He cocked his head oddly — “Wait a minute!” he called. “Don’t deflate the balloons yet.”

“Huh?” Purple cried. “What are you —” Then he stopped too. There was a distant cough of thunder. Behind us. Far behind us.

“The storm is over,” said Orbur. “We’re past it.”

“We fell through it,” muttered Shoogar. He began climbing down. The bird’s nest, where he had been holding onto it, was bent out of shape.