The Nightmare Garden

there all day twinging in my worn-out boots.

“There’s going to be a weight issue,” said Skip’s short friend. “The dirigible wasn’t built for nine. Or more like ten, including the portly dame.”

“Excuse you!” Bethina snapped. “I’m not an ounce overweight!”

“You’re too heavy for the sky,” Skip said bluntly. “That’s just simple math.”

“Better than being a walking cadaver, like some of us,” I piped up. Skip looked at me, then at Dean.

“Keep a gag on your girlfriend, Deano, unless you want me to do it for you.”

Dean looked at me and, no doubt seeing the murder in my eyes, brushed his hand against mine. “Not the time,” he muttered.

I took a deep breath and then leaned a bit closer to him, so that the sides of our hands stayed in contact as we walked. Dean caught my eye again and gave me a sideways smile.

“You three can walk back to the pickup zone,” Skip told the other Erlkin. “I’ll stay with the prisoner.”

“That’s fifteen miles!” his friend protested.

“You don’t like it, go live in the woods with the slipstreamers,” Skip snapped. “You have your orders.”

We came within range of the dirigible, and surprise made me stop and stare. Far from the metal-walled zeppelins I was accustomed to, the Erlkin’s dirigible looked like it shouldn’t fly at all. It consisted only of a metal cage slung under a balloon with bronze-colored ribs holding it in place, the red skin of the balloon rising and falling like the sides of a sentient creature.

The cage looked delicate, the wire thin and woven intricately, and Skip opened the retractable door with a crank handle. “Get in,” he ordered, shoving Conrad. My brother fell to the floor of the cage, and Skip kicked him hard in the gut.

“Hey!” I shouted, lunging for Skip. Dean grabbed me by the sweater and yanked me back.

“No, Aoife,” he hissed through gritted teeth. I struggled against him for a moment before going still. I’d always had a temper, and it was coming out more and more now that I didn’t have the admonition to be a “proper young lady” hanging over me, as I’d had at the Academy. I gave Skip the worst look I could muster, but I smoothed my hands over my skirt and stood down.

“I’m fine,” I told Dean. “He’s not worth it.”

“You’re a firecracker,” Skip sneered. “Time was, Dean knew just what to do with a girl like you.”

I crouched next to Conrad, cradling his head in my lap as Skip got Cal and Bethina on board and reeled in his mooring lines. “Bastard,” I said to him, stroking my brother’s hair. Seeing Conrad hurt brought back the old feelings, the feelings of the girl who’d do anything for her strong, loyal brother. Conrad coughed weakly.

“I’m fine, Aoife,” he said. “We’ll get this fixed. Just a misunderstanding.”

Once we’d all boarded, the craft rose from the forest floor with a bump. I looked at the ground drifting away below my feet and tried to focus on the construction of the Erlkin’s craft to still my temper and the fear that once we reached Windhaven, we’d be in even worse trouble. The cage was made of fine silver mesh and iron bones that echoed in the wind, giving an empty bong when I tapped my knuckle against it. Hollow bones, like a bird’s, light and strong. The Erlkin were better engineers than the Fae, that was for sure. The Fae feared anything with moving parts, treated it like it was some object from beyond reason if it mimicked their magic in any way.

Except I was in an iron cage, and even now I could feel it pressing on my mind, stirring in my blood and bringing on light-headed fits.

I tried to breathe, to think of orderly numbers and figures, the physics that allowed us to rise from the ground and drift above the treetops. Tried not to think of my dreams or my mother, as impossible as that might be.

“How far?” I asked Dean.

“Not much longer,” he announced. “The faithful of the fold never venture too far from Windhaven. Isn’t that right, Skip?”

Skip said nothing, just kept his hand lightly on the rudder of the dirigible, until we were far enough off the ground that all I could see were the tops of trees, rising through the fog like the blackened fingers of dead hands.

“Not far now,” Skip said, but his tone didn’t fill me with hope.

When Windhaven came into view, it wasn’t a sight that anything in my life, including my visit to the Thorn Land, the home of the Fae, had prepared me for.

The fog parted like the sea before the prow of an old-fashioned ship, and I saw gleaming towers of iron suspended high above the ground.

The distinctive burnt-paper scent of aether reached my nostrils, and as Windhaven got larger, I realized it wasn’t merely suspended—the entire city was flying along before us, moving above the Mists like a great raven casting its shadow across the ground. Iron didn’t poison the Erlkin, I knew—Dean had been just fine spending his life in an iron city surrounded by machines. Good for Dean and the Erlkin. Bad for Conrad and me. My stomach dipped along with the craft.

As we drew closer, I saw that Windhaven’s structures were built on an oval platform supported at the thinnest and widest points by giant fans whirring so loudly that even now, hundreds of yards off, they overwhelmed my ears. At the base of the city a giant aether globe hung by flexible cables, supplying Windhaven with light and communications. It looked small as a marble, or a twinkling star in a vast sky, against the grand scale of the flying city.

A mass of radio aerials flew from the highest tower at the apex of the buildings, which were largely curved but didn’t look as if they’d come together in any particular order. It was, for lack of a better description, a flying scrapyard, albeit one held aloft by engineering that made me dizzy with its genius.

I saw a cluster of spindly docking arms radiating from the back of the flying structure, in the dead spot for drag near one of the giant fans. Some were already occupied by crimson-sailed dirigibles similar to ours. Skip steered us toward an empty berth.

The arm extended toward us, long, flexible cables seeking out the iron ribs of the balloon.

“Magnets,” I said to Cal, analyzing how everything worked out of habit. We’d both been students at the School of Engines before I’d found out he was actually a ghoul and I was actually, in the eyes of the Proctors, an abomination.

“It’s boss,” he murmured, distractedly keeping one hand on Bethina’s where it clutched his arm in a death grip.

The magnets clamped on and reeled us in, safe against the docking arm. A thin ladder that looked like it couldn’t support even its own weight locked onto the outside of the dirigible’s cage.

“I’m not climbing that,” Bethina said instantly.

“You’re welcome to stay here,” Skip said shortly. “Once the city climbs up to night flying altitude, the temperature will drop enough that you should freeze to death in an hour or two. You probably won’t feel a thing.”

Cal put his hand on Bethina’s shoulder. His stringy body was vibrating, and I could tell it was taking everything he had not to change and launch himself at Skip’s throat.

I was thinking it would be a toss-up who clocked Skip first—Cal or me.

“Come on,” Cal soothed Bethina. “It’ll be okay. I’ll be right behind you.” He opened the door and helped her out onto the ladder. She was sheet white, her knuckles the color of bone where she held on to the metal, and I didn’t envy her. I wasn’t afraid of heights, but I had plenty of other fears to fill that void, and being so close to iron was making every one of them stir and raise their heads.

Skip turned to Conrad and pulled a key on a flexible chain from his belt. “I’m going to unlock you to climb up. There are more of us at the top than you could hope to overpower, and if you pull anything you’re going off the side.” He smacked the cage for emphasis, and it rattled. “It’s a long way down.”

“You can lay off the lanternreel-villain talk,” Conrad told him. “I’ll be a good boy.”

Skip curled his lip and looked at Dean. “And what about you, Nails? You going to be a good boy?”

“Doubt it,” Dean told him. “Never managed it before.”

Skip snorted before he manhandled Conrad onto the ladder and followed him up.

Dean helped me out, his hand warm on mine even though the breeze whipping along the docking stations was icy cold. “Why does he call you Nails?” I asked.

“Long story,” Dean said. “Not one I’m going to waste time telling, either.”