wound to heal better, add glim.”
“Does it really come from the sky?” Rose asked, watching Bryn break the wax seal on the vial with his thumbnail.
“Harvested by specially equipped airships,” Alun said. “Not that the scientific minds can agree upon what, exactly, glim is made of, nor why exactly it works the way it does.”
“Wait,” Rose said, finally looking away from the glow in Bryn Madder’s hand. “You don’t know how it works?”
“Sometimes a man doesn’t need to know how a thing works so long as he knows that it does work.”
Bryn opened a small gearbox on the side of the burner, and tapped out exactly one drop of glim. The drop floated down into the gears.
The basket lurched and a whirring racket started up. Rose grabbed hold of the railing, her breath frozen in her chest as the balloon above them snapped taut and round.
And then the world seemed to take a step away.
The sturdy basket made it feel like she was standing on solid ground, but when she looked over the edge, the ground was growing farther and farther away. They were lifting up, soft as a sigh, now at about midheight of the trees, and still rising.
They were flying!
“Put this back in the locket.” Alun took the vial from Bryn and handed it to her. She looked it over as carefully as she could in the moonlight. He, or maybe Bryn, had remelted the wax on the mouth of the vial, effectively sealing it. Rose placed the vial back in the locket. It snicked into place and then the locket spun closed all on its own, though she figured there was a spring set to trigger it to lock again. She tucked the locket back inside her dress.
When she looked up again, the bottom of the basket was above even the tallest trees. She grinned and put one hand over her mouth to hold back on a whoop of joy. She was flying!
Bryn Madder took hold of the levers, and with the assistance of the fans on each side of the craft, and some clever saillike rudders that Cadoc and Alun manipulated on the sides of the balloon, they were able to steer the craft off over the trees and the hills and the creeks, to the rail.
Rose had imagined this moment for years. How the trees and mountains and town would look. She had always known it would be beautiful. Breathtaking. But even so, she had underestimated the thrill of being above all the living world, had underestimated how small and pretty and quiltlike the earth rolled out beneath the moonlight. And she could not believe how far to the horizon she could see.
The boiler rattled so hard, it shook the basket. The whole craft lurched to one side, and Rose had to brace her feet not to go sliding across the floor.
“Whoa, now,” Alun said. “Easy on us, brother Bryn.”
They were beginning to descend, quickly, the ground growing larger and the black-shadowed tops of trees coming much, much closer.
“How much longer?” Alun asked, trying to correct their angle through the trees with the sails. Branches scraped the bottom of the basket, and a flurry of crows took off squawking.
“Almost out of steam,” Bryn called over the boiler’s thunderous noise.
Evergreen branches whipped against the sides of the basket and snagged up the lines tethering the balloon.
“Too many blasted trees!” Alun yanked on a sail line, dislodging a limb, and Bryn worked a lever to angle the fans and push the balloon out of the tree’s reach. But they were still falling too fast, branches slapping, cracking, catching at the aircraft, grazing over the delicate balloon fabric.
“Give us a sign, brother Cadoc,” Alun said.
The unmistakable rasp of material tearing sent a cold wave of fear down Rose’s spine. The balloon was broken. They weren’t going to land. They were going to crash.
“There!” Cadoc pointed to a clearing not far from the rail. They were just a ways, maybe half a mile, down from the building end of the track.
“Down,” Alun yelled. “Put ’er down, quick, Bryn!”
The boiler stopped rattling, completely burned dry of water. Wind rushed by, cold and wet from the steam gouting out of the balloon above them.
Alun and Cadoc heaved on the lines, opening pockets in the fabric, trying to push the balloon toward the clearing.
They sped down. Fast and faster.
Rose clutched the rail of the basket and watched, transfixed, as the skeletal giants of moonlit trees slapped at them with silvery fingers.
The fans whirred like hornet hives as Bryn put all the steam, and likely all the glim that was left, into them. “Brace for it!” he yelled.
Rose sucked in a deep breath and said a prayer.
The basket rammed into something solid, then just as quick was whipped the other way. Rose lost hold of the edge of the basket and fell as the entire craft tipped. She caught a glimpse of sky, trees, basket, the wind rushing past her, and then was caught by strong hands around her waist.
“Hold on!” Alun yelled.
Rose, half in and half out of the basket, facedown to the ground, couldn’t hold on to anything, but Alun Madder’s hands were a vise around her ribs. The basket tumbled, bounced, and then even Alun Madder’s strong hands couldn’t keep ahold of her.
Rose spilled free of the basket and hit the ground so hard, all the air was knocked out of her lungs. It took her a full minute to get air back in her chest and wits back in her head. And when she did, she realized two things.
One, she was on the ground. Scuffed, bruised, and mussed, but by most parts whole and undamaged.
And two, the Madder brothers were all laughing their fool heads off.
She pushed up to sitting, and tried to get her bearings.
Somehow, they kept the basket from breaking apart. Somehow they brought the basket down, close enough, and, more important, slow enough, that when the basket finally struck the earth, they hadn’t all perished falling out of the thing.
The balloon, however, was caught up in the tree branches, and torn open like a child’s wayward kite.
“Fine a landing as ever, brother Bryn,” Alun, who sat no more than a few feet away from Rose, said.
“Thank you, brother Alun.” Bryn chuckled and heaved up to his feet. He swayed a little, then seemed to get his footing and stomped over to the tipped basket. He twisted a valve, and threw open the burner grate. There was not a coal, not a stitch of fuel, left. “Well, she won’t burn the forest down.”
“Looks like a one-way ticket,” Cadoc said from where he was sprawled on the ground, staring up at the tattered balloon in the tree above him thoughtfully. “Pity. I do like air rides.”
“We’ll make you another balloon, Cadoc,” Alun said. “And you can try your hand at flying it.” He slapped at his shoulders and trousers, then stood. “Miss Small, are you in one piece?”
Rose took a deep breath to steady herself. She felt jostled and rattled as if she’d ridden a day in a horse- drawn carriage, as if every inch of the space they had traveled had rumbled beneath her as they passed over it. But that had been flight. Her first. And she had loved it.
She stood. “I’m fine enough, thank you, Mr. Madder.”
“Good,” he said, “that’s good. Thought I might have lost you there at the end, what with you jumping ship.”
“I assure you, I did not jump,” Rose said.
The brothers all laughed again, and went about reclaiming their weapons and supplies.
Rose wanted to know how they had built the ship, wanted to know what the balloon and sails were made of and how the tubes and hoses and steam and glim had powered it, but there was no time.
The thump of steam exhausting a stack rolled through the air from up the track and a long hiss followed. The matic that Shard LeFel rode was somewhere up the rail ahead of them and coming closer, like as not headed to LeFel’s railcars.
“Bring your weapons, lady and gents,” Alun said, jumping free of the basket. “It’s time we see to the end of
