Chapter 11 - The Golden Lure
Prawn Fish: ‘I laugh at this; hahahaha! See these three struggling at only the third flight? Is this what passes for valor in our bubbled domain? Are these this age’s heroes? No wonder recent eons have seen so few brave the cursed shroud.’
Koi Fish: ‘Come on Prawn Fish. Methinks thee dost project too much. Only their warrior huffs; is that why you whine?’
Prawn Fish: ‘You only like them because they’re outsiders, Koi Fish! Because you carried them down in your belly. Hear how that one in the sunflowers complains at every step they rise. This is the seventh time she’s said they should be going down. I call that sloth. I call that struggle.’
Salmon Fish: ‘I don’t know Prawney, I gotta abide with Koiey here. They ain’t taken many licks before the stair. Sure as sharks they knocked more than one of them Shellshades back to the Bottomworld. And the grey one’s wise to hedges; you saw how he rolled through- JUMPING BELLBUGS KOI FISH! Watch where you trail those whiskers!’
Koi Fish: ‘Didn’t see that grey one before. Heh, I bet Clam Fish is happy.’
Prawn Fish: ‘Now there’s a projection for you! There’s an example of favoritism. A statuary man, carrying a violin, just happens to get this far? Look at him! Look at how bored he is. He just checked his pocket ticker. Again! Clam fish held that one’s hand. I guarantee it.’
Salmon Fish: ‘They got a point Clamey. Odd for one of yours to get this far.’
Clam Fish: ‘It is not our place to say, fellow fish. We have no sway, on the Stairs of Marble Unending. Others have come so far before, and found their worth wanting. Let us take example from the Sea-Father. See the patience of mighty Sun Fish. He watches. He decides. Let us, also, watch.’
Koi Fish: ‘Sourpuss.’
…
Koi Fish: ‘Well, that’s your horse out Prawn Fish. The fat fighter stops at the dozenth story.’
Prawn Fish: ‘Less fool than these other two, Koi Fish! They forget that the skyscraper of the fish might rises endlessly, step after step after step, and never pierces the bubble.’
Koi Fish: ‘Oh, I don’t know. At least they’re determined. The Sun Fish might bless them yet.’
Prawn Fish: ‘You look at their foreign robes only, and wear rosy scales. What’s that style anyway, Starharbor? I cannot believe these the descendants of those who conquered the bubbles. Listen how the sunflower-bedecked one wails. “I’m bored,” she howls. Such an amusingly human noise.’
Salmon Fish: ‘It is a bit of a cowsowhorse-ish whine. Hehehehehe, she’ll be done soon enough.’
Koi Fish: ‘I see the grey one’s going strong. He’s checked his ticker once or twice, but he marches on. You must be pleased, Clam Fish.’
Clam Fish: ‘Patience IS a virtue.’
Koi Fish: ‘Ugh, you can hear the sneer in his shell. He’s happy as himself.’
Prawn Fish: ‘Just you wait Clam Fish. You think yours is favored, but I think the sunflowers on that robe will yet earn the father fish’s favor.’
Clam Fish: ‘We’ll see.’
…
Clam Fish: ‘Alright, I admit it; this is a bit much. Even for me.’
Koi Fish: ‘He’s been at it for ages!’
Salmon Fish: ‘Whew! That trip out to Pluck and back is a dullard! Anything happen while I was gone?’
Prawn Fish: ‘He’s. Still. Going. It’s intolerable. The sunflower one found her sense eons ago. Would that the Sun Fish allowed me those gun-toting Shellshades I suggested as guards. We could have spared ourselves all this watching.’
Koi Fish: ‘I didn’t know human legs could take that many steps. Period.’
Clam Fish and Salmon Fish together: ‘They can’t.’
Koi Fish: ‘Hey, Rain Fish, if it’s not a huge bother, could you-’
Rain Fish: ‘HUUUUUHHHHHH. Why is it that whenever there’s trouble, it’s ME that has to fix it? When the cottonfruits are dry, MY rain gives them existence. When people… need rain for other things, I have to provide it.’
Koi Fish: ‘Okay, Alright. No need to flap up a hail. But since you mention rain, do you think you could flood the Stairs of Marble Unending? Just a little? Just to see if this grey guy stops?’
Rain Fish: ‘You know, I just don’t think I have it in me today. Antiquity’s such a hot bubble to lay on.’
Salmon Fish: ‘What about The Thick and Sweaty Wind? Sure as sugar she’d be sweet enough to handle him.’
Prawn Fish: ‘Is she nearby? My experience with her is: she always blows when you need your shots to fly straight, and sits still when you need a cool gust. Hardly the reliable sort.’
Koi Fish: ‘Wind? You out there?’
The Thick and Sweaty Wind: ‘Hi Fishes. Why are you screaming after me? Not that a girl doesn’t like that, now and then.’
Prawn Fish: ‘Simple job for you wind, if you can handle it. There’s an interloper mounting the Stairs of Marble Unending. He won’t give up. We need you to destroy him.’
Clam Fish: ‘Or just blow him back unharmed.’
Prawn Fish: ‘Well, I guess half a job done will technically work. In this instance. Just get rid of him.’
The Thick and Sweaty Wind: ‘Say… I know that guy.’
All the Fish: ‘You do?’
The Thick and Sweaty Wind: ‘Sure. That’s Mr. Grey.’
Koi Fish: ‘So, what’s he like?’
The Thick and Sweaty Wind: ‘He’s alright.’
Koi Fish: ‘Will he ever give up on these stairs?’
The Thick and Sweaty Wind: ‘Do they ever change?’
Koi Fish: ‘No.’
The Thick and Sweaty Wind: ‘He’s pretty persistent.’
…
Sun Fish: ‘What man is this that seeks conference with Great Fishes?’
All The Fish and The Thick and Sweaty Wind: ‘Yawn Mr. Grey.’
Sun Fish: ‘What does this man show?’
Prawn Fish: ‘Lunacy!’
Koi Fish: ‘Gotta agree boss. Lunacy.’
Salmon Fish: ‘Some Pluck, Some Prestige, no Panache, a dash of Antiquity.’
Clam Fish: ‘Determination.’
Rain Fish: ‘UUUUUGH. Trouble!’
Blob Fish: ’…’
Sun Fish: ‘Let this mortal enter the realm of the Fishes’ Pond. Let those who accompanied in prior trials, accompany here. Let them brave my flaming quills, for the glance of the Fishes. Let them look, but not touch, upon the divine scales of we fish. And Clam Fish: let you hide my lure in your soft mouth, that only the worthy may make claim.’
Clam Fish: ‘Sure.’
“I must’ve paused right before the end,” said Honeydew. “You were one flight ahead.”
Mr. Grey said, “It felt quite the trek. I started counting the tocks, and lost track of steps.”
“I was right behind,” said Tom.
Mr. Grey straightened his anchor shawl. “We’ve reached the top floor. I’d say we all earned a pat.”
Honeydew clicked. “Fine. How does this help? How do we get out? We’re farther than ever from our stuff!”
“We’re above the mist,” added Tom in a wondering tone. The three swayed their eyes as one. Each wore a different face as they beheld the prospect.
Tom began with wide-eyed, slack-jawed gaping. He stared at the open air sweep above a mist sea; all within a bubble beneath an actual sea of water; beneath another zone of merlot. He reeled his eyes back and slid them over the rooftop garden, floating alone above the mist. His bristly cheeks spread in a shining smile. He stared at dozens of water lilies, floating along a purling creek which ran perpetually into and out of a small pond.
Honeydew’s eyes flicked to the pond directly. Light spackled the dark orbs - like stars on an oily, moonless sky - from the gleam shining through the clear, rippling water. She walked slowly to the pond, ignoring the stepping stone path, prowling straight through shin-high grass like long swords of sapphire. Focus. Will. Zeal. She wore these on the thin line of her mouth and the sharp edge of her eyes. She crouched over the water. With those sharp eyes, she followed the light’s source; a glowing, spiny pufferfish.
Mr. Grey remained expressionless. He stood still. He glanced at Antiquity’s bubble membrane. It arced close above them; he saw the individual fish swimming in the schools beyond. He saw no Sun Fish in that outside sea. Only the little fish in the small pond shone; it threw rosy fingers from the skyscraper rooftop, out through the cloud sea. Mr. Grey saw Honeydew crouch at the water’s edge. He listened to the quiet voice of the water. He laced his fingers behind his back. He basked peacefully for a moment, in a cool breeze which fluttered his shawl, in the garden under the sea and over the clouds.
“Oh, hello there, Wind,” said Mr. Grey.
“Hey there Mr. Grey. Fancy seeing you, here. Pretty far from the balloon elevator.”
“You’re unexpected here too. I missed your passing, back on the stairway. Do you often come so high?”
The Wind laughed. She fluttered Mr. Grey’s robe and shawl with a hot air. “Oh Mr. Grey,” she said, shaking off her misty, amused chuckles. “Someday you’ll figure it out. Meantime, call it a trade secret.”
“I don’t mean to pry.”
“Forget it. So whatcha doing?”
Mr. Grey glanced over the verdant, swaying garden. Tom joined Mr. Grey and The Wind. Both Mr. Grey and Tom held spare eyes on Honeydew as she traced the fish in the water. Mr. Grey said, “This seems like the fishes’ pond.”
The Wind whistled sarcastically. “That must’ve taken some sleuthing. What gave it away, the glowing pool? Or the lack of great fish beyond the bubble? Or the loneliness of this garden in a misty sea?”
“Then, ‘here lies the Golden Lure’. Such was the advice - in the glass temple - of the bearded oracle.”
“Possibly. So you think you’re in the Fish’s Pond; that the Lure’s here. So why hesitate? Why aren’t you searching?” Honeydew neither moved nor spoke, but Mr. Grey saw - in the rippled reflection of her face on the water - a roll of eyes which said, ‘My thoughts exactly.’
“To the great fishes, we’d show our respect,” said Mr. Grey. Tom nodded. “You said you don’t know folkpoles, back in Wine Medo. Do you know fish lore? Or the proper hecatombs, or the rituals? Or anything else?”
“Trade secrets,” said The Wind in a sultry whisper. The grass-stained hem of Tom’s robe fluttered across his hairy knees. Then The Wind sighed warmly on their cheeks. “You’ve been let into a colleague’s house, but she accidentally left her purse, back at the tram-station. She insists you make yourself at home. What do you do? To show respect? To avoid offense?”
The Wind went quiet; Mr. Grey and Tom’s robes fell still. Tom took big, thoughtful paces. He walked over and stood by Honeydew at the edge of the rippling pool. Mr. Grey pinched his chin.
“Don’t worry,” said Honeydew. Her rippled reflection’s eyes twinkled with drive. “I’ve got it solved. These water flowers - constantly turning in the current - they stick out to me. I’d wager we pick the nicest. We prove ourselves worthy, the flower becomes the lure.”
Her rippled reflection arms stretched toward the nearest lily. Mr. Grey spoke fast. “But would you touch a friend’s things? Alone in their house, on your first visit?”
“It’s just a flower. Why so solemn? We don’t buy into these fishes.”
“It seems courteous.”
Honeydew reached again. She saw Tom’s rippled reflection hold out a hand in a gesture of pause. “The partisans wanted him,” said Tom with a nod at Mr. Grey. “‘Come with,’ said Nuggets. They had Candlehead, but they still asked Mr. Grey. He may be a clue.”
Honeydew click-snapped. “Then do something,” she said. “Act. Don’t stand there; praying, meditating, whatever.”
Mr. Grey followed the path of sunken slate which looped through the tall, sea-dark grass. His shoes made soft taps on the round stones. He walked at his usual steady pace. He let the water’s babble fill his ears and the slow ripples fill his eyes. He went and stood between Tom and Honeydew. He looked down, past their wavy reflections.
The water flowed clear of silt. The quilled pufferfish lit the pond to its bottom. Spiny shadow fell from wisterias and pennyworts dancing beneath the surface. A lumpy blobfish floated under one thick water-plant leaf. Not far from it, a manta-ray stretched lazily across the sand and uneven rocks scattered over the floor. Suddenly the ray started, and darted away, as a meaty prawn sprung from a nearby crevice and punched twice with its claws. Mr. Grey looked to a different spot of the water; the prawn reminded him of the armored-ghost lobsters.
On the pool’s farther side, making its way through the widest expanse of clear water, a salmon fluttered busily along the sandy bed. A translucent koi - the exact miniature of the one they came to Glory Days on - floated beside the salmon, with its whisker-tendrils undulating lazily. Thin shadows of the two swam on the water’s surface - like shadow’s from Tom’s lantern - cast there by a pufferfish underlight.
The spiny pufferfish itself floated at the pond’s precise center. No other fish dared swim near. Mr. Grey felt why; intense heat radiated from the fish alongside its brilliance. Bubbles boiled off its spines. Mr. Grey saw Tom’s reflection doubly wetted with pouring sweat, worse than on the dragon-ski. Seeing his friend’s plight under the pufferfish glare, a sudden understanding clicked for Mr. Grey. He realized why Candlehead would’ve failed this challenge.
Mr. Grey, at first, thought he’d seen every fish in the pond. But on a second passage of eyes over water, he saw a last creature existing. Camouflaged among a rock cluster, just under the boiling pufferfish, lay a hard clam.
Mr. Grey pointed out the clam to Tom and Honeydew. All three instantly guessed that it held the Golden Lure.
“Does the clam conceal the lure?” asked Mr. Grey openly. “How do we find out?”
“We grab it and look inside,” said Honeydew. She kept her eyes fixed on the fish and the water, but she raised her brows at Tom and Mr. Grey’s rippled reflections.
Tom said, “But the water boils…”
“And aside from that, it does seem disrespectful,” said Mr. Grey.
“Maybe the clue’s in the fish,” suggested Tom. “What does each fish do? We could try tributes.”
Mr. Grey mused. “The manta ray stands for rain. We could show jelly, if we had any. And that prawn nearby, I think he’s a fish of war. Dipping your mallet; that might show respect.”
“Far too theoretical,” said Honeydew. Mr. Grey and Tom both gestured to the boiling water, but she went on. “Granted, the pufferfish is trouble. That doesn’t mean we bow and scrape to seafood. Let’s stir the water. Or take a different fish.”
“But these embody Great Fish,” said Mr. Grey.
“So what? More reason to grab one. What could you do, I wonder, controlling a Great Fish?”
“Stealing the Sun Fish-”
“Not the Sun Fish especially! That one matters for cotton and light. Fine. But if we had that prawn, for instance. Maybe we could use it to beat the lobster-monsters. Get back to our stuff. Or that Koi! We could go anywhere, see everything.”
Honeydew’s rippled reflection padded softly around the bank. Her eyes fastened on the translucent koi. Just as she reached the side where the koi swam, both it and the salmon darted to the pool’s other end.
Tom held up a palm which he waved toward Mr. Grey. He said, “Let’s pause a moment longer.”
Honeydew straightened her back, folded her arms, tapped her foot, pursed her lips, and showed - in general - all the recognized signals of impatience. Had she a ticker, she would certainly have drawn it and glared pointedly at its tocking hands. As she didn’t have one, she made do with her pocket mirror. She glared pointedly at her un-rippled reflection; as if making it answerable for this tedious scheme. When she finished visually upbraiding her own reflection, her eyes returned to the pond, and followed the koi.
Mr. Grey rubbed a thumb over his small mustache. He wondered. The Wind - interested in the outcome, but not in affecting it - blew soft around the three and over the water.
Another realization clicked for Mr. Grey. He said, “Candlehead’s talent, enchanting with the bagpipes… But he’d have melted, if he stood so close. That’s why they invited me, is what I’m thinking. In Candlehead’s place, I’d have been the enchanter.”
Tom nodded encouragingly. Sweat flew from his cheeks. Honeydew said, “Does enchantment travel in water?”
“What should I play as a test?” Tom, Honeydew’s rippled reflection in the pond, and her un-rippled one in the mirror, all looked at him and shrugged.
Mr. Grey unbuckled his coffin, drew the violin, tightened the bow, and tuned the strings. He took a deep nose breath. He reflected, like a fiddler’s statue, on the bank of the Fishes’ Pond. As his music began, it mingled with the purling water. He set out no treasure, playing instead an unaffected, simple song.
He played his notes carefully, though he knew not that they were right.
The pool shadows shifted. The boiling bubbles moved across the surface. The spiny, bright pufferfish drifted towards Mr. Grey’s music. As its little fish tail wagged it forward, the clam mouth opened, as if to say, “Who turned out the lights?!” A glint of gold darted from the soft mouth. It arced through the clear water and broke the surface. It fell with a tinkle on one of the smooth stones at Mr. Grey’s shoes.
Mr. Grey stopped playing. Honeydew and Tom walked slowly around the Pond’s edge to join him. The Wind whistled low, the azure grass murmured. Mr. Grey bent down, picked up, and held aloft a golden minnow; rosily shining in the pufferfish day.
“Well that wasn’t much trouble,” said Mr. Grey.
Honeydew asked, “That’s it then?” She sounded disappointed. Suddenly, before Mr. Grey or Tom could stop her, she lunged at the water. Her hand darted in and shattered the rippling reflection. Mr. Grey feared she’d reach for the pufferfish, that she’d scald herself. But when her hand splashed from the water, it held only one of the floating lilies.
“A souvenir,” she said, turning away from the pool as it returned to tranquil ripples. Tom stared at her, first in anger, then with widened eyes. Even Mr. Grey, expressionless, darted a sideways glance at Tom. Neither spoke. The Wind tossed their robes in her laughter. Honeydew raised her eyes and asked, “What?”
The sunflower-eyes on her robe had changed. The dark eyes were still surrounded by blonde petals. Instead of sunflowers, however, a pattern of water lilies grew across her robe.
Mr. Grey cleared his throat. “So, how do we get back down?”
Mist streamed by Mr. Grey’s eyes. He felt as if he were diving through cloudy water, so thickly and closely did the vapor flow. Only The Wind - still hot, still sweaty, smacking like oven air against his face - and the bumpy spine of the cowsowhorse mount, grounded him to reality. Mr. Grey, Tom, and Honeydew weren’t swimming, but flying. Flying; far above the unseen skyscrapers. Flying; through the misty sea covering The Lost City of Fountains.
“Nice of the fishes, gifting this shortcut,” said Mr. Grey. The cowsowhorse lowed beneath him, as though agreeing. “We’ll shortly return to camp, deliver the lure, do Jodee’s visa, clear miscommunications - with the Defense Force - and after all that; return to our vacation.”
Honeydew made, Mr. Grey thought, a reluctantly satisfied click. She sat at the front with her legs dangling along the chuck and foreshanks of the broad cow body. Her knees dangled behind the bone-and-linen glider wings harnessed to their mount. She glanced sidelong across the vibrating fabric of one wing. “Not that shortly. We’re hardly swooping and soaring. And how will we know when we’re landing?”
Looking at The Wind dancing beneath the wings, Mr. Grey asked, “How long till we make camp, Wind?”
The Wind shrugged; the bone framework creaked. She said, “Not much farther. Probably. Hard to see in the mist.”
“I hope the crab-things are gone.”
“And our stuff’s intact,” added Honeydew.
They glided in silence for a time; atop their fish-gifted cowsowhorse; through a hot, wet foggy ocean. Tom sat between Honeydew and Mr. Grey. The working Wind’s breath fluttered his robe, so that the cloud zeppelins patterned there seemed to fly within the surrounding mist. As a snow owl might fly through an alpine storm, its alabaster feathers camouflaged, with only a rustle and a warp in the falling flakes to mark its passage; just so did the cloud zeppelins on Tom’s robe fly. Whenever Tom turned his broad, whiskered face sideways, an odd expression of worry wrinkled his brow. Tom broke the silence by saying, “There were many crabs. Maybe we forget the camp; beeline back to town.”
“Our. Stuff. Is. At. Camp.” said Honeydew, emphasizing the words by squeezing them between bared fangs.
“And consider Tom,” Mr. Grey added, “this cowsowhorse only glides. It’s range has limits.”
Tom steadied himself with a palm against the cowsowhorse’s ribs, drew his handkerchief with the other hand, and wiped gathering mist from his brow. He twisted his broad body around and nearly knocked Mr. Grey from his sirloin perch. Tom twitched his cheekbones and twisted his mouth, as if struggling to speak. The spectacle alarmed Mr. Grey.
Just then, they heard a shout - a command - from somewhere ahead and below in the pale murk. All three glanced over the flanks. The tallest skyscrapers slipped up through the mist; columns of grassglass, metal, and stone. The building rose like cliff walls on either side; as though they flew along a deep ravine, with a cloudy sky above, and its mirrored reflection in a river below. A moment passed. The grand facades, misty floor, and circular stone rings of the fountains popped into sight; a dizzy distance down. They heard a second bark - a second command - and the camp of the partisans rushed through the mist-wall.
The Glorious Defense Force held them prisoner.
A row of gun-toting, prawn-armored soldiers stood in duos and trios around the former camp of the partisans. The unmoving tortilla-shells of many lobster-monsters lay in the street like boulders on a flat misty heath. The partisans huddled beside Honeydew’s luggage stack. Their hands were bound in thick seaweed-rope, and a few had been roughly handled, but otherwise they looked unharmed. Nuggets stood out at the edge of the cluster, his rose-tipped shoulders drooping, his hands held to his face, sobbing into his cloth visa. Mr. Grey marked Candlehead’s absence among the prisoners; he wondered if the legendary figure had somehow escaped.
One of the Defense Force soldiers pointed at the three up on their cowsowhorse. They leveled their guns skyward. One soldier however, carrying an all-too-familiar trumpet, waved a fist.
Ordus the Diegeonary yelled up at the gliding three. “‘Not even the Prawn Fish will transgress his swim, but the Diegeonaries, the ministers of justice, overtake him.’ Did you think you’d escaped? That you’d gotten away? From the Defense Force? And the keen light of the Sun Fish? NO WAY, HORDIST SCUM!”
Mr. Grey saw the glider wings quiver with a sudden, second source of vibration. Honeydew, sitting with her knees against the framework, shook with fury. Mr. Grey only saw the back of her head, but he heard how the words she said whistled from her throat, almost a whisper. “All our stuff… All my robes… These… Stupid… Soldiers…”
Before Mr. Grey could think of something soothing he might say, Ordus called up again. “I’m giving you one chance. Just this single one. glide that bull to ground, and submit yourselves to King’s Law. FROM THIS POINT ON, I’M DONE PLAYING NICE!”
Mr. Grey, in a less-wise moment, said, “Perhaps we should consider-”
Honeydew threw her hair back and howled with fury. “MY STUFF!!!” She pumped her shoulders in vain at the empty air; The Wind slipped away from the barrage. Honeydew brought a tight, shuddering fist over her head, her hand mirror clutched between the blanched knuckles. She brought the hand hard against the cowsowhorse’s flank. She wasn’t trying deliberately to hurt the animal; it had the simple misfortune of being the first surface to meet her descending fist.
The cowsowhorse’s cowsow shoulder bucked. It shunted Honeydew sideways. She gasped. Before Mr. Grey or Tom could grab her, she tumbled over the side.
Honeydew fell. The movement seemed slow; the mist covering the ground seemed strangely pillowish. But they all, every one, knew that only unforgiving stone lay beneath. Honeydew screamed and plummeted. Mr. Grey tried to scream, but shock choked the noise in his throat. Far below, Ordus the Diegeonary cried, “Somebody catch her!” The soldiers were too far. None would reach Honeydew before she hit ground. Her fall accelerated. The false mist floor spread its massless arms wide for the catch. Mr. Grey closed his eyes.
A splash. Mr. Grey opened his eyes. Honeydew had landed in the center of a fountain ring. She came up spluttering; wet; but still existing. Mr. Grey pulled air in, breathing for the first time in several tocks. He saw the soldiers move in, guns drawn. His breath caught halfway down his neck.
Then the scene vanished from view. The mist swallowed Honeydew, the partisans, the camp, and the soldiers and their guns. Mr. Grey and Tom’s cowsowhorse glided past the site, deeper into the haze, further along the skyscraper corridor.
Mr. Grey twisted and said, “We need to go back. Wind, can you turn us around?”
Ahead of the Wind’s response, however, Tom scooched forward along the mount’s jagged spine. He took hold of the glider frame and held it steady. The glider continued straight and high over the misty street. He said, “The soldiers abide king’s law. They’ll just arrest her. She’ll be safe with them. We’ll regroup with her later.”
“She’s part of our team. We can’t travel without her,” To Mr. Grey, Ordus’s yells sounded alarmingly distant.
“We traveled to the castle; she wasn’t with us,” Tom countered. “We can shortcut this. We do Jodee’s visa first, handle the lure next, clear our names for thirds, then they’ll release Honeydew.”
“Tom, we can’t abandon her.”
“Will us getting caught help her?”
“But… our stuff is back at camp.”
“You have your fiddle. I have my mallet. We can use the cowsowhorse. It makes a bubble. We’ll walk by its hocks; cross the abyssal dessert. Isn’t that right, Wind?”
The Wind murmured under the glider wings. “Do what pleases you. You will regardless. That bare, broad, sandy sea floor? I’ll not cross alone.”
“But you’ll carry us?” Tom’s voice was pressing. “Fly the glider its farthest?”
“If you feel strongly.”
Tom bent over the cow-neck of their cowsowhorse and held his palms by its eyes like blinders. They glided no faster, nor did their course change, but Mr. Grey heard the beast huff. He said, “Museumtown’s a long way.”
The Wind said, “I’m taking you to the bubble’s other side. The Lost City lies right at Antiquity’s far membrane, on the Panacheward edge. Then you won’t need to cross all of Antiquity and the Abyssal Desert. Just the latter.” The Wind seemed to have warmed to their scheme as she found herself a component. She blew hot, strong currents under their wings, so that the grassglass windows of the skyscrapers flashed by like tenacious curtains of vine draped down a canyon wall.
Mr. Grey, finding his resistance buckling at the knees, asked, “But what about food? Water, bedrolls, fire.”
Tom looked back from his bend over the mount’s neck. He sniffled, and his eyes carried dark, tired bags, but the eyes themselves shone with steel polish. Tom said, “We’ll figure things out. We can rough it for a spell, scavenge off the sand. You should trust me more, I’ve always helped you get by.”
The skyscraper walls vanished into the mist. Their glider broke free of the consumptive misty zone surrounding The Lost City. The edge of Antiquity, the far side from where they’d entered, curved just ahead. The bubble’s membrane held back the crushing sea. Beyond it lay the Abyssal Desert; stretching out of sight; brightly lit in all its vast emptiness by the sweltering Sun Fish’s fickle rays.
Mr. Grey looked with doubt at their ride’s furry flanks. The thought of walking that gulf, in a claustrophobic pocket of air made by a barn chimera, was not comforting. And he hated leaving Honeydew. But Mr. Grey stifled his objections. He let Tom urge on The Wind and the cowsowhorse. He took another big breath through his nose, and readied himself for whatever lay ahead.
After all, he thought; Tom had always helped.