Twenty thousand feet up, looking down at the patchwork quilt of the English countryside, the boy retched, and watched his vomit trail down the side of the lurching dirigible, and tried to wipe his mouth clean before they could find him.
He was waiting for his brother and sister on the deck; he had been counting clouds when the squall hit.
“You’re such a mess, Col,” Fry said, appearing from the deck door with Maura in tow. Fry looked as dapper as ever an eight-year old could get; he always had the shiniest shoes, and if he so much as got a scratch on them he would stop and polish them with his finger.
Maura, a year younger, fidgeted and pivoted her foot on her toes, wrinkling her nose, and said nothing.
At ten, Col never felt like the eldest, and today he felt it even less than usual. Under Fry’s smug eye, he straightened out his shirt, dabbed at the wet spots on his shirt with his handkerchief and stood a little taller.
“We’re supposed to be flying today.” Fry folded his arms. ”Father said.”
“Father!” Maura said, and turned away.
“Don’t talk about him,” Col started.
“He did say it. Before he left.”
Col sighed as he heard Maura begin to sniffle, and wondered where the dirigible was taking them. Their mother hadn’t said much about the journey, just that she needed to get work done and could her darling children please leave her alone as far as was humanly possible, and not be late for meals ad ad ad nauseum. And please stop fighting.
“Let’s go,” Fry said. “I want to look at the new pod.”
Like a ballooning spiderling settling onto a fat apple, the pod had docked in the morning. There had been too many people around, and the children hadn’t been able to see over the commotion; all they had been able to ascertain was that the newcomers seemed important, had colourful, expensive-looking clothes and pompadour hairstyles. Fry had thought them from the East, but Col privately thought they were from some new route. There were a lot of drop-ins on the connectors in these days.
They headed back down to the docking bays, winding their way down the slippery wooden steps and shouting above the din as they passed the roaring walls of the engine chambers. Maura had recovered from her tearful episode, and was talking animatedly about her latest dream, to no-one in particular. Fry wasn’t listening; he was rapping on the walls and singing something tuneless and dreadful.
Col watched his step on the wet planks, and wondered if he were too late to trade in his siblings. His back hurt from the effort of standing tall, and he began to hunch again. He thought of the squall that had hit the airship earlier and made it seem as fragile as a seed pod in a tornado. Their mother said airships and connectors were perfectly safe, and people who didn’t think so were just being narrow-minded retrograde non-thinkers. She had a way of spitting the last couple words like an epithet.
The pod opened, wooden petals blooming to let the riders out. This pod sat an impressive six people; it was covered in
—r: lacks charm/soul of more recent stuff—
