“Probably. The fire was nothing. Just a little leak. I can seal that with putty for now. It’ll take a little longer to get the cable back in place, but it should only take an hour. Then we just need a little water for the boiler and we’ll be all set to fly.”
“I saw a stream on the east face of this mountain,” Asha said absently.
“Great.”
They entered the cabin and Gideon gave the pilot a quick but warm embrace as he greeted her. But as she set to work on the strange engine, the man seemed to forget all about her as he returned to Priya’s side. The nun sat in the single chair in front of the controls, running her hands lightly over the levers and glassy faces of the gauges and dials.
Asha watched them all for a moment. “I’ll go get some water,” she said to no one in particular.
“Oh, thanks.” Kahina handed her a bucket. “Just dump it in there.” She pointed to the small boiler beside her.
Asha glanced inside, guessed it would take twenty or thirty buckets to fill the void, and strode outside again. There was no clear path down the eastern face, but the slope was forgiving and the ground was firm and safe. Soon she was back down in the shaded corridors of the cedar forest, swaddled in the sounds of tree-souls and hungry squirrels and timid birds.
The stream emerged from a narrow gap in the mountain rock less than a quarter hour from the airship and Asha frowned as she realized it would take most of the day to bring up enough water to fill the boiler using a single bucket. She had just filled the bucket from the cold stream and straightened up to leave when a deep thrumming sound caught her attention. She swept her long black hair away from her right ear to better hear the aetheric echo, but it faded quickly into silence.
“Are you all right?”
Asha glanced up to see Gideon standing on the slope above her. He had a stick across his shoulder with three more buckets dangling off it, and he was staring at her. At her ear.
“I’m fine.” She dropped her hair over her ear and began trudging up the slope. “The water’s right around that stone there.” She pointed at the stream carelessly as she passed him.
“But, your ear? Is it all right?”
She kept walking.
“It’s just… I’ve only ever seen something like that once before and I was a little surprised and I just wanted to make certain you were all right.” He took a few steps up the path after her. “I mean, if it is the same condition, then maybe I can help, or maybe I know someone who can.”
Asha whirled about and stared down at him. “You’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“I haven’t?” He frowned, his eyes searching her face.
“No.” She turned and resumed climbing the slope. “You haven’t.”
4
By noon the boiler was full and Kahina had completed her repairs. The engine hissed and rumbled, the propellers droned, and the entire airship was shaking as though eager to be back home again in the Persian sky.
“Please let us help you on your way. It’s the least we can do,” Gideon asked. “Just to the nearest town.”
“It’s safe.” Kahina grinned. “More or less.”
Priya stood just outside the cabin with Jagdish curled up in her arms, his fur bristling at the growling machine. She nodded. “Asha? Shall we?”
Asha pressed her lips into a thin line. “How does it work?”
“The envelope is filled with a light gas. It floats in the air just like an air bubble floats in water,” Kahina said. “Don’t worry. Even in a disaster, even when damaged, it still sinks gently back to the ground again, just like it did yesterday. It’s safer than horses or trains, or so they say.”
“Horses don’t fall out of the sky.” The herbalist picked at her lip. “All right then. But only to the nearest town, and only because there isn’t much to eat in this forest.”
The two women stepped aboard and sat on the small bench in the center of the cabin behind Kahina. Gideon stood beside them, his right hand with its strange brass gauntlet gripping an overhead bar for balance. The engine at the rear of the cabin roared a little louder and the propellers droned at a higher pitch, and the entire cabin shivered at the airship rose gently into the cool mountain air. Asha stared out the window as the rock face slid down and down until the peak slipped out of sight, revealing the endless vista of the cedar forest stretching out to a distant ridge on the western horizon.
The ship turned slowly, the entire world below rotating in a flat circle, and then they accelerated west, the mountain peak gliding smoothly away behind them. Looking down, Asha saw the forest below as a wrinkled green cloth, dappled and shadowed, painted by sun and shade, and streaked here and there with brown or a flash of silver-blue. But the world of leaves and bark and insects and earth did not exist from her seat in the sky.
After a few minutes, she tried to describe what she was seeing to Priya, but she gave up a moment later. Gideon smiled and shrugged down at her. Asha kept her eyes on the horizon.
The sun had barely begun to shift down the westward sky when Asha noticed that they too were sinking toward the ground. The forest below thinned, giving way to a rippling sea of green grass and the patchwork plots of farms and orchards. And after only a quarter hour of cruising over these signs of civilization, Kahina announced that they were about to land. The airship slowed and Asha watched the earth sweep up to meet them, resolving quite suddenly into the ordinary world she had left behind on the mountainside.
The cabin banged slightly as they touched down and the engines sputtered into silence. Kahina stood up and gave Gideon a serious look. “Coal. Water. Food. Blankets. Anything we should have had on that mountain, we need now. All right?”
Gideon nodded. “Sure.”
Asha watched the pair open the metal door and step out onto the grass, and then she helped Priya to follow them. They stood on a flat grassy field just a stone’s throw from a wide dirt road. To their left the road plunged through an orchard and disappeared toward the cedar forest, but to their right the road wound around a narrow creek and up to a small cluster of farm houses near a tall wooden windmill.
As they walked up the road, Asha paused to stare back at the forest behind them.
“Something the matter?” Gideon asked.
“When we were in the forest, I thought I heard something following us. Something large.” Asha watched the tree line, seeing nothing but cedars.
“Oh, I doubt it. There’s nothing bigger than a hare in there.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Well.” He glanced away. “I’ve been here before. I know the area pretty well. I had to walk on the ground back then, of course. There is an old story about a giant man and a monster bull, but they only tell that story down south, and it’s a very old story. You probably just heard a falling tree in there.”
“Probably.” Asha narrowed her eyes and continued past him toward the village. “Then again, there are strange souls wandering the world these days.”
The small cluster of houses encircled a single covered well, and there were two old women sitting on a rough hewn bench beside it. They both looked up to watch the strangers approach, and Asha saw the sleepy apathy in their eyes transform into excitement and wonder. The two women rose up on unsteady legs, their hands clasped and their thin lips rising in crooked little smiles.
“Hello,” said Kahina. But the women looked right past the pilot.
“Hello,” said Gideon. “Lovely day, isn’t it?”
The old ladies gasped and came forward. “Gideon? It is you, isn’t it? Gideon?”
The young man blushed. “Uh. Well, yes. Yes, it is me. I’m Gideon.”
“I knew it!” one of the women said. “I could never forget that face. Oh, it is so wonderful to see you again.” She glanced over at Priya and Asha. “I’m sorry to make a scene, but it has been so long.”
Asha shrugged. “It’s all right.” She looked up at him. “When were you last here?”