The field was dotted with twice as many campfires as last night. Planes had kept flying in all afternoon, and this was still the beginning of the week. The show itself wouldn’t start until Saturday.
Just beyond the shadow of the Jennies, Jael sat cross-legged beside a small fire, messing with one of the new spark plugs Earl had bought in town. Taos lay next to her, his chin on his crossed forelegs. Every few seconds, she’d reach over to scratch his ears.
Hitch dodged past her to Rick’s plane.
Earl looked up from wiping his hands with an oily rag. “Well, you’re sure the popular man around camp tonight, aren’t you?”
Hitch managed a noncommittal grunt and stepped onto Rick’s wing to look through the extra gear and supplies stowed in the front cockpit.
“Or could it be you’re avoiding us?” Earl asked.
“Us?”
“Yeah, me and that girl.”
“And why would I do that?”
“Maybe because you’re scared of the both of us.”
Hitch snorted a laugh and dug out some cold potatoes and cornbread left over from the night before. “Don’t flatter yourself, old buddy.” He jumped back off the wing and looked Earl in the eye. “Trust me. I am not about to lose my plane to Livingstone.”
Earl shook his head. “What about that girl? You’ve dragged her into this now too.”
“It was more or less the other way around.” He turned to watch her silhouette against the fire. “She was lost and scared. What was I supposed to do? Somebody did light her ’chute on fire last night.”
“Well, then.” Earl still didn’t sound entirely convinced on that point. “Maybe staying out here in the open like this isn’t exactly the right thing to be doing with her. Not that I’m complaining. She’s a nice little thing. Tad strange in the head maybe, but nice.”
Hitch turned back. “Wait until she wallops you in the shins a couple of times.”
“What are you going to do with her?”
“I’m not about to just throw her out, if that’s what you mean. But folks who don’t pull their weight around here don’t eat.”
“She knows what’s what with engines.” Earl nodded toward Hitch’s plane. “Don’t think she’s ever seen a Hisso before, but she picked it up quick when I showed her.”
Earl passed out compliments about as often as J.W. sent Matthew birthday presents.
Hitch stopped chewing. “Well.”
“And here’s something else.” Earl stepped nearer and dropped his voice a shade. “She was talking about seeing ‘ground people’ fighting, killing each other in holes in the earth. Thousands of them, she said.”
“The war?” Back when America had gotten into it three years ago, Hitch had given some thought to signing up as a pilot. Between experimenting with a new plane design, a fling with a girl in San Diego, and a busted arm, it hadn’t happened. But he’d seen the photographs of the wasted battlefields furrowed with trenches.
Earl shrugged. “She talks like a foreigner. Maybe she’s from over there. It’s only been two years. She might have seen all that up close.”
Or looked down on it from the sky. Hitch shook the idea away. Nope. No matter what she said, no fighter pilot in his right mind would have taken her up there.
“You’ve got no idea where she’s from?” Earl asked.
“She doesn’t seem to like talking about it. And what she does say doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why don’t you go have a word with her. You’re about the only person she knows here. Give her a tater, tell her things’ll be fine.”
“Ah-ha.” Hitch grinned. “You do believe it’ll all turn out.”
“Hmph. What I believe is that the good Lord winks at the occasional well-intentioned lie.”
Hitch left it at that and made his way over to the campfire. Taos raised his head and curled his tongue in a yawn. Speaking of crew who didn’t earn their keep.
Hitch flipped him a wedge of cornbread anyway.
Without turning her head, Jael shot him half a glance. She kept right on working on the spark plug.
He held up a potato. “Hungry?” Lilla had boiled them last night, so they were already soft under their papery skins.
She kept her chin tucked and shook her head.
He ducked his head, trying to catch her eye.
Around her neck, the chain from that crazy pendant glinted. He wasn’t about to ask about that right now.
In this light and this mood, she seemed a different person. The wild woman was gone, for the moment anyway. But maybe that had all been nerves. Getting lit on fire last night would be enough to shake up anybody.
And she did have guts aplenty. She’d been scared when she went after him at the Berringers’, and then the boys at the cafe, and then Livingstone—but she hadn’t cowered or whimpered. She’d flung herself right in their faces, and by the time she was done, darned if they all hadn’t been a little bit more wary of her than she was of them.
He crouched near her. “C’mon, I know you’re hungry. We never got a chance to eat those cheese sandwiches earlier.” He wiggled the potato. “Trade you?”
She raised her chin and looked at him square. Her eyes charted his face, like she was searching for something. And maybe she found it.
The corner of her mouth lifted. “Tonk you. For earlier. I have sorrow for giving hurt to your leg.”
“Ah well, shinbones of steel, don’t you know?”
“You were right in what you said. You are not—none of you are not—what I am all my life thinking Groundsmen are like.” She offered the spark plug.
He gave her his most charming smile and handed over the potato and a good-sized chunk of cornbread. “Afraid that’s all the dinner we’ve got to offer right now.”
“No, this is very much.”
“Then you must not be in the habit of eating too good.”
She shrugged without looking up from the cornbread. “Some do.”
“But not you?”
“On bottom is where I am living.”
“Earl says you’re pretty good with engines. How’d that come to be?”
“Engines”—she pronounced it ennjuns_—“are my work. Not like your engines.” She held her hands far apart. “_Bolshoe, and slower. But same still.”
Big, slow engines. From something like a Sopwith Rhino triplane bomber maybe?
“They let you work on engines?” No matter how good she was, a female mechanic wasn’t exactly most pilots’ first choice. “You’re in charge of them?”
“No, they are not allowing.” She smiled, a bit sadly. “It is secret. I am having no family, not since long ago. So I am _nikto_—having no place. All through my life, I help Nestor with engines.” She looked down at her potato. “But he is _merviy_—dead.”
“What happened to him?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “He… was owning thing that is having importance. Someone had desire for it.”
Meaning the “sky people” had killed him? Skepticism washed over Hitch, but then an image flashed through his mind: the falling body Scottie had talked about.
“I’m… sorry.” He eased back to sit and propped one knee in front of him. “And how’d you end up here?”
“Was mistake.”
“Your mistake… or somebody else’s?”
“I took the…” She mimed putting on a harness, then made an exploding motion with her hands.
“The parachute.”
Another shrug. “I had to go away from there. Before time had all vanished. The ball gown was a—how do you say?—a mask, but for whole body?”
“A disguise?”