‘Oh. Right. But what does it mean?’
We both looked up at the tendrils of fog drifting past.
‘The old magic we can sense is the cloud,’ I said. ‘There’s a reason the top of Cadair Idris is constantly swathed in cloud … it’s hiding something.’
I picked up a stone, and threw it upwards as high as I could. There was a noise as the stone hit something, and a second later we jumped aside as a small section of rotted aircraft wing complete with tattered canvas came wheeling out of the fog and crashed to the ground. There was something hidden above us. We couldn’t find Pirate Wolff’s hideout for the very simple reason that it wasn’t meant to be found. That’s the thing about pirates. It’s not wise to underestimate their cunning.
‘If there’s something up there there must be a way of accessing it,’ I said, looking around. ‘We need to find the highest point.’
After a brief scout around in the damp fog, we found it – the high seat back of Idris’ chair, one side of which was twenty feet above the hard stone ground, and the other a precipitous seven-thousand-foot drop through the fog to the valley floor below.
‘Give me a hand,’ I said, and Perkins helped me to climb on to the large stone seat. I looked around to see how to climb farther and found a useful handhold, then a foothold, and then another. The holds were impossible to see from below against the wet stone, but had been definitely cut for a purpose. I had soon climbed upon the seat back, a narrow rock ledge less than six inches wide. I made a mental note that if I were to fall, I would try to land on the safe side of the chair – and when I say ‘safe’ I’m speaking in purely relative terms: a painful drop twenty feet on to wet rock rather than a seven-thousand-foot fall to certain death below. I cautiously stayed low, and reached above my head into the cloud, which here seemed to be thicker and distinctly uncloud-like – more like smoke. My fingers touched nothing, so, with fortune favouring the bold, I stood upright on the narrow ledge, all vision vanishing as my upper body was enveloped by the fog. I was mildly disoriented and my foot slipped on the wet rock, but I regained my footing, my heart beating faster. I stood up straight and reached above my head, straining to touch something. I even stood on tiptoe, but nothing. I was about to give up and return to firm ground when Kevin’s last message rang out in my head:
You may have to take a leap of faith if you find yourself on the shoulders of a giant.
I was standing on Idris’ chairback, about as close to his long-dead shoulders as I was likely to be, and if this wasn’t a leap of faith, I wasn’t sure what was.
I made a small jump and reached above my head, but felt nothing, and when I landed my feet slipped. For a moment I thought I would fall, but then I regained my balance.
‘Come on, Jenny,’ I said to myself, ‘that was nothing like a leap.’
‘Perkins?’ I called out.
‘Yes?’ came a disembodied voice from below.
‘I’m going to leap.’
‘And trust in providence?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘something better – I’m going to trust in … Kevin.’
And I jumped. Lept, actually. Even today I can’t remember whether I jumped on the cliff side or the summit side, but reasoning it out later it must have been the cliff side. Without the certainty of death, the leap wouldn’t have worked.
Because it did work. I leapt as high and as far as I could and put out my hands, hoping to grab hold of something, and I did. But it wasn’t the rung of a ladder, or a rope. It was a human hand, and it grabbed me tightly around the wrist, held me for a moment and then hauled me up until I was safe. I looked around and blinked, open-mouthed. I had not expected to see what I could see, nor the identity of the person who had just saved me.
The sky pirate’s tale
‘Surprised?’
‘Just a little,’ I said, looking around. I was still in cloud but sitting on a small, gently undulating platform that I soon figured was the distinctively broad flat skull of a Leviathan, and what’s more, that it was floating in mid-air and supporting my weight. I knew the Leviathan was lighter than air, but I had not taken the next logical step to suppose the bones would remain so after death. To one side of me was a spiral staircase, made of Leviathan bones, which vanished upwards into the gloom, and on the other side of me was the man who had hauled me to this strange new world within the clouds. It was Gabby, the very same as I had seen him last. Youthful, sleeves rolled, still wearing his backpack.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘Hiding. I’m not always wanting to be found. But when you took that leap, well, I wasn’t going to let you die.’
‘For the second time.’
‘Fourth, actually, but who’s counting?’
‘You are.’
‘Agreed. But you didn’t see me the other times. In my line of work, being seen can raise difficulties.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘No, few do – let me show you around.’
And so saying, he led the way up the creaking spiral bone staircase. We didn’t have to go very far before we broke cloud, and emerged into the sunlight. I looked around. My mouth, I think, may even have dropped open.
We were standing on what I can only describe as a floating platform of massive Leviathan bones, all lashed together, and constructed on several different levels. There were walkways, stairways and even rooms, passageways and a main hall, the framework of each built solely of lighter-than-air Leviathan bones.
‘The legendary Leviathans’ Graveyard,’ I breathed, for here indeed were the remains of perhaps hundreds of Leviathans, their bones used to make a hideout of crude beauty. Despite the lashed-bone construction there was elegance in the haphazard structure, and a certain recycled charm, for among the framework of bones was the booty of the aerial pirate – parts of aircraft stolen on the wing and adapted to make the hideout more like home. Wings became roofs, aluminium fuselage panels became footways, aero-engines as generator sets and winches. We were standing at what appeared to be a dock, ready to accept a Cloud Leviathan, with a large leather harness all set to strap a wicker balloonist’s gondola on the creature’s back, with harpoon guns on swivelling mounts, grappling hooks and cutlasses at the ready.
But for all this apparent readiness, the hideout was long abandoned. Everything was old, worn and weathered. Any exposed metal was corroded and the leather strips that held the Cloud Leviathans’ bones together had begun to rot. There were bodies, too, or rather, partial bodies. The closest pirate to us had died while fighting as his arm was still holding a cutlass embedded in the handrail, but although most of him was now little more than skeleton half held together with dried gristle, his arm, half of his chest and head had been preserved at the moment of death – but as a dull grey metal.
I tapped the grey metal, and stared uneasily at the look of grim determination stuck permanently to the dead pirate’s features, then tested the metal for softness with my fingernail. There was no mistake – he had been changed partially to lead.
‘The Eye of Zoltar,’ I breathed, ‘it’s here – or was here.’
I looked around to see whether there were other bodies, and there were, all of them either partially or completely changed to lead. It looked as though there had been a fight – and the pirates had lost.
‘However did this place come about?’ I asked as we followed the trail of dead pirates towards the main hall, the walkway flexing beneath our feet as we moved.
‘The Cambrian species of Leviathan has always lived on Cadair Idris,’ explained Gabby. ‘It is hatched here, breeds here, roosts here overnight and will eventually return here to die. Once dead, it floats in the air until it rots away, and its bones rise to form a mass about twenty thousand feet above the summit – and usefully become the nest where it lays its eggs. It’s thought the first sky pirate tamed a Leviathan and then established a base in what was once the Leviathan’s nest.’