The Wondermark Gazette

The shock-wave ripped my hands from the aero-carriage’s control-tiller and flung me out the far end of the pilot’s-cage. Instantly I was floating free on a wave of heat, coat flapping in the burning wind, feeling Gravity bow to the massive fire-power that was the Countess Peapoddy and her deadly war-machines.

The barrage lasted all of three seconds — and then the air was dark again, filled with the crushing thunder of rock and brick and flesh collapsing on itself, threatening to drown even the gnashing thrum of the hovering armada’s coal-engines. I could see nothing; the light had robbed even my un-bandaged eye of its sole faculty so now it was hanging out in my skull use-lessly, taking up space like a free-loader. I would have chastised it severely were I not in a weeping, blind free-fall hurtling toward the destruction.

What had become of the carriage? Of Lara? Had they been blown to bits by lightning? Were they, robbed of my pilotage, steadfastly motoring towards the black sea below, thinking all was well until the frigid water enveloped them?

Suddenly a deafening clatter was upon me, and a great heat swept past my body — and then I was tumbling side-ways into something soft, some sea-creature, a horrid, squishy kraken awoken by the tumult in the skies above –

No. It was Lara.

I forced open my un-bandaged eye and beheld her at the controls of the aero-craft, working the tiller like a seasoned pilot. I was mashed against her utterly, a hand resting undecorously upon her knee, even, and her heaving shoulder all but filled my vision. I could nearly make out the pores in her precious skin from this distance, but I had little chance to marvel at that — for once I realised what had happened, I couldn’t stop giggling.

She had snatched me from the air!

I scrambled to right myself, feeling my face redden and my skin burn from the spark of her touch. What would she say? What would she think of my impropriety? I’d have to be smooth. “Sorry, er, about, uh…”

“Hang on,” she said, banking the craft away from a billowing dust-cloud growing to cover the island. I felt inertia slide me away from her, towards that dangerous opening in the pilot’s-cage — was she sending me a signal? She could just as easily have banked the other way, sending me tumbling back against her…!

Lara worked a lever, and the carriage righted itself, then gently tipped heavenward. In a lazy spiral it began to ascend, smoothly and gracefully.

I fished for a good opener. “Hey, so…I didn’t know you could fly!”

“I didn’t know I would have to,” she frowned, and searched the sky around us. The Countess’s massive bomber-dirigibles sat many and heavy in the air, moored o’er the island — level with us now, yet we were still climbing. Betwixt the looming ships, smaller aero-carriages like our own traced glowing orange soot-trails across the night; I wondered how obvious we were, here, and if our own furnace would attract attention from the armada. Our coal-reserves were also a cause for concern, but Lara was the pilot now; I trusted she had a fair handle on the situation. I propped my feet up and peeked back at where we’d come from.

The island, below, was gone — replaced by a smouldering cloud, occasionally crackling with green sparks but largely settling into rubble. The bombers had laid it to waste, as they had Rikah’s village. As they would Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats, and, potentially, other places in the future; who could say?

I turned to Lara, trying to figure the best words to use. I’d just exploded her no-doubt dear friend Viktor before her eyes — yet she had saved me from falling; was she intending some grosser, yet more horrific punishment for me than death by simple Gravity?

Or…had she recognised me at last, and was ready to start our life together?

Best to get the obvious issues out of the way, at least. “About Viktor,” I said slowly. “You may not have known this, but he was a child-molester.”

She turned to me with the same blank look she’d sported all evening. “Who’s…Viktor?”

Clearly she’d known the man five minutes ago; she’d pointed him out to me! Unless — “I mean the guard on your ferry,” I said. “Perhaps his name wasn’t…?”

“I don’t know any ferry,” she laughed, reaching between her knees to turn a brass crank. “Oh, it’s shaping up to be a lovely night, isn’t it?”

Indeed, a cool breeze ruffled our hair as the carriage continued its ascent. We’d left the bomber-ships behind, now, and were approaching a cloud-bank, behind which the moon glowed wide and white. The clouds were brilliant, and cast her face in shades of pale and heather, giving her skin a softness I’d not noticed at sea-level. Her eyes twinkled with delight at the sight of far-off stars, and from this height, we could even glimpse the the main-land — battle-field bivouacs burned tiny orange dots into the dark land-mass, and of course Tapiorca’s head-quarters were a blazing smear of yellow. That man burned more kerosene each night than a Madagascar oil-huffer so far off the waggon he’d forgotten what waggons were made of.

Yes, oddly, war was being waged, but it traced no worried lines into Lara’s face. I recalled what Viktor had said, on the ferry-boat: Not entirely still there, from the, you know. Had it rough, she has.

She clearly seemed the type who would be concerned about such things as war, or the destruction of the island, or Viktor exploding. Only one explanation remained:

She had lost her memory.

“You don’t remember me at all, do you?” I asked her, unafraid to be bold now. Even if I was wrong, I could still chalk it up to coyness, surely.

She searched my face for the very first time, really stared into its crevices for what seemed like half an eternity, as the carriage continued screwing its way upward. “I can’t say so,” she finally said. “Were we friends?”

This was it — my chance to make history the way it should have been. The whole rakish-cheese-twirler-from-Azerbaijan deal. I had been handed yet another opportunity to start the whole affair over from the start, to make Lara good and well my own. All I had to say was yes, we were friends. Lovers. Married, even. Come home with me, my love. Come back to your own home, and let me teach you everything you’ve forgotten.

With Rikah, that path had led to her death.

White cloud-stuff enveloped us, and we were instantly cold and wet. I feared for the carriage’s furnace, sputtering behind us. But Lara turned and quickly worked a bellows-handle I hadn’t even seen was there — she knew this craft expertly, though she likely wouldn’t know her own face in a mirror. Our coal-engine roared with healthy flame, and we continued to climb through dark fog, invisible to the world, invisible to each other, she invisible even to herself. Me, invisible to ticks, I hoped.

As we rose through the cloud something deep inside me became afraid, all of a sudden, of something un-seen, of mist-dragons or star-narwhals or the like, but I shushed that voice, reminding it that we’d done this before, that we were old pros, that there was nothing up here to be afraid of.

Blind in the fog, but with Lara ten inches away, I began to stammer out some words.

I told her how we’d met in Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats when she’d become Head Inspector at the Police Bureau, and how she’d come to think my house was haunted by murderous spirits. How I’d co-operated fully with her investigation, only to have the treacherous Peapoddy enact violence upon her — and how I had then travelled the globe (or at least the Irish Sea) retrieving the Tome of the Precious Lore, with which, supposedly, to heal her.

I began describing herself to her, outlining the construct of her that I’d built in my mind, explaining to her all the qualities that she had, at least for me. For that was truly who she was, at her best.

I left out the bit about how I had blown up her boat and exploded her best friend. But I made sure to mention how I’d saved her from the island about to be destroyed by fire.

“Is any of that familiar?” I asked, finally, into the mist, hoping that she had even been listening, that she hadn’t fallen asleep or tumbled from the craft or turned into a monster squid while I wasn’t looking.

For a moment, there was nothing. Monster squids can’t talk, I thought; this is a bad sign.

Then, her voice, seemingly from everywhere: “What was that name again? The man — the one who hurt me?”

In that moment our aero-carriage lifted through the fog-bank into the clear black of the aether. Hanging pendulous from Heaven was the Countess’s flag-ship, a massive, glowing dirigible with her wide, grotesque face projected a hundred feet wide across the billowing gas-sac. No moon at all, this monstrosity out-shone the stars around it — set into a back-drop of pure shadow, exuding malevolence, buzzing about with smaller ships like flies about a rotting carcass.

“Peapoddy,” I breathed.

The Countess’s face reflected round and glassily in Lara’s eye-balls until she snapped her head to me, suddenly alert, suddenly stern.

“I remember,” Lara said.

“Look, she’s going to destroy the city,” I gasped. “She can destroy us just as easily, I promise! Get us out of here!”

Lara turned back to look at the flag-ship, then down at the fog-bank beneath us, a wide, white sea of its own betraying no indication of what lurked beneath. “We have to warn Tapiorca,” she said, and began to work every lever in the pilot-cage simultaneously.

My gizzard lurched as the carriage suddenly banked and panels set into its structure began to extend and twist and fan around in odd contortions. We dropped like a stone, screaming back towards the fog-bank, then sinking through it, enveloped in darkness and cold. “Stop!” I cried. “No! We can’t go back there!”

“We’re the only ones,” Lara said with jaw firmly set. “Nobody escaped Prison-Isle. We have to warn the Crown forces!”

“Let’s warn them in London,” I growled, and reached for the controls.

I never reached the tiller. A spasm twisted my hand backwards, and I shrieked in pain. A jolt of fear spiked through my spine. The morphine was wearing off.

I had to get back to Easthillshireborough-upon-Flats myself — to retrieve the Tome of the Precious Lore.

“Fine,” I squeaked, biting my thumb to avoid weeping with a sudden wave of morphine-shakes. “Back to Tapiorca we go.”

We burst from the bottom of the fog and raced the armada toward the city.

Next: Reunions

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