“The compass was accurate,” she had averred. “The incantation was incantateded just right. I did all the math forward and back. It came out perfect.”
And yet here they were in a field of cows and feral flowers, half a mile from the city.
Pleasance had dismantled the wheel, searching for a cause, which was pointless since the steering array was not attached to anything mechanical, merely serving as a conduit for the spell to provide direction. She had inspected the navigation tools. She had also held a conference with the old ghosts and villains who plagued her penny-dreadful consciousness, demanding they leave her in peace while she was flying.
Cecilia was privately inclined to believe therein lay the problem and could not understand why Miss Darlington persisted in allowing Pleasance the helm. But she also could not understand why she herself, and indeed all young pirates of her acquaintance, were forced through a long training regime—studying thaumaturgical physics, writing essays, taking countless elocution lessons, running a mile in full bustled gown—before being allowed their wings, and yet servants were just handed a copy of the highly secret, highly powerful spell and told to have it memorized by the end of the week.
She did not argue, however, because if the matter was examined too closely other questions regarding servants might arise, such asWhy don’t you wash your own dishes?andWhy don’t you dress yourself for parties?, and Cecilia was careful not to be too clever for her own good.
Besides, her elders knew what they were doing. After all, they had managed to keep control over the incantation for almost two hundred years, ever since Black Beryl introduced it to England.
Beryl had not originally been a pirate. She’d been the hardy young wife of Jeremiah Black, failed explorer—the failure being illuminated when he smashed their ship into an island in the Indian Ocean while seeking passage from London to Mexico. But on the shore of that island Beryl had found an old washed-up bottle containing a Latin poem. When she realized speaking the poem aloud created a magic that could move objects, regardless of weight, the possibilities had become readily apparent to her in a way they were not to her husband (mainly on account of him having been bashed to death with a compassby “persons unknown”). She’d commandeered a local’s hut and flown back to England, where she shared the incantation with the ladies in her book club. They had turned from casual literary criticism to piracy with remarkable ease, establishing a class of magnificent women in flying mansions, thus causing a collapse in the hot-air-balloon picnicking industry—and a whole new meaning to the phrase “groundless fears.”
Cecilia had grown up on stories about those exciting days. Miss Darlington’s history lessons had been full of gunfire and brimstone. And villains had abounded, such as the book club members who found a devious use for the incantation, surreptitiously moving people and things rather than buildings, thereby committing vulgar witchcraft. The more honorable members had been forced to separate themselves from these degenerates by forming the Wisteria Society, a noble coterie of ladies who were virtuously open about their crimes.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow-wallpapered room, and we pirates took the better one,” Miss Darlington had told ten-year-old Cecilia, brandishing the dagger she liked to use to direct her lessons. “Anyone who dislikes pirates needs to blame those wicked witches in the first place!”
Then there had been the army. If His Majesty’s troops had not responded to the advent of airborne crime by trying to put the Wisteria Society back in their proper place—i.e., on the ground and preferably in the kitchen—the ladies would never have learned how to fight. Thus weaponized piracy was clearly the army’s fault.
“The war ended over a hundred years ago,” Miss Darlington had explained to Cecilia when the little girl had offered to rush out and join the battle. “Land-based guns were useless against flying houses, and the army finally gave up. But we can never relax. Anti-smuggling patrols and arrest warrants for minor infractions like armed bank robbery are only some of the indignities the government continuesto perpetrate against us. It is nothing more than misogynistic bullying!”
But the worst villains of all were the insurance companies and bodyguard services who made a fortune off an anxious public. And none of this even began to touch upon real estate agents. A nefarious lot, they were forever trying to steal the flight incantation so they could sell houses based on “location, location,andlocation.”
Miss Darlington had shaken her head sadly at it all. “Black Beryl would be horrified at how her incantation corrupted the hearts of men everywhere. But we Wisteria Society ladies must rise above it.”
“In our flying houses!” Cecilia had added excitedly.
“In our noble hearts. But that’s enough history for today. Come and learn how to kill someone with a teaspoon.”
As an adult now, Cecilia felt glad she had missed the war. It seemed a messy kind of venture, involving far too much irregularity for comfort. Even the sight of Darlington House’s steering array in a jumble of pieces on the cockpit floor disturbed her enough. Miss Darlington, on the other hand, was entirely unbothered by the disorder Pleasance had created. In fact, when Cecilia had suggested they reassemble the wheel and fly to a location nearer the Bath library, she’d spurned the idea. She rather liked the rural view and had decided to paint some cows (which is to say, their likeness, not their bodies) since several of the species were grazing near the house. It was, she’d declared, a nice change of pace from the rigors of entertaining society in Mayfair, and the cows were more interesting conversationalists.
“You did say I might go to the library,” Cecilia had argued gently.
“I did? Goodness, that doesn’t sound like me. Oh, my dear, do stay safe at home, at least until Pleasance has ascertained there are no evil spirits in our navigation system. The countryside is rife with scurvy.”
“That is caused by fruit deprivation, Aunty.”
“Precisely! Do you see any orchards out there?”
Cecilia could make no sensible reply to this. But her eyes spoke volumes—specifically, of anguished poetry in which heroines meet a sad end. By the third day, Miss Darlington had relented. Despite the risk to ankles, lungs, and fair complexion, Cecilia was given leave to walk into town and visit the library.
She’d donned a long-sleeved, high-collared dress, boots, gloves, and wide-brimmed hat, thereby leaving no part of her exposed to the evils of sunlight. Then, having selected a book to read along the way, she’d raised her parasol, promised her aunt she would be on the alert for bad air, and at last set out across the waste.
Nothing more dire than honeysuckle and cowpats troubled her, and she made it quite intact to the edge of the field. Pausing, she looked back at the house.
It was a somber edifice, pale and narrow, with three stories and two modestly haunted attics: the sort of building that would sigh mournfully into its handkerchief before proceeding to scold you for fifteen minutes for holding your teacup incorrectly. A building after Miss Darlington’s own heart, or perhaps vice versa; Cecilia had never been able to decide which.
The circular window in its gable, curtained with lace that had been spun by a convent of elderly Irish nuns made mad by the haunting pagan song of selkies, could dilate open for the deployment of cannons without affecting the window box of petunias set beneath.
From that window Cecilia now glimpsed a flash of light and knew it reflected off the telescope through which Miss Darlington was watching her progress. She waved a hand in reassurance. The house moved toward her slightly, as if wanting to wrap a scarf about her neck or make her don a coat, but then shifted back again and settled on its foundations with a shrug. Miss Darlington was apparently going to be brave.
Relieved, Cecilia turned away, entering a lane that meanderedbetween brambleberry hedges toward Bath. Soon after, a bandit attempted her purse. She disabled him with an application of elbow then fist, which did not require her to pause in her stride, although she did skip a vital sentence in her book and had to reread the whole page to make sense of it. Then the bandit, collapsing in the dirt, moaned so wretchedly that she felt obliged to return and provide him with a handkerchief, after which she was able to continue on in peace.
The countryside offered more to her sensitive spirit than Mayfair had. She noticed a skylark springing from the earth, although it looked less like a “cloud of fire” the poet Shelley would have her anticipate and more like a flying clod of dirt. She breathed in the fragrance of sun-warmed dust with no thought of lung contamination. She even lifted her face to the gentle breeze. It was altogether so pleasant that by the time she reached the city she was prepared to call herself happy indeed.
And then she saw the pirate.
He loitered near the river, hatless once again and indecently dressed: he wore no tie, his waistcoat was secured withpewterbuttons, and his trousers were far too tight. The way he had his sword belt slung low around his hips inexplicably disturbed Cecilia.
