“I’m paid to judge distances. Besides, just look down.” She pointed to the small village that lay like a brooch on the green patchwork of countryside below.
“Look down?!”Apparently, this suggestion did not meet Algernon’s standards of reasonable behavior. “When they told me this job was a ground-level position, I took them literally!”
Elodie glanced at Gabriel, if only to avoid rolling her eyes, and saw him rolling his own. He was leaning back against the side of the basket, arms and ankles crossed, tension limning his features as he stared into the middle distance. Elodie assumed he felt unhappy being on this assignment with his so-called spouse. Well,so did she.
She turned back to Algernon. “You’re quite safe. In fact, you’d be in more danger on the ground, crossing fey lines.”
“The lines are stable ninety-nine percent of the time!”
This was true; indeed, a person could go their entire life never experiencing a single disturbance from the rare, magic-infused minerals that lay scattered beneath the earth and that flared only when natural conditions mixed in unlikely ways. But for Elodie, whose career focused on the one percent, and who therefore lived within a frequent storm of magic and its disastrous consequences (interspersed by equally exhausting periods of teaching university students), Algernon’s hysteria over a tranquil balloon ride was difficult to sympathize with.
Unfortunately, the pilot, Mr. Bloyd, did not help matters by saying just then, “I reckon that’s some bad weather coming, it is.” He pointed southwest, to the cumulonimbus formation Elodie herself had been watching for some time now. Its vast, billowing white heap was stained beneath with a heavy, somber darkness that promised storms. Belatedly she recognized that Gabriel watched it too and that this explained his taut expression.
“It’ll be raining old women and sticks soon, mark my words,” Bloyd predicted, his face etched with worry. “I should never have agreed to this trip.”
“Think of the noble service you’re providing to science,” Elodie told him.
“Think of the small fortune we paid you,” Gabriel added.
“Money won’t do me much good if lightning hits this balloon,” Bloyd grumbled.
“Oh my God!” Algernon wailed.
Bloyd sneered at him. “You’re a rightlembo, ain’t you?”
“What does that mean?” Algernon asked weakly. “I studied math; I don’t understand foreign languages.”
“I say,” Elodie interjected before someone threw the accountant overboard. “Do you think we’ll be able to land before that weather arrives?”
“Land, maybe,” Bloyd said. “I’m not sure about taking off again, though. And I ain’t staying any more than a minute in thatrhyfeddplace.” He spat over his left shoulder (and in acomplete coincidence, the wind current flung the spittle into Algernon’s face).
Suddenly, the basket convulsed.
“Aaagghh!”
Elodie winced at Algernon’s scream. Bloyd, with muttered curses, began urgently adjusting the gas tank’s valve. Gabriel raised an eyebrow.
“What’s haaaappening?” Algernon shrieked.
“Turbulence,” Elodie told him. “Don’t worry, it’s just air currents—”
Thwomp!A gust smacked into the basket, causing it to swing. The atmosphere flashed eerily with a bright, glimmering blue light that set the gas flame flickering wildly.
“Actually, that’s magic,” Elodie amended.
“But I thought magic was in the ground!” Algernon wailed.
“It is, but it rises up through fissures in the land, or in water vapor, or with the respiration of plants. That’s how it ensorcells people and creates atmospheric conditions like—”
Thwack. Her lecture was interrupted by a practical demonstration that shook the basket. Algernon howled. Elodie sighed testily. Gabriel straightened the handkerchief in his jacket pocket.
“I’m not going to be able to hold her for long!” Bloyd shouted. “We’ve got to turn back!”
“No, wait!” Elodie urged. “We’re almost there. I’ll pay you another ten shillings.” She reached into her skirt pocket, pulling out a handful of coins (and fascinating pebbles and a single earring whose partner she’d lost somewhere). Looking closer at them, she amended, “Eleven shillings.”
“Oh well, if it’seleven,” Bloyd said sardonically. Reducing the flame, he vented air, and the basket began to lower.Whooshwent the magically charged breeze.“Eeeek!”went Algernon as sparks flew.
“It’s fine,” Elodie told him. “They’re coming from outside.”
