“Well, I admit, until I met you two ladies, I did labour under an unfair assumption about humans,” he stammered out.
“And now you’re cursed to look just like us, to teach you a lesson. Am I right?”
“Well,” the prince paused and looked into her expectant eyes. I’m pretty sure Mellors and I both held our breaths, though I wasn’t sure if it was for the same reason. “I don’t know if that was the intent of the Assembly, but yes, I have found the change incredibly illuminating.”
That seemed to be enough for Tess. The two of them rested their arms on the wicker edge of the basket, the prince frequently pointing to landmarks for Tess to coo over. In return, she peppered him with a million questions, about the purpose of the buildings, of the flocks of animals we could see dimly below–apparently, they were wild pinkies–and the different parts of the huge estate. The gap between them grew thinner and thinner as their conversation became more animated. I knew because I eyed it closely, lurking in the back of the wicker basket that creaked and twitched with the gusts of wind disturbingly.
I was not enjoying this at all. The design of the basket seemed ridiculous as well as unnecessarily cruel. Suspending the basket of cables meant that every decent breeze sent it swaying. Looking up at the aerowhale I could see the body of the beast had a series of wires crisscrossing its girth and the aeronauts used them to make their way around the animal, which made me shudder. Then it happened. A great gust buffeted the basket, leading to us all being shaken about in the breeze. The walls were tall enough not to worry about falling out, instead, I found myself lumbering drunkenly around, trying to recapture my feet. Until I heard the scream. I dropped to the floor and looked up to see my sister half over the side of the basket, her mouth wide as she wailed.
I went to scuttle towards her, but the prince jumped into action, grabbing Tess around the waist and dragging her inside, the two of them falling in a heap as another gust shook it. “Milady Pendragon!” the prince gasped, holding her shaking body to his manly chest. She had gone white as a sheet, tears running down her face as the prince drew her close. “There, there . . .,” he said, stroking his hand down her cheek. “Mellors!” he snapped as Tess’s breathing began to settle.
“At once, Your Highness,” Mellors said. But he didn’t respond immediately; I realised as I looked up at the wolfish man, he took a split second to arrange his muzzle into an appropriate snarl before looking upward and snapping at the nearest aeronaut scrabbling up the aerowhale’s side. “Get down here at once!”
I had thought the aeronauts were also wolf people, like the rest of the prince’s entourage but it became apparent that they were more simian. Overly long arms, wrapped in lean, wiry muscle and slender fingers were used to drop down from the aerowhale’s hide and into the basket. Instantly Mellor's hand went around the simian’s throat, the poor thing beginning to bleat a rapid response that quickly died away into a strangled yelp as Mellors’ claws dug in. I got to my feet shakily and looked across at where the prince held Tess and shook my head slightly. His Highness’s eyes narrowed in response and I saw a flicker of refusal in his bright blue eyes, an immediate offence taken at the advice from another, but he thinned his lips and mastered himself. “Do not torture the beast in front of the ladies!” he snapped.
“Of course, Your Highness,” Mellors said mildly, then flipped the aeronaut out of the basket. His scream dropped away rapidly as he fell to the earth below. Please have a parachute, please have a parachute, I hummed to myself. I never found out. I crept over to the back of the basket and looked behind but could see nothing but the distant view of the estate. Tess began to cry again, great racking sobs, she seemed to be fighting to catch her breath. The prince took full advantage of the situation, caressing her face like a kitten’s. Her eyes started to close, tears still leaking from the sides but then flared open and met mine in an instant. She knows what he’s trying to do, I realised.
Tess’s body didn’t have the soft, languid look of someone who had surrendered to hysterics. The prince held her awkwardly, her neck hanging at an uncomfortable angle, her arm crushed against his chest. She struggled to move, just a little wiggle to at least get into a slightly more comfortable pose, but the prince’s arms tightened. He was having his moment and it didn’t matter how Tess felt about it. He had his role, and she had hers and they were going to play them out. I stood there, hands balled into fists. We were hundreds of feet up in the air, with two bigger, stronger guys who were just as likely to toss us after the aeronaut if we proved worthless. I shook my head slightly, unable to watch her eyes go wide with fear as her struggles grew more pronounced and his grip grew tighter. She was my sister, no matter what had happened, I couldn’t just let him just maul her, no matter where we were. I took a deep breath and took a step forward.
“Storm!” one of the aeronaut’s shrieked. Our heads moved as one, seeing instantly the great wall of storm grey cloud beginning to cross over the far horizon of the estate.
“Get us down!” Mellors shouted with an unearthly growl.
“Told you, this is storm season! Come from nowhere. Should never have come up! Where’s Leven?”
“If he was the ginger-pelted one, he’s long gone from this world. You need to get us on the ground right now!”
“He was the navigator!” the aeronaut screamed back, its long fingers wrapped so tightly on the aerowhale cords, his brown skin looked almost white.
“Mellors!” the prince said. I turned to see he had finally let Tess go to crawl up to the basket’s edge. “We’re blowing off course!”
“Get this beast under control, now!”
The simian’s face went still, its brown eyes flashing with fury. “Close the mouth!” he called, his request echoing across the beast’s body. I saw several spidery figures make their way to the front of the aerowhale and then slowly, forcibly, the animals winched a guard that covered the whale’s mouth in a series of interlocking metal parts. The effect was instantaneous; we began to drop like a stone. The prince leapt for his parachute, the precipitous fall leaving him hovering in the air for a moment before slamming down on the basket’s bottom. The whale wailed in response, its sounds somehow both muffled and louder due to the mouth guard. I crawled over to Tess, who clutched at the basket in a daze.
“Tess!” I said, pulling my parachute from my back, “here!”
“No, no!” she cried, both trying to push it back on me and to feel wildly around for her chute.
“Get this on!” Mellors snarled, the only one of us able to stay semi-upright as we began an erratically swirling descent. His long claws dug into the wicker, weakening it to my terrified mind, but he slung her chute over to her, so it slammed into her face. She blinked wildly, but I slid behind her, tugging the bastard thing on and latching it around her.
“Do we jump?” I screamed at the two men, wondering how the hell we did that, since we were pushed so hard against the basket.
“Open the mouth two increments!” the aeronaut cried and then whoomph! As if shoved from below, the aerowhale swept upwards for a moment, then settled into a gentler coast as of before, though much closer to the ground.
“We may be able to coast down to the border, hunker down until the storm passes and then make our way back,” the aeronaut said. I watched how he carefully remained high enough on the ropes that he was out of Mellors’s reach. This didn’t stop the wolfman from snarling at the aeronaut. The prince shifted quickly to the other side of the basket, eyes wide.
“Do what you have to, but we must keep away from the estate border!?
? he said, trying for authoritative and just sounding panicky.
“You heard His Highness, turn the beast around,” Mellors snapped.
“But the—”
“Don’t give me excuses, man! You have your orders, make it so.”
I watched the simian climb back up the ropes, the chittering that followed obviously a discussion of the change of plans. It didn’t sound like it was a positive one. I saw an aeronaut look back at us, eyes wide and then they all began to move, swarming around the aerowhale’s body. Fuck this, I thought and made my way over to my sister. “Let’s make sure the parachute is on properly,” I said, checking her straps one by one.