Cloudland (14 page)

And all at once, he was a small figure on the plain. They banked in front of the flames, spiralling up and clear. The smoke burnt Lucy's lungs. They saw the Kazia, perhaps fifty metres ahead; her face was turned towards the Varactor and glittering in its greenish light.

The albatross wheeled around the carpet with the antenna in its claws. Though Lucy's whole body was pounding, when the albatross fixed its eye on her, her throat tightened with something like joy. Calling out once, it swept past them and started to climb the sky.

Lucy used the ice-razor to cut a strip from her shirt. Her hands felt clumsy and enormous. Twisting the strip of cloth, she forced it into the mouth of the flask so it stuck out like the wick of a candle. All the while, they kept climbing. Wist, with his arms tucked behind him, leant into the wind. The carpet shuddered with speed. They were gaining on the Kazia, but slowly.

Lucy thought how small the albatross looked now, rising against the Varactor's mass. Close, close – the Varactor's tentacles flared and, like sheet lightning, a blue-green light spread across the sky.

The albatross cartwheeled sideways, wingtip over wingtip. The antenna, spinning from its grasp, glinted
and then dropped straight down. Lucy kept waiting for the albatross to steady, to arc its wings, but it kept falling, shuddering as the wind plucked at it.

‘Keep going!' Lucy struck Wist's back. He had folded into his grief; the carpet was tipping. When he glanced back at her, she saw lines cut into his cheeks as his mouth stretched open in a soundless cry.

‘Keep going!' she screamed again, and rattled the matches: such a small sound! With his mouth still gaping, Wist nodded and the carpet kicked forwards again. In the air next to Lucy, something flared. It was Daniel, riding an Arcaral. He held the antenna in one hand like a spear. The Arcaral made no sound as it passed. Daniel looked back, the Arcaral's mane streaming around him, and called out something she couldn't hear.

The Kazia was so close now Lucy saw how the ice-melt on her back had frozen in windblown shapes: frills and spines that caught the Varactor's light. Ten metres from the Varactor, Daniel raised the antenna. Barbed wire pierced Lucy's spine as she watched. Five metres away, then two . . . the Varactor shrugged its tentacles wide.

The Arcaral spun backwards. Turning a loop, it surged straight up into the dead centre of that wheel of light. A soundless explosion: the Varactor slammed
its tentacles together and the sky broke into white and green flames.

Lucy's body seemed to collapse in on itself. From the bottom of all that flaring light, she saw one plummeting line. The Arcaral was falling so fast she could see its slipstream. Fear ripped at her throat. One straight line down; and then, astonishingly, it turned. The Arcaral swept out of its dive. She saw Daniel, his arms stretched out like wings.

Above him, the explosion shrank into a cluster of light, which flickered once, then vanished. The Kazia had stopped in mid-air. She was swinging back and forth, staring up at that emptiness where the Varactor had been.

Lucy's fingers fumbled with the matches. The small flame trembled and almost died, but when it touched the fuse, it leapt up at Lucy.

‘Now!' she called. Wist swept the carpet over the Kazia, who tipped her head and looked up at Lucy with one blank, astonished eye.

Lucy dropped the burning flask and watched it break apart in her face.

The explosion flung Lucy back. She had a sense of quiet, of the sky rolling away from her. Far off, she saw a shaking out of black and scarlet sheets; and she saw the wind streaming past her, full of grey lines
like fishing wire.
What a tangle
, she thought.
How will I unknot it?
But she didn't feel worried, only a little puzzled. She waited, and the answer came to her.
I'll just pull on one end
, she thought. Then she settled into drowsiness, and a pleasant feeling of warmth.

All at once, she slammed back into her body. The noise was unbelievable, a physical pressure on her eardrums and ribs. Her hand was freezing – no, that was heat. Her hand was on fire. She saw flames, real flames, dancing on her fingers. It felt like having needles pushed under her nails. She beat at air. The flames leapt higher. She seemed to see faces in them, laughing at her.

Lucy pitched off the carpet, landing face down on the plain. When she rolled sideways, aching exhaustion in her muscles, she saw she had extinguished the fire on her hand. The skin on her finger was purple-red and already blistered. Two of her nails were lumpy and black. Her whole hand throbbed with pain.

She was perhaps a hundred metres from Alkazia. The Cloudians swarming around it looked no bigger than her forearm. Beside her, the carpet was a tattered scrap.

Wist picked himself up. ‘Well,' he said. After a pause, he added: ‘We did it. It doesn't seem . . .'

He stopped again but she knew what he meant. Instead of exaltation, or even relief, she felt drained. Slowly, they walked towards Alkazia.

They found themselves stepping over a varnish of water: Alkazia's ice-melt, filled with reflections of sky. It gave Lucy a strange impression of walking on emptiness. She thought of that great weight of water pouring down on Earth.
But that will be the end of it
, she thought.
These clouds will thaw, and then the rain will stop
. Relief coursed through all her nerves.

‘Can we find Daniel?' They passed between huddled groups of Cloudians. Some stood pressing their fingers into each other's faces. Others knelt, gazing at their reflections in the ice-melt.

‘The Megalith,' she whispered, bending to touch a still, ash-coloured heap. Its skin felt soft. Flakes of it lifted and spun into the wind. The Megalith's head had twisted sideways, pressing into the plain. Lucy's sadness was vast and blank. ‘It saved me,' she said. ‘In Alkazia, it shielded me.'

Wist stared down at it. ‘What would a Megalith be doing in Alkazia?'

Lucy paused – not thinking, exactly, but feeling out the shape of thoughts. ‘You never really saw the Kazia. She had three Stratus trapped in her body as though she'd frozen around them.'

Wist stepped back. His ears fanned slowly.

‘The statue must have started it all,' Lucy continued, ‘when she ordered the Megalith to kill those Stratus who escaped.'

‘How did you –'

‘Fracta told me. The statue ordered the Megalith to get a piece of absolute cold. That was how it started.'

Wist pressed his hand against his cheek. ‘They can't know,' he whispered, turning his head to gaze at the Cloudians and at the last shards of Alkazia. ‘They would . . .' He breathed out slowly through his mouth. ‘It would upset the entire system.'

‘But they will know,' answered Lucy. ‘Because I'll tell them. I'll tell them everything. The statues will have to free the Stratus now.'

Wist's mouth had fallen open, showing his ridged, toothless gums. With his mouth still open, he started nodding. ‘Alright,' he said at last. He looked over Lucy's shoulder at the Stratus, still waiting in two lines. ‘Alright.'

Lucy saw Daniel, sitting with Fracta and the Heir. With his head thrust forwards, Daniel was peering into the softening light. He was searching for her. She called out and started towards him.

A red ball glowed like a second sun in the evening colours of the sky: a hot-air balloon, flying so smoothly it might have been holding still while the sky slid back. In its basket, a gaunt figure clung to the ropes.

‘January!' Lucy leapt up, with Daniel beside her. She forgot the stinging pain in her hand as the two of them waved their arms and started yelling.

‘So you're going,' said Wist, behind them. His voice sounded as bleak as the wind in dry branches. Fracta and Jovius stood watching beside him. Jovius smiled vaguely, while Fracta stepped forwards.

‘Thank you,' she said, stretching up to press her
cheek against Lucy's. Her face felt as cool and smooth as a night window. Lucy felt the ache she had always felt when she held her cheek against glass.

Wist watched as Fracta pressed her cheek against Daniel's, then he dropped into a low bow. When he straightened up, the five of them gazed at each other in silence. Lucy was aware of the plain, vast around them.

‘Climb up!' called January. ‘I'll take you home.' The balloon was so close they could hear its burner – a sound like radio static. ‘Hurry!' she called, and flung a rope ladder over the side.

The ladder was made of scratchy, ordinary rope. Its rungs tugged against Lucy's sore hand as she climbed. When she looked down, she saw January had let the balloon rise. Lucy and Daniel were hanging between the sky and its reflection on the plain.

All at once, Lucy realised this was her last moment in the clouds. She could not see Wist, Jovius or Fracta. In fact, she couldn't see any Cloudians. But Daniel was just behind her. She saw his face shining with the wide plain all around it. ‘We did it!' she called. He grinned up at her. Then they started climbing again.