Perilous Journey of the Much-Too-Spontaneous Girl

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

Copyright © 2016 by Leigh Statham

THE PERILOUS JOURNEY OF THE MUCH-TOO-SPONTANEOUS GIRL by Leigh Statham

All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America by Month9Books, LLC.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

EPub ISBN: 978-1-945107-54-2
Mobi ISBN: 978-1-945107-40-5

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-944816-57-5

Published by Month9Books, Raleigh, NC 27609

Cover design by Christel Michiels

For Evan & Georgie,

little boys with big dreams.

Fly hard and fast,

and keep your mouths closed

or you’ll get bugs in your teeth.

Lady Marguerite Vadnay strapped herself into the tiny compartment and slipped her goggles over her eyes. A glass hood lowered over her upper body while she sat snug in the cockpit of the single-man aership. The wind blew enough to rock the small cabin back and forth as her envelope filled beside her, eventually leaving the ground completely, its seams tight with helium.

Her hair was pulled into a neat bun, and her flight suit was no longer a man’s hand-me-down. It was custom made from the finest industrial cloth she could get her hands on in Montreal, complete with lots of pockets. Lady Vadnay loved pockets. Little brass buttons stamped with her monogram ran from her chin all the way to her trousers. She had fully embraced her life as a woman of New France and soon-to-be aership pilot.

Plenty of men flew the tiny contraptions. It was the aercraft of choice in New France, perfect for charting high-mountain passes and performing night raids on neighboring New England. France was far ahead of any country in the world when it came to avionics—unless, of course, you counted the pirate nations of the seas, which Marguerite did not. All of their technology was stolen, mostly from France.

It had been a long road getting to this point. Only six months earlier she was being abused by her high-priced governess, Pomphart, back in mainland France. Her father was a wealthy Lord, determined on marrying her off to anything that crawled around with a decent title and bank account, and her friends were either boring or deserting her for adulthood.

Marguerite quickly took matters into her own hands. She’d volunteered to be a Daughter of the King and sailed away without her father’s knowledge. All she wanted was to start a new life with her childhood friend Claude and have some adventures; unfortunately, the adventures were more than she’d bargained for. Friends were lost, and new ones made. She was lucky to be alive and studying at His Royal Majesty’s Flight Academy for Resilient Young Women after the harrowing trip.

“Tighten the lift lever, pull in on the altinometer. We’re going to remove the anchors now!” Her professor yelled at her over the sound of the roaring single-motor engine. It sputtered and spit steam. The solar panels had been fully charged the day before and the fuel tanks filled with fresh water that morning. There was nothing left to do but fly.

“Ready?” the professor called to Marguerite. The ground crew, consisting mostly of her classmates from the flight academy, scurried to finish their assignments. Marguerite nodded, and the assembly went to work loosening ropes, moving sandbags, and generally getting out of the way.

Marguerite adjusted her goggles out of sheer nervousness. Claude had made her a new pair, with even better dark vision and a scoping feature on the right eye. They fit her face perfectly, but she didn’t even need them today. She had a glass dome to protect her from the elements. Still, she loved having them on, and she couldn’t help but think that they brought her good luck. Her first pair had saved her life not too long ago.

This was her inaugural solo flight for His Majesty, Louis XIV. If all went well, she’d spend the rest of her life an independent woman doing what she loved—flying. If not, she was going to have to do a lot of backpedaling with a lot of people, Jacques Laviolette, being person of interest number one. She spotted him walking up to the edge of the group of onlookers. She’d hoped he would come today. She’d mentioned the event offhandedly the night before while they shared dinner with her automaton, Outil, but she wasn’t sure he’d understood how important this day was or if he could get away from his own duties at the school.

Jacques—handsome, brave, and annoying Jacques. He was an entirely different issue. But there was no time to think about that now.

The professor gave the signal. She tore her goggle-tinted gaze away from Laviolette’s tall, dark-haired frame. Lifting one hand, she gave the sign for all go, pushed the buttons and pulled the lever. The launching mechanism shot her little ship into the air like a Chinese rocket. She had never traveled this fast before in her life. It felt like invisible arms were shoving her back into the seat with tremendous force, until she reached her cruising altitude, and the balloon took over as the thrust let off.

Marguerite glanced up from her controls and caught her breath. Her new home city of Montreal lay beneath her in all its splendor. The river wound like a loose ribbon through the brick and wood dwellings. She could see her school almost immediately, its roof littered with experimental equipment for weather and aviation. The chapel caught her eye next, its soaring crucifix and brightly colored windows winking in the perfect morning sun.

Her heart filled like a mini aership envelope, happiness threatening to burst it open. Marguerite sighed audibly, realizing that she’d held her breath during the entire launch. She eased her controls to the right, and the thrusters kicked in, propelling her forward and to the right.

This was amazing.

“Yes!” she cried out to the endless blue sky in front of her.

The controls felt so right in her hands. She began to execute more maneuvers. The tiny ship felt like an extension of her own body. She dove to the left, steered it back up, turned tight to the right, centripetally swinging her own compartment in the opposite direction.

She laughed. What a thrill! Months of study and hard work, tiny rooms, and terrible food—this was completely worth it.

A flock of birds flew past her, swirling around, welcoming her. They dove and skimmed the surface of the St. Lawrence River, then swooped back up along the edge of a brick building.

“That looks like fun,” she said to herself.

Laying on the controls, she took the little ship in a steep dive toward the aerstrip. Her heart floated in her chest, her breath caught in her throat, and she giggled with delight as the ship responded to her demand and swooped back up. It leveled off like the birds, just in time for the envelope to catch on a breeze and drag Marguerite, ship and all, into the windsock tower.

The birds continued on without her, the sudden lurch throwing her forward and forcing her to close her eyes. When she opened them again, it was just in time to see the metal trusses of the tower approaching at top speed.

Before she could call for help, Marguerite was whipped around the tower, her envelope caught in the trusses. She banged into one pylon and then another; the glass around her shattering and tearing at her exposed cheeks and nose. She cried out and braced herself for impact with the ground, her giggles from the moment before turned to cries for help.

This could be it
, she thought.
How appropriate that I work so hard and then die in my first solo flight. Poetic even.

She braced herself for death, but a final jerk left her shaken yet alive. Unfortunately, she dangled several feet above the ground from her own rigging, tangled beneath the windsock. She opened her eyes, realized her precarious situation, and groaned. She could still fall and be hurt, but her broken pride was worse than death at this point.