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He assumed it would feel like jumping.
It did not.
Rather than pushing off from the earth with great force to take flight it felt instead like some great invisible hand simply plucked up the airship.
The airship lifted into the air.
Emrys could think of no other word to describe it. They had been on the ground with no real indication of what was about to happen but the bustling of the crew. Emrys stood at the prow gripping the railing beside Fionnuala and Mari. Mari said, “Hold on tight.”
Perhaps that’s what made Emrys expect some forceful power to the beginning of flight. Lyosha, Claude, Yana, and Benoit hurried this way and that shouting to one another over the sound of the engine, of the tremendous inflated envelope above them.
“What’s that noise?”
Mari said, “Helium.”
“Helium?” Emrys and Fionnuala spoke as one.
Mari nodded. “It is lighter than air. It fills envelope.” She pointed above them. “Allows flight.”
Emrys laughed. It burst from him uncontrollably. His father believed his druids and shipwrights had solved the airship and could build it without trouble. And perhaps they could. Perhaps he could. Even the engine. For the shipwrights, it may even be easier since they’d not have to seal the ship to keep water out. But even if none of that presented a problem, they would need this helium, a substance Emrys had never heard of that was lighter than air to fill the airship.
For all that Emrys and clan Matauc had learned from these strangers, they hadn’t learned the key ingredient to flight. Hadn’t even heard the name.
It may as well have been magic, like so many still believed. A great spell or incantation carrying this ship into the air.
Helium.
Perhaps it was why Mari saw no need to keep the construction of the airship secret. The ship itself was nothing but a vessel. It needed helium to fly, which meant that Owain would first need to discover helium and then discover a way to harness it.
Mari said, “What is funny?”
But Emrys kept laughing and couldn’t respond. He raised a hand and shook his head.
Fionnuala said, “He laughs at his father.”
Mari frowned and looked thoughtful. “I see.”
A learned phrase. He knew she did not see or understand what was between him and his father. She couldn’t know what he sent Emrys to do or what he thought of Mari and her companions or her people.
They lifted into the air and Emrys stopped laughing and clung tighter to the rail.
Mari giggled, holding on with one hand and letting herself hang slightly at the terrifying angle the ship took as the nose of the airship rose high into the air before the rest of the airship followed. They lifted rapidly but Emrys could not feel it the way he expected. Rather than throwing his body into the air, he simply floated away from the earth without his volition.
Such a strange sensation.
Lifted from the ground and carried off into the air.
He clung tightly and stared straight ahead into the clear blue of the skies while the crew shouted back and forth in that other language. The one he had not learned from Mari. Lyosha seemed to be in charge of the flight. He shouted the most, anyway, which Emrys took to mean he was the captain.
And then, as abruptly as they tilted backwards and took to the sky, the airship seemed to level off. It still had a clear incline as it rose higher into the air but the incline was less severe. Emrys held on tight but found he could relax. If he let go, he was no longer going to tumble through the air to the back of the ship where he’d lie broken and mangled by the fall.
Taking tentative steps, like an infant learning to walk, he went to the port side of the ship and stared out over the land. Mari moved beside him and said, “It is a moment of power.”
“A powerful moment,” he said to himself, to her. Not meaning to correct her but simply restating what she said the way he believed she meant it.
The land stretched beneath him. Snow still remained in patches, clinging to itself, but the melt of spring finally arrived. Greyish green stretched over the rolling hills for as far as he could see. He thought he would know the land no matter the perspective but it was disorienting to see the land from high above. Like looking at a map but without any demarcations. The longhouses were still visible but shrank at an incredible rate even as he watched.
He knew his father’s longhouse from its position rather than from any physical detail.
Already, he was too far away.
The smile came and tears sprang to his eyes.
He escaped.
Mari’s hand landed on his. “It is hard to leave home.”
“No,” he laughed. “Happy tears. Good tears.” He turned to her, smiling hard. “I am happy.”
She smiled at him and he knew he would never go home. Never see any of them again.
The echo of a pain at his hip. He touched the puckered, scarred flesh and found it hot. His smile faded. “Fionnuala.”
“Hm?”
Despite the impossibility of this experience, she seemed unaffected. Like they were not flying through the air but still standing on the ground. He figured it was some quirk of her personality to remain unimpressed by even the most impressive sights and accomplishments.
He said, “My wound burns.”
She frowned and hurried to him. Kneeling before him, she reached into his tunic from below without waiting for an invitation or for him to expose himself. Her brow knit and she touched it gently. Her fingers tracing the length of the scar. She said, “Did it just begin?”
“Yes.”
Mari said, “What is wrong?”
Fionnuala said, “You thought you burned all of him away.”
“Did.”
“With the wound closed and scarred, I can’t tell. I saw no trace of the infection before. But the lord of bone—” She shook her head and raised her gaze to meet his. “This is a powerful curse. It may only be an echo. Your body remembers Home’s sting and he may be reaching for you. He feels you leaving and he is willing part of himself to remain with you no matter where you go.”
“He can still reach me?”
“This is not the first echo you’ve felt. I am sorry to say, Emrys, but he may be with you for all of your life. No matter how far you go.”
Mari said, “What has happened?”
Emrys took a breath. Swallowed. Shook his head. His smile gone. He turned starboard to the vast expanse of Chalon. From across the ship, he couldn’t see it but he knew it was there. Knew it stretched from coast to coast as a barrier marking the end of human rule.
“The end of the world,” he said.
“Only the edge,” Fionnuala said.
Mari said, “Emrys, what is it?”
The way she said his name.
He soared for a moment on that alone. Swallowing once more, he tried to find the words in Faroise. He said, “I met evil. Before you. Strange to leave it.”
“It is good to leave the past,” she said.
He loved her for that.
Below him, Matauc shrank smaller and smaller. He could not longer see his father’s longhouse and it struck him like a slap.
His father would die. Emrys may never see him again.
He may be dead in the ground, buried in the barrow beside his mother by the time Emrys returned.
Knew he wouldn’t be. Saoirse would never allow Owain to lie beside his mother, but the thought still struck him. It may be what the laird wished, whether his wife or anyone else liked it or not.
He was leaving. Not only Owain and the power dynamics and struggles of the clans but also Aeronwen and Alwyn.
His friends.
His cousins.
They thought he’d be back, perhaps, by winter. Or the following spring. Even when he told them the University took several years, at least, they still talked of his imminent return.
Even his best friends didn’t understand him. Not really.
He spoke to Mari and Fionnuala, “What is it like to leave home?”
Mari pushed her dark glasses higher up her nose. She appeared thoughtful for a moment, no doubt chasing the Graelish words. “It is difficult. Then not so difficult. I am always coming home.”
That made him smile. Speaking across languages the way they did made their words hold more weight. Since their vocabularies were so limited, every word stood in for dozens that remained unspoken. Like filtering an entire book into a sentence. Condensing and filtering whole conversations into a few sentences.
It gave every exchange more power and it drew him closer to her, even when she said something so simple, but especially when that simplicity led to a strange kind of poetry.
“Always coming home,” he repeated, smiling. He then spoke in Faroise. “I like that.”
He made her smile. Saw how his words surprised and delighted her.
Fionnuala said, “Sometimes leaving home is the only way forward. The only way to live your life. We cannot always be who we want among those who have known us and so we must journey far away to become the person we always knew we were.”
She stared off into the distant skies. She’d lived with clan Matauc for twenty years, or so Ariana thought. None knew where she spent all of that time but none had asked. Questions rose, as always, when she was around, but, in that moment, only one seemed to matter. It bubbled to the surface. “Are you my aunt?”
Fionnuala didn’t react. He watched her closely, trying to tease meaning from any quirk of her mouth or nose, any squint or flinch or blink. Her eyes rolled from the distant skies to him. “Why would you think I’m your aunt?”
“Owain says you came with my mother. Ariana says so too.”
Fionnuala nodded towards Mari. “She your sister?”
“Then who are you?”
“Have I lied to you, Emrys?”
“You’ve told me nothing of yourself.”
She nodded. “You believe I owe you my past?”
He sighed. “Never mind.” The conversation twisted so rapidly away from him and not in any direction he expected. He supposed this was why no one asked her about herself. She lashed out with such an odd texture to her belligerence.
His wound continued burning in a dull and distant way. An old wound poked and prodded. He did not and could not understand, but to call it magic.
Emrys spoke to Mari. “How long will it take to get to Morrigan University?”
She called to Lyosha and spoke in that other language. He barked back and she said, “Two days. The wind is strong and will slow us. We have also never been. It may take longer than it should.”
He nodded. Only two days. In two days he’d be at the University. The smile burst over his face once more. Couldn’t help it. All his planning in the autumn for a trip that would take him weeks or even months now accomplished in two days. “Incredible.” He spoke the word like she did. Or tried to mimic her accent.
She laughed and spoke in Faroise. “That’s quite good.”
Warm. Alive. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her. Instead, he asked her if Lyosha was the captain of the airship.
She cocked her head, her expression becoming stern. She spoke in Graelish. “I am captain. This my ship.”
He stuttered and stammered, trying to find the words to wash away her anger. How quickly it spun away from him. One moment, he made her laugh. Made her smile with such radiance. The next, he insulted her.
All at once, the anger on her face washed away and she laughed. “I am not mad, Emrys. I am teasing.”
Relief swept through him and she laughed.
How he loved her laughter.
In the evening, he turned back to his home and could see nothing of it. Only the vast expanse of rolling hills and valleys.