Episode XIV - That Wonderful Man and His Flying Machine

            “Where did he go?” Siren screamed, running down the steps, “What did you do?”

            Franck was staring at the empty space where Ellis had been standing and was scratching his head beneath his impossibly tall hat.  He looked mildly confused, but too polite to say anything about it.  It made Siren’s blood boil.

            “Don’t just stand there, do something!  Find out what happened to him!  Find out where he went!  Just… just bring him back!”

            “Well…” Franck began uneasily, “it’s just not that simple.”

            Amy was drifting and flickering around behind Franck, her face a perfect portrait of worry.  She looked like she might cry again.

            “Amy,” Siren asked, trying to sound a little more calm, “do you know what happened?”

            The spectral amnesiac turned to face the younger woman and shook her head sadly, before covering her face with her hands.  Siren turned back to Franck.

            “You have to do something.  Don’t you have some idea what just happened?  I mean, what were you doing?”

            “I had just powered up the ring to see if we could activate the hole between the worlds, which I believed resided inside it.  Ellis tried the ring on.  You saw the rest.”

            “You think the hole’s inside the ring?”

            “That’s what I had concluded, yes.”

            “Then, has Ellis… has he gone back to his own world?”

            “That is one possibility.”

            “What are the others?”

            “Oh, if the rift is unstable then there is an infinite spectrum of possible locations he could have ended up in.  Depending on just how unstable he could be anywhere from the guest bedroom to the other side of the universe.”

            “That’s horrible!”

            “Mmmn, yes.  Yes, I imagine it would be.”

            “Then why aren’t you more worried?” her voice was half scream.

            “Because I’m having trouble thinking clearly enough as it is.  Would you kindly be quiet so that I can work out what to do next?”

            Siren opened her mouth to say something else, then shut it again rapidly and made her way over to a stool, which she mounted, and then sat there quietly watching as Franck paced around the room with Amy drifting in the background.  Hours passed.

            There was the tinkling of shattered glass and Franck swore.

            “Oh, this is no good!”

            He brushed the delicate broken pieces of his latest effort aside and propped his elbows up on the workbench, all the better to support the weight of his head.

            “There must be some way to track the passage of a soul through infinite space, there must be!  If the aether warps the patterns of hypostatick energies, then surely it must be affected itself and there ought to be a way to measure that and trace it!”

            “No doubt,” Siren said, half asleep.

            “But everything I’ve tried so far has been useless!  Useless!”

            “Maybe you’re just looking in the wrong places?” Siren suggested half-heartedly.

            “But then, where?  What am I supposed to do?  Perhaps I have truly failed the poor boy.  We shall sing songs of him, Ferris the Great Vanquisher of… himself.”

            “We are not giving up on him, Franck.  Think of something else!”

            “What about the stone?”  Amy asked, her voice reaching them like a whispering breeze.

            “What about it?”

            “You said it was from the other world, right?  It’s the part which creates the pull between the two places.  Can you track that?”

            Franck stood up and scratched his head again, “But then we’re just back to the same problem.  How do we track any of these things?”

            “Still, if the stone’s the active part of the ring, it should serve as some sort of insurance that he got home, right?” asked Siren hopefully.

            “Maybe.  That was certainly the idea, but… to be honest, it doesn’t feel like he just went home, does it?”

            “No.”

            “And I find that feelings are ever so important in Philosophickal studies, whatever the Academy used to say.”

            “So, if he didn’t go home, where is the next most likely destination?”

            “Well, the ring came from the other world, so that’s it’s primary pull, but it’s been on our world for a long time, so it must have ties and connections to Shadow as well.”

            “But where?”

            “Amy,” Franck asked suddenly, “where exactly did you say you found the stone?”

            “I don’t remember…”

            “She said it was in the ruins,” Siren remembered excitedly, “where the first breakthrough occurred!”

            Siren and Franck looked at each other.  Their faces dropped.

            “We have to get out there quickly!” Siren yelled, rushing towards the stairs.

            “It’s just not safe there, no, not safe at all!”

            “Where are you going?” Amy asked, confused as always.

            “We’re going to get the fasted form of transport we can find,” said Siren, “a Skyboat!”

            “You’re most welcome to come,” added Franck.

            It was night again by the time they left Tentacle Lane, but unlike the night before, Shadow was still busy, shops were still open and vehicles and carriages still hurtled through the streets without a single care about how many pedestrians might be in the way.  At first Franck and Siren (as heavily armed as she’d ever been) had to force their way through the crowds, but with the glowing, flickering apparition of Amy in tow, they soon found that the crowd parted and froze just for them and the going became considerably easier.

            Voices call out to either side, advertising wares and services, many of which made Siren mutter under her breath in disgust, and bright lights shone down on them in many colours.  These were little more than distractions from their goal, however and they made their way towards the harbour as quickly as they could.

            The shore was no quieter than any other part of the city in terms of the sheer number of people and the noise they were capable of making, but somehow the thick sloshing sound of the waves and the bells atop the masts of the many ships at anchor ringing gently as they swayed seemed to overpower all the chaos and create an atmosphere that was a little more serene.  Siren breathed it all in like fresh air and tried to avoid the melancholy of nostalgia that threatened to come with it, much like how the salty sea air was tainted with the smell of rotting fish.

            Both Siren and Franck knew exactly where they were going and, whilst Amy might have lingered beside a stall selling shellfish, they were quick to get her moving again along the wharf and towards a lone, conspicuous jetty where the strangest-looking vessel imaginable was berthed.

            They passed beneath an arched sign which advertised, in faded lettering, ‘Sydney’s Skyboats and Aerial Tours’ and then came to a small, rotten outhouse with shutters half-closed, like sleepy eyelids.  A man was actually sleeping at the desk.

            “Syd, my man,” Franck said loudly as he approached, “wake up, rise and shine, we have some business for you!”

            The man’s head shot up from where it had been resting on his arms and instantly crashed into one of the shutters, which had the duel effect of waking him up fully and sending him cursing around his tiny office.  When he returned to the front he had a broad grin plastered across his face, even as he rubbed at the injury to his head.

            “Why, if it  isn’t old Von Spektr!  And with a pretty lady in tow, no less!”

            “Two, actually,” said Franck, gesturing towards Amy, who was just now drifting into view.

            “Cripes!  Where did you find the ghost?”

            “She’s part of a rescue team I’ve been putting together.  It’s a lot to go into at the moment, but suffice to say we need the services of your Skyboat right away.”

            “Well, that’s excellent news!  Business has been a bit slow lately, you know, since the crash, and I haven’t really been bringing in enough to make ends meet.  The Mrs. has been none too pleased about it either.”

            “Is that why you’re sleeping our here, tonight?”  Siren asked pointedly.

            Franck laughed, “No, he always does that.  Their marriage works best if they don’t ever actually see each other.”

            “Still, if I’m not sending her enough money to keep things going… well, I hear about it soon enough.”

            “I’m willing to pay extra, if required.  We do have quite a long journey planned and to one of the more dangerous parts of the city.”

            “Oh, really?  Well you do know how to make a man interested, don’t you, Von Spektr?  Hazard pay has always been my favourite kind of pay.”

            “Well, then, if you can get the old girl up and running, we’d like to be on our way as soon as possible.”

            “Right you are then,” Sydney replied, his grin widened even more, “wait right there.”

            He disappeared into the gloom of the outhouse and then reappeared towards the rear of the building, walking along the jetty towards the boat.  He climbed a ladder, squeezed through a hatch and was gone once more.  There followed the sounds of a spanner hitting metal, some curious and diverse curses that Amy appeared to be pretending not to hear and the slow chugging sound of an engine starting.  Eventually he stuck his head out of the hatch and, as another ladder descended to the jetty, called out, “All aboard!”

            Siren didn’t need to be told twice, so she loped along the jetty and vaulted the ladder in an instant, climbing into the cabin at the top and finding a seat.  Franck wasn’t far behind her, but Amy was more reticent and both of her companions had to call out from the cabin to coax her up the ladder.  She seemed uncertain as to whether the vessel would actually support her insubstantial being all the way into the sky and back.  Eventually she tried her foot on the ladder and joined the others.

            “Is that everyone?” Sydney called up from below, “then let’s get going.”

            The engine noise picked up and the whole frame of the vessel began to vibrate considerably.  Above the cabin a huge rotary blade had begun whirring around and propellers had started spinning at various points across the hull until it sounded like they were surrounded by a swarm of bees.

            “Is it always this noisy?” Amy asked.

            Siren and Franck merely nodded in unison, then laughed and then stared out of the windows to see the black surface of the ocean frothing up as the hull of the Skyboat first began to cut through the waves into the harbour bay and then lifted out of the water completely, giving them a fine view of the city at night, spread out beneath them like a starscape.

            “So, where is it exactly that you want to head?” bellowed Sydney.

            “To the ruins of the first breakthrough,” replied Franck, equally loudly, “to Blackfeather!”

            “Right you are then!”

            The Skyboat, improbable ship of the air that it was, began to turn in an arc over the harbour and set its course straight towards the violet face of the moon.  Somewhere in that direction lay the ruins of Blackfeather and, so the vessel’s passenger’s fearfully hoped, Ellis Graves.

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