Everfound

PART THREE
The Gates of Grief
High Altitude Musical Interlude #2 with Johnnie and Charlie

S he’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes…”

Johnnie was more than ready to hurl himself out of the Hindenburg window.

“She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes…”

More than once, he thought they were actually beginning to settle back to earth, and he got his hopes up… but it wasn’t them coming closer to the ground, it was a living-world mountain rising to meet them.

“ She’ll be comin’ round the mountain, she’ll be comin’ round the mountain…”

The problem was, in spite of Charlie’s inane singing, they weren’t comin’ round the mountains at all: they were going directly through the mountains. Over and over they were forced to suffer an unpleasant violation of granite and limestone as they traveled sideways through living-world mountains-which wasn’t all that different from sinking into the earth except that you came out on the other side.

“ She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes!”

And beyond the mountains and the plains there was always another vast expanse of sea. Johnnie had no idea there were so many oceans, so many seas. Then, when they finally hit land again, he realized that there was something a little bit too familiar about the coastline.

Finally he spotted a landmark in the foothills. A sign on a mountainside said HOLLYWOODLAND, although the LAND part was clearly in Everlost.

“No!” wailed Johnnie-O. “Are you telling me we’ve gone all the way around the world?”

To which Charlie responded, “She’ll be ridin’ six white horses when she comes…”

It was enough to make Johnnie-O cry. He knew the world was round, but in his mind it sort of went on forever before coming back around on itself again. There was no telling how many times they had circled the globe and no way to know if it would ever stop.

“We deserve better than this,” he told Charlie, who just smiled and continued to sing his song.

It was late the next day that Johnnie saw something out of the ordinary from the window. They had been traveling mostly over desert, and were still over the western United States. Johnnie-O had seen many odd living-world things from the Hindenburg windows-a road whose random twists and turns spelled out the word “haha”; a fighter jet parked for no apparent reason in a suburban backyard, giant crop portraits made by living people with way too much time on their hands. But nothing was as strange as this-and it wasn’t in the living world-it was in Everlost!

“Is that a deadspot?” asked Johnnie, mainly to himself, because he knew Charlie wouldn’t answer. “Yeah! Yeah, I think it is!” But this was more than just a deadspot-it was a massive patch of earth, dull gray in color, miles across, and perfectly round.

“Charlie, you gotta see this!” But right now Charlie, was all about killin’ the old red rooster when she comes.

Johnnie peered out at the deadspot as they approached. What first looked like a flat gray disk wasn’t flat at all; it was covered with tons of stuff! Johnnie couldn’t tell what kind of stuff it was, just that it was stuff.

And that’s when Johnnie had the big idea!

The Hindenburg had passed many deadspots; buildings that had crossed over, intersections where accidents had occurred. None of them, however, were big enough to land a bull’s-eye from the Hindenburg. This deadspot, however, was so big, you couldn’t help but land a bull’s-eye!

The idea of jumping thousands of feet from an airship was not exactly Johnnie’s idea of fun, but it was better than the alternative. And besides, they were Afterlights. Sure, they would hit the ground hard, but they would be no worse for it, and they would be off the infernal airship for good!

“Get up, Charlie, we’re going!” But when he turned to look for Charlie, he was gone. “Charlie?” He could still hear Charlie’s singing, but it wasn’t coming from the starboard promenade anymore. He was somewhere else in the ship.

“Charlie, get back here!”

The airship crossed into the airspace over the strange deadspot, and Johnnie could feel a sudden difference in the air around him. An unexpected density-if Everlost air could even have density. Static began to spark in the walls around him, and the airship began to turn as if being acted on by a new force. “Jeez, what is this place?”

With the sudden spinning motion of the airship, it was hard for Johnnie to walk without stumbling into walls, making it harder to search for Charlie. Still, Johnnie bumped his way to the port promenade, the galley, and all the staterooms. Charlie’s song was coming through the vents, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere. Meanwhile, below, they had already sailed halfway across the deadspot.

Finally Johnnie climbed up through a ceiling hatch, from the passenger compartment, and into the airship’s massive aluminum structure. There, on a narrow catwalk sat Charlie. He wasn’t singing anymore. And he was holding the bucket of coins, as if protecting it.

“What the heck are you doing here?”

Then Charlie pointed up. Johnnie looked to see the airship’s massive hydrogen bladders, like giant internal balloons all around them. Static electricity sparked through the entire space, coursing over the bloated bags of hydrogen… and wasn’t it static that brought down the Hindenburg to begin with?

“It can’t blow up again, right?” said Johnnie. “This is Everlost.” But there was something about this deadspot that made anything seem possible. He grabbed Charlie’s hand. “C’mon, we’re getting out of here!”

He practically dragged Charlie down from the infrastructure and back to the starboard promenade, opening a window. “I know it’s scary,” Johnnie said. “But we have to jump. We’ll probably just bounce anyway.”

But suddenly the air changed again, and the static sparks stopped, and when Johnnie looked down, he saw the border between the deadspot and the desert moving away from them. They had missed their chance. They were out over the living-world desert again.

“Nooooooooo!”

The airship stopped spinning, and went back to its normal drift-although the interference from the deadspot had shifted its direction by a few degrees to the south-but otherwise, their predicament was exactly the same as before.

Johnnie-O curled his big fingers into oversize fists. “Why couldn’t you have stayed put! We could be out of here!”

But Charlie just smiled and sang, “Camptown ladies sing this song; Doo-dah! Doo-dah!”

Johnnie-O peered sadly, longingly, out of the window at the huge, perfectly round, gray deadspot as it receded on the horizon.

Funny, but from this angle, he couldn’t help but notice how it resembled a giant Everlost coin.