The Flying Sorcerers

The sea tumbled and broke on the blackened shore.

Except for that, all was silent. Above hung the pinpoint brightness of Ouells, blue and glaring. The Cathawk lay beached on the shore, her balloons full but flaccid. A larger white one blossomed above them; only one tenth full, it was a narrow cylinder with a gentle bulge at its top. A full load of water kept the boat from rising.

Our supplies lay scattered on the sand to protect them from the water in the boat. The four of us sat there and stared glumly at it.

“I knew we had forgotten something,” repeated Wilville. It was the eleventh time he had said it.

“North,” said Orbur, “we forgot about north.”

“We forgot that the wind blows north,” I said.

“No matter,” shrugged Orbur. He tossed a pebble toward the sea. we’re still not going anywhere. Wilville and I just can’t pump hard enough to fight our way south.” He tossed another pebble. “Curse it, anyway.”

“Don’t swear,” mumbled Shoogar. “Greatest magician in the world, and I can’t even change the wind. Curse it all.”

“You’re swearing,” said Orbur petulantly.

“That’s my job. I’m a magician.”

We had tried to lift the boat four times already. Each time the best we had done was to maintain our position over the shore — and each time, as the boys had slackened, the wind had threatened to push us inland. Each time, we had brought the airboat down again.

“I don’t care how much power that battery has got in it,” Wilville said. “If we’re not getting anywhere, we might as well not have it at all. We’re only wasting its power this way.”

“It doesn’t show on the dial yet,” I said.

That doesn’t mean we haven’t wasted the power we’ve used,” said Wilville. “And if we keep this up, we’ll keep going until there’s no more left.”

We were miles east of where we had first touched shore. It was a spot that had once been below our old village. It was as desolate as the other. I chewed thoughtfully on one of Purple’s food sticks — it was soft and brown and had an odd taste. There must be a way,” I said. There must be.”

“Not through the air,” grumbled Wilville.

Orbur tossed a rock, “Then let’s go through the water.”

“Why not? The boat will float, won’t it?”

“Yes, but — the whirlpools, the reefs —” I said.

“We lift above them!” Wilville was shouting now. “Yes, I’ve got it. We put just enough gas in the windbags to hold the boat out of water — but not the outriggers! The airpushers will move water too, and we can pedal our way home. Whenever the wind dies, we can lift into the air.”

“But,” I said, “if the wind works on balloons like it does on sails — it pushes — won’t it push against us in the water too?”

“Yes, but the water will be pushing back. That is, the water will give us the leverage we need to move forward. Besides, we won’t pump the balloons as full as they are now — they won’t present as much area to the wind and we won’t be fighting it as much.”

“Wilville and Orbur were right, of course. They usually were in matters concerning the flying machine. It was almost as if they knew as much about it as Purple — certainly more so than Shoogar. Shoogar had protested their whole discussion equating the action of the wind on the balloons with the action of wind on sails. But, said Orbur, wind is wind. And Wilville and Orbur were right.

The water splashed slowly under us, the airmakers churned it into froth behind us. The boys had to pedal nearly twice as hard as they would have in the air.

The sea was sinking again, and rapids and whirlpools were frequent. Often, we had to take to the air. When we did this, we would usually slip backwards, but then the boys would begin driving either east or west, and in this manner we managed to avoid most of the dangers of our first journey.

Whenever the boys tired of pedaling, we either took on ballast or released some gas. In the water, our backward slippage was slight.

We trailed fishing lines behind us. They had been a gift from Purple and not understood at first, but once they had been explained we were eager to put them to use. Once we caught something big and it pulled us eastward for half a day before we could cut through the line. We had to use a special tool to do that.

It was not that the food Purple had given us was inadequate. It was just that it tasted bad. We ate it only when there was nothing else available.

On the fifth day we were lucky enough to slip into a section of water that was receding rapidly southward. We stayed with it as long as we could until it became too savage. Then we lifted into the air. The boys were delighted to find that the wind was behind us now.

The darknesses were longer now — nearly two hours — and the seasons were changing. The oceans were slipping away again. They would continue to slip for months, but the process had begun.

The sea below churned over razor-sharp reefs that were becoming mountain peaks. There was a period when we saw nothing but fog: blue fog, white fog, red fog, black fog, blue fog, and so on, endlessly repeated with the cycle of the suns.

We had lost three of our aircloth windbags by now. Their seams had given way abruptly, one right after the other, smacking the boat solidly into the water. We made up the difference by inflating Purple’s weather windbag even more. It was only half full, but more than offset the loss of the others.

We lost two more bags in as many days. Apparently there was something seriously wrong with the glue Grimm had used to seal the seams — and perhaps his stitching wasn’t as strong as it should have been. The bags that we still had held their air for little more than a day. Shoogar and I were constantly recharging them. The aircloth had been tight when we had woven it, but it was certainly no longer so. Something tended to weaken it with continual use.

We still trailed our fishing lines below us, they hung like slender threads of shimmering gossamer. I wondered how they were made, and if we could duplicate them.

We sailed into another wall of fog. Blue fog, white fog, red fog.

In black fog we hooked something big, too big to draw in.

We dared not cut the line. It was too precious to lose. The wind whistled past us — how fast were we moving?

And then the fog cleared as the blue sun burnt it off, and we saw that we had hooked land.

The desert we had crossed so many months ago — which had been sea bottom for the last few seasons — was a swamp now; a marsh of riotous colors, blooming briefly and frenetically during the few short hands of days it would take it to dry. There were roots to chew down there — and possibly meat.

We reeled in the line and pulled ourselves down.

We were within walking distance of home.