…or, Wagon West

“What the fuck?” I said, though what the flying fuck might have been more appropriate. The cart had lifted itself off the ground, with Iolana and me inside it. We were already high enough and moving fast enough to make a jump to the ground more than iffy, even if it wouldn’t have left us stranded in the woods at night.

“What’s going on?” Iolana shrieked. “Make it stop!”

“How?” I said. “It’s your hitchhiker that’s probably doing it.”

The hay wagon cleared the tops of the trees and kept going. The tops of the trees glinted silver in the moonlight. It was windy, but the sides of the wagon bed were high and the thing bucked and rocked a lot less without a road underneath it.

Well, the road was still underneath it. I guessed. Looking straight down over the side to see if we were still following it didn’t seen like a happening thing.

Iolana had calmed down a lot all of a sudden. At least I assumed she had. She might have been paralyzed with panic. Her face was kind of shadowed. Panic seemed like a viable option. I could feel my heart thudding in my chest. I decided to say something to forestall it.

“Okay, this is really fucking freaky,” I said. I realized that was probably not the most panic-forestalling thing I could have said. “But there are really only two possibilities here. Either this is a flying wagon and we somehow set it off, or your new friend is messing with us. If Bobby’s family bought their land discounted, it’s not likely they can afford flying farm equipment, so it’s probably the second one. That means we’re probably going to be okay.”

“What do you mean, we’re going to be okay?” Iolana said.

“Well, Bobby was acting like she’s more mischievous than anything.”

“Yeah, I’d say this is pretty fucking mischievous,” Iolana said. Her voice was getting higher. Her hand was gripping the top of the side like she thought she was going to fall off.

“I mean, more mischievous than actually dangerous,” I said.

“So what do you call this, then? Safe?”

“Precarious,” I said. “I mean, we’re not actually in a worse position than we’d be on the ground. We’re not actually in danger from flying. It’s falling that could be trouble.”

“Falling’s nothing,” the sidhe girl said. She was suddenly sitting up on the edge of the wagon. “It’s landing that messes people up.”

“Put us d—” Iolana started to say, but I clamped my hand over her mouth. She bit it and shoved me away with her elbow. Away from the edge, luckily. “What the fuck, Jamie?”

“Think about what you were about to say and all the ways it could go horribly wrong if she listened,” I said. “Don’t they have faerie tales where you come from?”

“I thought you said she wasn’t dangerous,” Iolana said.

“I said ‘more mischievous than dangerous’,” I said. “That still leaves plenty of room for danger. She’s listened to you before. Try asking her if she’ll let us down gently.”

“You know, it’s rude to talk about someone like they’re not there,” the girl said, and she vanished.

“Great,” Iolana said. She folded her arms and slumped down to get out of the wind. “Good going. Really. I’m so glad you decided to volunteer your expert knowledge about dealing with faerie crap.”

“She’ll be back,” I said. “In fact, she’s probably not actually gone. I mean, we are still flying.”

I walked on my knees towards the front of the wagon. It seemed like the safest place to try to take a look out and see the lay of the land since I wouldn’t be leaning out over thin air, and if the whole thing suddenly pitched or bucked I’d just fall backwards.

Propping myself up over the driver’s seat, I looked out. We were zooming over tree tops. It was hard to say, but I thought we were going about the same speed we had on the ground. There was dark undulating strip that I thought was probably the road through the trees. We were mostly following it. That was a little reassuring, but only a little.

“Looks like we’re still more or less on the road,” I said, hoping to share that reassurance.

“The road to where?” Iolana asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s something we can follow back, if it comes to that.”

“I think we’re heading west,” she said, looking up at the sky.

“How can you tell?”

She pointed.

“That’s the Titans’ Door,” she said, pointing to a clump of stars. I knew the constellation she meant, but I couldn’t pick it out. Stars looked like stars to me.

“What’s the Titans’ Door?” the girl asked, from where she was now sitting in the back of the wagon.

“It’s where the giants left the world,” Iolana said. “They cut a hole in the sky and passed through it, and then closed it up behind them, but light leaks through. That’s why the stairs there are so bright. The biggest star in the corner is north, no matter where you are.”

“Oh, good, then we are going west,” the girl said. “You’re really smart, you know? I’m glad you opened my jar.”

“I didn’t open it,” Iolana said. “I was just in the wagon when it got broken.” She pointed at me. “You might as well have picked him instead of me.”

“Oh, no,” the girl said, shaking her head. “That would never do. He’s kind of dull, I can tell. Also hopelessly elven.”

“I’m only a little elven,” I said. “And what’s wrong with elves?”

“They’re so vain and self-important and stuck on themselves,” she said. “It makes them either horribly frustrating or boring. Humans are much more interesting. They’re like watching embers flare up in a fire.”

“What are we doing up here, anyway?” Iolana asked her.

“I wanted to see what it was like to ride in an airship,” she said. “Isn’t this fun?”

“It’s a blast,” I said. “Just remember that the most important part of any authentic airship ride is the safe landing at the end.”

“I’ve always heard that it’s the journey that matters, not the destination,” the girl said.

“That’s an unfounded rumor,” I said.

“Are you taking us back to campus?” Iolana asked.

“Do you really want to go back there?” she asked. “I kind of want to see the Wall of the World.”

“It’s not that all that impressive,” Iolana said. “It’s just mountains. We have them back home”

“There aren’t any here,” the sidhe girl said. “I’ve never seen any.”

“Look at the ground and turn your head to an angle,” I said. “It’s the same thing.”

“But there are ogres and harpies and dragons,” she said.

“The dragons are mostly dead,” I said.

“And you don’t see the ogres from up high,” Iolana said.

“We’ll go down to them, then!”

“You could dr… land us safely at campus and then go visit the mountains,” I said.

“Couldn’t,” she said, shaking her head. She pointed at Iolana. “I’m stuck with her.”

“Well, she’s going to have to take a real airship back home eventually,” I said. “Wouldn’t you rather wait and see that?”

“I don’t mind going twice,” the sidhe girl said.

“But don’t you want to see the school?” I asked. I remembered how she’d sounded almost awed at the idea of it. Apparently she had been stuck attached to the farm since before humans doing magic became common, back when “wizards” were rare and impressive.

“Hmm,” she said, cocking her head to the side. “That might be impressive, but I don’t know if it would be as interesting as the Wall.”

“There are people there from all over,” Iolana said. “Not just humans. All kinds of different races. I think there’s even a harpy.”

“There’s at least one ogre,” I added. “And elves and dwarves and other people.”

“I can see elves any time,” she said. “Well, I could. I’ve seen lots of elves.”

“What about dwarves and goblins and gnomes?” I asked. “And minotaurs and mermaids?”

“Can you introduce me to all these people?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t really know a lot of them,” I said. “I mean, I have a professor who’s a gnome. There’s a centaur in one of her classes.”

“And you’d get to see where we live,” Iolana said.

It sounded kind of lame. She was really grasping. But then, we both were.

Also, it worked.

Sort of.

“Well, okay,” the girl said. “But fair’s fair. I guess I should show you where I live first.”

As soon as she said that, she vanished, and the front end of the wagon pitched forward. I could only take comfort in the fact that my scream sounded less like a little girl’s than Iolana’s as we plunged down towards the ground. I only had a moment to realize that the glistening, rippling “ground was actually the surface of the Enias River before the front end of the wagon broke through.

The water that splashed up from the impact was the only liquid that touched us. We passed through cleanly somehow, emerging from the surface of faster, narrower river in bright golden daylight.

“Welcome to my world,” the sidhe girl said as the cart righted itself and dropped into the current.

Next: A shortcut through the Summerlands.

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