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strange future they were all part of.
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Justin watched the ship intently. Wells watched
Justin.
Abruptly, Justin turned. "Scotland," was all he said.
They had brought their things from the inn with them
in a pack Wells carried. It didn't take them long to find a
deserted alley wide enough for Justin to change form,
hiding them both with magic first. Wells climbed on to
Justin's back, lying comfortably on his stomach beneath
wide leather straps that held him securely. Once he was
settled, Justin took to the air. Liverpool fell away below.
As Wells watched the outskirts of the city turn to
green fields, he sent his thoughts to Justin. Two things I
don't understand. How did something as big as you fit
through that mirror, and why couldn't I see it from the
other side?
Magic, Justin answered.
But I thought that mirror was science based.
Is there a difference?
Of course. Science is -- human stuff. Magic is -- your
kind of stuff.
And that mirror was both. You believe in evolution,
do you not? Could not magic and science have a
common origin?
Oh. Wells thought about that. I guess so.
Exactly, Justin said, sounding very satisfied with
himself.
Fondly, Wells rubbed his cheek on the dragon's flesh
-- though tough, Justin felt soft and warm, not scaly --
and let himself fall asleep to the rhythm of the wings.
When he woke, he was in their bed in the cave, and
he found himself caught in a different kind of rhythm.
Justin, in human form, was slipping inside him, and
Wells went from asleep to aroused in a heartbeat,
stretching on his stomach in luxury beneath Justin's
weight.
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"Oh," he murmured into his pillow in the soft
darkness, hearing silence beyond Justin's warm, wet
noises.
"Oh," he cried again as Justin began to thrust. For a
while, steam engines and dinosaurs and knights and sad
women eased away from him. All the world filled with
his dragon and love and pleasure, coming around him in
waves, bearing his mind up on dark wings into the blue
sky over the water, endless water, to a new horizon that
held promises of a life yet unlived.
"America," he heard himself say as he came.
And then, into the motionless silence, Justin said, "I
was thinking about that too. Yes."
"Yes," Wells repeated.
And then they slept, entwined, content, and more
firmly grounded than they'd been in an long time, and
free, for the moment at least, of uncertainly about where
they were heading.
Shifting Steam - 115
Nine and Fifty Swans
By Rowan Benjamin
The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.
W.B. Yeats- "The Wild Swans at Coole"
Her Majesty's Swans were drilling in the warm
August afternoon. A row of tall platforms rose over the
far side of the pond, and one by one the Swans would
leap from them, falling as far as they dared, only to
sprout wings at the last moment and fly to safety. Ian
Fanshawe watched them from the window of his
workshop. As he watched, he made the occasional note
or diagram on his note pad. Even the clumsiest of the
bird men stunned him with his grace and agility,
swooping low in the form of a man, and then soaring
skyward like an unburdened angel. That unburdened
nature was, Fanshawe noted, the problem they were
having. That was why he had been brought in.
Ian Fanshawe was a tailor, though on his letter of
commission he was styled a Journeyman of the
Honorable Order of Sartorial Engineers. His
apprenticeship was several years behind him, and he
daily avoided the thought of entering his third decade of
life with no master work to submit to his guild. His
Shifting Steam - 116
father had influential friends, however, and thus Ian
Fanshawe found himself in his present position.
He was under commission to the Royal Avian Force
to engineer a lightweight, yet heavily insulated uniform
for a squad of flying soldiers capable of changing their
shapes with a moment's concentration -- a puzzle, to say
the least. Ian could see the men outside in their loose,
sleeveless shirts, which were designed to allow them to
unfurl their wings without impediment. Fanshawe had
some scant idea as to how he would create a uniform
that would allow them the freedom of movement they
required, but those ideas were precious few indeed.
Since the Royal Order of Balloonists had developed
the airships, the bird men in the crown's employ were
deemed the most likely to benefit from their military
application. The unfortunate truth is that the air was far
too cold at cruising altitude for the avians to operate in
anything but their purely avian forms, that is, as birds.
Rather than scrapping the plan as untenable, Mr.
Fanshawe had promoted his son Ian as the man who
would devise a solution. Ian scratched his head. There
were fifty-eight Swans, as the RAF bird men were
called, and each would require a custom tailored
uniform. Fifty-nine, he amended, remembering the Wing
Commander.
Simon Cobbe was the highest ranking of the avians
with whom Ian would be working. He was easy to spot,
even from across the pond. Fanshawe could see him
standing atop the central platform, issuing commands to
his lieutenants. He was taller than most of them, and his
striking platinum hair shone in the light of the summer
afternoon. Ian couldn't help but feel clumsy and dull
when he watched the Wing Commander from his little
window, which he had done more than he would care to
admit since he had arrived one week ago. He was able to
Shifting Steam - 117
attribute his wistful staring to the lifelong desire he felt
to take to the sky himself.
With a sigh, Fanshawe added a few sparse notations [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]