K. Weiland - Storming

“This guy Zlo,” he said. “Who is he? How’s he doing that stuff with the storm and the wind and the lightning? Did he do that? Did he send the lightning deliberately?”

She eased up off the bed and stepped toward him. “Your head. You have blood.”

“What you did with the pendant, you did that on purpose. Didn’t you? You took the hit on purpose?”

“It did not hit me. It just… was surrounding me.”

Which explained why she wasn’t all crispy.

“And how exactly does that work?”

She hesitated, then shrugged. “Lightning is giving much danger to… Schturming , just as much as Groundsworld. So Nestor is letting me make changes to _yakor_—to direct lightning—and maybe to give protection.” She tilted a sheepish smile. “It is only half working.”

“I noticed.”

Heck, why not? After everything that had happened today, a lightning puller/protector thing seemed almost the most believable.

“Well,” he said, “if it attracts lightning, then do me a favor and don’t take it in a plane ever again.”

She picked up a rolled-up bandage from the table beside the bed and reached to dab it against his forehead. It came away streaked with red, and she dabbed again. She raised her other hand to prod his forehead with a fingertip.

“Ow!” He grabbed her hand reflexively. What she was doing caught up with his brain. “You’re doctoring me ? You’re the one who got hit—or surrounded—or whatever by lightning.”

She positively blushed. Embarrassed she’d been caught fussing? Or embarrassed she was still alive when her insides should be scorched?

She pulled free and lowered herself to the bed’s edge once more.

He backed up to lean against the door and watched her, arms crossed. He made himself take in a deep breath.

Okay, so there was something up there that could command lightning. Probably not the best thing to have happening just before an airshow.

He dug around for the right words to frame this crazy question he had to ask. “I went straight up into that storm. Ran smack into something.” He pointed to his head. “That’s when this happened. And then I was in a long room full of supplies, and Zlo and a bunch of other people were there.” He eyed her. “That was Schturming , wasn’t it?”

She gave one tight nod, then busied herself straightening the tray of instruments on the side table.

“Well, what is Schturming ?” It sure as Moses wasn’t the big bomber he’d been halfway expecting.

More fiddling. Then she looked him in the eye. Her pupils were tiny, the silver of her irises practically engulfing them. “If Zlo has control, he will use power wrongly—against my people. He will make more days like today. Worse days, even.” She stood back up. “I am going to go home. I must find way home on any plane, and I will give stop to him.”

“Why? From the sounds of it, folks up there haven’t been treating you too good.”

She jutted her chin. “Zlo was killing Nestor. And… someone has to give stop to him.”

Her determination was about as real as it got. But what was one woman—even one as apparently indestructible as she was—going to be able to do?

A thought occurred. “This all isn’t your fault somehow, is it?”

“No.”

But she was still headed back up there, sure as shooting. She’d get herself killed. People who could zap you with lightning weren’t people you wanted to be messing with. She’d be better off staying down here.

“Maybe you should back up a little,” he suggested. “Catch your breath. Most people would say getting hit by lightning is way above and beyond the call of duty.”

“I did not get hit. And this I must do. If Zlo is able to do these things he did today, it has to mean he has at least killed our _glavni_—our leader—and Enforcement _Brigada._” She raised her chin; her nostrils flared. “I will never be free, I will never be happy, if I leave my people in danger.”

He wouldn’t know about that. His people were only in danger so long as he was around.

“Being free is a harder thing to find than you might think.”

“Yes. But I will not ever gain it by running away.”

In his experience, life wasn’t in the habit of making things that clear cut. But he bit his tongue. “Who are your people? What are they flying around in up there?”

The glimpse he’d gotten from his cockpit had been of a legitimate _room_—plank walls and floors. And the people inside of it hadn’t exactly looked like crew. Their clothing hadn’t been familiar, but it hadn’t seemed to be any kind of uniform. That might mean they were closer to being passengers. But since when did passengers have to help with stowing the supplies?

The whole thing had seemed awful permanent. That explained her talk of it being “home” and the fact that people would be up there long enough to need burial rituals. Even still, flight and permanence didn’t exactly belong in the same sentence.

She shook her head, almost apologetically. “I cannot tell you. It is not for Groundsmen to be knowing.”

Right. He’d heard that one before. “Tell me this then—how do you figure on finding Zlo?”

She slipped a hand into her pants pocket and fisted it around something. “He will find me maybe.”

Ah, that wasn’t so good. After the airshow maybe he’d go hunting, just to satisfy his own curiosity. But right now, the last thing he or the airshow needed was a crazy madman in a cloud machine.

Truthfully, Zlo’s coming back to find Jael didn’t seem like the best thing that could happen to her either.

They looked at each other. From beyond the door, the bustle of the hospital filtered in.

His pulse beat a steady rhythm against his bruised forehead. His muscles all felt like they were starting to sag right off his bones. The excitement was almost gone, and all he was left with was a huge desire for his bedroll and someplace dry to unroll it.

She was probably wanting the exact same thing right about now. But she looked a far sight better than he felt.

He clucked. “Anybody ever tell you you’ve got some guts?”

She knit her brows and laid a hand on her stomach. “Guts?”

“Courage. Maybe a little more than your share of insanity too.” He offered a grin. “But then I’m hardly one to call the kettle black.”

The line between her eyebrows deepened.

He stood up from the door. “I’m just saying, you’re a brave and crazy person. Smart too.” Everything she’d done out there today had been calculated. She made her decisions—the right decisions, as things had turned out—and acted on them without a second thought.

For some strange reason, the image that flashed through his mind was of what Celia would have looked like if she’d been the one standing on the wings of his plane today. Part of him almost laughed. Celia had hated planes. Never wanted to go near them. Partly, she’d just been worried about her health—she was always worried about something. And partly, she’d been maybe a little jealous of them.

She’d never have been able even to dream of doing anything like Jael had just done.

He tamped the thought away. Celia’d been her own person, with her own strengths. She’d hardly been alone in not being able to count wing walking and lightning dodging amongst her foremost talents.

But Jael… There was something about her. She surely hadn’t been born for a life with her feet nailed to the ground. True, she didn’t know much of anything about anything. But she could learn. Earl himself had said she’d picked up the workings of the engine fast enough. With a little training, she might really be able to do something in the air that was worth watching.