K. Weiland - Storming

But if she went home, they’d never see her again. His stomach cramped.

She smiled at him. “Now that I am working with planes, your mother maybe would let you come to see them. You should ask her. Tell her I would be certain for your care.”

It wouldn’t work, of course. When Mama Nan made up her mind, that was that. He bit his lip, hard. But maybe—just this once—he might sneak out anyway. Once Mama Nan understood how important this was, she would see it was all right for him to go. She had to.

And, of course, good sweet angels willing, she might not find out at all. Jael wouldn’t tell on him. It would be just once. After he rode in the plane, he’d come home and do all the girls’ chores without anybody even asking him.

He gave Jael a firm nod.

Aunt Aurelia stared at him. The look in her eyes was serious.

He’d forgot about her. She wouldn’t tell on him either. But she might say the wrong thing without realizing it.

“It’s coming back,” Aunt Aurelia said.

What? He shook his head.

“Jael’s home—it is coming back. The storm hasn’t stopped. It’s coming to get us, and I know all about it.” She raised her chin, kind of like Molly did when she was spatting with Mama Nan. “People who fly, it will get them all. First, you.” She brushed her fingertip against Jael’s nose. “It has already gotten you.” She turned to Walter and touched his nose in turn. “And now it will get you.”

Aunt Aurelia was always saying stuff that didn’t make any sort of sense. Her mind didn’t work right, after all. Everybody knew that.

But he got cold all over anyway.

Jael’s eyebrows came almost all the way together. She pushed herself up to sit. Beneath her rolled-up blouse sleeves, goose bumps appeared on her arms. “It must find me—I know because of… this.” She fingered the strange pendant that hung around her neck. “But where do you have knowledge for this?”

Walter frowned. If her home was up in the sky and she was down here, how could she use the pendant to make it come back to get her?

He pointed at the pendant and then at the sky.

She was too busy watching Aunt Aurelia to notice.

Aunt Aurelia sniffed. “Oh, I do talk to people, you know.”

“Zlo? Zlo told you this. You had sight of him?”

Walter’s insides froze up.

Yesterday, when Mama Nan had been taking him to the shelter in the diner’s cellar, Aunt Aurelia disappeared for a minute. Mama Nan stopped right in the middle of the sharp rain, her pocketbook over her head, and turned back to call for Aunt Aurelia.

Walter had looked back too.

Aunt Aurelia was standing in the door to Mr. Fallon’s store, and a man with a great bird on his shoulder held the door for her. He looked like a tramp, and his teeth gleamed when he grinned down at her.

Then Aunt Aurelia came running and they all made it to the cellar.

Was that the man who had made the storms? The one who’d robbed all the stores in town? The one who’d hurt Jael?

And Walter had been that close to him?

A sick feeling swirled through his stomach.

Jael kept her face very still. Only a little muscle at the edge of her cheek flinched. “This,” she said, “is why I am having fear.”

She was afraid too? She didn’t seem like she was afraid of anything. She rode on the outside of Hitch’s plane.

On a different day, that might have made Walter feel better. But if she was scared too, then maybe this man really was coming back.

Aunt Aurelia tsked. “Oh, he was a most polite man. You have no need to be afraid.”

“I am having fear because maybe many people will be hurt before I can stop Zlo.” Jael looked up at Walter, not Aurelia. “But I have to be staying in this place, because how else can I be going up to him when he comes?”

Walter’s stomach rolled over on him. He tried again to point at the pendant and then at the sky. It was the only way he knew to ask.

But she looked away again, and the ticking of the muscle in her cheek got worse.

Aunt Aurelia stood and stretched. She bent to pluck a long strand of grass out of Jael’s hair, then she turned toward the house. Her gaze caught on Walter’s face.

He could feel his eyes growing huge. He was clenching his teeth awfully hard.

She cooed and patted his head. “Aww.” Then she started back across the field, swaying and humming along to whatever music she heard in her head.

She wasn’t afraid anyway.

He watched her for a second. Maybe he shouldn’t fly with Hitch after all. He looked at Jael.

“Have no worry.” She smiled, but it was forced. “She has no knowledge of what she says. Her head is not correct.” She stood up and reached out a hand.

That was true, of course. Mean people said Aunt Aurelia was loony; nice people just said bless-her-heart. If he let what she said after one of her fits keep him from riding in Hitch’s plane, then he was the one whose head wasn’t right.

He grabbed Jael’s hand and let her pull him up. She put her arm around his shoulders, and he put his around her waist, holding on tight.

He jammed the fear down deep inside of himself, so deep he could hardly feel it. It was still there: beating like a baby bunny’s heart after you caught it and held it in your hand. But if he didn’t look at it, maybe, just maybe, it would go away.

FOR THE SIXTH time that morning, Hitch took off, gained about nine hundred feet, banked hard, and turned around to set the plane right back down. The show started tomorrow, which meant today was the big opportunity to make extra dough by hopping rides to paying customers.

Up, turn, and back was worth two bits a person.

The passengers in his front cockpit, a pimpled farmhand and his sweetheart—the farmer’s daughter if Hitch didn’t miss his guess—grinned at each other, wide-eyed. Most folks reacted that way the first time. Even if they got into the cockpit all stiff, hanging onto the sides until their knuckles went white, it usually only took that first stomach-bumping lurch into the air to win them over. Half of them might not ever get the bug to fly again, but they’d be telling their families about it for the rest of their lives.

Luckily for him, that made for good business. Not so luckily, business was a little too good to manage single-handedly at the moment.

He bounced the wheels back onto the strip and looked around. The crowd had been a couple hundred strong at dawn, and it’d only grown since. Even with almost every pilot here hopping rides, there were plenty of fares to go around.

But without Lilla to flash that smile of hers and direct traffic his way, every pilot but him was getting the lion’s share. Even Earl had deserted him—not that he was much good at flashing winning smiles. He’d thumbed a ride into town to buy gasoline with the last of their payment from Campbell.

No doubt Rick was laughing his head off. Hitch craned his neck and squinted through his goggles toward where Rick was successfully operating on the far side of the field.

Just ahead of Hitch’s propeller, Taos got up from lying in the shade of a lonely parked plane and ran, barking, across the field. And there, out of the early morning haze, walked Hitch’s solution.

Jael saw him. She didn’t wave, but her face lit up.

Speaking of winning smiles…

The dog jumped a good foot off the ground, still barking.

Hitch cut the engine. “All right, folks, thank you very much.” He climbed out and came forward to help them down off the wing.

No other customers were clamoring just yet, so he pulled off his helmet and jogged over to Jael. “’Bout time you showed up. Haven’t you figured out what ‘crack of dawn’ means?”