Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

“I’m sorry,” said Jesse. “It’s too late for that.”

“No, we can at least get him to—”

“Too late, Lora. Listen.”

I did, cocking my head to the wind. But I didn’t hear any voices. I didn’t hear people on the stairs. It was mostly schoolrooms over here; we were far from the populated part of the castle.

I held back my hair and shrugged at him.

Jesse glanced upward. Toward the eastern stars.

Thup-thup-thup-thup. It was hardly a sound at all, it came so faint.

“What is that?” I asked sharply, but I knew. Oh, I knew.

The Germans had believed the mad duke’s cables. The airships were coming.

“What is what?” asked Armand. “I don’t hear anything.”

I hadn’t taken my eyes from Jesse. “There’s more than one. Two at least, right?”

“Two,” he said. “I hear two.”

Armand stood. “Two what ?”

I sent him a look. “Zeppelins. Headed this way.”

He stared at us, silent. And, really, what could he say? Sorry my father doomed us all? Nice knowing you?

“All right, all right.” I chafed my hands nervously up and down my sides, rumpling the shirt. “I can—I can fly up there. Turn to dragon. Claw them open, make them crash.” Instinctively, I turned to Jesse, almost plaintive. “Can’t I?”

He took up my hand. I swear I saw the stars brighten around him, a sparkling, silvered nimbus. “Perhaps.”

“Well, I have to. That’s all there is to it. I have to.”

“No,” burst out Armand. “They have guns! Bombs! They’ll fill you with holes before you can blink!”

“Not if I’m smoke.”

“ Smoke can’t tear apart a dirigible! We need to wake the others and evacuate the castle. Get everyone out before they make it here.”

“No time,” said Jesse. “We’ve only a few minutes. Look.”

And, yes, I could see them now in the distance, two round, dark blots against the purple sky, steadily enlarging.

Thup-thup-thup-thup-thup …

… shoom-shoom-shoom …

“Hold up, what’s that?” I ran to a merlon, tilting past it to scan the empty sea. The wind snapped my hair into a banner, a cheerful long flutter beyond my face. “Do you hear that, too? That swooshing sound? Is it a ship?”

“A submarine,” replied Jesse, matter-of-fact. “A U-boat sent ahead. They do that with the airships when they can. It’s about ten leagues out. Headed this way.”

I think the word despair is much too small to encompass the magnitude of all it defines. For me, right then, despair meant that everything within me—my organs, my spirit, my hope—plunged down into a place of utter density, of blackness so heavy and bleak I had no idea how to lift any of it up again.

I can’t do this. I’m just Lora Jones. I can’t even remember how to tell a shrimp fork from an oyster fork. I can barely find middle C. I can’t save Jesse and Armand and the castle. I can’t defeat them all.

But I had to. We were going to die unless I did.

I pulled back from the merlon. I stood with my hands at my sides and made certain my face was scrubbed clean of any expression before I turned around to them again.

Jesse had decided to sit. The darkened figure of the duke stretched out flat behind him; the ruby from his ring was making a warbling noise, small and sorrowful.

“Is the tide high enough right now for a torpedo to make it inside the grotto?”

“Aye. I think so.”

“But they won’t know about the grotto,” protested Armand. “How could they know?”

“It’s been there for ages, Mandy. Longer than the castle, even. It’s part of the geography of the island. How difficult could it be to find out about it?”

One strike. I’d bet that was all it would take. One lucky strike, and the grotto, the columns, the foundation of the castle itself, would shatter. And down we’d all go.

My heart was thudding so loudly I thought I might retch. Armand had taken my hand and was crushing it in his. His heart beat nearly as frantic as mine.

Blood and muscle. Muscle and blood.

Jesse only watched us both from the limestone as his leg leaked a slow, slick puddle along the fitted grooves. I freed my hand and dragged off the shirt.

“I’ll start in the air,” I said, far more steadily than I thought I could, considering. I knelt to tie the shirt around his thigh, cinching it tight above the wound; he stiffened but let me finish the knot. “The air first, the airships, and then—then I’ll dive.”

“You can’t swim,” broke in Armand. “You told me that you can’t.”

“Maybe I can now. If I’m a dragon.”

“Don’t be an idiot! If you can’t swim, you can’t swim, Eleanore! You’ll drown out there, and what the bloody hell do you think you’re going to do anyway to a U-boat ? Bite it open?”

I stood again. “Yes! If I must! I don’t hear you coming up with a better—”

“You’ll die out there!”

“Or we’ll all die here!”

“We’re going to find another way!”

“You two work on that. I’m off.” I fixed them both with one last, vehement look, the Turn rising inside me.

Remember this. Remember them, this moment, this heartbreak, these two boys. Remember that they loved you.

Armand had reached for my shoulders. “I forbid—Eleanore, please, no—”

“No,” echoed Jesse, speaking at last. “You’re not going after the submarine, Lora. You won’t need to.”

Armand and I paused together, glancing down at him. I stood practically on tiptoe, so ready to become my other self.

Jesse climbed clumsily to his feet. When he swayed, we both lunged to catch him.

“Armand will take me to the shore. I’ll handle the U-boat.”

“How?” demanded Armand at once.

But I understood. I could read him so well now, Jesse-of-the-stars. I understood what he meant to do, and what it would cost him.

I felt myself shaking my head. Above us, the airship propellers thumped louder and louder.

“Yes,” said Jesse, smiling his lovely smile at me. “I already sense your agreement. Death and the Elemental were stronger joined than apart, remember? This is our joining. Don’t waste any more time quarreling with me about it. That’s not your way.” He leaned down to me, a hand tangled in my hair. His mouth pressed to mine, and for the first time ever I didn’t feel bliss at his touch.

I felt misery.

“Go on, Lora-of-the-moon,” he murmured against my lips. “You’re going to save us. I know you will.”

I glared past him to the harsh, baffled face of Armand. “Will you help him? Do you swear it?”

“I—yes, I will. I do.”

I disentangled Jesse’s hand, kissed it, stepped back, and let the Turn consume me, smoke rising and rising, leaving the castle and all I loved behind me for the wild open sky.

Airships aren’t actually powered by air. They have propellers and engines that run on fuel, much like a water-bound ship, and they stay aloft by means of the hydrogen gas trapped inside the cells of their great elongated balloons.

I knew that much from the reports in the London papers, but what I recalled most about them, watching them float over St. Giles to let loose their unholy fire, were the windowed gondolas that hung beneath the balloon part, filled with crew. And the bomb bays positioned behind those, filled with death. When the ground-defense searchlights landed on them just so, you could clearly see the figures of the men behind the glass.

I remember thinking that the Germans must have had a very fine view of all the neighborhoods they were obliterating.