Flight Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One - CARDS

  Chapter Two - MEETING

  Chapter Three - REPORT

  Chapter Four - SPINES

  Chapter Five - ESCAPE!

  Chapter Six - A VEILED THREAT

  Chapter Seven - HEALING

  Chapter Eight - THE BOATMAN’S SHACK

  Chapter Nine - MISSION

  Chapter Ten - SHAPE-SHIFTER

  Chapter Eleven - LEAVING THE BOATMAN

  Chapter Twelve - WOODHAVEN

  Chapter Thirteen - A NARROW ESCAPE

  Chapter Fourteen - PURPOSE

  Chapter Fifteen - PURSUIT

  Chapter Sixteen - SPECTER’S HOLLOW

  Chapter Seventeen - THE MIDWAY

  Chapter Eighteen - BACK TO SCHOOL

  Chapter Nineteen - WORKSHOP

  Chapter Twenty - FLIGHT

  Chapter Twenty-One - RING

  Chapter Twenty-Two - CORNELIUS

  Chapter Twenty-Three - LAIR

  Chapter Twenty-Four - HORSEMEN

  Appendix

  Teaser chapter

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  by Scott Altmann. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2009006095

  ISBN: 9781101184530

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  Version_2

  For my brother Jeff.

  A special thank you to Bob Rosen.

  If there are indeed two of you in this universe,

  then it is a better place for it.

  “Tell me, Melchior,

  what was it you hoped to achieve by falling?

  You knew the consequences.

  Why did you do it?”

  asked the Elder.

  “For me, it was better to fall

  and understand love,” Melchior replied,

  “than to forever wonder.”

  -An excerpt from the Chronicle of Melchior, W.R. 2675

  Chapter One

  CARDS

  Edward Macleod reached into his pocket and removed a tattered deck of playing cards. His long fingers twitched, anxious to begin their favorite activity. He needed something to distract him, something to occupy his mind. He was still trying to process everything that had happened to him in the last twenty-four hours. His former life in Portland, Oregon, was long gone, and if he thought too much about it, he felt like he would explode from barely contained excitement.

  After shaking the cards loose from the box, he smoothed a wide area on the wooden desk with the edge of his palm. Then, after taking a deep breath, he began stacking the cards with mechanical precision, balancing them on top of each other and allowing a pattern to emerge.

  With each card he placed, he felt more and more relaxed. His one-of-a-kind deck of cards was his most precious possession, a gift from his mother when he was very young. She’d been amazed at the elaborate card houses he could build. And for Edward, now an incredibly tall, skinny fourteen-year-old with a stutter, it was the one thing that relaxed him and gave him confidence. It was the only thing that he had ever been truly “good” at.

  Edward had seen many playing cards since then, but he didn’t think any of them rivaled his deck. The face cards had unusually elaborate portraits of kings, queens, and jacks. And the pips on the numbered cards were different from normal cards. They had real shovels for “spades,” gems for “diamonds,” and realistic hearts for “hearts.” Even the “clubs” were different. Instead of the typical clovers found on most cards, they had wicked looking fighting sticks—real clubs! For Edward, the tattered box was filled not with cards, but with fifty-two familiar friends. And they were the best cards for building houses he’d ever seen.

  Edward smiled as he formed the cards into a pattern, never pausing to think about what he was actually building, but allowing the structure to take shape of its own accord.

  He drew a card from the stack. The jack of spades was covered in rusted armor. His battered shovel was raised protectively, attempting to fend off a flying dragon. The dragon’s recently shed skin lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the picture.

  Edward glanced from the card to his reflection in the mirror above his bed. He felt a little like he had shed his skin, too. He gazed at his unusually tall, sticklike proportions, and his thatch of messy, black hair. It was the same image he’d seen every day of his life except for one major change. He flexed his shoulders beneath his cable-knit sweater and his brand-new, huge, ebony wings responded with a gentle flap.

  He grinned. Just two days ago, what had started as an annoying itch between his shoulders that he couldn’t scratch had magically turned into something else . . . something he would have never believed possible!

  He’d sprouted wings!

  Being careful not to flap them hard enough to blow his cards over, he resumed building. The card structure was taking shape beneath his deft fingers. Triangular supports appeared like trestles on a railroad bridge. His hands automatically placed each card in just the right place, knowing instinctively how to make the structure as solid as possible. He delicately positioned the ace of spades—a black shovel with a grinning skull—on top of the two of clubs.

  The creepy-looking ace made him think of the mysterious Mr. Spines. The stumpy, porcupine-like man had found him trapped in the cellar of his terrible boarding school, and had rescued him from Whiplash Scruggs, a horribly evil teacher who had tried to cut off his new wings. After that harrowing incident, he had learned that Scruggs wasn’t really a man at all, but actually a monster in disguise. Edward shuddered, and the movement sent waves rippling through his ebony feathers. He had barely escaped with his life! But at the last minute, Edward used Mr. Spines’s incredible machinery to transport himself here, to the Afterlife, a place the locals called the Woodbine.

  Until recently, Edward had never known what happened to people when they died. When he’d lost his mother two years ago, he’d thought she’
d left him forever. And life had become so miserable after her passing that he’d never even paused to consider that he might be wrong, that she might still exist in another world.

  But after arriving here, Edward met Jack the faun and his niece, a pretty redhead named Bridgette. To his amazement, they knew who his mother was and informed him that she was known to the residents as a great warrior called the Blue Lady. Edward would never have believed it if they hadn’t shown him a painting of her. In the picture, she was riding a flying horse and carrying a long, silver spear. Since then, she had been caught by Groundlings and imprisoned by an evil being known as the Jackal.

  The thought that he could actually find her and see her beautiful, loving face again filled him with hope. He didn’t care how impossible Jack and Bridgette had said it would be for him to break into the Jackal’s lair. He would face anything if it meant he could see his mother again.

  Lost in thought, Edward was just about to place the last card on top of the bridge when the door behind him flew open, sending a forceful gust into the tiny room.

  “Hi, Edward.” Bridgette stood in the doorway, looking excited. But her face fell as she watched Edward’s delicate card house collapse onto the floor. “Oops!”

  He smiled and shrugged. “I-It’s okay,” he stuttered.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said softly, gazing at the messy pile of cards. “Whatever you were building looked amazing!” She smiled, and Edward could feel his cheeks turning red.

  None of the girls at his former school had ever been as nice as Bridgette. They’d spent most of their time teasing him about his unusual height, calling him names like “Bean Pole” and “Sticks” behind his back. It was nice to have a friend. Trying not to show how nervous he still was around her, Edward busied himself by replacing the scattered cards inside the worn box. Bridgette walked over and helped gather them up.

  “Uncle Jack sent me to tell you that the meeting is about to begin,” she said. Her slim hand brushed his own as she passed him a few of the cards. Feeling self-conscious, he quickly placed the cards inside the box with the others.

  “G-great,” he said. “I cuh-can’t wait to h-hear what they’re going to say.”

  Last night, after he arrived in the Woodbine, Jack had hinted that Edward’s arrival was auspicious, that there was something very special about him. The faun was a respected authority in Woodbine lore and wanted to gather some important people to discuss the event. Edward was very interested to hear what he had to say.

  He followed Bridgette downstairs, walking past a hall filled with odd-looking portraits. There were several noble-looking fauns, a double-headed lion, and something that Edward felt sure was a typewriter with legs. He chuckled as he descended the twisting stairs, remembering what Bridgette had told him. Here in the Woodbine, people were allowed to change their appearance into something that they thought best resembled their “inner” self. And judging from some of the unusual creatures he’d met so far, the possibilities were endless. He glanced at Bridgette’s copper colored hair as she bounded down the stairs in front of him, wondering if she had changed her appearance. It was a curious thought. Had she always been pretty? What had she looked like when she was back on Earth?

  He decided that it didn’t matter. The only Bridgette he knew was the one he’d met here in the Woodbine. Whoever she’d been back on Earth was in the past. The Woodbine was a clean slate, a second chance for everyone to become the person they’d always hoped to be. He just hoped that was true for him as well.

  Smiling, he approached the downstairs common room, noticing that the murmurs of cheerful conversation grew louder and the smell of baking scones filled the air. Edward’s stomach rumbled and he smiled happily. He could hardly wait for the meeting to start!

  Chapter Two

  MEETING

  Outside the cottage, thunder rumbled in the distance, and shortly after, the sound of a gentle rain pattered down on the thatched roof. Edward stared out of a nearby window, watching gray clouds hover over the pine-covered hills. If he didn’t know he was in the Afterlife, he would have sworn he was in the woods outside Portland.

  Edward pulled his eyes away from the view and looked around the room. He and Bridgette were settled on a sofa next to the crackling fire. He smiled awkwardly at a pair of majestic Guardians, winged beings like himself, who were staring at him from the opposite couch.

  “H-h-hello,” Edward said. The Guardians smiled back tensely and then resumed their low conversation. Edward felt embarrassed and immediately wished he hadn’t spoken. He always felt so stupid when he stuttered like that!

  Bridgette’s uncle Jack sat next to the fire holding a big, leather book. He had been a respected English professor back on Earth, but in the Woodbine he had chosen the appearance of a faun wearing a tweed coat and smoking a pipe. In spite of having goat legs, the clothes suited him in a way Edward couldn’t explain. He looked like a teacher or a historian.

  Bridgette’s aunt Joyce, who was a faun like her husband, was perched on the chair next to Jack. And on the couch across from Edward, next to the two winged Guardians, was a little man with huge, hairy feet.

  Edward sighed happily. Now that he was here, Edward’s former life in Portland, Oregon, seemed like a bad nightmare. This new life was looking much better so far, although, as usual, he felt a little awkward around all of these people that he didn’t really know. But Edward really wanted to make a good impression on everyone he was meeting in the Woodbine, so he was fighting his unease as best he could.

  “Hey, look. Tollers is snoring,” Bridgette whispered to him.

  Edward looked, and the tiny man with exceptionally large, furry feet was indeed snoring gently with his head resting right on the shoulder of the young Guardian next to him. Tollers had helped rescue Edward when he’d fallen in the river the previous evening and was supposed to be an expert in Guardian history.

  Bridgette tried to suppress a giggle as Tollers snorted loudly and rolled over. Soon Edward was grinning, too. It was hard not to laugh. The tiny man was completely oblivious to the two Guardians, very honored guests, who were politely pretending not to notice his steady stream of snores and groans.

  The larger of the two Guardians was a burly, fierce-looking man with brown skin and gigantic, silver wings. He wore heavy, studded armor and carried a large, curved sword at his side. He was speaking quietly with the younger Guardian next to him. Edward guessed that the girl, who had close-cropped hair and perfectly groomed, pearly pink wings, wasn’t much older than he was. Around her waist was a brilliant blue sash, complementing her sturdy, leather coat and trousers.

  Bridgette noticed him staring at her and whispered, “Her name’s Tabitha and she’s one of the best fliers in the Afterlife.”

  Edward glanced back at his own wings and sighed, noticing how bedraggled they looked. She probably thinks I look like a molting vulture, he thought, trying to smooth down his feathers without anyone noticing.

  “Would you like some tea, Edward, dear?” Edward jumped, and glanced up to the plump, little faun who had spoken.

  “Th-thank you, Joyce,” Edward said with a smile, taking the cup that was offered and trying, as always, not to stutter.

  The happy chatter died down as everyone received his or her tea.

  Jack cleared his throat, ready to officially begin the meeting, and gave the still sleeping Tollers a shake.

  “Wake up, Mr. Tollers,” Tabitha said kindly. The Guardian shook his shoulder but the tiny man wouldn’t wake up. She tried again, shaking him a little harder. Tollers mumbled something in his sleep about cherry tarts and then snuggled up even closer to Tabitha. Edward and Bridgette couldn’t help but laugh.

  Tabitha’s wings twitched in annoyance and she looked at Jemial for help. The big Guardian shook his head and shrugged. Tabitha looked around helplessly for a moment, and then spotted a nearby poker. She grabbed it and with a swift, deliberate motion, prodded the little man’s backside.

  Tollers sat up with
a loud “Whoop!” The entire room burst into fits of giggles. Tollers glanced around disoriented.

  “I wasn’t sleeping!” he protested loudly. “I was just resting my eyes!”

  As the little man repositioned himself on the sofa, Edward heard him mutter something in a surly voice about young Guardians having a “lack of manners” and “no respect for elders.”

  Jack waved for silence, chuckling a bit himself, then said, “Let me begin by saying thank you, especially to Guardian Jemial and his apprentice, Tabitha, for joining us on such short notice. I know you’re both very busy with duties from the Council and your presence here is greatly appreciated. I think you’ll find that what I have to share with you will be of tremendous importance. If what Tollers and I suspect is true, then the future of the Woodbine could be changed forever.”

  “I’m happy to oblige, Jack,” Jemial said in a deep, resonant voice. “You and Tollers are respected authorities in Woodbine lore. The Council is always interested in your findings.” As he spoke, the big Guardian glanced at a golden dial affixed to his broad, leather belt. His wings twitched. “But unfortunately, we can’t stay long. Tabitha and I are due back in Estrella two hours from now.”

  “It’s my graduation day,” Tabitha explained. “I’m being promoted to Guardian Third Class and have been assigned to a flying squadron.” Edward noticed that she was fingering a large, golden ring tied to her belt, turning it round and round impatiently.

  A chorus of excited voices greeted her announcement. Everyone in the room offered his or her congratulations. To Tabitha’s surprise, Joyce rushed over and threw her arms around her, giving her a big hug. From the expression on her face, Edward could tell that Guardians weren’t used to such overt displays of affection. However, Tabitha couldn’t help but return the little faun’s embrace, patting her lightly on her back and smiling broadly.