Hoo boy, here we go. Important to keep in mind: I've never been in a helicopter before, and am armed only with the knowledge Google gave me (for instance, that autopilot probably wouldn't exist in a tiny personal helicopter like this one). So if I've gotten something really wrong, please let me know. I'd be happy to go back and tweak this chapter to make it more realistic. In any case, I hope I haven't ruined your suspension of disbelief by too much.
Chapter 8: What Goes Up
This was going to be more difficult than I thought.
And that was saying a great deal, because my whole body was already shaking with the sheer impossibility of what I was about to do, so much so that I nearly stumbled over my own feet just loading the supplies I'd stolen from Saruman's stores into the helicopter.
There was more room for the stolen goods than I'd thought there'd be in the backseat of the vehicle. Camping gear was strewn on the floor, left in disarray by their previous owner. Some wealthy adventurer used to own all this, I supposed. They probably took their friends or family out skydiving and camping in the mountains, and were baffled when their helicopter and gear went missing one day. They would never—could never imagine that it had ended up in Middle Earth. "Poor thing, bless their heart," I muttered out loud.
But I couldn't afford to think about that right now. I climbed into the pilot's seat and slammed the door shut decisively.
Closed inside the tiny, egg-shaped cockpit, I nearly lost my nerve then and there. My eyes darted back and forth across the helicopter's dashboard, panic swelling in my chest. There were so many buttons and dials, a joystick and pedals and levers and a weird sci-fi throttle and how did I ever think I could do this? Maybe stealing a gun and taking off on foot would have been easier. But I knew I couldn't shoot at anyone. And I knew Saruman would catch me not five miles out of Isengard, if I even made it that far.
No, it was too late to turn back now.
It took me a long moment to even find the ignition on the dashboard. My hands shook so badly it took even longer to actually stick the key in and turn it.
I flicked through the heavy instruction manual as lights sprang to life behind some of the dials and screens. Thankfully there was a labeled diagram on one of the pages, and I slowly started to make sense of the controls. The lever on my left was the collective; the joystick thing in front of me was the cyclic; the yaw pedals were at my feet. Having names for all the gears helped me calm down, creating some order out of chaos. I made a list in my head, committing the diagram to memory as I read through their functions. Maybe I could do this.
I buckled my seatbelt, and buckled my violin case into the passenger seat for good measure, feeling oddly protective of it.
Now it was time to test the throttle. Keeping my eyes on the manual, I reached for the lever, braced myself, and—
The blades whirred to life above me.
"Ha!" I exclaimed breathlessly. "Ha ha, yes!" Hell, maybe I really could do this.
The helicopter was ridiculously loud, almost loud enough to drown out my thundering heartbeat, and the rotors stirred up a cloud of dirt in the air. I released the throttle hastily, letting the rotors die back down.
I pored over the instruction manual one more time. I'd already read aloud some of the basic flight instructions at Saruman's bidding, that first night in Isengard. He had been stunned by the concept of a flying machine: "a great mechanical bird," he'd said, and I'd let out a derisive laugh before quailing at the look in his eye.
I'd learned not to laugh at Saruman. I knew now just what he was capable of, and who he really was. And yet here you are, trying to escape from him with a piece of equipment you've never even set foot in before. I swallowed with difficulty. Hell, back home people took lessons, got pilot's licenses, worked for years and years to fly one of these things, and here I was like a complete idiot, trying to do the same, just like that. God, what was I thinking?
A panicked sob escaped me, and I was suddenly overwhelmed. I felt faint. The world seemed to spin beneath the pilot's seat. I couldn't do it. Why I'd even gotten into the helicopter was baffling. But I had to try, didn't I? Saruman was never going to send me home, but there had to be someone else out there who could. This world was full of magic, after all, wasn't it? I saw my mom's face clear in my mind, the faces of my friends and coworkers; I saw my old run-down apartment, the lime-green couch and chipped paint on the walls. Tears welled in my eyes. I reached for the throttle again.
This time the blades were even louder. I let them speed up, and up, and up, until the engine behind me roared and my stomach flipped upside down and the helicopter's heavy, egg-shaped body lifted off the ground.
I did it. I was flying.
The helicopter climbed into the air, its nose dipping slightly as it drifted forward, narrowly missing the roof of the storerooms. The rotors spun faster and louder than ever. My head reeled, and I realized I'd been holding my breath.
"Oh my God…oh my—" I swallowed nervously. I was going to crash into something at any moment, I just knew it…
But I hadn't run into anything yet, had I? I hadn't made the engine explode, I hadn't fallen out of the sky—those were good signs, right? I let out a nervous, giddy laugh, frightened by my own success.
The helicopter veered around the storeroom lazily, leaving it farther and farther below me. It was a good thing I'd never been very afraid of heights. My stomach lurched as the wind buffeted the helicopter back and forth, and I strained to steady the throttle unsuccessfully. I knew if this were a pilot's exam I'd have already failed. I was pretty sure helicopters were supposed to hover into the air when they took off, not lurch forward uncontrollably. But I had no idea how to get the damn thing to stay put, which meant I was drifting forward, arcing sharply to the side as I rose, the top of Orthanc growing closer and closer.
The wide, flat roof of the tower rose up to meet me on my left side. I gulped.
The wizards were there, just as they'd been in the movie. Only now they weren't fighting one another anymore; Gandalf had been knocked back to the very edge of the tower, and even from my far-off vantage point I could see the blood on his temple. My heart twisted painfully in my chest. He wasn't moving.
Get up! Fight back! I thought desperately, before realizing that he was staring in utter shock in my direction. Saruman, too, had stopped advancing on the other wizard and was gazing at the helicopter's ungraceful ascent into the air.
What must it be like, I wondered suddenly, to live in a medieval world—magic or no—and suddenly see a modern helicopter in flight? Then Saruman raised his staff toward me, and I decided that I didn't want to stick around to find out. It was time to move faster, to leave this place behind me.
I jerked one of the controls forward decisively—then screamed as the helicopter nosedived violently and began plummeting back to earth.
"No—no—stop!" I pulled back in the opposite direction as hard as I could and leveled out fifty feet or so from the ground. The tail careened drunkenly for a few moments, and I forced down the bile that had risen in my throat, shaking uncontrollably.
"Holy…crap…" I breathed hoarsely. "Holy…crap."
Still swaying this way and that on the wind, I struggled to flip through the instruction manual while keeping an eye on the controls. I was drifting upward again, gaining speed and altitude as the throttle pushed the blades faster and faster above my head. I was nearly level with Orthanc again.
Oh, that's what I did wrong, I realized as I read over the diagram. Oops. This was even tougher than it looked; I had to move multiple levers at once to control my acceleration, it looked like, and move them in different directions. I set aside the manual and nudged the joystick forward again, ever so gently, at the same time pulling at the lever on my left—yes—I was moving forward properly now; any second I'd be past the wizards and on my way—
A deep, chanting voice made me pause. My hands faltered on the controls, reducing my speed as I looked down. The voice sent a chill down my spine, and was clearly audible even over the rotors. It was the same voice I'd heard in my apartment, a thousand lifetimes ago, when my friends gathered around me, asking if I was okay, telling me they'd see me soon…
It was Saruman's voice, and he was casting a spell.
Suddenly I noticed the clouds gathering above the tower—where had they come from? They were solidifying and darkening as I watched, and were rotating slowly above me, as though mimicking the helicopter's blades. "Great," I said faintly, fumbling at the controls with shaking hands. "Now he can control the weather too?"
The entire helicopter swayed suddenly as the wind picked up, and it began to spin like a top in midair, even as I began to lose altitude again. No, no no—I slammed a foot down on one of the yaw pedals, but that only made it spin faster. "Damn it, wrong pedal—" Fumbling with the controls and pedals, I finally guided the tail back in the proper direction, my entire head spinning until my stomach couldn't take it anymore and I dry heaved, pressing my forehead against the controls as I retched and gasped for breath. For once I was glad I hadn't eaten anything that day, though it didn't make my stomach feel any better.
I'd managed to right the tail from spinning, but the wind had grown so strong at the wizard's command that now it was pulling the helicopter in a swerving, faltering circle around the tower. I pushed the controls to move forward again—properly this time—but only succeeded in spinning faster around the tower—the wind was too strong for the helicopter to break free. "Come on!" I pleaded, my voice lost in the gale, but the helicopter continued to veer around the tower once—twice—I looked down in panic to see Saruman lower his outstretched arms and point his staff at the careening helicopter. A reddish light appeared at the end of his staff, forming a sort of gleaming fireball; what was he d—
BOOM.
A searing heat exploded near my face, and the helicopter pitched to the side so violently I thought it might roll over entirely. Broken glass stung at my skin, and my scream was swallowed up by a howl of wind. Freezing air shattered through the helicopter, sucking the breath from my lungs until stars danced behind my eyes. I screamed again as the helicopter began losing altitude, screamed and screamed until I was struggling to breathe—desperately I fumbled at the controls with frozen hands, and I finally looked to my left to see what Saruman had done and—there was a hole in the door.
I couldn't believe it. There was a goddamn gaping hole in the helicopter door!
Saruman's attack had shattered the glass and twisted the metal under the window, leaving a horrible burning smell in the cockpit that even the howling wind couldn't get rid of.
"Oh, come on!" I screamed in absolute desperation as the helicopter leveled off, still being pulled involuntarily around the tower in the wind. I gasped for breath as it careened from side to side like a sailboat in a hurricane. "Come ON! You—threw—a fireball—at me?!"
Caught in the magical wind hurling me around the tower, I risked a glance down at the wizard—and bit back another scream as a second ball of fire narrowly missed me. It flew wildly off into the distance, only just missing the rotors spinning above me before disappearing into the roiling black clouds overhead.
"Damn it!" I yelled, my voice cracking with hysteria. "None of this was in the movie!"
I tried again to escape the magical gale Saruman had conjured, pulling at the lever on my left and pushing the control in front of me forward; but the wind was too strong. The rotors strained with the effort, and an unpleasant groaning sound came from the engine behind me.
In a panic, I looked down at the tower one last time, and was relieved to see that Gandalf had gotten to his feet. I let out a grateful sigh—at least he was okay, for now anyway, though his staff was nowhere to be seen. Gandalf stepped forward slowly; it looked like he was yelling something at Saruman. The White Wizard paused in his attack on my helicopter to face him.
The wind around the tower faltered ever so slightly. I breathed in sharply—Gandalf was distracting him on purpose—this was my chance—
"Now!" I screamed, pulling at the controls again, and this time the helicopter broke free of the gale. The helicopter tore off into the sky, as fast as I dared to go.
My hands shook on the controls, but I was moving steadily now—at least, steadily enough that I didn't immediately fear for my life. The helicopter was flying over the grounds—the underground pits, the orchards, the long dirt road leading away and finally—finally—the circular gate at the edge of Isengard.
I took a shuddering breath, hardly able to believe it. I escaped.
I did it.
I was free.
I should have stolen the tank.
This was by far the most difficult, terrifying, ridiculous thing I had ever done.
And I'd had no idea that piloting a helicopter could be so loud. The spinning of the blades made a wild roar around the helicopter, and the freezing wind ripped through the hole in the door and into my hair as I flew, threatening to burst my eardrums and making my face and fingers numb with cold.
Even louder than all that was my thundering heartbeat, which hadn't slowed down since the moment I'd taken off. It was pounding through my skull, making me dizzy—although from fear or excitement I couldn't tell.
The helicopter lurched violently as a freezing current of air slammed into the rotors. Scrabbling at the controls, I managed to slow my downward descent, and worked at the yaw pedals until the tail stopped spinning.
Maybe it had been a stupid thought, but I'd assumed that once I was out in the open, and all I had to do was fly in a straight line, things would get easier.
They hadn't.
Gusts of wind were constantly buffeting the helicopter up and down without warning, and every now and again the tail would veer alarmingly to the left or right seemingly without cause. My hands were numb on the controls as I constantly tried to adjust the rotors, tail, and throttle. I knew if anyone from my world looked up and saw a helicopter flying like this, they'd assume the pilot was blackout drunk.
I still couldn't get a proper hang of the controls, either, though at least I hadn't hit anything yet. That had to count for something. There were a few near misses, though, as I cleared the steep hills surrounding Saruman's tower; the wind had risen up angrily around me, and I'd nearly crashed into a canopy of trees as a particularly violent gust of wind sent the helicopter's nose plummeting downward.
The black stormclouds from Saruman's spell followed me miles and miles from the tower, making the wind even wilder. It took nearly a half hour of flying as fast as I dared before I lost the stormclouds in the distance, where the rolling hills of forest had swallowed up Saruman's tower.
Finally, all traces of Isengard and Saruman were left behind. I tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but my breath hitched in my lungs; I knew I wasn't in the clear yet.
After all, I was lost.
I squinted ahead, looking for signs of civilization on the ground below me. The hills had given way to mountains in the distance to my right, and below me they were thinning gradually into rocky, rolling plains. There were no signs of life whatsoever. Should I just keep flying straight until I run out of fuel? Or try to land now, and take my chances? There has to be some civilization—
My thoughts flew out of my head as a strong current of air slammed against the pilot's window, cracking the glass further and sending the entire helicopter careening sideways. I leapt at the controls, and after a long moment of cursing and lever-pulling, the rotors angling up and down, the nose bobbing and tail swerving, the helicopter righted itself again. "Will—you—stop—doing—that?" I hissed at the dashboard venomously. "Honestly!"
If only I had Nathan's book, I thought. Or, more specifically, the map Tarbyn had ripped out—then I might have been able to find a destination. But I didn't have the map. I didn't even know how to land, and I was in the middle of nowhere. So stopping now wasn't an option. But what then? Where could I go? The world spread out below me, unending and empty and strange. "Oh my God," I breathed faintly. "I'm lost in a helicopter in Middle Earth. What do I—how do I…oh, my God…"
My vision blurred as panic threatened to overwhelm me. "What do I do now?"
"Go back?" he thought. "No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!"
The words came to me quite suddenly, and I found myself smiling despite myself. My panic cooled slightly; I was able to breathe again. The words were from my old favorite book, The Hobbit. I remembered reading them as a little kid, my hands nearly tearing at the pages in concern as Bilbo struggled to find his way out of the caves under Goblin Town.
Admittedly, being lost in a helicopter was a pretty strange comparison to make. But still, the words came back to me nonetheless, and my hands steadied themselves on the helicopter's controls.
"Only thing to do," I repeated out loud. "On we go!"
I wasn't sure how much time was passing; my phone, of course, was long dead and despite the sheer number of dials and buttons on the helicopter's dashboard, there was no sign of a clock. So I continued onward, every few minutes leaping to correct the helicopter's flight whenever the wind changed or an unexpected gust hit the rotors above me.
There was no sign of civilization.
If I was living in Middle Earth, I decided, I'd live near the mountains. Snowmelt for water and whatnot, right? With this vaguely in mind I drifted closer to the mountain range on my right, though I still kept them at a good distance—it seemed like the wind got wilder and less predictable when I flew too close to the mountains. Did that have something to do with the change in altitude? The air temperature, maybe? I wished I'd taken a meteorology course in college; it might have helped me now. Hell, I wished I'd taken flight lessons most of all. But no; my mom had to insist on a business degree, I thought bitterly, though admittedly my desired major—violin performance—wouldn't have been very helpful in this situation either.
The sun crept forward in the sky. The tiny meter on the fuel gauge drifted lower and lower as I went. How far had I gone? And how far could I keep flying? The manual said on a full tank the helicopter could make it nearly three hundred and fifty miles, but the tank hadn't been full when I set out, and I imagined that a hole being ripped in the helicopter door didn't exactly work wonders for the gas mileage.
Besides, I wasn't sure how much longer I could keep this up. I was hungry, cold, thirsty beyond belief, desperately tired, and getting whinier by the minute.
"Come on, Middle Earth," I complained, trying not to notice how the clouds looked like mashed potatoes, the river in the distance looked like gravy and the trees below me looked like steamed broccoli. "I'm starving. Let me find some civilization. I'll take anything."
Still, there was nothing, as far as the eye could see.
I itched to go faster, rocketing through the air until I found a city, a town, even a single farmhouse, but I knew I shouldn't push my luck. As the day wore on, I slowed down bit by bit until I was going barely fifty miles an hour—slow for a helicopter, or I assumed so by how high the speedometer allowed—but I wanted to be careful. The vehicle was lurching and veering worse than ever, and I began to wonder if Saruman's magical gale and the hole in the door were beginning to take their toll on the poor helicopter. Maybe it was because I was well and truly running out of fuel now, and the helicopter was on its last legs. Or maybe it was all in my head, my weariness making me jumpy and my coordination worse than ever.
I jumped as a shrill beeping filled the cockpit.
I was running out of gas.
"Well," I told myself faintly, struggling to stay calm, "you're lost anyway, aren't you, so this place is as good as anywhere…"
But I still didn't know how to land.
I slowed down even more as I reached for the instruction manual. "All you have to do is figure out how to hover," I said reassuringly, "and then descend until you hit the ground. Right?"
Suddenly the rotors faltered. The helicopter jolted violently and the manual fell out of my hands, swept into the backseat by the wind.
"No, no, no—come on, stop falling!" I pulled at the throttle desperately, and the rotors sprang back to life, though not as fast as before. The engine made an unpleasant groan behind me. I was losing altitude. I slowed down again, trying desperately to stop the helicopter from moving forward as the ground got closer. "Just—hover, damn it—come on!" How did pilots do it? It was impossible!
That didn't keep me from trying, though. I pulled forward and back on the levers, angled the failing rotors this way and that and only succeeded in pitching the helicopter forward and back so violently that my head started spinning. If anything, that made my descent even faster—there was no hope for it—I was going to crash—feverishly I pulled my seatbelt tighter as the ground came rushing up to swallow me—I squeezed my eyes shut—
CRASH.
I screamed as the helicopter's runners tore through the earth, jerking my body against the seatbelt so hard my head slammed into the dashboard and my vision flashed red. Rock and mud exploded violently across the windshield, cracking the glass. The helicopter's nose pitched forward and to the right, its body tilting to the side and the rotors tearing into the ground as they struggled to continue spinning. I held the controls in a death grip as the helicopter plowed forward, farther and farther, losing speed until it finally careened to the right, fell over on its side, and came to a shuddering halt.
It took me a minute or two longer to stop screaming.
I pried my hands off the controls, struggled out of my seatbelt, and fell limply into the passenger's seat below me. With enormous effort, I stood and wrenched open the pilot's door, which was now above my head. A shower of broken glass from the window fell into my face, and I winced and sputtered, pausing to shake the larger pieces from my hair.
Climbing out of the helicopter took the better part of ten minutes. Finally I managed to hoist myself out of the ruined door, where I tumbled onto the grass, breathing heavily as though I'd just run a marathon.
You did it. My stomach heaved and my head spun and I clutched at the grass with both hands, grateful beyond words to be back on solid ground. After a moment, I tried to stand up. The world spun beneath me, and I fell back into the grass. And for the second time in my life, I passed out.