Chapter 2 Flying
Eleniel settled herself on Morning Dove's helm, smiling in anticipation. She'd only been flying since her birthday, but the thrill hadn't faded with repetition yet. She doubted it ever would.
The fact her mother had finally decided she was old enough to try the helm was the best birthday present Eleniel had ever gotten. The wonder of feeling herself become their home was intoxicating!
The feel of the helm's smooth wood under her fingers focused her on the here and now. She wriggled in the large heavy chair, nestling her arms and legs in the hollow troughs meant for them. Slowly she felt the helm mold itself to her, becoming the most comfortable chair she'd ever sat in, the hard wooden back turning soft and cradling her head and shoulders.
The heat of the chair rose around her like a warm bath, making the necklace circling her throat turn hot. It sucked in the heat all around her then spit it back into the helm, only to suck it in again, getting stronger with each cycle. As the power grew a sense of contentment filled her. This was how things were meant to be. While the power flowed all was right with the world.
There was a snap and the helm began to thrum softly. Heat poured from the bottom of it to fill the middle deck. From there it spilled down the ladder into the lower hold like a waterfall.
As the heat spread so did her awareness. In less than a minute the heat flooded the ship's wings and then rose upward to the top deck, and finally into the ship's main and mizzen masts.
A wave of dizziness swept through her and she found herself lying flat with arms outstretched, staring down at the mooring dock. She blinked in the bright morning sun as the wind-driven wavelets brushed lightly against her pontoons.
Her father and brother raised the lateen booms. She shivered with delight feeling her sails unfurl like cloth sliding over skin.
The helm came up fully at last, and she felt the wind off the lake cease as her air envelope formed. A peculiar rigid stiffness in her wooden body told her she was ready to fly.
She watched as her father untied the two lines that anchored her to the U shaped cutout in the dock that nestled her nose, amazed as always how he managed to effortlessly coil and toss the lines to land on the top deck. She had never seen him miss, unlike her brother who had a habit of letting the ropes fall back into the water whenever he tried.
She blithely ignored the fact she couldn't do it either, having to climb the ladder with the ropes coiled over her shoulders. At least she never got the lines wet!
Her mother's voice distracted her, seemingly echoing from inside her head. She still hadn't got used to that.
"Eleniel, is the helm up?"
"Yes, Mama," the girl replied as she felt her father's footsteps on her shoulders. It felt like she was speaking aloud, but the sound echoed inside her. She tried to ignore the weirdness.
"Back away from the mooring please. At least one ship's length before you lift, all right?"
"I have done this before," her daughter replied, wanting to roll her eyes but currently not having the right anatomy. "You always tell me the same thing. It's not like I'm going to forget."
She changed her point of view from her face to the bottom of her feet (and wasn't that a weird sensation), seeing nothing but empty lake for half a mile behind her.
"All clear astern," she informed her mother, languidly waving what felt like her hands in the warmth surrounding her, even though she knew her real arms were glued to the troughs in the helm's chair arms.
She felt herself drifting slowly backward, keeping an eye out for other craft moving into her right-of-way.
This early in the morning there weren't any. The only jammer moored at the docks was Adderfield's lone hammership, the Land Guard, which was clearly not going anywhere. There was only one sailor posted on watch who waved lazily as she moved steadily away from the mooring.
It's not like the lake dock sees many jammers anyway, she thought to herself. Adderfield's way too small for most of the big waterborne jammers to bother with. So it's just us and the Land Guard most of the time.
Like most cities and towns on Aloth, she knew, the biggest and busiest jammer port was always land-based, traffic being nothing but ordinary angelships running cargo and passengers between settlements.
Judging she was far enough from the mooring she let herself drift to a stop and scanned the skies around her for any other jammers. The only one she saw was an angelship from the land port, already in flight and moving safely away from her.
Its helm blazed like the sun in her mind while the Land Guard was the pale ember glow of a banked fire. The muted glow of a dozen other quiescent helms from the land-port reminded her of a field of stars on a hazy night.
"Skies are clear, Mama. One angelship moving away from the starboard beam with no other traffic in the air."
"Very good," her mother replied in a crisp, almost military tone. She reached over and pulled a cord leading up through the ceiling. Eleniel heard the deck bell ring twice. She glanced at her father as he scanned the heavens around the ship quickly but thoroughly. Satisfied he yanked a cord beside his position twice.
"Deck reports all clear, you have permission to lift. Two hundred feet, please, helmsman."
"Aye, aye, Mama," Eleniel couldn't help the giggle that escaped.
"Sorry," her mother chuckled. "Old habits die hard."
"Just as long as you remember this isn't the Shou Long navy," Eleniel replied. "I don't think they let nine year olds fly their dragonships."
"They do not," her mother agreed. "If I had not been a descendent of Fu Xing and marked with his favor they would have never let me aboard either, even at 18. Idiot men, thinking a woman could not possibly fly their precious jammers."
Eleniel grinned at the grumble in her mother's voice, and then imagined herself to be a swimmer under water bobbing to the surface.
As gracefully as a thistle on the wind her hundred and thirty foot length responded, water spilling off her pontoons. It didn't feel like she was moving at all, rather it felt like the world moved around her while she stayed still.
She'd asked her mother about it once, her mother explaining a ship under power was its own little world, largely cut off from the rest of existence. Then hastily added that largely did not mean entirely. Solid objects could pass into the air envelope unhindered, smoke could seep in, and light passed freely, although sound could not.
Eleniel halted herself two hundred feet above the lake and looked around again before her mother could nag her.
"Two hundred feet, no traffic inbound," she recited the words that had been drilled into her.
Her mother rang the bell twice, and got an instant reply of two rings.
"You are clear to lift to a thousand feet. Set course, by compass, yellow 26 degrees." Again, her mother's manner shifted into the near military.
"Aye, aye, lifting to one thousand feet, course yellow 26 degrees," Eleniel said, again imagining bobbing to the surface. She tried to twist her wooden body but instead of bending, she felt herself spinning in a lazy circle.
She shifted her point of view to her flesh and blood body so she could watch the compass mounted in front of the helm as it spun inside its glass dome. When the bottom edge of the spinning dial turned yellow and the needle reached 26 degrees she stopped her turn.
"Course set, reaching altitude now, what speed?"
"As fast as you can go," her mother said with a smile. "We are in a bit of a hurry, my angel."
Eleniel's laughter pealed like the ship's bell as she threw herself forward, willing her wooden body to lunge through the endless blue sky. The feel of the warm bath surrounding her changed from a quiet babbling brook to a tumultuous thundering river. She could feel the ship spirit's delight as she tore through the heavens on a raging torrent of magic.
