Collected Fiction Page 16

  His broken glider still stood where he had left it on the far end of his work bench. He went over and picked it up.

  “At least you flew by yourself,” he said, “and I didn’t have to kill any poor little toads to make you.” Then he juggled it in his hand, feeling its weight, and began to wonder. It had occurred to him that maybe the wooden wings on his big orange-box glider had been too heavy.

  “Maybe if I could get some long thin poles,” he thought, “and some cloth to put across the wings . . .”

  DURING the next three months, there was room in Porgie’s mind for only one thing—the machine he was building in the roomy old cave at the top of the long hill on the other side of Arnett’s grove. As a result, he kept slipping further and further behind at school.

  Things at home weren’t too pleasant, either—Bull Pup felt it was his duty to keep his parents fully informed of Porgie’s shortcomings. Porgie didn’t care though. He was too busy. Every minute he could steal was spent in either collecting materials or putting them together.

  The afternoon the machine was finally finished, he could hardly tear himself away from it long enough to go home for dinner. He was barely able to choke down his food, and didn’t even wait for dessert.

  He sat on the grass in front of the cave, waiting for darkness. Below, little twinkling lights marked the villages that stretched across the plain for a full forty miles. Enclosing them like encircling arms stretched the dark and forbidding mass of the Wall. No matter where he looked, it stood high against the night. He followed its curve with his eyes until he had turned completely around, and then he shook his fist at it.

  Patting the ungainly mass of the machine that rested on the grass beside him, he whispered fiercely, “I’ll get over you yet. Old Eagle here will take me!”

  Old Eagle was an awkward, boxkite-like affair; but to Porgie she was a thing of beauty. She had an uncovered fuselage composed of four long poles braced together to make a rectangular frame, at each end of which was fastened a large wing.

  When it was dark enough, he climbed into the open frame and reached down and grabbed hold of the two lower members. Grunting, he lifted until the two upper ones rested under his armpits. There was padding there to support his weight comfortably once he was airborne. The bottom of the machine was level with his waist and the rest of him hung free. According to his thinking, he should be able to control his flight by swinging his legs. If he swung forward, the shifting weight should tilt the nose down; if he swung back, it should go up.

  There was only one way to find out if his ifs were right. The Eagle was a heavy contraption. He walked awkwardly to the top of the hill, the cords standing out on his neck. He was scared as he looked down the long steep slope that stretched out before him—so scared that he was having trouble breathing. He swallowed twice in a vain attempt to moisten his dry throat, and then lunged forward, fighting desperately to keep his balance as his wabbling steps gradually picked up speed.

  Faster he went, and faster, his steps turning into leaps as the wing surfaces gradually took hold. His toes scraped through the long grass and then they were dangling in free air.

  He was aloft.

  NOT daring to even move his head, he slanted his eyes down and to the left. The earth was slipping rapidly by a dozen feet below him. Slowly and cautiously, he swung his feet back. As the weight shifted, the nose of the glider rose. Up, up he went, until he felt a sudden slowing down and a clumsiness of motion. Almost instinctively, he leaned forward again, pointing the nose down in a swift dip to regain flying speed.

  By the time he reached the bottom of the hill, he was a hundred and fifty feet up. Experimentally, he swung his feet a little to the left. The glider dipped slightly and turned. Soaring over a clump of trees, he felt a sudden lifting as an updraft caught him.

  Up he went—ten, twenty, thirty feet—and then slowly began to settle again.

  The landing wasn’t easy. More by luck than by skill, he came down in the long grass of the meadow with no more damage than a few bruises. He sat for a moment and rested, his head spinning with excitement. He had flown like a bird, without his stick, without uttering a word. There were other ways than magic!

  His elation suddenly faded with the realization that, while gliding down was fun, the way over the Wall was up. Also, and of more immediate importance, he was half a mile from the cave with a contraption so heavy and unwieldy that he could never hope to haul it all the way back up the hill by himself. If he didn’t get it out of sight by morning, there was going to be trouble, serious trouble. People took an unpleasant view of machines and those who built them.

  Broomsticks, he decided, had certain advantages, after all. They might not fly very high, but at least you didn’t have to walk home from a ride.

  “If I just had a great big broomstick,” he thought, “I could lift the Eagle up with it and fly her home.”

  He jumped to his feet. It might work!

  He ran back up the hill as fast as he could and finally, very much out of breath, reached the entrance of the cave. Without waiting to get back his wind, he jumped on his stick and flew down to the stranded glider.

  Five minutes later, he stepped back and said:

  “Broomstick fly,

  Rise on high,

  Over cloud

  And into sky.”

  It didn’t fly. It couldn’t. Porgie had lashed it to the framework of the Eagle. When he grabbed hold of the machine and lifted, nine-tenths of its weight was gone, canceled out by the broomstick’s lifting power.

  He towed it back up the hill and shoved it into the cave. Then he looked uneasily at the sky. It was later than he had thought. He should be home and in bed—but when he thought of the feeling of power he had had in his flight, he couldn’t resist hauling the Eagle back out again.

  AFTER checking the broomstick to be sure it was still fastened tightly to the frame, he went swooping down the hill again. This time when he hit the thermal over the clump of trees, he was pushed up a hundred feet before he lost it. He curved through the darkness until he found it again and then circled tightly within it.

  Higher he went and higher, higher than any broomstick had ever gone!

  When he started to head back, though, he didn’t have such an easy time of it. Twice he was caught in downdrafts that almost grounded him before he was able to break loose from the tugging winds. Only the lifting power of his broomstick enabled him to stay aloft. With it bearing most of the load, the Eagle was so light that it took just a flutter of air to sweep her up again.

  He landed the glider a stone’s throw from the mouth of his cave.

  “Tomorrow night!” he thought exultantly as he unleashed his broomstick. “Tomorrow night!”

  There was a tomorrow night, and many nights after that. The Eagle was sensitive to every updraft, and with care he found he could remain aloft for hours, riding from thermal to thermal. It was hard to keep his secret, hard to keep from shouting the news, but he had to. He slipped out at night to practice, slipping back in again before sunrise to get what sleep he could.

  He circled the day of his fourteenth birthday in red and waited. He had a reason for waiting.

  In the World within the Wall, fourteenth birthdays marked the boundary between the little and the big, between being a big child and a small man. Most important, they marked the time when one was taken to the Great Tower where the Adepts lived and given a full-sized broomstick powered by the most potent of spells, sticks that would climb to a full six hundred feet, twice the height that could be reached by the smaller ones the youngsters rode.

  Porgie needed a man-sized stick, needed that extra power, for he had found that only the strongest of updrafts would lift him past the three-hundred-foot ceiling where the lifting power of his little broomstick gave out. He had to get up almost as high as the Wall before he could make it across the wide expanse of flat plain that separated him from the box canyon where the great wind waited.

  So he counted the slowly pas
sing days and practiced flying during the rapidly passing nights.

  THE afternoon of his fourteenth birthday found Porgie sitting on the front steps expectantly, dressed in his best and waiting for his uncle to come out of the house. Bull Pup came out and sat down beside him.

  “The gang’s having a coven up on top of old Baldy tonight,” he said. “Too bad you can’t come.”

  “I can go if I want to,” said Porgie.

  “How?” said Bull Pup and snickered. “You going to grow wings and fly? Old Baldy’s five hundred feet up and your kid stick won’t lift you that high.”

  “Today’s my birthday.”

  “You think you’re going to get a new stick?”

  Porgie nodded.

  “Well, you ain’t. I heard Mom and Dad talking. Dad’s mad because you flunked Alchemy. He said you had to be taught a lesson.”

  Porgie felt sick inside, but he wouldn’t let Bull Pup have the satisfaction of knowing it.

  “I don’t care,” he said. “I’ll go to the coven if I want to. You just wait and see.”

  Bull Pup was laughing when he hopped on his stick and took off down the street. Porgie waited an hour, but his uncle didn’t come out.

  He went into the house. Nobody said anything about his new broomstick until after supper. Then his uncle called him into the living room and told him he wasn’t getting it.

  “But, Uncle Veryl, you promised!”

  “It was a conditional promise, Porgie. There was a big if attached to it. Do you remember what it was?”

  Porgie looked down at the floor and scuffed one toe on the worn carpet. “I tried.”

  “Did you really, son?” His uncle’s eyes were stern but compassionate. “Were you trying when you fell asleep in school today? I’ve tried talking with you and I’ve tried whipping you and neither seems to work. Maybe this will. Now you run upstairs and get started on your studies. When you can show me that your marks are improving, we’ll talk about getting you a new broomstick. Until then, the old one will have to do.”

  Porgie knew that he was too Big to cry, but when he got to his room he couldn’t help it. He was stretched out on his bed with his face buried in the pillows when he heard a hiss from the window. He looked up to see Bull Pup sitting on his stick, grinning malevolently at him.

  “What do you want?” sniffed Porgie.

  “Only little kids cry,” said Bull Pup.

  “I wasn’t crying. I got a cold.”

  “I just saw Mr. Wickens. He was coming out of that old cave back of Arnett’s grove. He’s going to get the Black Man, I’ll bet.”

  “I don’t know anything about that old cave,” said Porgie, sitting bolt upright on his bed.

  “Oh, yes, you do. I followed you up there one day. You got a machine in there. I told Mr. Wickens and he gave me a quarter. He was real interested.”

  Porgie jumped from his bed and ran toward the window, his face red and his fists doubled. “I’ll fix you!”

  Bull Pup backed his broomstick just out of Porgie’s reach, and then stuck his thumbs in his ears and waggled his fingers. When Porgie started to throw things, he gave a final taunt and swooped away toward old Baldy and the coven.

  PORGIE’S uncle was just about to go out in the kitchen and fix himself a sandwich when the doorbell rang. Grumbling, he went out into the front hall. Mr. Wickens was at the door. He came into the house and stood blinking in the light. He seemed uncertain as to just how to begin.

  “I’ve got bad news for you,” he said finally. “It’s about Porgie. Is your wife still up?”

  Porgie’s uncle nodded anxiously.

  “She’d better hear this, too.”

  Aunt Olga put down her knitting when they came into the living room.

  “You’re out late, Mr. Wickens.”

  “It’s not of my own choosing.”

  “Porgie’s done something again,” said his uncle.

  Aunt Olga sighed. “What is it this time?”

  Mr. Wickens hesitated, cleared his throat, and finally spoke in a low hushed voice: “Porgie’s built a machine. The Black Man told me. He’s coming after the boy tonight.”

  Uncle Veryl dashed up the stairs to find Porgie. He wasn’t in his room.

  Aunt Olga just sat in her chair and cried shrilly.

  THE moon stood high and silver-lit the whole countryside. Porgie could make out the world far below him almost as if it were day. Miles to his left, he saw the little flickering fires on top of old Baldy where the kids were holding their coven. He fought an impulse and then succumbed to it. He circled the Eagle over a clump of trees until the strong rising currents lifted him almost to the height of the Wall. Then he twisted his body and banked over toward the distant red glowing fires.

  Minutes later, he went silently over them at eight hundred feet, feeling out the air currents around the rocks. There was a sharp downdraft on the far side of Baldy that dropped him suddenly when he glided into it, but he made a quick turn and found untroubled air before he fell too far. On the other side, toward the box canyon, he found what he wanted, a strong rising current that seemed to have no upward limits.

  He fixed its location carefully in his mind and then began to circle down toward the coven. Soon he was close enough to make out individual forms sitting silently around their little fires.

  “Hey, Bull Pup,” he yelled at the top of his lungs.

  A stocky figure jumped to its feet and looked wildly around for the source of the ghostly voice.

  “Up here!”

  Porgie reached in his pocket, pulled out a small pebble and chucked it down. It cracked against a shelf of rock four feet from Bull Pup. Porgie’s cousin let out a howl of fear. The rest of the kids jumped up and reared back their heads at the night sky, their eyes blinded by firelight.

  “I told you I could come to the coven if I wanted to,” yelled Porgie, “but now I don’t. I don’t have any time for kid stuff; I’m going over the Wall!”

  During his last pass over the plateau he wasn’t more than thirty feet up. As he leaned over, his face was clearly visible in the firelight.

  Placing one thumb to his nose he waggled his fingers and chanted, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, you can’t catch me!”

  His feet were almost scraping the ground as he glided out over the drop-off. There was an anxious second of waiting and then he felt the sure steady thrust of the up-current against his wings.

  He looked back. The gang was milling around, trying to figure out what had happened. There was an angry shout of command from Bull Pup, and after a moment of confused hesitation they all made for their brooms and swooped up into the air.

  Porgie mentally gauged his altitude and then relaxed. He was almost at their ceiling and would be above it before they reached him.

  He flattened out his glide and yelled, “Come on up! Only little kids play that low!”

  Bull Pup’s stick wouldn’t rise any higher. He circled impotently, shaking his fist at the machine that rode serenely above him, “You just wait,” he yelled. “You can’t stay up there all night. You got to come down some time, and when you do we’ll be waiting for you.”

  “Nyah, nyah, nyah,” chanted Porgie and mounted higher into the moonlit night.

  WHEN the updraft gave out, he wasn’t as high as he wanted to be, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He turned and started a flat glide across the level plain toward the box canyon. He wished now that he had left Bull Pup and the other kids alone. They were following along below him. If he dropped down to their level before the canyon winds caught him, he was in trouble.

  He tried to flatten his glide still more, but instead of saving altitude he went into a stall that dropped him a hundred feet before he was able to regain control. He saw now that he could never make it without dropping to Bull Pup’s level.

  Bull Pup saw it, too, and let out an exultant yell: “Just you wait! You’re going to get it good!” Porgie peered over the side into the darkness where his cousin rode, his pug face gleam
ing palely in the moonlight.

  “Leave him alone, gang,” Bull Pup shouted. “He’s mine!”

  The rest pulled back and circled slowly as the Eagle glided quietly down among them. Bull Pup darted in and rode right alongside Porgie.

  He pointed savagely toward the ground: “Go down or I’ll knock you down!”

  Porgie kicked at him, almost upsetting his machine. He wasn’t fast enough. Bull Pup dodged easily. He made a wide circle and came back, reaching out and grabbing the far end of the Eagle’s front wing. Slowly and maliciously, he began to jerk it up and down, twisting violently as he did so.

  “Get down,” he yelled, “or I’ll break it off!”

  Porgie almost lost his head as the wrenching threatened to throw him out of control.

  “Let go!” he screamed, his voice cracking.

  Bull Pup’s face had a strange excited look on it as he gave the wing another jerk. The rest of the boys were becoming frightened as they saw what was happening.

  “Quit it, Bull Pup!” somebody called. “Do you want to kill him?”

  “Shut up or you’ll get a dose of the same!”

  Porgie fought to clear his head. His broomstick was tied to the frame of the Eagle so securely that he would never be able to free it in time to save himself. He stared into the darkness until he caught the picture of Bull Pup’s broomstick sharply in his mind. He’d never tried to handle anything that big before, but it was that or nothing.

  Tensing suddenly, he clamped his mind down on the picture and held it hard. He knew that words didn’t help, but he uttered them anyway:

  “Broomstick stop,

  Flip and flop!”

  There was a sharp tearing pain in his head. He gritted his teeth and held on, fighting desperately against the red haze that threatened to swallow him. Suddenly there was a half-startled, half-frightened squawk from his left wingtip, and Bull Pup’s stick jerked to an abrupt halt, gyrating so madly that its rider could hardly hang on.