Steampunk Family

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Falling

By Madame vonHedwig on Sunday, February 7th, 2010

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In which things go from bad to worse.

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“Stop!” Claire shrieked. “Stop fighting him! Lie down!”

“What?” Mirabelle yelled.

“He ignored me! Get down!”

Gerhardt and Bettina dropped like stones, and the twins followed. The yeti halted, looking around for its attackers. Behind it, Claire crawled across the tilting floor to Adolphus.

“We need engines,” she whispered, “to slow us down when we crash.”

“How about an anchor, to stop us falling?”

Claire nodded, and Adolphus turned to address the ship.

“Has anyone seen the anch-?”

The question died on his lips. The gondola was strewn with debris, and the starboard windows shattered. His younger brother and sisters lay as though dead, and a 7-foot, distressingly not mythological, bleeding, growling, angry animal glared at him from amidships.

He gulped, and slowly spread his arms wide, displaying his tragically empty hands. The beast stepped towards him. With a screeching, grinding noise, the ship slid again. The yeti gave a bark-like roar and covered its ears, glaring at Adolphus.

“You chaps better find the anchor while it’s ripping me up, or we’re all done for!” he shouted.

The yeti roared again, lunging at Adolphus. Its weight and momentum were too much for the little ship, which spun off of the stalactite holding it, and plunged into the blackness.

“Aaaaaaahhhhhh!!” the children screamed again.

There was a tremendous thud, and they all stopped screaming to listen. They were falling, definitely falling, but not as fast as they had first feared. Only three of the gas balloons were gone, and those remaining slowed their descent. They could not guess the source of the thud.

Claire recovered first. “Light!” she shouted. “Bettina, I know you have matches!”

Bettina did not answer. In truth, the wind coming in the broken windows would blow a match out.

“Here!” came Gerhardt’s voice. “I have the torch!”

A moment later the youngest vonHedwigs united in the darkness, and there was light. The small bright white flame showed the yeti sprawled on the floor, unmoving. That had been the tremendous thud. Gerhardt hurried around the prone beast to illuminate the control panel.

“Thank you,” Claire said. “Adolphus, how did you start the engines?”

They turned to the panel, but were abruptly thrown against it. The ship’s hull scraped against rock with a crash and a shudder. For a moment they slowed, but then, with a terrible POP POP, two more balloons exploded, and they bounced off the wall, falling faster than ever.

Adolphus scrambled at the cluster of controls, and the engines coughed to life. He swung all the engine pods to vertical lift full throttle. The little ship strained against its own weight, slowed its descent, but could not rise. They had lost too much gas. Claire took over the controls, while Adolphus and Annabelle searched for exterior lights.

Mirabelle and Bettina were binding the yeti’s limbs together with some line they found coiled in a corner, talking soothingly to the creature as they did, although it was still unconscious. Gerhardt felt the yeti’s head for blood. Finding none, he moved to the fallen Count. With a frown of stern disapproval, he began examining man’s wounds. A nasty gash on his head was bleeding freely. The first aid kit had been with Ulrik when they took off, so Gerhardt had to rummage through the ship’s detritus for adequate bandages.

“Ah ha!” Annabelle’s triumphant cry was muffled, as she was lying beneath the control panel. Dazzling spotlights burst to life, beams swinging wildly on the rock face of the tunnel through which they fell. “Crazy monkeys,” she muttered.

A group of dials lit up when she found the switch, allowing Adolphus to focus the spotlights on their descent.

“It’s so smooth!” Claire exclaimed. “No wonder we’ve hardly hit anything.” She deftly adjusted the engines, controlling their inevitable fall. “This is more a tunnel than a cave. Perfectly round, too. Could it be man-made?”

Gerhardt finished his reluctant ministrations on the Count, and recommended his sisters tie him up as well. “He’s in bad shape, but he’ll still be nasty when he wakes up.”

“Ooh, there went a side branch off the main shaft,” Claire said. “If there’s one big enough I could try to land her.”

“We’re still going too fast for that,” Adolphus said. “It would have to be awfully big.”

Gerhardt looked up at this exchange, suddenly struck with an idea. He grabbed the welding torch from where his sister had wedged it into the console, and called for Bettina. “Come to the window, and hold it steady,” he instructed.

“Where are you going with my light?” Claire demanded.

“Breadcrumbs,” he said. With that, he loaded his marshmallow crossbow and fired through the flame of the torch, out the broken window. The flaming marshmallow arced through the air and stuck to the tunnel wall above them. Gerhardt waited for what he judged was about a hundred yards, and fired again.

And so, the vonHedwig children descended into unknown darkness, with a trail of flaming marshmallows the only evidence of their fall.

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This story began with On Grandmothers, and continues with Breadcrumbs.

Tags: Adolphus, Annabelle, Bettina, boiler monkey, Claire, flying, gas, Gerhardt, Himalayas, lamp, light, Mirabelle, punk, steam, stories, story, vonHedwig, Yeti