Stirring Adventures and Mad Mods! Saving the world one questionable decision at a time.
By Madame vonHedwig on Saturday, April 17th, 2010
This entry is part of a series, Voyage to Antafrica» In which the children run aground.
.
They fell for two days according to Adolphus’ pocket watch, which was miraculously unharmed in all the excitement. They were tense, tired, grubby, irritable, and out of cookies.
Adolphus was once again at the controls, Mirabelle watching the tunnel with him.
“We’re not going straight down,” she said.
“No, the tunnel’s curving. I’ve swung the aft engine pods straight back to keep us away from the wall.” He fumbled at the controls. “There, I’ve got the lights on back there. Would you go watch that wall?”
“Of course. How shall I signal you? I don’t want to shout or whistle, Claire’s just fallen asleep.”
“Is there a light back there? If you flash a light I’ll see the reflection in the window here.”
Mirabelle walked around her twin and moved aft. Annabelle was once again applying her tweezers to the yeti and strange moss that grew into its skin. Concentrating on the yeti helped her forget her motion sickness, so she had made sketches, measurements, and taken extensive notes on the creature. She had even opened the cupboard and questioned Count Montesanto on the moss, but found him most unhelpful on that topic, although perfectly willing to expand her vocabulary of Italian obscenities. (She took extensive notes on this topic as well.) At this point, she had most of the moss removed, but the yeti still did not wake.
Continue Reading…
By Madame vonHedwig on Saturday, November 21st, 2009
This entry is part of a series, Voyage to Antafrica» In which the vonHedwig parents pursue knowledge, and a little peace and quiet.
.
“Ulrik, you are in charge.” Herr vonHedwig cast a stern eye over his assembled family. “This means what, children?”
“No arguments!” Claire glared at her siblings.
“No visiting the boiler crew,” sighed Adolphus, “no entering the galley, no throwing things at the galley, no talking to or otherwise bothering Chef.”
“No weapons, fighting, or dueling,” the twins chorused.
“No open flame, even in the laboratory, until your return,” Gerhardt recited.
“No boom,” said Bettina, her lower lip pouting.
“Thank you,” Father said. “If you dutifully follow these rules, Ulrik will have no reason to dart you.”
Continue Reading…
By Madame vonHedwig on Friday, November 13th, 2009
This entry is part of a series, Voyage to Antafrica» 
Bettina vs the sweeper
In which permission is asked, but not given.
-
“So,” Father said, “your hypothesis is that the mythological yeti is an actual creature residing in this region. Your evidence is personal observation by Adolphus, Mirabelle, Annabelle, and Bettina.” He glanced down at his youngest, momentarily distracted by her battle with his sweeping machine.
“I saw it too, just now,” Gerhardt asserted.
“Very well,” Mother said, “what are the next steps you wish to take in your research?”
Adolphus and the twins put their heads together. Gerhardt tried to push his way into their huddle. Claire tried to look aloof, sketching the folded rock formation. Bettina finished eating marshmallows from the floor and turned around to extract her shoelaces from the sweeper.
Adolphus stepped forward. “We would like to mount a more focused aerial search, using your launch, with the possibility of ground re –…” He looked back at the twins, who hissed at him in unison. “Possibility of ground reconnaissance. You know, have a look round for tracks, and um, scat, I suppose.”
“That’s the idea!” said Gerhardt. “And while we have the launch, we can go sledding!”
He was momentarily suppressed by Annabelle and Mirabelle, but recovered quickly. “I mean to say, I concur.”
Continue Reading…
By Madame vonHedwig on Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
It is a vonHedwig family tradition to picnic in a graveyard every autumn. As winter gains strength, frost kills, and wind rattles the leaves off the limbs, Death whispers in your ear. I AM HERE.
Of course, the Cold Man is always here, but he’s easier to ignore while the bee is on the flower. Since it is very much a vonHedwig tradition to face what threatens, we dress in our mourning finest and meet him where he lives. Or rather, doesn’t.
This year we accepted the gracious invitation of other like-minded souls, and joined Those Who Mourn at the lovely Rock Creek Cemetery for a picnic. The weather was unseasonably but enjoyably warm, and we explored, and made friends, and toasted those who have gone before.
Preparations, of course, included new hats. The twins, Annabelle and Mirabelle, trimmed their own.
Alice band
+ hot glue
+ ribbons
+ feathers
+ little black beads
over veil
= appropriate and elegant new headgear
P. Phinneas, usually resplendent in a brown topper, had to find headgear to match his grandfather’s black frock coat. He settled on a grey wool slouch, fitted with an emergency tool stash. The Fearless Fabricator is never without the means of production!
My own topper only needed a bit of trimming to include a veil, and a Día de los Muertos touch.
The cemetery has been in use some 300 years, and has much to delight the senses. We picnicked by the lotus pond, whose brown stems and rattling seed pods reminded us – as I am now, so shall you be.
Chef had prepared a cold collation, which we presented buffet style on a suitably elegant tomb. Then, with apple cider and schloss, we toasted the dead.
We met many fascinating people, some again and some for the first, but I hope not the last, time. More photos can be found on the von Hedwig Flickr photostream.
By Madame vonHedwig on Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
Read more from Airship
Several of us in the Steampunk Family will be attending the Rock Creek Cemetery picnic, Sunday November 8, one o’clock to five o’clock in the afternoon. Shall we meet you there?
By Madame vonHedwig on Saturday, October 31st, 2009
A vonHedwig Halloween Story
“What, exactly, does this holiday celebrate?” Pelinina asked.
“Ummm…” Philomena vonHedwig hesitated, studying the features of her turnip. “It’s sort of … well … Death, I suppose.”
“Americans celebrate Death by carving vegetables?”
“Yes,” Philomena said with conviction. “Sort of.” She sketched a face on to her turnip, the largest one from the bag she had appropriated from the kitchen of the Academy, where she (and every other scientifically promising vonHedwig since the institution’s inception) boarded for school. She and Peli, her best friend and roommate had liberated the turnips, reasoning that if they didn’t leave the school grounds, it wasn’t really stealing, and removing turnips from culinary use would be beneficial to the student population overall.
She studied the face, nodding with satisfaction, and turned to her best friend.
“It’s to celebrate everything you’re afraid of, really. To spend a night scaring yourself and laughing about it. It’s the end of summer -the sun turns pale, the nights are cold, nothing grows on the earth; everything looks dead. Hallowe’en is a way for people to prepare for death – for the death of summer, for the death of the old and sick who will die over the winter, and for our own, inevitable death.”
“What fun,” Peli deadpanned.
“You Brits have a big bonfire holiday, too, don’t you?”
“Oh yes, Guy Fawkes Night!”
“Which celebrates what?”
“Umm. Not blowing up Parliament? Executing traitors?”
“Death, in other words.” Philomena exchanged her pen for a scalpel, borrowed from the Moreau dissection lab, and began carving.
“It’s not originally an American holiday anyway, it came from Irish and Scots immigrants; the old Celtic traditions came over, they traded their turnips for pumpkins, their wicker men for bonfires. There’s lots of playing tricks on people, too.”
“Excellent! Who shall we trick?”
“Ah ha!” Philly said, “At last, my peculiar folk traditions interest you! Let us plot while we finish carving these turnips.”
“What, all of them?”
“We can’t have just one!” Philomena finished digging out the center of her vegetable and dropped a candle into it. She struck a match and lit it, turning the face to Peli so she could admire the affect.
“Horrible!”
“Thank you. If we carve them all, we can put one on every grave and tomb in the cemetery on Hallowe’en night. That will be pranking the entire school!”
Most schools do not have their own cemetery, it is true. The Academy is not like most schools.
“Can’t we trick someone into carving all these turnips?”
“If you think of a way while carving, do let me know.” Philomena handed her friend a turnip, and got back to work.
An hour later, they were in the Fabrication Hall, and 5 hours after that, they dragged a steam-powered, belt-driven, scalpel-wielding, turnip carving device up to their room. Peli had done most of the welding while Philomena had cannibalized a disused Babbage engine to make the carver programmable.
“Five different facial features – eyebrows, eyes, nose, mouth, fangs. Seven types of eyebrows, 8 eyes, 5 noses, 6 mouths, fangs yes or no… that gives us 480 different faces! No one should notice the few duplicates that occur by random chance.”
“That old Engine was an antique,” Peli said, “you probably shouldn’t have pulled it apart like that.”
“Nonsense! There’s a working Engine in the Lovelace Maths wing, and another in the museum. That old thing was abandoned because it didn’t work right. I could tell by looking at it that it dropped a digit every hundred-thousandth decimal place.” She speared a turnip on a carving spindle in the device; it had 6 spindles surrounding the central scalpel array. A coring blade was centered above each spindle. “Besides, we don’t have time to machine our own gears, Hallowe’en is tomorrow.”
Peli stoked the fire, and they waited for the boiler to build up a head of steam. When the coring blades started to spin, Philomena threw the lever that raised the spindled turnips to meet their fate. The immediate effect was spectacular, as both girls were covered in juicy purple turnip pulp!
Peli spluttered, scraping turnip off her face. “Why didn’t I wear my goggles? Can we stop this now? The British Student Association is hosting a bonfire next week; can we just-”
“And they’ll all be talking about the ghostly, glimmering faces that haunted the cemetery 5 days before!” Philomena handed her friend a handkerchief. “Let’s adjust the scalpels, shall we? I think I see the problem.”
*****
Hallowe’en day dawned crisp and cold, with fresh snow on the mountain peaks surrounding the Academy. Philomena woke up tired because she and Peli had been up late perfecting their device and carving their turnips. She had difficulty concentrating in Anatomy lecture, and nodded off during the discussion of cross-species organ substitution, even though that was the most interesting part.
She drank coffee after that, even though she didn’t really like it. It was strong and bitter, so unlike the delicate café au lait Chef used to make on the Schöneluft. She loaded her cup with sugar and cream, missing her family, missing their annual pumpkin-carving contest (Bettina always won by sculpting her pumpkin with explosives), missing life soaring through the clouds. She pushed on to Alchemy, where, nerves agitated by the coffee, she set fire to her notebook.
When she finally made it back to her room after dinner, she was tired, discouraged, and ready to go straight to bed. But as she put her hand to her doorknob, the door creaked open on its own. A soft purple glow pulsed and flickered from hundreds of tiny grotesque faces. She entered, entranced.
She was thinking that the cold purple-white radiance of the turnips was far more eerie than the warm orange glow of pumpkins, when the white glow shifted. The turnips were moving. Grotesque faces floated slowly into the air. The effect was uncanny, but Philomena was a scientist.
“That’s very good, Peli,” she said, “I can’t even see the strings.”
Even though she was sure her friend was there, she could not help but startle when a voice directly behind her whispered, “There are no strings!”
Philomena jumped and dropped her book bag, charred pages scattering, then laughed at herself for doing so. Peli stepped out from behind the door, laughing as well, and Philomena startled again, whirling around to see who was behind her.
She found a thin boy with a prominent adam’s apple and red hair that stuck out at improbable angles. He was looking at the floor, but glanced up at her with a grin, then examined his shoes.
Peli stopped laughing long enough to gasp, “I told you she’d be hard to scare!”
“Of course,” said the boy softly, “she is a vonHedwig.”
“Philly, this is Dietrich Getman,” Peli announced. “I met him in the Verne Library this afternoon. He’s going to help us with the turnips, because three hundred graves is a lot. He can keep a secret, he’s not afraid of ghosts, and he’s clever. He made the turnip heads float with channeled air!”
“No strings,” Dietrich repeated.
“All right,” Philomena said, “let’s blow these out and get moving. But while the candles cool, I want to see how you attained an airstream sufficient to lift a turnip!”
After Dietrich’s device was examined, explained, and admired, they shoved the turnips into sacks and crept outside, staying out of sight.
“What did Peli mean, Mr. Getman, when she said you were not afraid of ghosts? Do you believe in ghosts?”
“Please, Fräulein vonHedwig, call me Dee. I am from Detmold, in the Teutoburger Wald. If you go into the forest on the anniversary of the destruction of the Roman legions, you can hear the screams and clash of battle; you can feel the fear of the invaders who died there. I have done so many times.”
“Ugh,” Pelinina said. “Once would be more than enough for me!”
“Surely such a place invokes romantic ideas, and stimulates your imagination,” Philomena reasoned. “What sort of energy signature could last nearly two thousand years without a source of regeneration? How could the phenomenon only exist once a year? What could explain it pulsing like that?”
“I do not know, Fräulein. I came to the Academy to learn, but I did not expect to learn everything. It is to be hoped that you will have a long and successful career – perhaps you shall discover the answers to these questions.”
They reached the small stone chapel that was the gateway to the cemetery. It dated from the thirteenth century, and had replaced an even older building. It was a simple, squat rectangle, with gothic arched doorways and a peaked bell tower, added much later. Light from the school no longer reached them, although they could see lights from most of the dormitory windows. A pale moon sailed between clouds, and its light made the shadows in the gothic doorways impenetrably dark. Without saying a word, the three conspirators left the path, avoiding the chapel.
“Right,” Philomena said when they reached the first row of gravestones, “we split up here. Get them placed and lit, but don’t get in the light of any of them. We don’t want to be seen.”
Peli giggled. “I’m sorry I complained to much yesterday, Philly. This is too fun! I’ll take the west.” She scurried off. “Meet you back on the path!”
“I will take the area where the sepulchers and monuments are tallest,” Dee said. “You ladies are not dressed for climbing mossy old tombs.”
“Thank you,” Philomena said. Looking at him in the moonlight, he seemed even thinner than he had inside. She could see his collarbones through his shirt, and his cheekbones cast deep shadows on to his face. “Dee, are you quite well?”
He chuckled, though Philomena did not see what could be funny about such a question.
“I am as well as I shall ever be, fair lady.”
He turned and headed towards the tallest monuments, disappearing immediately into the darkness. Philly rubbed her eyes, searching for him in the moonlight, but found nothing but graves. After a moment, a lit turnip appeared on a far sepulcher, and she shrugged, and got to work.
The Academy clock tower chimed 11, and then half past. Peli was right, three hundred turnips on three hundred graves was a lot. Philomena worked quickly, but when the moonlight allowed, she could not help reading the stones.
Erected by Darius Clipper
In memory of his beloved son Edmund
Died 1846 Aged 17 years
–
Here lies Albrecht Sussman
He drank the wrong vial
–
Artephius
93 – 1247 A.D.
She had one turnip left, its face carved in a leering skull. She reached to balance it on a stone, when she stopped, her outstretched hand shaking uncontrollably. Dee appeared beside her, and she jumped back, dropping her turnip. Its light snuffed out, and it rolled away into the darkness.
Dee picked it up. It lit in his hand, and he placed it on the gravestone.
In Loving Memory
Dietrich Getman
1864 – 1880
Philomena’s mind reeled. She knew something must be said, but found no words on her tongue. She looked from the lantern to Dee, who was quite obviously cadaverous now; he had shrugged off the illusion of life, in the face of her realization.
“I was quite a fan of your father, you know,” he said. “My first year here was his last. A group of us younger boys idolized him, aping his fashion and copying his experiments. He was always quite gracious about it.”
He looked at her. She could no longer see his eyes, only dark holes in his skull.
“Oh.” Her voice was barely audible, but she could not help it. She could not move from shock, but stood, trembling, listening to his story, and watching him decay.
“I died trying to recreate one of his experiments, fool that I was.”
He chuckled again, and Philomena found it not only inappropriate, but sinister. She cleared her throat.
“This, um, this wouldn’t be a family revenge sort of moment, would it?”
“No, fair lady. Every man is responsible for his own mistakes. Herr vonHedwig inspired me beyond my abilities, but that is no fault of his. I have waited years for a child of his to come to the Academy. I am pleased to have spent an evening with you.”
The clock tower chimed midnight. On the twelfth note, the bell in the ancient chapel began to peel. It rang crazily, as though sounding an alarm, announcing armistice, and celebrating a wedding all at once.
“It is time,” Dee said. “You and Fräulein Gamble must go.”
“Why?” Philomena said in alarm. “What’s going to happen?”
“Tonight we shall dance. But it is not a dance for the living; you will have time enough for this dance when you are dead.”
“Oh. Good night, then.” She turned to go, concentrating on placing one foot before the other, trying not to look at the pale shapes rising from the graves around her. She was afraid, yes, but also intruding. This was a private function; she was not yet invited. She saw Peli waiting ahead, but she stopped at the edge of the graveyard.
“Dee?’ Her voice was quiet, but he answered immediately.
“Yes, Fräulein?”
“Same time next year?”
His chuckle seemed to sound from her own chest.
“Danke, my friend. It will be fun.”
She nodded, picked up her skirts, and ran back to school, back to the living.
By Madame vonHedwig on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
This entry is part of a series, Voyage to Antafrica» In which the children conspire.
To Madame vonHedwig’s surprise, Adolphus returned to searching the next morning, joined by Mirabelle and Annabelle.
“How very helpful of you to join us,” she said, “when I am sure you have projects of your own requiring your attention.”
“We’d thought we’d give Gerhardt a turn in the lab this morning,” Annabelle said.
“And we have so much to learn about geology!” added Mirabelle.
“How interesting,” Mother said. “Let’s to it, then. Would anyone like to review the features for which we search?”
This offer politely declined, Mother, Ulrik, Claire, Adolphus, Annabelle, and Mirabelle each found window space to call his or her own, and the day’s search began in earnest. If Mother noticed that the youngest searchers kept their eyes down at the rubble-strewn cliff base, rather than the shear face above, she said nothing.
Adolphus noticed though, and cornered the twins at lunch.
Continue Reading…
This entry is part of a series, Philomena Flies» 
Philomena vonHedwig smiles
“I must beg your pardon, Fraulein von Hedwig.” He sounded very serious now, and kept his eyes on the floor. “I had not considered my actions might be perceived in this way. I never meant to cause you distress. I apologize.”
“Thank you.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting the badge I brought you, then.”
I sighed. I felt quite ridiculous now, for I was behaving like a spoiled child. And even worse, I realized I would love to have one of those badges. There loomed an impassable gulf between my outburst and touchy pride, and his good intentions and impeccably wavy hair. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. The vulture was asleep, and no help at all.
“Is this your work here? What is… oh I say, they’re wings! My gears and garters! You never jumped off the roof – you flew!”
“Plummeted, actually. I don’t need your flock of jumpers to make my invention frivolous. It’s useless.”
He walked about the wreckage studiously.
“I don’t know, the concept seems sound enough. It’s a bit heavy, perhaps. Clever, though.”
“It would be if it worked.”
“So you’re not just a dashing adventuress, but an inventor, too. Or is it inventress? Inventrix?”
“Invented words should illuminate or amuse.” That was one of Father’s.
“Well said! It’s a family trait, then, inventing? You’re famous for it! Especially your father – The Fearless Fabricator. I’ve heard some outlandish stories about his school days!”
Oh dear.
“Did he really –“
“Yes. No! I don’t really know what happened. Let’s just say they are unlikely to name a new wing after him.”
“Not after they had to rebuild the old one,” he said thoughtfully. “Is it true that your mother was once a circus performer?”
I hesitated before answering, to let the ice crystallize in my voice. “You cannot suppose I would have the impertinence ask her that,” I said.
“Oh dear,” he said glumly, “I must apologize again. I beg your pardon, both for my impertinence and for making my conversation dull and repetitive through constant apologies.”
“Oh,” I said, “you’re not dull.”
“Thank you. Perhaps instead of this pin, which I am now afraid to give you in case you stick it in me, I can offer you some of my impertinence – I have it to spare.”
“I see.”
“And if you consent to be seen in public again, I’m reasonably certain I can keep the other Fliers from crowding around you and asking for autographs.”
“That would be nice.”
“If I give you the pin, are you going to stick me with it?”
I pretended to consider, then held out my hand. “No.”
He dropped the pin in my outstretched hand, with a dazzling smile.
“You are quite a fascinating girl.”
“Oh dear,” I said, “dashing and fascinating! No one will ever take me seriously.”
“I will,” Nick said, “but only if you don’t expect me to be so. I’m a ridiculous fellow – quite a slave to merriment.”
“I never would have guessed.”
“You scoff, but it’s true. I am excessively frivolous. So much so,” he laid is hand over his heart, looking grave, “that I have learned to play the piano accordion. It is dreadful of me, I know, but there it is.”
I adore the accordion. Love it.
“Really?” I gasped. “We… we’re not very musical, in my family. We sing a bit, I suppose. And Ulrik plays the violin. He practices in the envelope scaffolding, and it echoes. Very haunting, sometimes.”
“How romantic. Who is this Ulrik, one of your brothers?”
“No, he’s Father’s assistant.”
“I dislike him already.”
“No, why?”
“For playing the violin romantically near young women. The fellow’s clearly a menace.”
“Aren’t you a menace for playing the accordion?”
“Absolutely! But I never play around young women. It drives them off.”
“Do you play badly?”
“No, I play tolerably well, but it is the accordion. Most people don’t like it.”
“Most people don’t jump off castles into ravines.”
I smiled up at him, and he smiled back, and I have no idea how long that went on, but it was very pleasant. Then the vulture woke, squawking. Nick jumped.
“Listen, I’m sure I’ve been enough of a nuisance for the moment, but I was wondering – my mother is a sort of amateur folklorist, and she’s taken an interest in the vampire lore of Eastern Europe.”
“How fascinating.”
“Do you think so?”
“Why yes. I’ve always enjoyed comparative anthropology.”
“Well, good. The mater’s haring off to Transylvania when term ends, and wants Pelly and me to go with her. Father can’t get away from the Foundry, apparently. I don’t suppose you might want to come too?”
I felt a bit dizzy, and didn’t answer right away. Of all the improper, impertinent, wonderful invitations to receive under a screaming vulture at three in the morning!
“I shouldn’t ask, I know. If blood-sucking fiends don’t drain you, you’ll have to put up with my impertinent accordion playing. After a few days you’ll undoubtedly be breaking open crypts to find a fiend to put you out of your misery.”
I laughed. He smiled again, and raised his eyebrows in question.
“If your mother asks me to accompany her, and my family can spare me, I believe I might enjoy a trip to Transylvania.”
“Jolly good!”
“And now, I’m off to bed. If you wouldn’t mind letting the vulture out?”
“What?”
And I sailed out of the Fabrication Hall, no – floated out of the hall, flying at last.
This story began here.
This entry is part of a series, Philomena Flies» 
“Excuse me,” he said, in a melodic voice that was just adding insult to injury, “I’m terribly sorry to disturb your work, but you are Philly, aren’t you?”
Slowly, I moved a stack of paper onto the vulture-soiled sheets in front of me. I applied my pencil to the sheet, and wrote, “Icarus got off easy.”
“Oh, I do beg your pardon,” the God continued, “I’ve been talking to my sister just now and forgotten my manners. I mean to say, do I have the honor of addressing Fraulein von Hedwig?”
I set down my pencil, for the charade was too much to continue. I adopted my frostiest, most severe, Mother-crushing-some-jumped-up-petty-aristo-who-just-asked-her-if-it-was-true-she-had-once-been-a-circus-performer-voice. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry to disturb your work, but… no, I already said that, didn’t I? I’ve been hoping to run into you around school, but you haven’t left your room for days. I couldn’t visit your room, of course, even though my sister shares it. ‘Inventio et Decorum’, you know.”
At this point, I’m afraid I was staring blankly at him. Perhaps it was a trick of the light, the lantern flame disturbed by the flight of a vulture overhead, but I believe his finely chiseled cheeks colored at this point.
“The school motto, I mean to say, Discovery And Propriety, or um, Invention and Manners, or um…”
Something in my brain shifted, a tiny thought calved from a glacier of stupidity.
“Your sister?”
“Oh yes,” the God’s confidence returned as he found himself back on solid ground – away from Latin and on to family relations. “Pelly said you didn’t want to be disturbed, but I just had to meet you. I threatened her with the most awful brotherly retributions if she didn’t help me. I have a dreadfully sordid cache of nursery stories saved up for just this sort of emergency. I’m Nick, you know, Nick Gamble.”
I felt a shock course though me as though I were next to Father’s Ball Lightening Generator. “Pelly’s brother? And Pelly told you where to find me?”
“Well, yes, but only after I threatened to tell the entire first form the one about the all-day sucker and Nurse’s hamster.”
I already knew that one. “So you are Pelly’s brother, who was off skiing with friends when we went to Riga over the holiday,” I said.
“That’s right.”
“Pelly never told me you were a –“ I stopped, gagging a bit on the word “God” that had treacherously leapt to my lips. I cleared my throat. “She didn’t tell me you were part of this … club.” I waved a dismissive hand.
“Part of it? I founded it! Best rag we’ve had all year!”
“Rag?”
“What a lark! It’s the most fun I’ve had since the build-your-own joy buzzer craze.
“That ended rather messily as well,” I reminded him.
“Huh? Oh, Perkins. Well, I don’t think he was quite Flier material, really.” He paused to admire his badge. “I mean, the rest of us wore parachutes when we went down.”
The vulture took that moment to squawk, reminding us both what Perkins was material for now.
“I saw your first flight, you know. I was in lecture when you dropped past. You must have pulled your chute just as you passed us! I say, you’re cool as an iceberg. I’ve done the drop twice now, and I felt plenty nervous waiting ‘til the hall to pull the cord! Couldn’t do it the first time, honest truth! Pulled it at the Alchemy Lab, I think. Hard to tell, actually. It all goes by rather quickly, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, it does.” I smiled then. Oh traitorous lips! But I couldn’t help it. He admitted he was nervous. He’s at leas two years senior than me in school, looks like a Greek God, and he named a club after me! An action, I reminded myself strictly, of which I disapprove for both my own and my family’s dignity.
“Why did you start a club?” I asked. “You could have done the drop all you wanted without having a name and a badge.”
He shuffled about a bit, and ruffled his hair. Against all probability his hair remained exactly as perfectly wavy as before he touched it. My fingers twitched, I couldn’t help it – I started imagining a experiments to test the wavy perfection faculty of his hair. In a purely scientific way, of course.
“Just for the fun, you know. It helps to have a few pals along to buck one up before one jumps off a castle into a ravine.”
I thought of Pelly’s hand wringing, and had to agree.
“And anyway…” He ruffled his hair again, and looked up at the vulture, perching on the 2-story pneumatic drill press across the hall. “I thought you deserved to be recognized. I’ve never known a girl to come up with a brilliant rag before.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry, that didn’t come out well. None of this has, actually. I thought – well, I thought you’d be more pleased!”
“Pleased? Pleased? To have my failure cheered by two hundred upperclassmen? To have my name bandied about the school? To have my serious work made frivolous by a herd of unruly thrill seekers? To have my heart’s desire mocked-”
I stopped. I had become rather shrill, against all Mother’s deportment lessons. (“Shrillness is a sign of weakness, dear, it sounds like fear. It should be your listener, not yourself, experiencing fear…”) I glanced sidelong at him; he seemed absorbed by the sight of his shoe.
“I believe a group of unruly parachuting thrill seekers is better described as a flock.”
“Quite.”
This story began here and continues with Sunday, part 3.
Read more from Academy
This entry is part of a series, Philomena Flies» Philomena vonHedwig smiles
Sunday
Last night, or this morning, I suppose, for it was after midnight, I made my way to the fabrication hall to see what could be done with the wings. I removed the silk covering (which is both fire and vinegar proof. I checked.) The Grandmothers’ silk is remarkably tough, and I believe I can repair the covering with the scraps I have left.
There was damage to the left wing due to a rock outcropping it struck during the plummeting phase of my brief and over-exciting voyage. I believe it was that impact which broke my stunned reverie, reminding me to employ my parachute. I had been madly trying to diagnose the failure of my flying apparatus on the way down, with little thought for the end of my journey. For that wake-up, I was most grateful to the rocky outcrop. I was less grateful now. The left wing was crumpled from the elbow joint to the tip. No wonder I’m sore.
I remember extending and flattening the wing profile to slow myself down, once the parachute was open. It worked – I could feel the drag of the wind pulling at my arms. Drag, but why not lift? Looking at the undamaged wing, I began some calculations comparing the proportions of a vulture’s wing vs body weight and size to my own. (I used a vulture because it was easy to get one; they cluster on the roof above our room now, watching the ravine and the Philly Flyers.)
I don’t know how much time passed then, for I am seldom aware of time while I am working, but after 7 pages of scribbled maths, sketches and questions, I became aware of a new light source in the room. Although hard at work, I noticed my pencil had an extra shadow, and looked up to find the source of the interruption.
My eyes beheld what I took at first to be some form of Greek God; Adonis in a school tie and Norfolk jacket, complete with broad shoulders and wavy hair. I admit, my normally steady scientific mind went whizzing along unused paths, and my stomach felt as though I was once again plummeting. I forgot the pain of my body and the shame of my mind, even forgot how to calculate descent rate. He seemed to give off an otherworldly glow as he advanced. Was I awake, or dreaming? Then I saw the hideous white blob on his lapel. A badge. A badge of enameled copper in the shape of an open parachute. Awake, then. Awake and persecuted.
My mouth snapped shut and I furiously returned to my notes (even though the simplest calculation had abandoned me), and in my haste knocked over my candle and released the vulture, which squawked as it lurched off the table and emptied its bowels on 2 pages of calculations. I froze in horror. Far, far too late to dive under the desk, I tried to camouflage myself with immobility, like a rabbit in the road, and with the same chance of success. No where to hide, and running away is so undignified.
The God approached.
This story began here and continues with Sunday, part 2.
