GUTHRIE LAID HIS hand on the broken lock of the shed and glanced over his shoulder. He could see the big classroom windows of the Philosophers' House and the silhouetted figures of the other lost children inside. No one looked his way. Empty playing fields stretched behind the classrooms and dormitory. In the opposite direction lay the glittering houses and shops of the City of Wind. Beyond them he saw only dilapidated windmills and the craggy Black Peaks, their upper reaches hidden in mist. Safe enough, he thought.
The lock opened with a rusty clink, and he ducked inside, careful to shut the door. He was supposed to be helping Peter, the mechanic, repair windmills this morning. Guthrie understood machinery, an unusual talent in this place, and he liked working on the 'mills. But yesterday Peter had hinted that the shed concealed something forbidden, and Guthrie's curiosity had gotten the best of him.
With a happy squeal, his small agouti friend, Zephyr, jumped down from his shoulder. She headed for a dark corner, probably searching for some other animal's stash of stored nuts.
"Hey!" he called. "Stay close, O.K.?"
"Not go far," she replied in her small, squeaky voice.
He felt honored whenever she spoke, because she never spoke to anyone but him. In the City of Wind, there were no speaking animals. Other agoutis only growled and squealed. She came from a "big dark forest far away," where many animals could speak, she said. She feared the Philosophers would capture her for experiments if they discovered her unusual ability. In fact, she had already been captured once, but escaped.
Guthrie suspected the big dark forest was the Forest of Ruins, which lay beyond the Black Peaks. Some of the other lost children said the Forest of Ruins was haunted. His teachers said mutant monsters--whose ancestors were made by the Engineers--lived there. Everyone feared the forest and seemed relieved that the Engineers were now extinct. He wasn't sure where the truth might lie, but Zephyr's caution seemed wise.
Guthrie felt for a light switch but found none. That was no surprise. It would have been wasteful. He had only lived in the City of Wind two months, but he knew the Philosophers' wastefulness lecture by heart: If the Engineers hadn't made wasteful things that polluted the air, the Great Warming would never have begun. There wouldn't be giant hurricanes or deluges, 1 or the lost children they created. Even here in the City of Wind, where energy came from windmills and waterwheels and life ! was more comfortable than elsewhere in j the Walled Lands, waste would be shameful forevermore.
But sunshine filtering through the dirty window of the shed outlined a dark, bulky shape covered with a tarpaulin, which he pulled back with care. Underneath sat a strange-looking machine. Its spidery metal frame was badly bent and muddy. He leaned close for a better look at the motor, sniffing the scent of lubricants. He ran his fingers over the beautiful fittings. No dust or cobwebs! It looked almost new. But all the machinery he'd seen in the City of Wind was old and worn out. Not even Peter, the Philosophers' best mechanic, knew enough about machines to build something like this. Where could it have come from?
An eerie feeling crept over him. Had he seen it before? Had he dreamed of it?
He reached up to feel the scar where he had hurt his head two months' earlier. The crack in his skull had healed. But the cracks in his memory remained. He knew he was eleven years old. He knew his father's hands were big, his little sister had hair like a sunny halo, and his mother's hugs were warm and soft. But he didn't know where they were or if they were still alive. He didn't even know how he had gotten hurt.
Zephyr gazed at him quizzically as he blinked and shook his head. "I... I think it's a flying machine!" he whispered. "Powered by the sun. A... a sunbird." The unfamiliar word dropped from his mouth like a foreign jewel. How did he know these things?
Zephyr hopped up onto the machine's dented cowling. "Guthrie fly," she said. "Big dark forest."
He frowned. "Fly you home to the forest to find your family--is that what you mean?"
She watched him, nose twitching. "Find yours, too."
He looked away. "Not likely."
He wasn't even sure of his own name, let alone the whereabouts of his family. He had only agreed to be called Guthrie because Zephyr whispered it in his ear the first night he met her. He'd found her curled on his bed in the Philosophers' House. And though he'd never seen her before, she rose up on her hind legs to touch his face with her paws as if she had always known him.
"It's different for you," he said now, steadying himself against the broken machine. "You can remember your home. For me… sometimes it hurts even to hope."
Gripped by a sudden fit of trembling, Zephyr dropped the walnut she carried in her paws. She opened her mouth, but only a breathy "uh-uh" came out.
Guthrie had seen this before. Speaking seemed to overwhelm Zephyr's small brain now and then. Sometimes he could guess what she was trying to say. If he got it right, the shivering would stop.
He scooped her into the crook of his arm and stroked her head. "Is it about going home?"
"Yes," she said, her voice very small. "Must hope. Want go home. Find family."
The trembling ceased, her eyes closed, and she fell asleep as if a switch had been flipped. He rubbed his cheek against her silky fur, wondering whether she'd been talking about herself or him or both.
"I'll help you find your family," he said. "I promise."
He tucked her into his backpack and sneaked out of the shed, careful to make sure no one saw him.
Later, working on the windmills, Guthrie asked Peter, "Have you heard of a flying machine that crashed around here not too long ago?"
Peter squinted at him. "Rascal! You've been in that shed."
"Nobody saw me, I promise," said Guthrie, cheeks flaming.
Peter nodded and rubbed his bushy, gray beard. "A couple of months ago, a friend of mine said he saw a machine with someone in it fly over the mountains and crash into the woods. Not long after, the Philosophers came dragging something down the woods road in the dark of night, no moon, and not even a candle to light their way. They put it in the shed."
"But why would they hide it?" asked Guthrie.
"Oh, you know Philosophers. They think machinery's the root of the world's problems. Don't want people in love with it again." He raised one eyebrow and chuckled. "Unless it's a windmill or a waterwheel, of course."
That night while the other children slept, Guthrie lay stroking Zephyr's back and thinking. Mountains sheltered the City of Wind from the worst storms. It was a safer place than most. The beds in the Philosophers' House were warm and clean. There was plenty of bread and honey, and thick stews for dinner. Paints, puzzles, and oddities from the faraway sea filled the schoolrooms. When Guthrie's troubles seemed too much to bear, Aldric the Head Philosopher sometimes invited him for tea in the library. The huge room held more books than Guthrie had ever imagined could exist, and Aldric always found at least one that made him smile. The Philosophers only seemed less than generous in one way, and that was their beliefs about the Engineers. Aldric sounded angry whenever he spoke of them. It made Guthrie feel wounded somehow, though he wasn't sure why.
Once, Guthrie climbed the library ladder to reach a book printed sixty years before his birth, when the Great Warming was still so small that only scientists believed in it. The pages held pictures of the world as it had once been, flashing with wonders the Engineers had made: cars, computers, factories, skyscrapers, and machines of every kind. Peter said Engineers invented windmills and waterwheels, the lifeblood of the City of Wind. Probably Zephyr wouldn't exist either if it hadn't been for Engineers. Even if Engineers had done some bad things, why were they alone blamed for all the world's troubles?
"Zephyr," Guthrie murmured, drowsing at the edge of sleep, "why do I hurt inside when they say the Engineers were bad?"
At the windmills the next day, Guthrie asked Peter if he would help fix the machine in the shed.
"Are you daft?" said Peter. "Suppose they caught us? If Aldric wanted that machine fixed, he wouldn't be hiding it."
"But what if we could make it fly again?" asked Guthrie. "Please?"
Peter scowled and shook his head. But by that night, the old mechanic's love of machinery had triumphed over his fears, and they were hard at work in the shed. Peter had brought a biolume lantern, and they propped a board over the window so no one outside could see its greenish light.
They soon discovered that pedals and a stick controlled The Sunbird's altitude and direction. A lever adjusted the speed of an airscrew on the nose. Thin material inlaid with gold wires covered the top wing surfaces--a mystery to Peter, but when Guthrie ran his hands over it, a dimly reflected memory glimmered in his mind.
"I must have seen this stuff before … somewhere," he said. "When the sun strikes it, it makes electricity, just like the 'mills make electricity from wind! That's what powers the motor."
Peter gasped. "Oh, if only we had more. The things we could do!"
They straightened the frame with boards and the weight of their bodies. The night became a scavenger hunt for parts, materials, and tools. They made stealthy trips to Peter's workshop nearby. Zephyr helped, too. She was good at finding small, dropped parts like bolts and washers.
As the hours wore on, Guthrie felt more and more certain that if the motor worked, he could fly The Sunbird. The controls felt familiar, as if he had dreamed of them once upon a time.
Dawn was only an hour away when they finished. "I'm for a bit of sleep," said Peter.
"Good idea," said Guthrie, pulling the tarpaulin back over their handiwork.
"Guthrie fly?" said Zephyr.
He stroked her head and held open his backpack for her. "Shhhh," he said.
Outside, Guthrie whispered, "Goodbye. And thank you!"
Peter smiled and shrugged. "A good night's work. See you soon," he said and he turned up the road toward his shop.
Guthrie made for the dormitory. But when he reached the doorstep, he didn't go in. Instead he crouched behind a bush. The road was empty. Peter was gone. Guthrie doubled back to the shed.
An hour later, as the sun rose, Guthrie pushed the doors open, leaned hard against the towrope, and pulled The Sunbird out into the road. The sun glinted on its sleek wings. In the cargo hold were biscuits and fruit from dinner, a warm cloak, a few tools, and spare parts. Zephyr sat in a basket on the seat, nose twitching.
Guthrie stole a glance at the Philosophers' House. No one seemed to be up yet, but he knew there was no time to waste.
He threw the cloak around his shoulders and leaped into the cockpit. He watched his hands with amazement as they flew over the controls like practiced birds, snapping the power switch, tugging on the accelerator knob. The airscrew disappeared, replaced by a circular shimmer. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, The Sunbird bumped down the road on its hard wheels.
He held his breath and pulled back on the stick. Almost at once the bumping stopped. He thought his heart might break his ribs. Up, up, up, over the green fields they sailed.
"We' re flying!" he cried.
Startled beyond words, Zephyr squawked.
Guthrie moved the stick gingerly to the left. The Sunbird responded, banking in a slow loop around the valley. They dropped lower as they swept toward the gray stone walls of the Philosophers' House. Peter stood in the road looking small, mouth open and arms raised.
"Come back!" he shouted.
"I will!" cried Guthrie. "Someday. I promise!"
Then they were up and away, headed toward the crags of the Black Peaks.
Clouds blanketed the mountaintops, making it hard to judge whether The Sunbird was high enough. The first cold feathers of mist swirled into the cockpit. Zephyr left her basket and climbed into Guthrie's lap. He gathered his cloak around her and tried not to tremble.
He glimpsed the ground--barren, rugged, and too close for comfort. As the clouds grew thicker, the airscrew slowed, then stopped entirely. The Sunbird's nose went down.
It happened so fast, he didn't have time to grab Zephyr or even shout. With a horrible feeling that he'd lived this scene before, he covered his eyes and waited for a crash. Two seconds passed, then three. The only sound was the whistle of wind rushing over the wings. He peeked out between his fingers just as they emerged from the clouds. The sun fell full on the wings, and the airscrew whirled again. The mountains dropped away behind them.
The world lay spread out far below. He saw the thin, sunlit line of the Seventh Wall and the jumbled roofs of Castle Rock. Far southward he spied the blue of the ocean. He could even see the crusted towers of the Isle of Teeth, tall buildings the sea had half swallowed when the Great Warming came. Directly below lay a dark green tangle--the Forest of Ruins.
A tingle ran up his spine. He had been in that forest before. He was certain of it. With sure hands, he guided The Sunbird toward a narrow strip of gray barely visible in the green carpet of trees. The wheels touched down with a bump.
In the silence of heat-bugs and bird calls, he blinked at Zephyr.
"Home!" she said.
"Yes," he whispered. All at once he knew that in the trees not far away hid a snug and comfortable house and his very own room full of books, models, and toys.
He had taken The Sunbird without asking. His father might be unhappy with him. But that seemed a small matter. He had gone to the City of Wind to rescue his friend Zephyr, and he had succeeded!
Zephyr clambered onto his shoulder and spoke in his ear. "Find my family. Find yours." Her breath smelled like nuts and oranges.
"What?" he said.
"Look!"
There they were, Engineers, not extinct at all, running toward him across the runway--a bearlike man with large hands, a beautiful woman, a little girl with a halo of hair, and more agoutis than he could count.
"Guthrie? Son!" the man shouted.
With cries of joy, he and Zephyr ran home.
By:
Etchemendy, Nancy, Cricket, Sep2006
