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“…the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.” — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
The strange words awakened young Charlie Darwin. He wasn’t positive what they meant, spoken as they were with unfamiliar inflection, but he got the gist. Charlie pushed up on one elbow and gawped. He lay on the deck of a galleon constructed and carved of dark wood. It swayed and swashed as if afloat.
A bean-pole of a boy with ragged brown hair was pacing back and forth, his unpolished boots thudding upon the deck. He was the one who had spoken.
Another boy lay on the deck next to Charlie. He slept, eyes closed, mouth open, snoring a wheezy little snore. He wore a black suit and had hair as slick as a raven’s feathers.
Charlie spied a man on the quarter deck, standing at the helm, attention focused on adjusting a set of brass levers. He wore white from head to toe, including cowboy boots, a European-style cloak, a knee-length Templar tunic (slit to reveal fringed chaps) and a ten-gallon hat on his head. The wind whipped his cloak out behind him and flattened the tunic to his thighs.
Charlie’s perusal of the man was curtailed by a thunderous whoosh from overhead. He ducked, covered his ears, and looked up. Where he had expected to see sails pulled taut by the wind, he found a trio of white balloons tethered to the boat with criss-crossing ropes. It took a moment for the sight to sink in and for his brain to analyze what he was seeing, but only a moment. In the next instant, he was up and running to the deck railing so he could look out over the ocean. It was there, vast and blue-gray, but it was far, far below.
Charlie sat down and wrapped his arms around his knees.
“You okay?” asked the tall, thin boy.
“I don’t like heights.”
The other boy patted Charlie on the shoulder. “Sorry about that.” He plopped down too. “You’re awake.”
“That remains to be seen,” Charlie said. “Who are you? Where in Hell am I? And how did I get here?”
“I dunno,” the boy replied, then stopped to correct himself. “I mean, I know who I am. What I don’t know is where we are or how we got here. I was hoping you’d tell me.”
“Who are you?”
“Name’s Abe. Abe Lincoln. Now you.”
Charlie frowned. “Are you from Lincolnshire?”
“I ain’t never heard of that. I’m originally from Kentucky, currently residing in Spencer County, Indiana.”
Charlie had never met anyone with an accent like this boy’s. Based on Abe’s attire, he presumed the boy to be an uneducated peasant. He tipped his head. “I’m Charles Robert Darwin of the Shrewsbury Darwins.”
Abe picked up Charlie’s hand and shook it. “Charles Robert Darwin?” Abe spoke with a particular relishing of the R’s. “That’s a mouthful, ain’t it? I’m gonna call you Charlie. Is Shrewsbury in Virginia?”
Charlie pulled his hand away and scrunched his upper lip. “Virginia? No. It’s in England.”
“Ooh, ain’t you a long way from home.”
Charlie corrected him. “Aren’t you a long way from home?”
“Seeing as how I live nowhere near the ocean, I’d have to say yes.”
“No,” said Charlie. “I mean—”
The other boy, the one dressed in the black wool suit, came to life. He went from prone straight into crawling on all fours. He scuttled about until he found a dark corner, and then he knelt there, hands knitting at his chin, eyes skittish.
“Whoa there, fella,” said Abe.
Charlie looked at the boy. “By all evidence, I’d have to conclude that you don’t know where we are either.”
The boy in the corner shook his head. “Am I kidnapped?” he asked.
Abe tilted his head and pooched out his lower lip. “That remains to be seen, my friend. I don’t remember getting an invitation, so I’m thinking we ain’t honored guests.”
“Aren’t honored guests,” Charlie said.
Abe gave him a sour look. “That’s what I said.”
“No,” countered Charlie. “What you said was that we ain’t honored guests. You’re butchering the King’s English.”
“Well, I don’t answer to no king, and I sure as snot don’t answer to you.”
Charlie and Abe stared at one another. Charlie looked away first.
Abe stood and crossed to the third boy. “Don’t you fret. We’ll figure this out together. Folks call me Abe.” He stuck out his hand.
The other boy cringed back from it.
Abe left it out there. “Way I look at it, this is gonna be one heck of a tall tale to tell when we get back home. This here’s Charlie. What’s your name?”
The boy looked from the one to the other, evaluating them. He said, “Eddie. Eddie Poe.” He shook Abe’s hand only at the last and only with the tips of his fingers. “What chicanery is this?” he asked. “What artifice? Have I gone insane? Perhaps I’m fae-touched. Or, perhaps I dream.”
Abe put his hands on his hips and surveyed the deck. “Or I’m having a nightmare, and y’all are in it.” He sighed.
“You know,” said Charlie. “I’ve read about airships like this, though I’ve never seen one quite so big. They use hot air for lift. Hot air rises because it’s of a lesser density than cooler air. It’s scientific.”
Eddie nodded toward the man in white. “Who’s that?”
The man in white growled and beat his fist—in a very unscientific manner—against a dial. After the third hit, a pop split the air, and the ship shifted to one side.
Eddie screeched. The boys all reached for handholds.
The daylight grew brighter, as if a cloud had released the sun. Warmth accompanied the light, and though the boys had to blink against the glare, they lifted their faces to the sky.
Charlie said, “Maybe we should ask that man what he’s about. It’s logical, since he’s at the helm of this ship, that he would know the answers to our questions.”
“If you’ll pardon the expression,” said Abe, “I’d say there ain’t no reason to rock the boat until we’re back on the ground.”
Charlie rubbed his brow. “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this.”
“Maybe we’re dead.”
The other two boys gaped at Eddie.
“That man could be the ferry man,” suggested the raven-haired boy. “He’ll want a penny from each of us, if so.”
Charlie snorted, “Poppycock.” He didn’t sound as convinced as he’d have liked. “If we were dead, we’d go straight to Heaven. We’re children, after all. Children have angels that come for them and carry them to Heaven.”
“I reckon he could be an angel.”
Three faces lifted toward the man in white, and they studied the possibly divine driver in silence.
Charlie had to admit, even to himself, that the man could have been God’s reaper. The thought, however, galled him. “If I’m dead,” he said, “then how did I die?”
No one had an answer to that, and it mattered not at all anyway, for at just that moment, the boat dropped. The sudden descent lifted the boys an inch off the deck. They clung to their handholds and to each other, screaming together in fright.
Brief blasts of fire heated the air in the three balloons, first one, then the next, then the last, and so on, and so forth, adjusting the balance of the boat with notches, niggles, and nudges. The aft-most balloon made a sibilant suspiration. It was joined by the centermost balloon’s syncopated hisses. Synchronized susurrations from the foremost balloon shaped the sounds into a fracas of fuss raised in protest against the descent to earth. The clouds overhead lifted farther and farther away.
The boys clung.
The bottom of the boat bumped against something hard and knocked them off-balance.
The balloon-song drifted down into silence.
The boat came to rest.
In the waiting moment that followed, the boys remained still and hesitant. Abe was the first to speak, and he said, “I sure woulda thought that the ride to Heaven woulda been smoother’n that.”
…
