Perfume by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9535-9
Publisher: Open Road
Published: 2012-12-05T21:42:00+00:00

Chapter 14

THE GONDOLA OF THE HOT air balloon was made of wicker. It was just a very very large basket. A sturdy basket, to be sure—but not something Dove particularly wanted to trust with her life.

In their ancient history book, there was a chapter on prehistoric England. A scary group of people lived there when the Romans conquered the island: Druids. The Romans had crossed the Channel from France and taken England as a colony two thousand years ago, and they wrote history books about it. How strange it was to think of people two thousand years ago needing to write history books for themselves. How ancient could you get?

Druids, the Romans wrote, made human sacrifices. The Druids were not a kindly people and they did not have kindly gods. They burned people: women and children and warriors … in immense wicker baskets.

There was an illustration in the history book. One of those pen-and-ink drawings that can be so much more horrifying than photographs. It pictured desperate victims with their feet on fire. And even as they tried to stomp the fire out, they smothered to death from the smoke.

The Druids had done this often.

There were many periods in history in which nobody would have wanted to live, and this was certainly on the list. Druid sacrifice would have been a very difficult way to die.

Timmy and Wing and Dove entered the basket. Wing’s fingers gripped the rough and splintery reeds of the basket, but Dove could not feel it.

There was a fire in this basket. Right in the basket. Flames rose and heat expanded the air to keep the balloon aloft.

Perhaps I was wrong about Wing being from Egypt, thought Dove. Perhaps Wing is really from ancient England. She’s a Druid, and she is going to burn us as a sacrifice.

Don’t be silly, said Wing inside their shared mind. If I burn you as a sacrifice, whose body will I have? Nobody’s. Don’t you understand anything, Dove? I need a body. Yours is the only one I can get at.

Dove was not fond of heights but, because the body was not hers, she could not feel the lift, or get dizzy from looking down.

She could only look.

Mostly Wing looked straight ahead, so that Dove’s view was of the ropes and wires that attached the balloon to the gondola. Sometimes Wing looked at Timmy, and then Dove studied the wide horizontal blue stripes of his shirt. Sometimes Wing stared into the flames, and Dove wanted to squint against the bright orange, but she could not; and Wing did not.

“See?” Timmy kept saying. He kept turning to Wing, laughing with pride, as if he had made the world; this was Timmy’s creation, this green and lovely land beneath them. “See the farm?” cried Timmy. And later. “See the village?”

“See the river?” said Wing. “See the playground?”

Wing was mocking him, making Timmy’s sentences sound like phrases in a first-grade reader. But Timmy did not know. “Yes!” he cried. “And the road! See the cars?”

“Cars?” said Wing.

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