A Box of Nothing by Peter Dickinson

Author:Peter Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Teen & Tween
Published: 2014-12-29T16:37:41+00:00

Chapter 12: Captured

Falling, falling. Air rushing faster and faster. Head over heels. Sky and land whirling upside down. Great white cloud coming. Whump!

Whump into soft white cloud, only it wasn’t a cloud, more like some kind of bulgy bed, or a soft white trampoline that has somehow got stuck at the bottom of your jump and won’t push you back. Still falling, but not so fast. Sky steady overhead.

Very carefully, because the cloud thing was wobbly and he was scared of toppling off it, James sat up and looked around. Not far off and a bit above him he saw a rat dangling under an enormous parachute. Even then, it took him time to understand that he had fallen on top of the other parachute—there’d been two rats in the biplane, pilot and gunner. This one was falling faster because of James’s extra weight. The white cloth bulged up around him so that he couldn’t see the ground.

They’d fallen a long way already. High overhead a white gull with a tattered wing was trying to tow the airship away. It had the broken rope in its beak. The gas bag looked floppy. The basket still dangled sideways and James could just see the Burra lolling limp by the engine. It must still be in some sort of a daze after the fight. Perhaps it would wake up and mend itself and come and rescue him.

He wasn’t ready for the landing. He heard a bump below. The bulge of the parachute went out of shape, began to flop, stopped holding him, sent him slithering down, clutching at nothing … thump.

A wild squeak. Another thump. He’d landed.

Wasn’t hurt, either, only thumped. Fallen on something. The parachute was still flopping softly down as James stood up. A rat with the parachute harness attached was lying on the ground with its eyes open. Dead?

No—its whiskers were quivering. He must have fallen on top of it and stunned it—yes, thump, squeak, thump, like that. The other parachute was still in the sky. First thing was to get away from the rats and hide somewhere until the Burra came and rescued him. No trees, no bushes, just the bare slopes of a small valley. Get up over the ridge for a start.

He scrambled up the slope, noticing as he did so that it was a bit different from the slope he’d climbed by the iron sea. Not so steep, but that wasn’t it. No, it was made of different things. Not cookers and fridges but bits of old wagons, and ploughs, and things like that, all gone fossil. He understood without thinking about it that this was an older kind of place.

He ducked over the ridge, panting, and began to leap from jut to jut down the far slope, watching all the time for his next foothold, so that it was not until he reached the bottom of the valley and took a quick look around for a hiding place that he saw the gull.

It lay on its side near a small black stream.

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