Chapter 11
IN FLIGHT
A single pair of houseflies breeds so quickly that if there were no spiders, bats, and other predators to eat them, over the course of one year the flies’ offspring would multiply to the point that they would cover the earth to a depth of half an inch.
—FROM THE
RAVENSPELL COOL BESTIARY
Amber had never flown on a plane before, but now Butch had rented a Learjet to take them to Disneyland, a small jet with only a dozen seats. It was very comfortable. Amber had flown in a magically powered flying saucer made from a garbage can lid and a fishbowl. She’d ridden on the backs of mallards and geese. But a Learjet turned out to be the best of all!
The cushions were made from crushed red velvet, and everything was very fancy. There was no stewardess, only a captain to fly the jet, but it did have a nice little minibar filled with root beer, candy bars, and sandwiches.
It took only minutes for Ben’s mom and dad to take their seats, and then Amber and Ben raced around, exploring the plane. Lady Blackpool just sat thoughtfully on an armrest while the butterfly Serena landed on the back of a seat and looked out the window.
“If there is anything you need,” the captain had said before they departed, “just holler. The intercom here on the plane is voice-activated, and it works both ways.”
The captain put on a movie for Amber to watch—
Stuart Little.
Afterward, he went into the cockpit and started the plane. It had gone surging down the runway like a speeding car and had suddenly lifted into the air.
For a moment, Amber watched the earth fall away, the trees and houses growing smaller and smaller until she really couldn’t see them at all.
So she watched the movie for a bit. It left Amber confused. It was about a little mouse named Stuart who was somehow living in a human orphanage. Stuart could talk to humans, but didn’t seem to have any magic powers at all. Nor did any humans even notice that he was a mouse. He was a very odd mouse who walked funny and wore human clothes. “Mice don’t walk like that!” Amber groaned after just a few minutes. “Whoever made this up has never even
seen
a mouse! Why isn’t Stuart grooming?”
Ben tried to explain the movie to her, telling her that it was a fantasy. He wanted Amber to relax and just enjoy the film, but she couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be serious, funny, strange, or just stupid.
Eventually, Amber got bored. So she merely sat on the armrest while Ben’s mom petted her. Mona would gently take her big warm finger and stroke it down Amber’s head, from nose to tail, sending shivers of joy down Amber’s spine.
I feel so good,
Amber thought,
that I think I might just melt into the armchair.
Amber had never liked a human before—other than Ben, if he still counted as a human—but she was finding that she was growing fond of Mona.
“Tell me how to pet you better,” Mona said. “What does a mouse like?”
Amber didn’t know for certain, but moments later Mona tenderly rubbed the insides of her ears then pinched Amber’s tail and rolled it between her fingers, sending waves of gladness through the young mouse.
Mona leaned close. “I know how you feel about Ben,” she whispered.
Amber’s heart began to pound. “You do?” She couldn’t imagine how Mona could know. Whenever Ben was around, Amber felt as if she might melt from happiness.
“You need to know that I love him, too,” Mona said. “He’s my son. Even though you might want him to go to your school with you, to S.W.A.R.M., he’s still my little boy. I . . . you understand that I can’t give him up. I can’t just let him go away.”
Amber didn’t answer. Her heart was breaking.
While Ben scampered around, climbing up the seats and then leaping from the back of one chair to the next, Lady Blackpool only sat gazing ahead as if looking into the future.
Like a faithful watchdog, Serena took up a spot on the chair next to Lady Blackpool.
Finally, Lady Blackpool said softly to Amber, “If anything happens to me in the next few days, I want you to make me a promise . . .”
“Nothing will happen,” Amber said hopefully.
“But if it does,” Lady Blackpool said, “I want you to promise to go to S.W.A.R.M.”
“How will I know the way?” Amber said.
“You’ll find the way,” Lady Blackpool said. “You have great powers, and even though there are spells that hide the school from the rest of the world, you will find a way.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you,” Amber affirmed. “Ben and I will protect you.”
Lady Blackpool smiled weakly. She whispered, “Life must come to an end. Even for old ones like me. I’ve seen this beast in a vision, this Belle Z. Bug. I must face her alone. You have no power now—no power to stop her, no power to save me.”
“But I can’t just let you go alone!” Amber said.
“I let you fight the bat Nightwing alone,” Lady Blackpool reminded her. “That was a task you and Ben had to face in order to grow together. Everyone has a time in their life when they must stand alone against evil. Now it is my turn.”
“But,” Amber said, feeling very sad, “if you know that you’re going to lose, why fight at all?”
“I go to my death,” Lady Blackpool said, “but that isn’t the same as losing. I hope to purchase something with my life.”
Serena spoke up and asked, “Purchase something? Like fly-shadow?”
Amber didn’t understand. What could her friend hope to gain from fighting a battle that she couldn’t win? “What could possibly be worth your life?”
Lady Blackpool said, “I am going to teach you a lesson, Amber. I am going to teach you how to fight a battle calmly, while facing a more powerful foe. I’m going to teach you to use your imagination—not to rely upon force alone. Folks need to know these things.”
So they rode through the air, flying over the mist-covered mountains of Oregon, looking at the green fir trees far below, passing through clouds where Amber could practically see the ice crystals hanging in the air.
When the movie was over, Amber closed her eyes for a nap, but she couldn’t really sleep. She was too worried for Lady Blackpool.
Suddenly the captain spoke over the intercom. “Be advised that there is a very large, very dark storm cloud ahead. It’s kind of a weird one, folks. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like it. I’d prefer to avoid any turbulence, so I’ll just try to nose around it. If you folks would all put on you seat belts, it would be greatly appreciated.”
Ben’s mom and dad buckled down, and Amber tried to look out the window to see the cloud ahead, but she couldn’t really see anything until the jet suddenly banked hard to the left and dove.
Amber glimpsed the cloud. It wasn’t gray but black—as black as if it were formed of millions of bits of rock instead of ice.
But what was weirder was the shape. It wasn’t billowy like just any cloud. There was symmetry to it, as if it were showing two sides of something. There were bulbs on top, and a narrow part that might have been a tube, and beneath it was a long tube with a moplike ending.
Suddenly Serena shouted, “Hey, that cloud looks just like a giant housefly!”
Millions of black dots began to move, and the cloud shifted, moving toward them, speeding to intercept them even though their pilot had changed course.
“Those flies can’t possibly move as fast as this jet!” Ben said, leaping to Amber’s side.
Suddenly there was a grinding noise. The jet shuddered and slowed as if it had been grasped by a giant hand. The engines stuttered to a halt.
In the cockpit, the captain yelped in frustration.
The enormous cloud fly loomed closer, and the moplike ending of its mouth came open.
The cloud lunged, swallowing the jet whole.
Ben’s dad started screaming like a girl.
Millions of flies surrounded the jet, swarming onto the plane’s frame, grabbing onto the wings. Their droning carried even through the thick glass windows. The plane shuddered and began to alter course, veering south and east.
“They’re hijacking the plane!” Ben warned.
“We’re being fly-jacked?” Amber asked.
But as soon as Ben spoke, the plane’s left wing tilted down then soared back up. The plane began to rock in midair.
“Wait,” Ben yelled, “they’re trying to tear the wings off!”
Butch slapped himself on the forehead. “Who would have ever thought it—having my wings torn off by a fly?”
“Do something!” Ben’s mom screamed.
Ben looked to Amber, and she frowned in frustration. It was too soon for her to use her powers. Still, Amber wondered if she should try.
Lady Blackpool stood calmly upon the armrest of her chair. “Let them take us,” she warned Amber. “Don’t try to stop them. It requires great power for our enemy to stop this machine, magical energy that Belle Z. Bug will no longer have in battle! Let her waste her powers, and then I will deal with her more easily—face-to-face!”
A fly slammed into the window above Amber and sat for a second.
“Look at that one,” Serena shouted joyously. “It’s wearing fly-shadow and mask-era and wing wax. Have you ever seen such a beautiful bombardier fly?”
Amber had to admit, the fly did have startlingly bright eyes and a pretty face. But then the wind caught the little bugger and whipped it away.
The jet engines whined and surged back to life. The captain was desperately trying to escape. The plane groaned forward, trying to break from the grasp of a million flies. There were clouds of them, buzzing all around.
Serena translated the buzzing. “Lady Blackpool, the flies are out to capture you all!”
“Climb higher!” Ben shouted to the pilot. “Flies hate the cold. Try to climb higher!”
Amber wasn’t sure if the pilot could hear him, but suddenly the jet throbbed and climbed, angling up. The jet engines sucked in flies by the tens of thousands and then spat out fly-burgers!
“Gross!” Ben’s mom said.
Butch covered her eyes with one hand. “Don’t look, darling. It will give you nightmares!”
The plane shuddered and trembled. The flies tried to hold on, but the jet was moving too fast. Flies began to peel off the wings in layers, huge rafts of them.
The plane rumbled, nearly free, and soared up into the sky. It raced through a cloud of flies so black that it seemed to be night outside.
“Hooray!” the mice cried.
“What a relief!” Serena shouted.
But Lady Blackpool seemed to be in shock. She stood there gaping. “I don’t understand,” she said. “This is not what happened in my vision!”
Just as suddenly, the great invisible hand seized the plane again, and the engines roared as the pilot gave them all the juice he had. The plane shuddered. The right engine grumbled, and for a moment the jet seemed to be at the heart of a tug-of-war.
Then the engine burst into flames, exploding in a fireball that singed the wings off a hundred thousand flies in an instant. The flies began dropping in a smoldering rain, and the jet’s right wing went with them.
Up in the cockpit, the pilot began to scream. He came running out the cockpit door while pulling on a parachute and cried, “It’s every man for himself!”
He wrestled the emergency door open, and there was a rush of air as the cabin depressurized. Then he leapt out of the plane, doing a swan dive through a storm cloud of flies.
Serena was knocked off the plane seat, and the force of the wind plastered her against the breast pocket of Mona’s blouse so that she looked like some fancy blue pin.
“Uh,” Ben’s mom called at the pilot’s back, “where are
our
parachutes?”
But it was too late. The pilot had already gone. Flies began whipping through the cabin of the jet, pinging against the wall like hail. The wind was so powerful that Amber feared it would lift her up and send her flying around the room. It might even suck her right out the door. So she just clung to a seat belt with her little paws.
Now would be a good time to have my powers back,
she thought.
I was so stupid to have wasted them.
“Look for the parachutes!” Butch shouted.
The plane bucked and then dropped into a nosedive, screaming through the sky.
Ben’s mom and dad looked about frantically, searching through overhead compartments, tossing out water bottles and life preservers.
Flies came bouncing through the cabin, flies in so many colors and varieties that Amber sat astonished. There were the common houseflies and horseflies of course, but there were dozens of strange varieties, too—bee flies that looked like honeybees and pale moth flies with wispy gray hairs covering their entire bodies, even their wings. There were shiny March flies that looked like angry blue-black wasps, and sand flies the color of sand, and fruit flies with brilliant red eyes and metallic green-and-gold bodies, and mayflies that had wings almost like a butterfly and long mandibles for grabbing things. Many were shiny, with strange-colored stripes going across their faceted eyes or bright stripes on their thoraxes.
Suddenly Ben spotted a sign above a small door next to the restroom. He shouted, “Parachutes—over there, Dad!” as he pointed frantically.
Ben’s dad raced to the door, pulling hard on the little knob. He banged on it a few times. “It won’t open!”
Mona joined him. “It’s locked!” Ben’s mom cried. “Where’s the key?”
As one, both of them looked out the open door, where the pilot had jumped. Mona said, “I think he had it!”
Butch screamed like a girl again then totally went ape. He began kicking the door like a madman.
“Move aside, big fella!” Ben’s mom shouted. She gave a mighty kick. The door folded, its hinges turning into twisted pieces of metal. Mona ripped the door open.
On the floor lay the parachutes.
Ben’s mom threw hers on, fastening a couple of straps. “Is this on right?” she asked.
“How would I know?” Butch cried, shrugging his own parachute over his shoulder.
The plane seemed to slow, leveling off, and the wind grew less boisterous. Amber suspected that the flies had regained control and were now holding the jet in the air.