A huge swarm of scissors had taken off from their perches and were rising on sharpened evil wings. These Siamese-twin knives came snipping through the dusty shafts of sunlight, soaring upwards towards the pair on their hang-glider. Should they reach it, their blades would make short work of the glider’s fabric. Fortunately the nasty metal birds proved too heavy once the air became more rarefied and, try as they might, they kept falling back, unable to climb to such heights. One or two pairs of nail scissors, being lighter than the kitchen or barber’s scissors, actually made it to within a metre or two, but even they did not have the strength to reach the glider.
‘You don’t know how close we were to disaster,’ said Jordy, relieved. ‘Those pretties would cut us to shreds.’
‘I can see that now,’ replied Chloe in alarm. ‘I thought they were Attican fairies.’
‘Attican demons, more like.’
The pair fairly flashed along, sometimes so fast it made Chloe feel giddy. Down below, familiar landmarks swept under them. After more than two hours they came to Jagged Mountain, that monstrous pile of weapons upon which sat the shadow-beast Katerfelto, feared throughout the attic.
The flight was a fantastic experience for Chloe. She was conscious of a wonderful feeling of freedom, a lightness of form, a sense of release from the tensions of being locked to the earth. It was as if a leaden anchor in her had suddenly changed to feather-down and the world had to let her go. She had wings. She was flying through the air. How privileged she felt, to be born among the fortunate in a world of modern devices. This was a miracle of science, to be able to fly using just a rag and a few aluminium struts. There was a gentle power in her which filled her with joy.
‘Birds must feel like this,’ she cried, wholly aware of the rhythms of the draught, its strong surges and uplifts, its minor eddies and currents. ‘And angels.’
‘Angels, is it?’ called Jordy, back up to her. ‘Well, there’s a little devil here, who’s waking up.’
Nelson poked his head out of the neck of the jacket and looked down. His feline eyes widened in disbelief. The next moment he had turned completely round and had his nose pressed to Jordy’s stomach, his heart beating fast.
‘Didn’t like that, is my guess,’ laughed Jordy. ‘I don’t think we’ll see his face again during the flight.’
At that moment Chloe lost concentration, along with meeting a side-draught which came out the blackness of the eaves. The hang-glider lurched to starboard, the right wing-tip dropping sharply. For a moment it appeared they were going to turn over and spiral downwards towards the solid boards far below. Then to make matters worse a low area of criss-crossing rafters appeared in front of them. Chloe actually went through the first triangle of timbers, almost sustaining a fatal rip in the wing. As it was, one of the thin aluminium poles which kept the framework rigid caught an upright beam and bent at right-angles. They rapidly started to lose height.
‘Pull up!’ said Jordy in a calmish voice laced with urgency. ‘Not too sharply now – easy, easy. Steady. Get the glider level. Don’t worry about those rafters: we’re going to miss them.’
They did miss the timbers, but only by centimetres. Jordy was suddenly shocked to see a girl scrambling around in the network of rafters. The girl looked lithe and strong, and had very long hair. She was dressed in a ragged shirt. Grabbing for a rope, she swung from one rafter to another to avoid being hit by the hang-glider. Jordy locked eyes with her for a second, then he and Chloe were gone, leaving the roof’s canopy and its occupant behind them.
In that awful second Jordy had fallen in love and he felt a terrible pain, an unbearable ache. He knew he would be looking for this girl of the attic jungle in all the other girls he met, and none would ever compare with her athletic beauty or the character he had seen in those eyes.
Jordy wanted to tell Chloe that he at last understood.
‘What the heck are you doing?’ cried a fraught Chloe. ‘We’re about to crash, you oaf! What do I do?’
Jordy snapped himself back to the task in hand. He issued some orders, which Chloe followed to the letter.
‘Now straighten her out properly. That’s right, bear down on that side. Excellent. WATCH THAT