she and Tony had an arm each and were yanking Ian into the gondola. As it swayed under his feet, his vision swayed with it and he turned back, but the attendant was already slamming the door shut. They were the last to load, getting the gondola all to themselves—and before Ian could leap out, the wheel was lifting them skyward.
His mouth was suddenly dry as paper, and the world sounded as though it had retreated underwater. Don’t be a coward, Graham. He hadn’t always been petrified of high places, after all. But the day he acquired the nightmare about a parachute had been the day that changed. Do not be a coward.
The gondolas of the Prater were famous: compact cars with a center bench and windows all around to see the panoramic scope of Vienna’s steep roofs and church domes, now shrinking to the size of dolls. Nina was wandering along the line of windows, as Tony pointed out landmarks. Bile rose in Ian’s throat and he swallowed as the car rose higher. If they’d been climbing up the stairway of a tall cathedral or walking the parapet of a rooftop, he’d have been all right—put a solid rail or a steady floor between him and the void, and he was fine. But swaying along through the air in this flimsy shell . . .
Better than an airplane, he told himself, hands linking so tight he saw the knuckles whiten. To think you once queued up for the privilege of jumping out of a bomber over Germany. Now he’d rather be flayed alive.
“. . . open these windows?” Nina was saying. “Is boring, sailing up and up like a sedate old kite.”
“What are you going to do, climb on the roof?” Tony laughed, clearly not worried as she dropped the top sill of the observation window. Nina hauled herself up, hanging her head and shoulders out into the sky. She was just trying to get a better view, Ian knew that, but his nerves didn’t. He imagined his wife falling from the gondola like a bird shot down in flight, glass shattering around her, and he lunged across the swaying floor. Seizing her around the waist, he wrenched her down so fast she almost flew across the gondola. She fell against the bench with a crash and came instantly to her feet, blue eyes flaring. Ian turned his back, shoving the window up with a violence that cracked the pane. A silver line ran in a sudden ping across the glass and he couldn’t help flinching, seeing the crack and then the tilted view of Vienna beyond it. They were at the wheel’s apex, sixty-five meters up, five times as high as the day he’d—
Ian turned away and threw up in the corner.
When he straightened, Nina and Tony were both staring at him. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his mouth, realizing with a flash of shame that his hands were shaking. His voice wasn’t, though. “Parachute jump, ’45,” he said, as the gondola began its descent. “Ever since then, you might say I’ve had a little trouble with heights. So next time I tell you to leave me on the ground, leave me on the goddamned ground.”
Tony cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“I know,” Ian cut him off, wishing this ride was over, wishing they’d stop looking at him. Wishing he weren’t a coward.
“I say go again,” Nina said.
“What?”
“Is what I would do. Ride this wheel around a hundred more times. All day. All night. Till I wasn’t afraid.”
“No,” Ian said. The thought of going round even one more time made him want to vomit all over again.
“You go down your list of fears.” Her eyes had a distant compassion, as if she knew what he was thinking. “Stamp them out, one after other, till there’s only one. Is good to have one fear, luchik, but just one. I think the fear you want to keep is the fear you never find die Jägerin, yes? So get rid of this one.”
Ian stared at his wife. She was retying the scarf around her neck, a homemade white thing embroidered in blue stars. She smiled.
“Come,” she challenged, patting the bench. “I ride with you, long as it takes. Let’s kill a fear today.”
“Get between me and the door when we finally stop,” Ian said, “and I will pitch you through that bloody window.”
He didn’t know how long that ghastly ride lasted, but it passed in utter