The Elementalist

3. How Pirates Affect Business & Other Important Aspects of Life-1

How Pirates Affect Business & Other Important Aspects of LifeEven after quickly unchaining her motorcycle from the fence then speeding wildly through the streets—garnering protests from slower automobile drivers and casual cyclists—Voi still arrived fifteen minutes late at Chester Field.

Paul and the other boys already had the Belareaux warmed up, its propeller buzzing eagerly as it awaited Voi on the grass field. She swooped in, muttering apologies as she strapped on her flying cap and pulled on her goggles, switching places with a disgruntled Paul in the cockpit.

Pumped with urche and feeling quite ‘normal’ now, Voi was ready to give a safe aerial tour. However, fate seemed to have other plans for her…

The customer, Miss Annie, a determined young brunette who had been dared by her male counterparts to go flying in a ‘flimsy,’ unfortunately grew queasy upon takeoff and up-chucked her butterflies in a sporadic spray across the passenger cockpit. Following that backseat debacle, Voi returned to Chester Field and had her crew clean up the mess while she returned Annie’s money. She couldn’t rightly keep it, after the humiliation the young woman had suffered.

Feeling guilty for wasting Voi’s time, however, Annie decided to pay Voi a generous tip for her willingness to take her up in the first place. Not enough to make up for the lost tour, but Voi appreciated the gesture.

Annie had seemed so sure of herself when Voi first met her in the office a week ago. Perhaps too sure of herself, Voi mused as she watched the girl leave the field with her friends. She puts on a bold-faced mask out of fear, not knowing her own limits. Voi saw a bit of herself in the girl. She’d been daring and fearless once, often to the point of recklessness. And perhaps, like Annie, Voi was also ignorant of her limits—not because she was naive but rather because, unlike Annie, Voi had been settling for the safer routes in life. She’d simply stopped pushing her boundaries.

Even Mr. Callahan had spotted this flaw in her character.

Paul was jogging towards her from the hangar now.

Huffing, Voi undid the buckle on her flying cap then snatched this, as well as her goggles, off her head—oblivious to the wild disarray of damp hair flying in the wind. Her frustrated hands ventured for something else to yank apart and settled for the belt on her leather trench coat.

Paces away, Paul took off his flat cap and threw his hands into the air. “What the hell just happened?”

“She got scared, Paul.” Voi moved past him.

He walked with her back to the hangar, looking over his shoulder in disbelief as the other two men expressed their disgust at what they found in the passenger cockpit. “Wasn’t she your only tour today?” Paul was struggling to keep up with her.

Voi looked at him, noticing a strand of his dusty brown hair waving agitatedly as he scrunched up his face against the wind. She wrinkled her nose as the smell of plane fuel met her nostrils. The sound of jazz drifted from the hangar, washing over the crunch of pungent autumn grass beneath their feet. “Yes, Paul, she was my only tour.”

“Alright, well, how many more did you manage to book this week?”

Voi slowed her pace as they neared the hangar, bending down to smooth out her trousers then retie her bootlaces. “Just this one.”

“Dammit, Voi.” Paul made his way over to a row of lockers and wrestled his cap onto his head. When Voi seemed disinclined to offer further explanation, he started scuffing his boots against a locker then looked at the sky. “Funny, no matter how bad things get for us freelance pilots, the airship industry seems to get along juuuust fine.”

Voi stood up and followed his gaze, spotting several round forms hovering in the distance. There was an airship port just a few miles west of Chester Field, with Lake Pristine to the south. “We’re doing our best, Paul.”

“Maybe,” he said, “but it’s not enough. I’m pretty sure these damn pirate incidents aren’t helping any. Two measly cargo ships—Borellian, not Apexian, mind you—go missing, and suddenly everyone thinks Haran pirates are back. As for the rest of us with real problems, a hot-shot Borellian war hero practically shows up out of nowhere and opens Neverri Aeronautic after the war; it does amazing. A handful of naval mechanics who worked the shipyards their whole lives do the same with Skyward Enterprise, and they don’t last more than a year against Neverri before he buys them out.

“A f*****g monopoly is what that’s shaping up to be.”

Voi took off her leather gloves then stuffed them into one of her pockets, shrugging. “So he’s successful. That’s no crime, is it?” She looked at Paul, though he wasn’t paying attention. “Anyway, you can’t blame people for wanting security. He is ‘The Pirate Huntsman,’ you know.” She hoped the joke would cheer Paul up.

Instead, he kicked the locker.

Voi drew back.

“It’s not right!” he said. “We work our asses off, too, us flimsy fliers.”

Voi c****d her head, giving him a long look. “I thought we agreed not to call ourselves that.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Paul tossed a hand at her then circled off towards the gramophone. He sifted through their collection of records in a box on the ground as an announcement came from the radio.

“A bomb has reportedly gone off outside of the Imperial Palace at Durge in North Darmoil this morning, killing at least twelve people. Haran protesters continue to voice their opposition to South Darmoil’s involvement with the League Alliance—demanding a secession from the empire before the induction ceremony, which is scheduled for the end of the—”

Paul reached up to turn off the radio, mumbling to himself about “damn foreigners with their emancipations and border disputes,” adding, “Just go to f*****g war already. Worked for us. To hell with Windsor and the Empire!”

Voi shook her head.

Paul pulled a record out of the box and stood up, setting some music to play. Following a jazzy blues intro featuring an oud and a bass, Maribel Grey, a black Maelt singer from South Darmoil, began crooning in a sultry alto voice about “a girl named Feruupa who worked the cabaret shows at night.” Big band winds hummed a moody tune as Miss Grey continued:

Then she met a man who was strange and new.

He liked her way—so sly and cool.

He said,

‘You should be a spy.’

Voi and her friends had unanimously agreed that Miss Grey’s voice had the unmistakable quality of someone who’d been using drugs. Ironically, Miss Grey had been rumored to dabble in a popular speakeasy staple known as ambrosia: a dreamy, exotic bit of contraband that Voi had only been exposed to though secondhand experience during her university years.

Paul returned to the lockers and leaned against them. Voi rubbed her arms, feeling nervous about the relevance of the song.

“The only reason people think aeroplanes aren’t as safe as airships,” Paul went on, “is because the leading airship company happens to be owned by a guy who fought a bunch of pirates before.” He watched the airships momentarily. “‘Neverri Aeronautic: fly luxury, fly safe.’ I mean, really? How cheesy a slogan is that? If anything, those pirates would go after the airships and all their rich, fancy passengers. Not planes.”

“Paul,” said Voi, “aeroplanes were never considered ‘safe’ to begin with.”

He shook his head. “It’s just not fair, Voi. That’s all I’m saying.”

They fell into silence, listening to Miss Grey’s interpretation of Kyra Feruupa’s outlook on spying: “Baby, darling, it’s but a game. Business, pleasure, it’s all the same…”

Inadvertently thinking of Mr. Callahan’s offer, Voi sighed.

“What’s wrong?” asked Paul.

“Nothing.” Voi watched the other two crew members, Michael and Adam, as they guided the Belareaux into the hangar, mocking Miss Grey with falsetto voices. Coming from the gramophone now:

So she took a job over in Darmoil.

When she came back, she just weren’t the same…

Voi fiddled with her flying cap and goggles. She was breathing more heavily now. “Paul, can I ask you something?”

He looked up, noting the change in Voi’s demeanor. “Sure. What’s up?”

She glanced around, worried that the others might overhear, then whispered, “How bad do you think the situation is?” She squinted. “And be honest. I can handle the truth, you know.” The former barnstormer had sacrificed many things by choosing to befriend Voi that fateful day he flew into the schoolyard—his previous celebrity status as Apexia’s fastest and most brazen pilot being one of them. He often shielded Voi from the harsher realities of life, knowing how much she’d already been through.

He gave her a wary look.

She huffed. “I’m not always the wide-eyed, optimistic naiveténne you fancy me to be.”

“Whoa, whoa,” he said in mock defense. “Easy with the Borellian. Gonna make this hopeless clown fall for you all over again.”

Voi smiled then shook her head, having thoroughly, yet kindly, rejected Paul’s one-sided feelings in the past. Quietly, she said, “You know, sometimes I only pretend to be—naive, that is.” She looked down at her boots. When you only have twenty-five years to live the closest thing to a normal life… Sometimes, turning a blind eye to reality was the only thing that gave her hope for her future.

“Well,” said Paul, “I hate to be the cloud in your blue sky, Voi, but people seem to have less of an interest in what we have to offer each week. Granted, planes are still relatively new, not to mention a Darmoilen invention. Could be they just remind folks too much of the war with the air raids and everything. Maker knows the talk in the papers hasn’t done our trade any justice.”

Voi winced at the imagery of brown-skinned Kesh and Maelt men, bandanas and all, as they zoomed over Tryste and the Borelli Jungle in their primitive flying machines—whooping while raining bullets and crude hand bombs from above.

Or so the stories from Borellian locals went. Luckily, Voi had never witnessed such horrors. She’d been sent away to boarding school while her parents served in the war.

Paul contorted his face. “But it’s more than that. I mean, why fly in a rattrap contraption when you can cruise in style aboard a world-class aerial liner?”

Voi knew she could count on Paul’s down-to-earth outlook to keep her grounded—even if she did fear hearing the truth. “Hmm… I suppose you have a point.” She sighed. “Well, I should probably head over to the museum, since we don’t have any other tours today.” Voi’s mouth quirked as she elbowed her friend. “Maybe art is where it’s at, Paul.”

“Maybe…”

Voi hesitated to leave, wringing her goggles and flying cap together. “Paul?”

“Yeah?” He closed his eyes to the sound of the woozy blues ballad playing on the gramophone.

Voi screwed her mouth to the side. “Do you think flying planes is suicide?”

Paul’s eyes snapped open. “Hell, yeah, but whoever said it wasn’t fun?” He went to give Michael and Adam a hand with cleaning the plane, though most of the work had been done. He decided to clean the Belareaux’s wooden propeller with an old hand towel.

Voi tapped her foot in frustration. Unsatisfied with Paul’s response, she followed him. “It just seems fitting that I, a hopeless emelesiac, should become a pilot, of all things. Don’t you think?”

Paul turned from the prop now, furrowing his brow. “Where are you going with this?”

“It’s only a matter of time before I officially go insane, so why shouldn’t I do something suicidal until then? I mean who knows? Maybe I’ll get lucky and crash again before things get too messy—”

“Hey, hey!” Paul grabbed her by the shoulders, vigorously shaking his head. “Don’t say things like that. Ever.”

She looked away.

“Aw, c’mon…” Paul tilted her chin towards him, urging her to look him in the eye. “That’s not the ol’ clear-skies-and-all-sunshine girl I used to know. Since when did you get so grey?”

Voi directed his hand back to his side with a polite smile. “I’ve just been thinking about things lately, that’s all.”

“Yeah? Well, try not to think too hard. Honestly, it’s kind of scary.”

“And rightly so.” Voi hung her head, her voice quivering as she spoke. “One day, I’ll go certifiably mad, and there isn’t anything I can do to stop it.” How desperately she wanted to believe in Mr. Callahan’s cure, but the whole situation—the idea that her medication was supposedly a suppressant of some sort… well, it was too cruel to accept. She refused to believe she’d been manipulated and lied to her entire life.

“Being a pilot doesn’t make you crazy, Voi,” said Paul.

“But don’t you get it?” she pleaded, her voice straining. “I’m nearly past the age most emelesiacs are committed. Time has practically run out for me, Paul!”

“Hey, calm down! Take it easy, alright?” Michael and Adam were eyeing them suspiciously from the Belareaux.

Voi took a deep breath, shaking as she composed herself.

“Look,” Paul said calmly, “for what it’s worth, it seems like you’ve got your condition under control. Sure, you get a little jumpy and maybe a bit paranoid every now and then, and you space out at inconvenient moments, but that’s really the worst of it. Seriously, I’ve seen worse crazy kooks out there than you, and none of them were emelesiacs—not that I knew of, anyway.”