Grounded – Countdown and Sneak Peak
For all of you who’ve been following the adventures of Mark and Angie and that peculiar belt, here it is:
September 30th. That’s the day that the final book of the Spellkeeper Flight series will be out: Grounded.
What can I say about the end of a series that’s been keeping me up for so many years? I could show you the cover—it is gorgeous, and it includes someone I’ve wanted to have on the front for two books now—and that will certainly be in another post soon. Or I could write about just how tangled and exciting the story becomes with its final race to the finish line.
Or I could show you a different kind of scene. In the middle of secrets, arguments, battles, and heartbreaks, this is actually one of my favorite chase scenes.
[bctt tweet=”The lighter side of antigravity. #Grounded” username=”TheKenHughes”]
It’s also from relatively late in the book, so it can’t avoid a few SPOILERS ahead. As to whether anything leading up to these spoilers is what it seems, you’ll have to decide for yourself.
A small door stood in the middle of the back wall. Mark felt his father’s talisman moving closer behind him, and grabbed the door. Dodging him is only putting this off, but do I have to deal with everything at once?
He stepped out into the morning sun. A wide, half-full parking lot spread around him, and he felt Angie launching from the roof as he moved. Her magic did feel thinner, the price of all the messages she’d given him. The silver in his hand was the answer to that.
His father neared the door behind him. Mark lunged across the lot with a magic-light stride over the slush, and Angie swept down the air ahead of him.
Faces turned toward him, up and down the lot. He held his pace down to a gliding sprint as his father moved to follow.
Angie twisted ahead, a shape of brown and gray veering toward the back corner of the next building. Mark realized his feet had already fallen into a path behind her.
Around the corner lay a small pocket between buildings, only half-open to the street, where not a single person stood to see them. Angie beat at the air and flew almost straight up along the wall. Mark flung himself to the rooftop after her.
Below he glimpsed his father stopping at the corner. Running from that man was only temporary as long as they could sense each other’s talismans… but just for now, there was so much more satisfaction in staying out of his reach.
Angie perched on the roof’s rim, just a few steps away.
“I brought some power for you,” and he held up the mind talisman. “We can finally keep you as strong as you need. Oh, and your mother wanted to apologize, for… everything.”
At least Kate was doing more to back that up than the man down below was. His father was already turning away.
He reached the talisman toward Angie. “We’re all working on this, on how to get you a real body. I swear, we can do it. And we really can make Winton pay—”
Kee-yak!
The owl twisted from his hand with a quick flap. She sailed just above the rooftop’s open space, an easy speed for her. Mark raced after her. Her cry had sounded, what, eager?
Her head twisted once to glance back, then she shot toward the roof’s edge.
If it’s a race— Mark hurled himself at the edge and the next roof across, magic’s power blasting him past beating wings. In midair he stole a moment to look down to the ground and around the streets; only a few people stood in view, and none of them looked up. But I just took that leap in broad daylight before I thought of being seen.
He didn’t feel the lightheaded madness of magic getting in his head. Only…
Angie chirruped and darted across the roof’s left. He leaped after her, with soft skips and minimal weight to keep from skidding on piled-up snow. She dived down between two huge air-conditioner blocks, but he sensed her twisting left behind them and he leaped across ahead of her.
“Bring it on!” He held up the mind talisman. “I can keep up, like I can save you—”
She rushed straight by him. Her claws plucked the silver from his hand.
He lost a moment in shock before he thought to follow. But this wasn’t like when she grabbed that talisman he almost gave Nolan… it felt nothing like it, not with her playful calls buoying him up. He dashed after her.
Roof after roof shot by. In scattered moments he thought of the faces that might look out through those windows, or the people on the street—but of course each building she picked was only a short distance from the last, a leap that a human could have cleared.
Angie’s dodges used every scrap of cover, every foot of space a roof gave her to double back on a wingtip. Mark leaped and skittered and caught at gravity to lock himself in place for instants before rushing on. Anything to keep his human bulk keeping up with the owl that moved like a part of the air.
Danger and regrets fell away. He was simply nineteen… or somewhere younger.
Then—
“I said I can!” He saw her start to spin and read the angle she’d have to take, and dove across ahead of her. “I know I—” She flipped away behind his back, still easy to sense and move ahead of. “I can save you—”
She swung out over the open street. After so many moves staying out of sight on the roofs, she changed the rules and ventured where he couldn’t go.
A flash of silver, arching high up and away from her. She’d thrown the talisman away?
Mark stared. He couldn’t see it now, couldn’t sense it from here, couldn’t leap out over the street even if he did, why would she…
Angie swooped down. He saw, felt, the streak of gray rush across the sky to scoop down and spin away, in a move that could only be catching the talisman as it began to fall.
He couldn’t move. He stood frozen on the edge of the roof, breath gasping, for the endless instant it took her to arch around and reach the roof. At the last moment she braked, and dropped lightly onto his arm.
The talisman slid back into his palm. And he finally had the words to share its power, because she’d found those too.
With his softest breath, he whispered “Tomishua zazda tomi zazda shua.”
Magic wakened. The energy roused at the words, loosened, and his thought sent it flowing—not gathering power from the air or draining another talisman, but this time streaming from his into the bit of silver on Angie’s foot. That magic swelled, pooled…
The thought-space opened between them.
Their breath and pounding pulses should have faded away—but instead they surged through the void like a message, her message. Soaring, twisting, the thrill she’d led him through, that had to mean flying.
Words flickered too. Unclear sounds, but he caught glimpses around them of daylight streets, windows by night, spreading from early autumn to biting winter air. Too much too fast to follow the language, but the tones were uneasy, worried, angry—all the shades of trouble and discontent around the city, plucked and gathered out of the months by her restless mind. She saw so much, followed it all.
The voices changed. A new flood of memories poured out from her—a smiling face, a woman running with smooth steps, a family looking up wistfully at the sky they’d never touch. Faces of joy.
Like our chase.
The world of the mind fell away. An owl’s pale face hung just before him.
“We can…. we can fly for real, once you have a real body…” he said, from a hollow throat.
She dropped off to soar away.
Mark shivered, slumped, sat clumsily down in the snow.
They’d been fighting to set Angie free. But what if…
