At last, the ship was ready to fly. Serena ran to join Fabian, abandoning the Baron mid-sentence, and proceeded to ignore everything that was going on around her in favour of the view that promised ahead. She watched, breathless with anticipation, as the airship’s engines started with a roar and a rattle and the craft began to rise. The ground dropped away much faster than she had expected, and she gasped in delight. She and Fabian gazed in silence as fields, woodlands and streams fell away before them and the world expanded into a vast horizon of green and brown, beneath infinite sky.
Finally, Fabian said: ‘I suppose I would have missed this, if you hadn’t forced me to come.’
Serena permitted herself a smug smile. ‘Still angry with me?’
‘Yes,’ said Fabian, with a dark, sideways look at
