Look and Leap [2 of 2]

Author's Note: This... probably won't make sense unless you read the first half.

“So Dusty, want to try Maths-Physics again this afternoon?”

“Eh, I don’t know…”

Dusty frowned into her bowl of cereal, hunched under a cloud of misery at one end of the long table in Oriel’s hall.

“You’re not going to stop because Harper’s in a sulk, are you?”

She sighed, took a mouthful of cereal, and swallowed it. “I don’t know.”

“Look, he’ll get over it, Dusty. You want to get some more practise in before Saturday, right?”

She just frowned, chewed another mouthful of cereal.

“Well, ok. Meet me at Maths at the same time this afternoon anyway, ok? We can decide then what we’re doing. Ok?”

Dusty shrugged, scraped the last spoonful out of her bowl. “Yeah, ok, I guess.”

She got up to leave, but Toby caught her arm.

“Look, Dust, I know it sucks that he’s upset. And I know it seems like he’s right, it’s all hideously dangerous and not worth the risk. But think about it. You know what it’s like. How would it feel to give that up, forever, just because someone else doesn’t like the idea?”

She looked at him, sighed, and pulled her arm away. “I’ll see you later, ok.”

“See you, Dusty.”
 
•  •  •
 
If she had floated through the day before, she trudged through this one as though she were made of lead. She dropped out of the ferries with a thud and a lack of grace, along with the rest of the crowds. She copied down laboriously neat notes in her lectures, inscribing every character with care. The whole day seemed overcast with a shade of grey, and when she found herself waiting out on the Maths dock for Toby that afternoon, it occurred to her to wonder whether it was worth it.

He arrived on the next ferry, jumped out of it with a cheerful spring. “Hey, Dusty. Ready to repeat yesterday’s brilliant performance?”

She sighed, and shook her head. “You know what, Toby, I just don’t think I want to do this.”

He frowned at her, but she just shook her head and walked past him, slipping in through the doors of the ferry as they were sliding shut. It pulled away, and Toby was left standing there, alone and looking angry.

Dusty went home. Harper was moving back from the bathroom to his room when she arrived, gave her a look of mild surprise.

“I thought you guys were out.”

She shrugged, and headed into her own room, and locked the door behind her.

She made it through half a problem sheet that evening, though she couldn’t really remember what had been on it by the end. Time ticked around, and she realised it had gone past dinnertime half an hour too late. So, stomach grumbling, she slogged away at the maths until she felt like doing nothing more than flopping over into her bed, which she did.

She expected to lay awake for some time, but it seemed she was more tired than she had thought, and soon she was asleep without dreaming.
 
•  •  •
 
Another day passed in the same blanket of grey, and then it was Thursday already and the week seemed to have run away in the night.

Dusty rose from sleep, though she hardly felt awake. She moved to breakfast in a zombie-esque daze, moving spoon from bowl to mouth in a dull, mechanical motion.

Her first lecture wasn’t for another hour or so after breakfast today, so she returned to her room, not sure exactly what she planned to fill the time with.

She unlocked the door to their shared room, and stepped through, made for her own door.

Harper intercepted her.

“Hey, Dusty. Can I have a word?”

She nodded, shrugged, stopped in her tracks. Harper glanced uncertainly at her door. She shrugged again, walked over to unlock that one.

They went in, and Dusty collapsed on the bed, looked up at Harper. He closed the door behind him, sat down on the bed beside her.

“Look, Dusty, about the other day…” He looked at her uncertainly, twisted his fingers around each other. She didn’t so much as blink, so he carried on awkwardly. “I’m… I’m sorry I got so cross with you guys. I was just… I seriously worry about you guys, sometimes, with the leaping. I got worried, so I got worked up, so I got cross, and got angry with you guys. I’m sorry.”

She stared at him, blank still.

“So, uh, I guess what I’m saying is, please don’t let me stop you leaping. I mean, you know what I hate almost as much as the thought of losing you altogether? Seeing you down like this, especially when I know it’s all my fault.”

Dusty shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. It’s a stupid thing to do.”

“No—well—look—” He twisted his hands more, pulling on his fingers. “Please, Dust. I want you to be happy. Don’t let me stop you doing something you love doing. Please?”

She just shrugged again, rolled over onto her side and curled up.

Harper sat there for a moment longer, before heaving a sigh and standing up. He paused, probably watching her for some kind of response, and then turned, walked out of the room.

The door slammed shut behind him.
 
•  •  •
 
About half an hour later, Dusty trudged out of her room and out into the corridor. There was no sign of Harper as she went—hidden away in his room again, perhaps. Toby, too, was nowhere to be seen, but he was easier to place – either at a lecture, or still in bed.

She shuffled along the corridors until she reached the dock, where she stood in the cold staring blankly at the Christ Church docks, from where the ferry would be heading over. The wind had got up, and it whistled around her neck, making her shiver.

When the ferry arrived, it was near-empty—the wrong time of the morning for most people, right in the middle of a lecture, and too early for anything else. There were four other people here, lounging on the chairs in varying states of consciousness. Dusty joined them, slouching in a seat by the door.

The ferry rose up from the docks, and began to chug resolutely towards the next stop. Oriel was out on the edge these days, so the next college on the ferry route was some way off – Merton, over to the east.

Dusty slipped into a kind of daze, staring fixedly at a nondescript spot on the floor in front of her. In her mind, she played through all Harper had said these last few days, growing gradually more and more miserable, if that was even possible at this point.

The ferry trundled onwards.

Bang.

The ferry jerked sideways. Dusty was thrown off her seat, remained half-upright only by grabbing at the wall. The driver swore loudly; the other passengers were jerked awake and tumbled off their seats with much cursing.

The ferry began to spin on the spot. The pilot swore again, slammed some levers, and the hum of the engines dropped to nothing. They spun slowly, bobbing slightly, supported only by the zeppelin balloon.

Dusty stood up, edged over to the side. Through the window, she could see Merton, about thirty yards away and some distance below them. More alarmingly, she could also see the right engine, from which thick, black smoke was billowing. She thought she saw a flicker of light inside it, and her stomach leapt.

The other passengers had also noticed. Staring out of the window in horror, one of them started to scream.

Dusty leapt to her feet.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

They stopped, and stared at her in stunned silence. Now the loudest sound was the continued swearing from the cockpit.

Dusty whirled around, darted over to the divider between them and the pilot. “What’s happening?”

“The bloody engine’s blown!”

“The smoke, should we be worried?”

“If we can’t get down soon, then yes. I’ve got no steering.”

Dusty frowned. Her heart was racing, but she focused for a moment on breathing slowly and deeply. She hurried over to the windows again, wincing at the way the ship rocked every time she moved across it.

Oriel was miles away. Merton was very close, tauntingly close, but the chances of them just drifting over to it were…slim. The ferry was spinning slowly on the spot, getting no nearer to it. In fact, judging by the direction in which the smoke was streaming, the only direction they would be moving in was the wrong one.

Her mind spun. Words, scenarios, possibilities streamed through it, tumbling over one another, until one began to grow clearer in her mind.

No.

That would be—

But it was that, or drift pathetically away until someone noticed them or—more likely— the fire caught the balloon and they all fell screaming to their fates.

She leapt over to the pilot again, cringing once more at the rocking.

“Do you have any rope?”

He blinked, turned on her. “How is that going to help? Going to lasso the dock?”

“Not quite. Do you have any?”

He dug around in the space beside his seat, pulled out a long coil. “Here.” He passed it back through the divider, and Dusty thanked him as she took it.

The other passengers were still staring in stunned silence. She edged over to the Merton-side door, frowned at the things nearby. The seat was perhaps the most solid thing. She tied one end of the rope around its legs, knotting and re-knotting it in the hope that would make it more secure. She tugged at the legs, hoping they were fused to the floor as well as it looked that they were.

She stood up now, unlatched the door and dragged it open. A gust of air swept her hair back from her face.

“What are you doing? You’re crazy!”

Dusty rounded on the guy at the back who had shouted that, gave him a death glare. He cringed away.

“You got any better ideas?”

At his nervous shake of the head, she turned back to the matter at hand. How to keep hold of the rope? She looped it around her left hand, gripped it in a fist, really hoped she wouldn’t drop it.

Merton wasn’t that far, really. At least, that was what she told herself as she crouched in the doorway. It couldn’t be much further than Trinity-Balliol; it was definitely closer than Maths-Physics. She would aim for the dock itself, she thought, but she must be careful to roll when she hit the platform.

She checked that the rope wasn’t caught on anything, and was coiled loosely enough to follow her out. Then, she curled up into a tight crouch, with a final glance at the cloud of smoke to her right. It smelt foul.

Deep breath.

Judge the arc. Got it.

She screwed up her eyes for a moment.

And go!

She drove down with her legs, felt the ferry swing backwards, and for a moment she panicked, thinking perhaps she would just send it bobbing back the other way, while she fell down where she was.

But she was falling away from the ferry, and towards Merton. The dock platform came rushing up in front of her.

She missed it.

By some unbelievable chance, her flailing right hand caught at the lower bar of the rail around the edge. The jolt snapped her head back and forth, slamming it into the base of the platform.

She swore.

…and hung there, fists clenched tight around rope and rail.

Deep breaths. Her head, neck and arm all blazed with pain, but she could just about pull on the arm, hauling herself up next to the rail.

She hooked her other arm over the rail, clung to it for a moment. Gripped it tightly, and tried to bring her legs up onto the platform. She made it, but wasn’t sure where to go next. Slide under the rail? But that meant letting go…

She let go her right hand for the briefest of moments, to wipe it on her jacket, and grabbed hold of the rail again. Wriggled her legs as far onto the dock as she could.

Then, very, very slowly, leaned backwards.

She unhooked her left arm from the rail, still clutching the rope. With her weight on her screaming right arm, she walked her feet along the dock platform, dragging her back along it as she slid beneath the rail.

She slid her shoulders onto the platform, so that now only her head overhung the edge.

Then she let go of the rail.

Her arm screamed at her, not caring that it had been relieved now of its burden, only that it was in pain. Her head throbbed, her neck stabbed with pain. But all through her veins, a thumping throb and buzz coursed through her. And in her left hand, she still held the end of the rope.

The rope.

She rolled onto her side, and onto her hands and knees. The rope hung in a long loop, from the ferry to her hand. She crawled back to the edge, knotted and re-knotted it around the rail, before finally letting go of it.

Then, very slowly, she began to stand up.

Up in the ferry, people seemed to have found the ability to move. Perhaps that was the pilot, that figure in the doorway. Whoever it was, they were hauling on the other end of the rope, bringing the ferry down along a slow, rocking path towards the dock. It was slow going, but it seemed to be working.

Dusty wavered on her feet. She felt there ought to have been some kind of conscious thought in her mind, but she couldn’t find one. Instead, there were merely two feelings: the deep burn of the pain, across her head, her neck, her shoulders, and the singing of the buzz, ringing in her mind and her blood.

•  •  •
 
The sun was high on this cold Saturday afternoon, as the small group of people came together in this unlikely spot, tucked away at the highest point of Christ Church’s buildings. The strangely mixed crowd had big, bulky rowers, and tiny, delicate figures, all dressed in figure-hugging clothes, all gathered with an air of anticipation.

Some signal was given, and they all made a move, scrambling across the surface of the college where it seemed no person should be able to go. They dispersed, some heading this way, some that, and some a third. A few seconds later, the first of them detached from the building altogether, flying through space over to the next ship over.

Soon, they were all leaping, hurtling through space from ship to ship. Had an observer been watching from above the University, they would perhaps have seen the tiny figures scattered all across it, spreading out from the start point. Or perhaps they would not—they were, after all, dressed so as not to be seen. Leaping was not an officially recognised pastime...

The race lasted no more than half an hour. The figures began to converge again, on a different point over by the Chemistry department. The first to arrive collapsed on the high platform, then stumbled back to her feet, to be greeted with a congratulatory handshake from the veteran waiting to take down results. She was followed shortly by another racer, who dropped down to the platform from above with a cocky flourish. The veteran congratulated him, too, and waved a hand at the steps down. They danced away down them, waving and laughing at each other.
 
•  •  •
 
“Harper, Harper, Harper!” Dusty bounced through into their room, leapt forward to wrap Harper in a crushing hug. “Harper, I won!”

He stumbled backwards, hugged her back, patting her on the shoulder. “Oh, well done!” His grin was uncertain, but he was perhaps more overwhelmed than anything.

Toby came in behind her, dancing and twirling on tiptoes. “She was amazing. Like I said, she’s a natural. No competition.”

Harper half-laughed. “Well, she would be, right? Can’t be doing anything by halves, eh, Dust?”

She gave him a playful shove and glare, dancing away from him again and back to Toby. She hugged him, too.

“So, you guys going to be able to eat dinner, or are you going to be too high to sit still and eat it?”

Toby grinned. “No, no, I’m sure we’ll manage. You’re actually turning up today, then?”

There was a pause, and Dusty froze in her twirling, eyeing first one, then the other. Then:

“Of course. I’m hungry.”

Dusty breathed again, twirled a full three-sixty. She wobbled, nearly overbalanced, and caught herself just before she went tumbling into the table.

The boys exploded into peals of laughter. She glared at them, folding her arms in a mock huff.

“Well, if you’re going to be like that, I’m going to dinner!”

She flounced out of the room, and they followed, still laughing.

“Hey, hey, hey, Dust.”

She turned in the corridor, saw Harper standing in the doorway with his arms spread. She grinned, darted back over, and he wrapped her in a hug, dragging Toby sideways into it. Toby stumbled over, laughing, and wrapped his long arms around them both.

“You guys. You guys are awesome,” Harper said.

“Yeah, we know,” Toby replied with a wink. “But I’m hungry. Dinner?”

“Indeed.”

They split out of the hug, and gambolled down the corridor, the very picture of ridiculous cheerfulness. As they flailed around corners and stumbled crazily into hall for dinner, Dusty spared a moment in her high to reflect on how much nicer the world was when they were all talking.