Elise Runs and Dorothy Falls

Chapter 30

What did Dorothy Blainwick think about the girl named Elise? If Elise ran, where did Dorothy fall?

Then in the distance she saw a little red light. Her heart leaped into her throat, and, trembling, she stood to see. Slowly but surely it approached over the waves.

Ding... bong... ding... bong...

It was lamppost whose top glowed like a lampshade, whose top looked just like a bell. When it swayed far enough to one side or the other it rang out just like a bell. Eventually, and very gently, it stopped a little off the Whim's starboard bow, its rounded bottom keeping it afloat.

Elise watched it for a moment, wondering what in the world she could do, when quite suddenly, but quite slowly, it began to bob away again.

"It's asking me to follow it! But..." She looked around desperately at the controls. "How do I drive this thing? I'm sorry, Dorothy..." She moved Dorothy away from the pilot's console and sat down. In front of her sat a wheel and a display of many different buttons and knobs. The lamppost grew smaller and smaller.

"No, no, no!"

In nothing short of a miracle, Elise pressed the right button to engage the thrusters. They fired for but a moment, however, and even when she pressed the button a second time—even sustaining that pressure—nothing happened. She took the wheel and began to pursue. She could only hope she had enough momentum to carry her to her destination, wherever in the unknown that might be.

As if gliding through space, the ship sailed over the sea without resistance. It wasn't hard at all to steer, even for her. Her heart never quit racing. The lamppost swayed from side to side, going ding bong ding bong, ding bong ding bong, ding bong ding bong... It went on like this for a long time.

Then, the clouds above the Whim began to emit yellow luminescence. Elise in all her years had never seen anything like it. Outside, she spied the water changing from black to something greener, bluer. The glow continued to build, and so too the greens and the blues, until it hit her. She had seen that glow before. It was sunlight.

Bursting from a dark wall of clouds, the Whim propelled itself into clear skies. Below the zeppelin lay a brilliant turquoise ocean, foaming white and seashell yellow, and above it spread the great open sky, troubled by only the fastest and brightest cumulonimbus. Elise half-expected to find three suns, or one sun, or no suns—but there were her two suns, gold and white, lightning up this new world for the very first time to human eyes, so far as she knew.

Ahead, on a splendid green island, sat the most wondrous building Elise had ever seen. Constructed of orange, red, and emerald green wood, it had beautiful hip-and-gable roofs and a thousand windows which slid left to right. Pink lily-print curtains adorned those windows as well as balconies that went all the way to the top. The eastern side of the structure had six water wheels, each one a hundred times the size of the one at her village mill, and each one churned a white waterfall. On the western side of island, neighboring the vast structure, rose a field of white wind turbines straight from the water.

Sixty, seventy stories tall the monument must have been. At the front stood a titanic golden archway that you would call a torii, strung with lanterns and flags, and a dock where anchored a half dozen ships that you would call yakatabune. It could have anchored a hundred more. You would look at all of this and think you were at some extravagant place off the coast of Japan, maybe where tourists would go to spend a lot of money, and for a fantasy story you would be just about right.

"What...? Is that...?"

Elise looked down to see Dorothy stirring and squinting through watery eyes.