Airship Stowaway

Back in the Air

Back on board the airship, Rasmussen announced that he was turning in. "We leave in morning."

Joanna went into the larger cabin, and lay down on the bed beneath the window, with a sense of satisfaction. But sleep proved elusive. She was too excited about her sudden reversal of fortune. 

At some point she nodded off, and was awakened by the sound of aero engines. She stared dozily out of the window at the dawn-tinged ground dropping away. 

She smiled as she remembered that she was going home. The view outside began to rotate, and the swollen red ball of the sun swung into view, half-hidden by the horizon. It continued to move across her line of sight, from left to right, until it disappeared from view. 

She continued to watch the chequerboard countryside pass below the ship. Morning mists clung to hollows and hedgerows, while the golden sunlight spilled across higher pastures and fields. But something was nagging at her. Some part of her sleepy brain had sounded the alarm, but she couldn't seem to bring it to the centre of her attention. 

She rolled back on the bed and tried to focus, but the thought was elusive and seemed to slip away. Her mind kept returning to the events of the previous evening, and Rasmussen's sudden change of heart. Why had it happened? Had it been because of the conversation with the strange men?

Suddenly the elusive thought snapped into place, and she sat bolt upright with a gasp. We're going the wrong way!

She stared desperately out of the window again, searching for evidence to prove herself wrong. But everything she saw confirmed her dreadful suspicion. The rising sun threw long shadows that extended away from the hedgerows, and it was obvious that they were heading towards it. To the east, not the west. 

She flopped back on the bed as the disappointment flooded through her. Rasmussen hadn't changed his mind. She wasn't going home. 

Worse than that, she realised, Rasmussen had lied to her, and therefore she was now his prisoner, with no idea of where he was taking her. When she had been trapped on the ship previously it had only been by circumstance, with no reason to suppose that she would be unable to leave when the ship reached its destination. All that had now changed. 

She jumped up and walked quickly to the door. The handle turned but the door refused to open. Fear stabbed into her heart. There was no doubt about it now. Rasmussen held her captive.  

Rasmussen unlocked the door some time later, allowing her to eat something and use the toilet, but continued to lock her in at night. On the morning of the third day in the Lotus Flower, Joanna awoke to see an enormous mountain range outside the cabin window. The immense snow-covered peaks appeared golden in the rays of the rising sun, and despite the horror of her situation, the sight struck her with wonder, cutting through the slough of despair that had enveloped her. She rolled closer to the window, and stared out. 

Far below, whitewashed buildings clung to the lower slopes of the mountains, dwarfed by their immense surroundings. The air was very clear, and the sun shone harshly out of a deep blue sky. The taller peaks were covered in snow, but the lower foothills and saddles were dry-looking, brown and grey rock. Even the valleys held little green.  

As she watched the incredible landscape unfold below, she became convinced that the Lotus Flower was losing altitude. By putting her head right up against the glass, she could just glimpse, forward and below, an enormous fortress-like structure, taking up the entire summit of a hill overlooking a valley. Its massive inwardly-sloping walls were huge blank faces, interrupted only by endless flights of stairs and long vertical rows of windows. The whitewashed walls gleamed in the harsh mountain light, but the central walls of the upper section, which were a dark reddish-brown, looked more forbidding. Some of its windows seemed to have golden canopies, and there were what looked like complicated golden chimneypots on the flat roofs. The airship seemed to be making for a landing pad on one of the larger roofs.

Sure enough, the Lotus Flower bumped down gently a few minutes later, and the drone of the engines wound down to silence. Seconds later, Rasmussen scurried around the airship, securing docking cables to iron rings stapled into the stone paving of the landing pad. He glanced once at her window, but did not pause in his work. Then he was off, striding away over the roof, and out of sight.

She waited, expecting at any moment to hear Rasmussen entering the gondola and coming down the companionway to release her, but the minutes ticked by in silence. After the elation at finally arriving somewhere, she felt the despair creeping back. Every passing second added to her frustration and sense of powerlessness. Somehow the feeling of being trapped was magnified by the fact that the airship was no longer moving.

Then the door gently unlocked. She turned towards it, ready to scream her anger and frustration at Rasmussen, perhaps even attack him. But the face which appeared around the door was that of a stranger.