“Keep up, Martin.” Aunt Lily’s voice is sharp and brisk. “No lagging behind.”
“Yes, Mum,” Martin says obediently.
Gerard tries not to roll his eyes. Aunt Lily has an even better sense for when they’re being impertinent (her word) than his mother does (her word is insubordinate) and he knows she’ll take it out on Martin if she catches him. The truth is that Martin is probably the only person in the family not having trouble keeping up with Gerard’s mother. Melanie has brought along a wooden trunk for some reason, and Gerard doesn’t know if it’s full or just that the trunk itself is heavy, but she mostly seems to be progressing along by heaving the trunk forward and using its momentum to propel herself and she won’t let anyone else help her. Aunt Lily is having one of her bad days and won’t admit it, so her cane is discreetly packed away—if she even brought it—and she’s leaning heavily on Uncle Roger, who’s obviously struggling with both her and their large suitcase.
Martin, on the other hand, has only his backpack, his clothes rolled tightly and neatly slotted in place; that, his current knitting project, and a couple of (carefully vetted) books are the only things he has with him. Even Gerard has packed more than that, and Gerard is used to going on long trips, so this is nothing particularly new.
Except that it is. Because the “trips” Gerard and his mother usually take are work-related, hunting down books and talking to people and…things bound up in the Fourteen. This, though, is an honest-to-goodness vacation.
And it’s one he’s taking with his whole family.
He can’t quite believe that his mother actually agreed to this. He’s not sure what’s going on, what the impetus was, but he’s also not going to ask too many questions lest he not enjoy the answers. Because they’re not just going on vacation, they’re going on vacation to another country, and they’re going to be gone for two whole weeks. She’s even promised she’s not “working”—no meetings, no dealings, no encounters. Just a vacation. She won’t even monitor Gerard’s activities, and he’s welcome to spend as much time with Melanie and Martin as he likes.
There’s got to be a catch somewhere, but for right now he’s going to take it and run.
Right now, the concern is that they might not have left themselves enough time to get through security. Gerard hasn’t flown in a while—his mother usually takes trains whenever possible, and he honestly prefers that—but he guesses wherever they’re going, it’s somehow cheaper for all of them to fly than to take the train. Or maybe she thinks it’ll be better for Aunt Lily. Whatever the case, security is a lot more intense than the last time he flew, and even having left themselves the usual amount of time, Gerard eyes the long lines to get through security and wonders if they’re going to make it. Why the United States has to mess everything up for everybody is beyond him.
Aunt Lily gets to go through a special line once they’ve checked their bags (which takes forever, especially with Melanie’s trunk), and Uncle Roger gets to go with her, but Gerard’s mother hands Gerard and his siblings their tickets, points them at the regular line, and tells them to meet them at the gate. He can’t help but be a little relieved. It’s at least a few minutes away from her, anyway.
“Where are we going, anyway?” Melanie asks as they join the slow-moving queue. She’s still clutching the bag Gerard got her two Christmases ago, which makes him happy in ways he can’t really explain.
“Dunno. Mum didn’t tell me.” Gerard pats down his pockets, trying to remember which one he shoved his passport in.
Martin, who’s already holding his shoes in one hand despite the fact that it’s going to be at least ten minutes before they’re at the point where that’s necessary, studies the ticket held in the other. His face lights up. “Oh, we’re flying into Katowice!”
“Where’s that?”
“It’s in the southern part of Poland, kind of near the Carpathian Mountains. It’s the largest city in Upper Silesia.” Martin’s eyes shine. “Granddad’s parents came from pretty near there.”
“We’ll have to poke around some, see if you’ve still got family there,” Gerard tells him. Martin’s never exactly been big on genealogy or anything like that, but still, he must be interested in knowing if he has family. Especially if it’s related to his grandfather. Actually, Gerard would be interested in meeting anyone related to the old man, too. A family that produced someone as kind as Martin has to be worth knowing.
Of course, they also produced Aunt Lily, so who knows.
They have a momentary delay at the security checkpoint, where they have to convince the guard on duty that they aren’t unaccompanied minors and that they really are meeting their parents at the gate; Gerard still isn’t sure she really believes them, but she lets them through with a dire warning about running on the premises and not losing their tickets or passports. There’s another delay while Melanie and Gerard painstakingly re-lace their boots, and then Martin hands him the various things he’s stuffed in his pockets in lieu of a carry-on bag and they’re off again. The corridors are crowded and confusing; the numbers make little sense, and Gerard isn’t entirely certain which way they’re even supposed to go to catch their plane.
“I think this place was designed by the Spiral,” he grumbles, dodging out of the way of a small child dragging a rolling backpack and clutching a teddy bear almost as big as she is. “Maximum confusion for minimum effort.”
Martin stops a man wearing a blazer and badge decreeing him to be a member of the airport staff and holds out his ticket. “Excuse me, can you tell us if we’re heading the right way, please?”
The employee asks them, again, if they’re traveling unaccompanied, and they again assure him that they aren’t. Gerard assumes there’s just some kind of policy regarding children and teenagers walking around without adults until they get to the right stretch of concourse and the tannoy crackles to life with the final call for their flight, at which point it occurs to him that if they’d been unaccompanied minors, they likely would have been able to ride in some kind of conveyance to get here faster.
They make it to the gate just in time, and although Melanie and Martin spend the entirety of their dash debating—bickering might be the better word—over which of them will take the responsibility for them being late, in the end, they don’t even need an excuse. The woman simply scans their tickets and waves them through, then shuts the door behind them.
The flight is nearly full, and even if it wasn’t, Gerard’s mother and Uncle Roger and Aunt Lily are sitting close enough to the front that they can’t miss the three of them squeezing past, mumbling apologies. There’s another embarrassing moment where the stewardess checks their tickets and discovers they’ve been booked into the exit row—Gerard is old enough to sit there, but Melanie and Martin aren’t—and then holds up the flight even further while she walks up and down the aisle trying to find someone willing and able to switch with them. There’s also a moment of worry when it looks like only Martin and Melanie will be allowed to move, but Melanie refuses to sit without both of her brothers. She’s very emphatic about that.
In the end, a couple in the very back row agrees to take the exit row and let them sit together. There’s not room to stow Martin’s backpack under the seat in front of him, so he quickly pulls out a thick blue book and hands the rest of the bag to the stewardess, who takes it to find somewhere to stow it while the three of them sit down. Gerard figures Melanie will want the window, but to his surprise, she insists on taking the middle. Martin silently gestures for Gerard to take the window, so, slightly bewildered, he does and buckles in for the safety briefing.
Truthfully, he more than half tunes it out. Most of it is intuitive, the rest of it is worst-case scenarios, and he’s flown before, after all, even if he doesn’t much like it. Short of one of the Fourteen attacking the plane, he doesn’t think there’s much he needs to worry about. Martin and Melanie, though, seem totally engrossed in the briefing.
The plane begins taxiing backwards. Gerard glances out the window, watching as the concourse rolls away, then feels the lightest of touches on the back of his hand. He turns his hand over automatically, and Melanie’s fingers wrap around his hand immediately and squeeze.
Surprised, Gerard turns to fully face her. She’s pressed as far back against the seat as possible, feet tucked back under her seat, clutching both Gerard’s and Martin’s hand. Beyond her, Martin sits absolutely still, shoulders and spine perfectly straight, his free hand curled around the other armrest. Both of them are staring directly at the backs of the seats in front of them. With a jolt, Gerard realizes they’re both scared.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, keeping his voice as low as he can. “All that stuff, it’s just a precaution. It’s probably not going to happen.”
Martin shakes his head minutely but doesn’t speak, his lips pressed tightly together. Melanie shrinks back further into her seat, somehow. Gerard decides to forgo comforting words and just be there for them as best he can.
He tries to remember his first flight. Was he scared? Or was he just excited? Or was he even thinking about the flight? He was young—it was long before he met Martin even—and he can’t even remember where they were going. He also remembers falling asleep not long after the plane took off.
For the first time, he wonders if his mother drugged him to keep him from making a fuss.
They don’t exactly relax when the plane gets off the ground and seems to level out a bit, but they aren’t quite as rigid. Melanie lets go of their hands and slumps down in her seat, somehow picking up her feet and resting them on the cushion. Martin, for his part, tugs the book out of the seat pocket in front of him and cracks it open. Gerard cranes his head to see the title.
“Death On Board?” he hazards.
“It’s a collection of Agatha Christie mysteries,” Martin says without looking up.
The plane banks a turn, and Gerard can see the sprawl of a city, close enough he can see individual buildings but distant enough that he can’t make out details. It’s almost certainly not London, not with the direction they’re heading, but he can’t resist quipping, “I can see my house from here, look.”
“Urgh.” Melanie scrunches down further. Martin glances up from his book, seemingly involuntarily, and his face goes white. He quickly buries it back in his book.
At that, Gerard realizes what’s going on, and he feels absolutely horrible. “Sorry. As soon as we hit cruising altitude, I’ll shut the blind.”
“Thank you,” Martin mumbles.
Melanie fidgets with the ruffled skirt hem she’s wearing over her leggings. “Gerry? Can you get me my book so I don’t have to…”
“Look?” Gerard supplies. “No problem.” He bends over and snags her bag from where she’s tucked it under the seat in front of her, fishes out the Hans Christian Anderson book she’s had as long as he’s known her, and hands it to her. Taking a hint from them, he finds the Basil Copper novel he’s been reading in the pocket he stowed it in and settles back to read as well.
The stewardess makes Melanie get her feet off the seat and sit up properly, but for the most part, they’re left alone. At last, the overhead crackles to life as the captain announces they’ve reached cruising altitude and turns off the seatbelt sign. Immediately, Gerard closes his book, using a finger to mark his place, and tugs the shade down. Martin takes the first easy breath he’s taken since they boarded.
Melanie slides the bookmark into her own book and rests it on her lap, then looks up at Gerard. She’s scowling, but he can still see the worry in her eyes. “They’re not going to try that again on the way home, are they?”
Gerard frowns, trying to figure out what she means. “What, making us not sit together?”
“Making us sit in an exit row.”
“Oh. I dunno. We can double-check at the gate when we pick up our tickets home, I guess.” Gerard shrugs. “Maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll let us get away with it if we say we’re triplets and you’re just small for your age.”
“No!” Melanie’s voice is sharp and slightly panicked. Martin nearly drops his book and quickly tucks the flap of the dust jacket in between the pages.
Gerard stares at her. “Why not? What’s wrong? We won’t—Neens, it’s really not very likely we’d need to be able to open it or anything. Planes are pretty safe these days.”
“I—I know, but—” Melanie bites her lip and looks from Gerard to Martin and back. “It’s just—you don’t normally fly places, and I heard Aunt Mary telling Mum that it’s all been arranged and it won’t touch anyone else, and then we were in the exit row and I just—I was, I was worried she was trying to sacrifice us to the Vast.”
Okay…that hadn’t occurred to him, but now that it has, Gerard has to admit it makes sense. His mother isn’t really interested in tying herself to a single entity, but if she found something that she was interested in trying—or worse, if she found something that was going to come after her and needed to placate it—she’s not above throwing all three of them to it if she can get away with it. And since Uncle Roger isn’t really…attuned to the Fourteen, it’s highly likely he’d never know precisely what happened to them. Depending on what his mother has—had—planned, he might not even remember them.
“They were talking about when we get there,” Martin says gently. “It’s why Aunt Mary and Mum said we can go off on our own—because they don’t want us hanging about when they’re doing…whatever they’re doing. I think it’s something to help Mum get better, maybe.” He pauses, then adds, “Which isn’t necessarily comforting, but at least it doesn’t involve chucking us off an airplane.”
Gerard blinks at Martin. “Wait, that wasn’t what you were worried about?”
“No. I just don’t like heights,” Martin confesses. “At least not—I don’t mind being in a building so much, but things like—like planes and roller coasters and—I don’t like knowing there’s not really anything much between me and the ground.”
“Oh.” Gerard leans over Melanie and squeezes Martin’s arm comfortingly. “Well, I’ll keep the shade down as long as I can, and when we’re on the descent you can close your eyes again. It’ll be okay.”
Martin gives Gerard a shy smile. “Thanks, Gerry.”
“Of course.” Gerard sits back. “Meanwhile. Now that we know where we’re going, what do we want to do when we get there?”
“We know where we’re landing,” Melanie corrects him. “We might be going anywhere from there.”
“We can run,” Gerard says. “Slip away from them the minute we get off the concourse, disappear into the countryside. Martin speaks Polish, he can translate for us. I can make us a pretty good living selling books. We’ll open up our own used book shop, sell nothing to do with the Fourteen. Few years down the line we’ll be able to buy a sheep farm and sell sweaters and socks made from wool spun off our very own ewes. We can change our names. They’ll never find us.”
Martin and Melanie are giggling so hard they can’t breathe by the time he gets to the end of this, which is kind of his goal. He chooses not to admit out loud how much he’d like for it to be true. Unfortunately, he’ll have to settle for it just being a vacation and then back to London.
Still. At least they can have this much.