From Fever Crumb: A Web of Air In her girlhood she had often heard old Dr. Collihole, her fellow Engineer, describe his dreams of flight. She had even flown herself, in the balloon that he had built from scrap paper and filled with hot air on the roof of Godshawk's Head. She hadlistened to him recount the legends about heavierthan- air flying machines built by the Ancients, and dismiss them, sadly, as mere fairy tales, because all his experiments had led him to believe that heavier-than-air flight was impossible. But it seemed to her that someone in Mayda did not agree. Someone in this city was designing a flying machine, or at least a glider. And now a model of it had flown into the hands of one of the few people in this quarter of Europa who could understand what it was... Which seemed to Fever to be such an unlikely coincidence that she did not think that it could be a coincidence at all. But whoever had launched the glider, from those dark terraces above her, did not seem to want to show themselves, and it was late, and the moon was dipping behind the shoulder of the crater, and so, clutching the white glider to her chest, she went walking thoughtfully back into the city. The angels had lost interest in her. But from the shadowed terraces above, someone watched her go. Excerpted from A Web of Air by Philip Reeve All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
