Flight of the Gazebo

Chapter 8 - Welcome Committee

Drome was cold. Not the sort of cold that comes from opening the front door on a winter's evening to put out the milk bottles, but a deep, icy chill that reached deep into the marrow of his bones. His cycling outfit made only the feeblest attempt to shield him from the strong wind of his aerial journey. He'd read somewhere that his outfit's artificial fibres helped cool the body, dissipating the heat built up by cycling. Not at all what he wanted right now. At an altitude of a thousand feet rushing through clawing, freezing air, he really could have done with something a little more substantial.

As the hours had passed, the ground below his dangling feet had changed from rolling green hills and shallow, fertile valleys - dotted here and there with towns and villages - to an empty plain that ended at the sandy shores of a grey, heaving sea. It was during this part of his flight, passing over the white-capped, dull waves, that he started to feel the cold. By the time he reached another shore whose foam-lashed black rocks protruded from the sea like rotting teeth from grey gums, he was shivering uncontrollably. The land grew steeper and ever more jagged until it became a range of snow-topped mountains.

The wind had long ago ceased knifing through his cycling gear. Now it sucked at his being, leaching the last vestiges of warmth from his soul.

He felt like an airborne icicle, an impression that wasn't helped when he flew into a slate-coloured cloud and was pelted with sharp, stinging snow flakes.

The cloud obscured most of his view, but from time to time he caught glimpses below of mountains growing ever steeper and craggier, their summits drawing closer and closer to his feet. Part of his mind was appalled that he wasn't worried he would collide with one of the grim, forbidding peaks. But he was past that stage. All he wanted was an end to his suffering.

Or so he thought.

It was when the cloud cleared suddenly and he found himself in bright sunlight with a double peaked mountain looming directly before him. Reality reasserted itself and he realised he still had the capacity to worry. His heart lifted for a second when it looked like he was going to pass between the peaks unscathed. But he was slowly losing altitude and his concern rapidly turned to horror.

He was too low. The gap between the peaks was filled with a shoulder of snow and he was heading right for it.

The thought that he was about to be smashed into a million pieces crept glacially into his chilled mind, and with a feeble cry he braced himself for the impact. The slope swept towards him: ice, snow and rock blurred in furious confusion. With a dull thump, he hit just below the crest of the shoulder. Powder snow exploded outward from the opposite side and Drome burst through along with it, careened out of control down the slope for a few moments, then jolted back into the air.

Dazed and confused, he clawed the snow from his eyes, mouth and nostrils and his horror jolted up a notch. A vast, craggy mountainside loomed a quarter of a mile away straight in front of him. Black and large, it heaved up from its smaller siblings like an ancient Norse troll.

He dipped suddenly into a cloud, only to break clear a few seconds later, revealing the mountain's flank approaching at dizzying speed. He made feeble waving motions with his numb limbs and forced open his frozen jaw to scream. All he could manage was a strangled "Aaawk!" as he plunged under a massive rocky overhang.

To his surprise, he didn't crash into the side of the mountain but found himself hurtling down a long, straight cave. The uneven walls snapped past, then slowed as he decelerated until he was moving no faster than walking pace. His frozen toes bumped into the floor and the force that had carried him vanished. He skidded a few feet, then, like a melting snowman, he sank into a crumpled heap.