They did have shorthand and filing lessons the first day and the next days too. There wasn't much else to do during the trip. The monotony of flying only broke a few times, when the dirigible landed and then took off again. Only the passengers who had tickets for that particular stop were allowed to disembark. The rest had to stay aboard.

The faint swaying of the gondola was lulling, the bunks in the cabins narrow but soft, so many long-distance passengers, like Mary and Charlie, slept late every morning. When they didn't have lessons or sleep, they read or spent time in the games room. Charlie also went outside at least a couple times a day. She would wrap her warmest clothing and Mary's around herself and spend hours listening to the cables' songs. Only the icy wind that always blew across the outer deck would drive her down. The crew got used to her staying at the railing motionless for long stretches. She didn't bother them, and they didn't bother her.

"You're going outside again, Charlie?" Mary closed the book she was reading and stretched on her bunk. Her hands pushed at the upper bunk above her head.

"Come with me, Mary. You've never gone outside. It's so peaceful up there, and everything below is so tiny. All our troubles below are tiny from up here," Charlie said dreamily. She wrapped Mary's woolen pink scarf around her head. "Today is our last day, your last chance. We're due to land in Denver in the afternoon."

"Well." Mary sighed. "Okay. But only for a couple minutes."

"I'd have stayed here forever, if it wasn't so boring. Do they allow women to work as stewards? I saw only men."

"I think only men are allowed to serve aboard, like on sea ships."

"It's so unfair."

"Life is unfair, Charlie. You'd better get used to it." Mary shrugged with practiced fatalism and put on her coat. "Or you'll be constantly disappointed."

"I guess. Wrap your brown shawl around your head, not your hat. The wind would blow the hat off."

Mary snorted but obediently wrapped her warm shawl over her head, tucked the ends into the coat, and climbed after Charlie up the stairs to the outer deck.

The weather was fair, and the land far below lay open for miles in all directions, like a map. Green forests, a thin blue ribbon of a river, a charcoal line of the railroad in the distance, and the mountains zooming in front of them, huge and ragged. No people. No cities. Just wilderness and the endless blue sky.

"Wow!" Mary murmured.

"Isn't it wonderful?"

"Yes," Mary agreed quietly. "I had no idea."

An officer hurried past them, but Charlie didn't spare him a glance. She was used to the crewmen on deck. The majestic vista commanded all her attention, and the low harmonic thrumming of the cables sang in her blood.

No, not today. Today, a dissonance intruded on the cables' celestial melody, as if one of the strings of a violin had sagged. Charlie shook off the trance she had often experienced up here. The cables shouldn't squeak like that.

"Something is wrong, Mary."

"What? What's wrong? You mean all the crewmen? I thought it was normal."

Charlie looked where Mary indicated. Half-way towards the stern, several crewmen talked animatedly beside one of the cable nests. Charlie followed their gazes and pointed fingers upward, and her heart plummeted. One of the cables seemed to be unraveling in the middle, between the gas-filled balloons and the gondola. A few steel filaments already flapped free, creating the strange moaning sound on the edge of human hearing. As she watched, horrified, another filament broke free. The gondola lurched.

It wasn't a big lurch, just a harbinger of what might come, if the cable broke. It shouldn't be happening. The dirigible company protected their equipment vehemently. There were all those fences around air fields, and inspections by the land teams at every stop, or at least that's what the brochures said. Maybe one of the inspectors hadn't done his job? Or maybe he had been the one to sabotage the cable?

Cold weight settled in the bottom of Charlie's stomach.

"It's breaking," Mary whispered beside her.

Like a somnambulist, Charlie started towards the faulty cable. The officer intercepted them.

"Ladies, you must go back down to your cabin. We'll have to make an emergency landing." His voice was calm but his eyes betrayed his distress. He didn't believe his own words.

"I might be able to fix it," Charlie said. "But I need to touch that cable."

"Fix it?" His weather-roughened face stiffened in disbelief.

"No, Charlie," Mary said quickly. "Let's go down." She switched to the officer. "She is just a girl, sir. She doesn't have any training."

"I can work metal," Charlie said stubbornly. "There is only forest below. We have children on board. It would be hard to land here. I have to try something."

"A metal monger?" The officer's gloved hand landed on Charlie's shoulder.

"She is untrained," Mary repeated.

"Try," the officer said, disregarding Mary's agitation, and propelled Charlie towards the fraying cable. He gestured the crewmen aside, clearing the space for Charlie.

She pulled her glove off her hand and closed her fingers around the bottom of the cable. The metal was icy-cold, and the cable too thick for her small hand. Her fingers didn't meet, but it didn't matter. Now that she was touching it, she felt all the separate steel strands braided together for strength. Half-way up to the other anchor point, most of them were cut. The extent of the damage wasn't visible from below, as the few strands that remained whole camouflaged the entire mess. Unfortunately they couldn't support the weight pulling on them. They were breaking.

The only thing Charlie could do to fix the crippled cable was to fuse al the filaments back together at the breakage point. It would create one lump of unyielding metal in place of the flexible cable, but it was better than no cable at all.

She concentrated, sending her magic up. It was too far from her point of contact, much farther than any lock she had ever worked with, but unlike her lock picking, in this case, she didn't need precision. She only needed to generate enough heat to weld the entire wreck together in the right place.

She closed her eyes and imagined the disconnected steel cords getting hotter, glowing with red heat, then white, becoming almost liquid, as they melted into each other. Then she let go.

She heard the metal clicking as it cooled off in the chilly wind but she couldn't see anything. A headache slammed at her with such force that she couldn't open her eyes. She whimpered and slid down to the deck to curl around herself. She had done all she could. Her hands squeezed her burning head in a futile attempt to ease the torment.

She didn't know what happened next. Someone carried her, but she didn't know who or where. Someone forced a sweet tea laced with bitter medicine into her mouth, and she swallowed obediently. Her mind was twisting in agony, and she drifted in and out of sleep on the recurring waves of pain. She might've cried or moaned at some point. She might've thrown up. People talked over her head, but the only sounds reaching her were disjointed syllables.

****

When Charlie opened her eyes again, she was in an unfamiliar room. No, not a room. It was a cabin, and it swayed faintly, so she was still inside the dirigible, still flying, but it wasn't their cabin. It was much bigger and plushier. And dark. They must've drawn the curtains over the porthole to block out the light.

She must've made a sound, because the next moment, Mary was kneeling in front of Charlie's bunk. "You're awake. How are you, Charlie?"

Charlie did a little inventory. She was covered by a very warm blanket. Her fingers moved beneath it. So did her toes.

"I think I'm okay," she croaked. "My mouth tastes like crap and my head still aches. Otherwise, I don't know. What happened? Where are we?"

"The captain's cabin. We're minutes away from Denver. I was afraid they'd have to carry you out of here. Can you walk? Slade will meet us there."

"Let's see." Regretfully, Charlie pushed the blanket away and sat on the bunk. Her head swam, and she closed her eyes again to fight off the dizziness. When it passed, she opened her eyes and carefully stood up. Mary gripped both her arms, obviously doubting Charlie's abilities to keep upright.

"I think I can walk," Charlie announced, "but I don't want to walk too far. Not yet." She attempted a grin. To her surprise, it worked despite her feeling so lousy. "Do you have some water here?"

"Sure." Mary poured her a glass of water. "Oh, god, Charlie. What happened?"

"You tell me. Did I fix the cable?"

"Yes. Well, at least I suppose you did. They said you welded it."

"Good. Let's go back to our cabin and get our stuff." Charlie shivered.

"It's all here." Mary nodded at their bags in the corner of the room. "Are you cold?"

"I always feel crappy after I work serious magic. Last time, after I opened a big bank vault, I almost fainted. I'll be fine tomorrow morning."

"Sit down." Mary pushed her back on the bunk and draped the blanket around her shoulders. "The captain wanted to talk to you. Can you see him now?"

"Yeah." Charlie nodded but regretted it immediately. Her head started pounding again, and pinwheels began spinning around her. She should refrain from sudden movements. Closing her eyes to banish the stupid spinning phantoms, she leaned on the wall behind her. She must've dozed off for a moment, because suddenly the captain's austere face appeared in front of her.

"Miss Perkins. I owe you a great deal. This company owes you. We could've had a serious accident, maybe even fatal, if that cable snapped. I want to express my thanks."

Charlie sighed. "Captain. The cable was sabotaged."

"I realize it's a possibility. We'll investigate this fully."
"It was sabotaged," Charlie repeated. "The cable is made of individual steel cords, all twined together, right? What I saw there was that the cords on the inside were cut. The cords on the outside of that cut were whole, but they were few and couldn't bear the strain. They started to tear. Before that, the fault was invisible."

His face changed, hardened. "You sure?"

"Yes. I don't know how someone managed to do that. It wasn't just a weak spot."

"Someone with magic like yours?"

Charlie winced. "I suppose it's possible, but that person must be very adept. It wouldn't be easy. It would be a precision job, designed to look like an accident, while you flew. I don't think I could've done it. You saw my fix. It was crude."

"But effective. It keeps us alive and aloft. Thank you, Miss Perkins." He took her hand, kissed it briefly, and stood up to leave. "We're landing soon. I communicated by radio with our Denver office. They authorized me to give you this. It's a certificate of unlimited flying with our company. Any time you wish to fly anywhere with American Dirigibles, your ticket will be free."

"Wow!" Charlie took the certificate from him. It was written on thick paper, with the company logo and all the stamps she could wish. Only the name—Charlotte Perkins—was wrong. Not her name at all. But she might keep the name just to be able to fly. She didn't want to revert back to Aaron's name. Perkins was better.

The captain watched her with a faint smile. "There are some journalists waiting for you on the landing field in Denver. The entire American federation wants to know what you did to keep the dirigible flying. People want to know you."

Charlie blanched. "No!" Panic exploded in her chest. "No journalists. No!" She started shaking. "No, please." Journalists would want to photograph her. Aaron always read the papers. He would know where she was.

"Miss Perkins? What is it? What are you afraid of?" He took both her hands in his own, but Charlie was unable to answer. She squeezed her eyes shut and repeated desperately, "No, no, no."

"Captain," Mary said. "She is on the run from an abusive husband. He promised to kill her. If anyone photographs her, he would know immediately where she is and come after her. Please, neither of us can talk to journalists. Could you, I don't know, sneak us away from the ship? As crewmembers maybe?"

Charlie's lungs seized. She couldn't breathe. "Please, Captain," she whispered.

"Of course," he said. "I'll send you spare uniforms, although I don't think we have anything small enough to fit you. You'll leave through the crew exit. I'll talk to the press."

"Could you leave my name out of it? Both our names?" Charlie pleaded.

He regarded her through hooded eyes for a long moment before he nodded and left.

"It'll be fine. Nobody will find you," Mary murmured and hugged Charlie. "Relax. You need to breathe."

"Yes." Charlie took a shaky breath. "So now, we are both running from our brutish husbands." She attempted a grin, and it came out, if a bit wobbly. "When did I marry, I wonder? I'm only eighteen."