“I’m going to wait till the wind seems right, and then I’ll yell ‘Now!’ Emery, you’ll just have to watch me and see where she goes, then do your best. Zach and Tyler—you guys fan out and be ready to catch her if she starts to fall. Catch her gently,” he added.
“What about me?” called Robbie.
“You stay with Emery in case he needs backup.”
“Backup?” Robbie frowned.
“You know,” said Emery in a low voice. “In case I need help getting Leonard back to the rubber room.”
The boys began to walk toward the water. Tyler had his cell phone out. He looked at Zach, who dug his phone from his pocket.
“Are they texting each other?” asked Emery in disbelief. “They’re ten feet apart.”
“Ready?” Leonard shouted.
“Ready,” the boys yelled back.
Robbie turned to Emery. “What about you, Captain Marvo?”
Emery grinned and held up the camera. “I have never been readier.”
Atop the dune, Leonard stooped to retrieve the Bellerophon from its box. As he straightened, its propellers began turning madly. Candy-striped rotators spun like pinwheels as he cradled it against his chest, his long white braids threatening to tangle with the parasol.
The wind gusted suddenly: Robbie’s throat tightened as he watched the tiny black figure beneath the fuselage swing wildly back and forth, like an accelerated pendulum. Leonard slipped in the sand and fought to regain his balance.
“Uh-oh,” said Emery.
The wind died, and Leonard righted himself. Even from the beach, Robbie could see how his face had gone white.
“Are you okay?” yelled Zach.
“I’m okay,” Leonard yelled back.
He gave them a shaky smile, then stared intently at the horizon. After a minute his head tilted, as though listening to something. Abruptly he straightened and raised the Bellerophon in both hands. Behind him, palmettos thrashed as the wind gusted.
“Now!” he shouted.
Leonard opened his hands. As though it were a butterfly, the Belllerophon lifted into the air. Its feathery parasol billowed. Fan-shaped wings rose and fell; ailerons flapped and gears whirled like pinwheels. There was a sound like a train rushing through a tunnel, and Robbie stared open-mouthed as the Bellerophon skimmed the air above his head, its pilot pedaling furiously as it headed toward the sea.
Robbie gasped. The boys raced after it, yelling. Emery followed, camera clamped to his face and Robbie at his heels.
“This is fucking incredible!’ Emery shouted. “Look at that thing go!”
They drew up a few yards from the water. The Bellerophon whirred past, barely an arm’s-length above them. Robbie’s eyes blurred as he stared after that brilliant whirl of color and motion, a child’s dream of flight soaring just out of reach. Emery waded into the shallows with his camera. The boys followed, splashing and waving at the little plane. From the dune behind them echoed Leonard’s voice.
“Godspeed.”
Robbie gazed silently at the horizon as the Bellerophon continued on, its pilot silhouetted black against the sky, wings opened like sails. Its sound grew fainter, a soft whirring that might have been a flock of birds. Soon it would be gone. Robbie stepped to the water’s edge and craned his neck to keep it in sight.
Without warning a green flare erupted from the waves and streamed toward the little aircraft. Like a meteor shooting upward, emerald blossomed into a blinding radiance that engulfed the Bellerophon. For an instant Robbie saw the flying machine, a golden wheel spinning within a comet’s heart.
Then the blazing light was gone, and with it the Bellerophon.
Robbie gazed, stunned, at the empty air. After an endless moment he became aware of something—someone—near him. He turned to see Emery stagger from the water, soaking wet, the camera held uselessly at his side.
“I dropped it,” he gasped. “When that—whatever the fuck it was, when it came, I dropped the camera.”
Robbie helped him onto the sand.
“I felt it.” Emery shuddered, his hand tight around Robbie’s arm. “Like a riptide. I thought I’d go under.”
Robbie pulled away from him. “Zach?” he shouted, panicked. “Tyler, Zach, are you—”
Emery pointed at the water, and Robbie saw them, heron-stepping through the waves and whooping in triumph as they hurried back to shore.
“What happened?” Leonard ran up alongside Robbie and grabbed him. “Did you see that?”
Robbie nodded. Leonard turned to Emery, his eyes wild. “Did you get it? The Bellerophon? And that flare? Like the original film! The same thing, the exact same thing!”
Emery reached for Robbie’s sweatshirt. “Give me that, I’ll see if I can dry the camera.”
Leonard stared blankly at Emery’s soaked clothes, the water dripping from the vidcam.
“Oh no.” He covered his face with his hands. “Oh no…”
“We got it!” Zach pushed between the grownups. “We got it, we got it!” Tyler ran up beside him, waving his cell phone. “Look!”
Everyone crowded together, the boys tilting their phones until the screens showed black.
“Okay,” said Tyler. “Watch this.”
Robbie shaded his eyes, squinting.
And there it was, a bright mote bobbing across a formless gray field, growing bigger and bigger until he could see it clearly—the whirl of wings and gears, the ballooning peacock-feather parasol and steadfast pilot on the velocipede; the swift silent flare that lashed from the water then disappeared in an eyeblink.
“Now watch mine,” said Zach, and the same scene played again from a different angle. “Eighteen seconds.”
“Mine says twenty,” said Tyler. Robbie glanced uneasily at the water.
“Maybe we should head back to the house,” he said.
Leonard seized Zach’s shoulder. “Can you get me that? Both of you? Email it or something?”
“Sure. But we’ll need to go where we can get a signal.”
“I’ll drive you,” said Emery. “Let me get into some dry clothes.”
He turned and trudged up the beach, the boys laughing and running behind him.
Leonard walked the last few steps to the water’s edge, spray staining the tip of one cowboy boot. He stared at the horizon, his expression puzzled yet oddly expectant.
Robbie hesitated, then joined him. The sea appeared calm, green-glass waves rolling in long swells beneath parchment-colored sky. Through a gap in the clouds he could make out a glint of blue, like a noonday star. He gazed at it in silence, and after a minute asked, “Did you know that was going to happen?”
Leonard shook his head. “No. How could I?”
“Then—what was it?” Robbie looked at him helplessly. “Do you have any idea?”
Leonard said nothing. Finally he turned to Robbie. Unexpectedly, he smiled.
“I have no clue. But you saw it, right?” Robbie nodded. “And you saw her fly. The Bellerophon.”
Leonard took another step, heedless of waves at his feet. “She flew.” His voice was barely a whisper. “She really flew.”
That night nobody slept. Emery drove Zach, Tyler and Leonard to a Dunkin Donuts where the boys got a cellphone signal and sent their movie footage to Leonard’s laptop. Back at the house, he disappeared while the others sat on the deck and discussed, over and over again, what they had seen. The boys wanted to return to the beach, but Robbie refused to let them go. As a peace offering, he gave them each a beer. By the time Leonard emerged from his room with the laptop, it was after three a.m.