Children, the village is doomed. Houses may be rebuilt and gardens replanted, but people cannot be replaced. Go and escape by the cliff route.
But Grandfather, you won’t be able to make it with your legs.
Do not trouble yourselves about me. Go on. Go!
Zomi felt her eyes grow warm and her throat constrict. She was thinking of her mother, and how she would behave if a fire approached and Zomi couldn’t get away because of her leg.
“You’ll never get the balloon up if you tangle it like that,” Luan calmly told the soldiers, who, being inexperienced with the workings of a hot-air balloon, were making a mess of things.
Glad to find someone whose speech he could actually understand, the nobleman immediately ran over and grabbed Luan by the lapels. “Is this your balloon? Excellent! Excellent! Quick, get it ready to fly.”
“What happened?”
“I came to this benighted valley because I heard that there were boars here with tusks in a pattern no one had captured. Since some of the boars were hiding deep in the woods, one of my followers had the clever idea to start fires to drive them out.”
“Don’t you know how dangerous that is with such a dry spring?”
“The idea worked! I got six excellent trophies. It’s not my fault that the wind shifts so quickly around here. We had to leave behind everything at our camp and barely managed to escape with our lives. Thank Tututika that you’re here!”
Luan shook his head. He and Zomi ran to straighten out the tangled balloon and to start the liquor-fueled stove. As the flame roared to life and the balloon began to fill, the nobleman and the soldiers cheered.
“It is best to start loading the gondola,” said Luan to the Earl of Méricüso.
“But this gondola is so small!”
“Toss out anything that is not necessary for flight. Get rid of the beds, the blankets, the food and water, and anything else you can free,” said Luan, exasperated.
“Right. Right. Good thinking!” said the earl.
As the soldiers scrambled to obey the earl and tore out everything that wasn’t bolted down in the gondola, Luan and Zomi continued to use the bamboo poles to straighten out the balloon so that it could be filled evenly with hot air.
“Mimi-tika,” whispered Luan. “Our first priority is to save Elder Comi’s life. He can’t climb the cliff to escape, so this balloon is his only chance. Later, no matter what I tell you to do, you have to obey, do you understand?”
“What are you thinking?” Zomi’s guard was up. Luan’s tone was too strange.
“Don’t argue! You’re the student. You must obey.”
“I won’t obey an order that is wrong!”
Luan laughed. “Now you sound like a Moralist. It was Kon Fiji himself who said that the duty to the Just and True supersedes all others, even a command from a teacher. I thought you didn’t like Kon Fiji.”
“Even an idiot can be right sometimes.”
“Ha! I dare say Kon Fiji never thought he’d be defended in these terms.”
The earl and his soldiers had finally succeeded in stripping the gondola of everything. They scrambled to pile in. Four of the soldiers sat on the bottom and crossed their arms to form a comfortable seat for the earl. The rest of the soldiers either climbed in and stepped on top of their comrades or hung on to the side of the gondola.
“Careful! Careful! Don’t damage the tusks!” shouted the earl as the boar’s heads were loaded in and carefully held up by the men around the earl. Luan shook his head at the ridiculous scene.
“Who told you that you get to fill the balloon with only your people?”
“The villagers can climb the cliff. That’s what they want to do anyway.”
“Why can’t you climb the cliff instead? You are fit and strong.”
The earl looked at Luan as if he were crazy. “Who knows how long I’ll be stranded on top of that mountain? These trophies won’t be properly preserved if I don’t get them to a taxidermist in time.”
Luan put a hand on Zomi’s shoulder to restrain her. “You have to make room for Elder Comi at least,” he said. The balloon was almost filled, and it strained against the tethering stake on the ground. “And Zomi and I have to be in there to pilot the balloon, unless one of you knows how to fly it. I warn you, fire can do strange things to air currents, and you need an experienced pilot.”
The earl looked at Luan and Zomi suspiciously. “This girl knows how to fly the balloon? I don’t want someone useless in here.”
Luan looked at the cringing flunkies holding up the earl’s muscular thighs and bit back a sarcastic remark. Instead, he simply said, “She’s young, but she’s an excellent pilot.”
The earl’s lips parted in a cold grin. “Then I won’t need you both, will I? Seize her!”
Several of the men hanging on to the side of the gondola hopped down to the ground, grabbed Zomi, and dragged her back to the gondola. Zomi screamed and kicked, but she was not strong enough to overcome the men. Luan rushed over to help, and one of the men unsheathed his hunting knife and slashed at Luan, who stumbled and fell to the ground.
The villagers rushed over. Without saying a word, Séji ripped open Luan’s leggings to reveal the sickening wound in his thigh. While she ripped strips from Luan’s robe to fashion a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, Képulu rummaged through her basket for leaves that she chewed into a poultice, applied it to the wound, and bandaged the leg.
Meanwhile, the earl’s men maneuvered the screaming Zomi into the gondola. The four “cushions” shifted to make space so that she was directly under the dials and levers for controlling the balloon’s stove, and then they squeezed in and held her legs so that she was trapped next to the earl and his pile of boar trophies.
“Let me go!” Zomi shouted. “I won’t fly the balloon for you.”
The angry villagers shouted and approached the balloon. The earl’s men unsheathed their hunting knives and brandished them threateningly.
“Stop!” Luan shouted to make himself heard above the commotion. There was such a natural authority in his tone that both sides halted. In a calmer tone, he continued, “Mimi-tika, listen, you have to fly the balloon without me.”
“Absolutely not! I’m not leaving here without you.”
“We must save Elder Comi! We can dangle a harness under the gondola to carry him to safety. The rest of us can make our way up the cliffs.”
“You can’t climb the cliffs with your leg like that!”
“Sure I can!” Luan got up. Séji reached out to support him, but he pushed her away, and stood as straight as a crane. “You managed to climb the cliff before with a brace, and I can do the same. Do not underestimate the medical arts of the villagers.”
Zomi still looked skeptical, but she was calming down. Maybe this was a solution after all.
“Hurry, hurry!” shouted the earl. “If you want that old peasant saved, do it now!”
As Luan explained what he wanted with gestures and roughly carved logograms on the ground, the villagers quickly fashioned a harness out of sticks and pelts to support Elder Comi and to tie it to the walls of the gondola.
The balloon was almost completely filled, and the earl’s men pulled in the anchor. The gondola wobbled on the ground, held only by a tethering line.
“Mimi-tika,” said Luan, “we don’t have much time. I have one more lesson for you.”