She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Probably wasn’t going to have any of those things now. The look on Mae’s face had told her what she suspected. She had only a few days left, and likely she’d spend each of those getting weaker and weaker.
Such a thing. Here she had set off on the trail looking forward to each new wonder she would discover, all the while not knowing she was just riding hard and fast toward a meeting with her death. Wasn’t at all how she’d expected her life to turn after leaving Hallelujah.
The sound of footsteps stirred her from her thoughts.
“Didn’t think you’d be awake, Miss Small,” Captain Hink said as he strolled toward her cot.
Well, she could be certain of one thing. It wasn’t just the low light of the airship that had given the man a handsome swagger. He was just as good-looking now as then.
“Mrs. Lindson woke me to see to my shoulder,” Rose said. She realized that her shoulder, neck, and a good portion of her chest were bare except for where bandages wrapped around them.
She was sitting half naked in front of an airship captain. It was such a thing she’d only secretly dreamed about. But not like this. In her dreams she’d been bathed, fresh, and certainly not wounded.
The captain’s gaze roamed briefly over her bare skin before lingering on her bandage and then returning to her eyes. “It’s nice to see you feeling good enough to be sitting,” he said as he walked off into the shadows of the room a bit, then returned with a chair into the warm wash of lantern light.
He put the chair next to her cot and sat there, next to her. “Sorry for the landing. Not the smoothest flight I’ve ever offered a passenger.”
“Oh, no, it was wonderful.”
“Wonderful?” he asked. “That medicine Mrs. Lindson gave you must be clouding your memories a bit. Maybe I ought to give it to all my passengers.” He smiled and it put light in his eyes, and an ease in all the rest of him.
Captain Cage was wide at the shoulder, with hair the color of gold and a face that looked like it would fit in just fine with those heroes of Nordic myths. He looked like he hadn’t shaved in a few days, which only gave him a sort of devil-may-care air, which she should not find so heart-stoppingly handsome.
But he was. And so far, had been kind to her too.
“I’m just sorry I couldn’t enjoy it,” Rose said. “I’ve always fancied what it might be like to pilot an airship, to harvest glim.”
“Well, I can tell you just what it’s like,” Captain Hink said. “Have you ever ridden a horse so fast it’s taken your breath away?”
Rose nodded.
“It’s like that but with more power. Steam train will almost give you the feel of it, except instead of barreling down a track, you’re shooting for the sky, with no rattle of the earth in your bones, and nothing but the soft green fire of glim burning in the sky around you.
“Up there, glim seems so strong and real. You think maybe you could lean out the window to feel the drag of it across your fingertips, taste it on your tongue, or catch a whiff of fragrance. But there’s no sensing it that way, no sense to it at all. Glim is a feast for the eyes only, though some say they’ve heard it ring like an angels’ chorus of bells on the wind.”
He shrugged and slouched in the chair a bit, relaxing into this. “We catch it with nets.” He spread his arms out wide. “Long-armed outrigging that drags through the sky, gathering glim on the strands, like pollen on a bee’s butt. Those strands draw the glim down to finer threads, where it collects like liquid in large glass globes. Can’t box glim up in too small a spot. It’s always looking for a way out, a way back to the sky, I reckon. Keep too tight a hold on it, and it will burst its cage.
“I’ve always thought glim and those who harvest it are much the same in that way. Too much of the need for the open sky in them. But then, I suppose you’ve heard all about how glim is got. Didn’t mean to rattle on.”
“No, it’s fine. More than fine,” Rose said. “I’ve heard some of how it is harvested, read about it in the papers. But that’s all. If you don’t mind, Captain—”
“Lee,” he said.
“If you don’t mind, Lee,” Rose said, liking the sound of his name on her lips, “I’d love to hear more.”
“More about glim,” he asked quietly, “or more about me?”
Rose held his gaze steady, glad she wasn’t blushing from that look he was giving her. A look she was giving him right back. “Both.”
He nodded and leaned in a little closer to her. “I’d be happy to oblige you on both accounts, Rose.”