You're Cleared For Takeoff

"'FLY!', cried Michelina.

The dragon unfurled its wings. Huge, flickering, impossible to look at.

The whistle of an incoming cannon ball.

The dragon's wings accelerated, blurring out of focus, shrieking like an airliner ready for take-off.

Rope paying out over the side.

Michelina was abruptly jerked off her feet and out of the boat. A brief freezing shock. Salt water filled her nose and mouth. A huge explosion nearby made her whole body shake, and then she surfaced again, dragged along the surface of the sea like a waterskiier behind the still accelerating dragon, and then abruptly into the air, the ocean below her now, the shattered remains of the boat scattered across the waves.

Ten feet up, then twenty, thirty, forty! She caught a brief glimpse of Lady Genevra, the knights, and their horses dangling from ropes of their own. Another cannonball whistled by. Sixty feet now. Panicked birds erupted from the cliffs in squawking black clouds.

She grabbed the rope and began to squirm up it, keeping the slack tight between her thighs, as if climbing in gym class. A hundred feet now, the island's black sea-cliffs still rising beside them, the sharp angle showing no sign of relenting. The sea and the Duke's fleet spread out far below, like tabletop models.

One of the dragon's huge scaly feet loomed above her. She grabbed for it and scrambled up behind the furiously beating wings, holding onto the rope and the cracks in its scales until she reached its relatively level back. The noise from the wings was almost unbearable, like the amplified whine of a jet engine, but it diminished as she made her way forward, trying not to look down, until she was finally level with one of its ears."
- posted by cjb @ 10:40 PM