Viktor

Why must it always be the hot air balloon?

I exit the side of the abbey, spot two figures in a basket beneath a rising balloon, and I take off so fast into the snow that my feet barely touch the ground.

There’s a crowd roped off at two hundred meters, and none of them seem to realize that the two women in the basket are not, in fact, authorized operators of the flying device. I leap for the basket just as it begins to ascend, gripping the edge and vaulting myself into the basket. “Papaya Mango Maloney—” I begin, but her companion screams and begins assaulting me with a thick sandbag.

It breaks. Sand explodes everywhere, flying into my eyes.

“Papaya, set this balloon down,” I order. Bloody hell, my eyeballs have shards of glass in them. My vision is blurring, my lids blinking shut of their own accord. “Toss the guards the rope.”

“But Katrin’s parents will kill her,” she cries.

“I’m so dead,” the other girl moans in German.

I grit my teeth. “Put. It. Down.”

“We packed food and blankets this time,” Papaya says. “I mean, not enough for you, but—are you crying? Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit. Peach is going to kill me for taking you.”

“Not. If you put. The balloon. Down.” I grip the side of the basket, the wind telling me we’re gaining altitude. “Pull the cord. Set the balloon down. Drop a rope to the guards—”

It takes every ounce of my determination to not rub the sand out of my eyeballs. “What the bloody hell—”

“I stole condoms out of your bedroom and gave them to her and now she’s pregnant and it’s your fault,” Papaya shrieks.

A chill races through my veins.

She’s quite right. “You took condoms from my bedchamber.” Bloody hell, I thought Peach had disposed of them after I told her they’d been tampered with.

“Peach said she knew better than to tell me not to sleep with boys, but that I needed to be smart enough to know to use protection. But I don’t want to sleep with boys. They lie and they cheat and they let you take all the blame for stealing things so that you get sent to live in foreign countries where you can’t understand what anyone’s saying and you don’t have any friends and everyone hates you. Well, now I’m stealing a balloon to save my friend, and I don’t care what you try to do to stop me.”

Heaven forbid Peach should have a normal sister who would steal a car or a truck.

“Have you any idea how to land this balloon?” I demand.

“Yeah. Duh. I looked it up on the internet.”

“Then you will land this balloon or you shall spend the rest of eternity grounded in the dungeons.”

There’s a moment of silence before the plaintive Papaya you’ve ruined my life wail explodes.

I fumble half-blind for the cord that I know must be here, and as soon as my fingers connect, I give it a yank.

Too hard of a yank, judging by the list of the balloon, but the ground is once again becoming closer.

A heavy gust of wind rolls in, accompanied by a blast of snow flurries, and the flame fueling the hot air of the balloon stutters.

We’re no more than ten meters in the air, but we’re drifting over people.

Or so I assume.

My vision is beyond blurry, my eyes stuck with needles.

“How do you turn off the flame?” I ask.

“Like this—”

“Not yet!”

Too late.

She’s extinguished the flame, and we’re no longer drifting downward.

No, now we’re plummeting.

And I fear this won’t end well.