Rewrite That Witch
CH978 · Rewrite
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Chapter 978: Flight

To give the glider enough speed, Roland had requested the Ministry of Construction to build the runway along the cliff edge toward the sea, curved upward at both ends like a crescent moon laid flat. Once a glider was locked in the launch cradle and the fixer released, gravity took it—rolling forward, building speed, until it shot off the curved lip and out over open air. The experience, Roland imagined, was something like a roller coaster, though considerably less terrifying.

The wings alone couldn’t generate lift from the runway’s speed. For that, Wendy would have to add wind.

And once the glider cleared the cliff—fifteen meters of sheer rock above the water—there was buffer enough for almost anything. Slow aircraft, low altitude, time for the flyer to react and time for the rescue team to act. That was why he’d designed the prototype for two seats to begin with.

With Lightning and Maggie still deployed in the Barbarian Land, the rescue duty had passed naturally to Tilly. She accepted without hesitation. Joyfully, even.

“Time to board,” Roland said, when the glider was positioned and the soldiers stood ready at their posts.

Wendy nodded, clenched both fists once—a private gesture of steadying herself—and walked to the glider with Tilly beside her.

She hadn’t expected the aircraft to be so large.

Standing beside it on the runway, she could take it in whole: the two pairs of straight wings, one pair extending above, one below, their span longer than any bird’s she’d ever seen, longer than Maggie’s full transfigured wingspan. The slim tips trembled in the sea wind.

Roland had told her that the vibration was normal—the wings were a frame of hard aluminum wrapped in a skin made by Soraya, tougher than ordinary leather or cloth, but so thin compared to the wing’s total area that it almost seemed not to be there at all. Like paper. She believed him. It still made her throat tighten.

“My Lady, whenever you’re ready.” A soldier’s voice carried over the wind.

“Right. The first step is—”

“Confirm every control surface is functional.” Tilly’s voice came from the rear seat, calm and unhurried. “Don’t be nervous. If anything goes wrong, I have you.”

“Thank you.” The knot in Wendy’s chest loosened a fraction. She was not alone up here. Tilly had sat through the same lectures, learned the same principles. If something slipped from her memory mid-flight, there was someone who could name it.

“First—pull the main lever. Elevator check.”

She put both hands on the iron lever and pulled. A click sounded beneath her seat—the wire had transmitted the command to the tail. She’d done this exact motion hundreds of times on the simulator. The simulator hadn’t had all these sounds, or this wind.

“Elevator is good. Next—the rudder.”

The components were simple: two vertical levers, two pedals, a system of wire ropes connecting them to the tail surfaces. When she’d first studied the diagrams, she’d found it almost impossible to believe that this little was enough to control something in the sky. It seemed barely more complex than steering a bicycle—though a bicycle’s handlebars could describe a full circle, while the direction lever here was constrained to left and right, the elevation lever to fore and aft.

“Rudder is good. Last—the ailerons.”

The elevator and rudder she understood clearly. The ailerons she’d had to see before she could name them. They were inlaid at the rear edge of the large wings—thin, perhaps a tenth the wing’s length each. Two of them, connected by wire to the pedals, one left, one right. Unlike the other surfaces, the ailerons worked in opposition: when one rose, the other dropped. The balance of that opposition was what kept the aircraft from rolling sideways. Of all the things she needed to manage in flight, they were the most critical—and the most demanding. She’d asked Roland once why the ailerons were necessary at all when the rudder could also change direction. He’d explained that every maneuver required all three surfaces working in concert. Rudder alone created yaw—the nose swinging sideways, the body resisting. For a real coordinated turn, the elevator had to compensate, and the ailerons had to hold the bank. One surface used alone could be worse than useless.

She needed to feel all three at once, and she’d only ever felt them on the simulator.

“Ailerons look good.” Tilly’s hand rested briefly on Wendy’s shoulder. “The rest is yours.”

Wendy’s heartbeat moved into her ears. She looked back once toward Roland, a small distant figure on the concrete. Then she turned to the soldier stationed at the cradle.

“I’m ready. Loosen the fixer.”

“Yes, my Lady—watch yourself!”

The soldiers moved.

Runway clear. All lights green, Wendy said in her heart. She wasn’t entirely sure what the words meant—Roland had said them once, calling them a ritual phrase, something for luck—but she said them anyway.

The cradle released. The glider pushed onto the slope and began to roll.

The wheels found their rhythm on the concrete, a rising creak that climbed with speed. The far end of the runway appeared: the cliff edge, and beyond it, sea. She felt herself rushing toward it and had one wild moment where all her training dropped away and she was simply a person pointed at the sky.

Half the runway gone—and the glider was still on the ground.

“Wind!” Tilly shouted.

Yes. The runway’s speed wasn’t enough to lift both of them. She needed to support the wings. She reached for her power and brought it up—a gentle, stable current rising beneath the main wings, pressing upward.

The creaking stopped.

It happened without ceremony: one moment the wheels were touching concrete, and then they weren’t. She’d been watching the cliff’s edge with her full attention and then it was behind her, and there was nothing beneath the glider but open air and, far below, the glinting grey sea.

The aircraft climbed. Something pressed her back into the seat—the sensation of weight that wasn’t weight, the body’s confusion about its own relationship to the ground.

Her hands moved on reflex. She pulled the main lever back.

The nose rose.

The earth dropped out of her view. The glittering sea. Even the horizon blurred toward the edge of her vision. There was only sky—clear blue, the kind that hurt to look at directly—filling everything in front of her, the light forcing her eyes to narrow.

For one moment she understood something that no amount of explanation had conveyed. She was a petrel. She had always, obscurely, been a petrel.

Then she heard that the wind had gone quiet.

The nose was still high. But the speed was falling away beneath her.

She reached for her power again, instinctively, wanting to hold this—wanting to push the wings and force more lift, force the glider back up—

“Too much wind!” Tilly’s voice came sharp and close.

The glider flipped.

Sky became sea became sky in a single lurch, and then the horizon was wrong and getting wronger, and Wendy felt the seat drop away beneath her and understood in the pure sensory language of the body that they were falling.

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