The Chamber in the Sky by M. T. Anderson Page B

“Oh, Clarice,” she said, “you are an awful girl. Your lions look like wombats. And what are they doing, dear? There’s a difference between rampant and hitchhiking.”
    She sighed. In heraldry, as in everything else, if you wanted something done right, you had to do it yourself.

T he children rode the currents of the blood.
    At first, their plan was to wait for the fire to burn out, then return to the magnetic dock.
    They waited a long time. They knew that Dr. Brundish would be waiting, too. Brian pictured the ghastly man standing in his grubby robes and top hat, pistol drawn.
    An hour passed, or two. They argued about whether they should go back or not.
    Gregory and Gwynyfer won the argument, and they all sat tight. Gregory had put himself in charge of the control levers.
    Brian sat with his knees up against his chest.
    A fan clunked as it circulated the air, trying to filter out the smoke. The kids kept coughing. They’d shut the engine off to conserve gas.
    When more time had passed, Gregory and Gwynyfer agreed to go back to the hermit’s hut.
    But by that time, they discovered they’d drifted. They turned on the electric lights fastened to the hull of thelittle sub and discovered they were passing through a forest of bloodweed, pushed along by some mysterious tide. They had no idea how far they were from the Dry Heart, let alone the airlock at the boathouse.
    Gregory swore. He kept swearing for some time.
    Gwynyfer clearly didn’t like it. She turned away and stared out another window.
    â€œWe’ve got to go back,” Brian said.
    â€œWhere’s back ?” Gwynyfer said. “We don’t know how to navigate in the flux.”
    â€œAgainst the current,” said Brian.
    Gregory turned on the motor. The sub chugged along for a while, but the current seemed to have slackened. They couldn’t tell which direction they were headed in. They got angry at one another.
    Brian pictured the ex-archbishop lying on his kitchen floor, bleeding.
    The submarine dinghy chugged through some unnamed vein, moving in some direction, and they hoped they’d run into something that would let them disembark before their air ran out.
    After a while, they turned off the motor, turned out the lights, and went to sleep.
    When they woke up, they didn’t know how long they’d slept. Nothing much was different outside the windows. A school of something yellow scissored past.
    â€œThere’s the wall of the artery,” said Brian.
    â€œVein,” Gregory corrected.
    Brian clammed up. Gregory didn’t know whether it was a vein or artery any better than he did. Gregory just wantedto correct him. In fact, Brian suspected that Gregory didn’t even know the difference between a vein and an artery.
    Just when Brian was about to say that out loud, he realized that he also couldn’t remember the difference between a vein and an artery. He knew one took blood away from the heart, and the other took blood toward the heart, but he couldn’t remember which did which. And he didn’t know which direction this particular blood vessel led — toward or away from which heart?
    â€œDo you think we’ll die in this dinghy?” Gwynyfer asked, as if she were about to take bets. “I’d be awfully glad of a deviled egg right about nowish.”
    The two boys didn’t answer.
    The dinghy puttered on toward nothing. They followed the curve of the wall, seeking other airlocks, other docks, other subs.
    Brian was starting to panic. The space was too enclosed. There were only a few cubic feet of cushion, hull, and rivets. The air was getting too hot. The seats smelled of salt and iron. He could tell that there was gasoline in the air. The fan blew raggedly and unevenly. Brian swallowed and coughed.
    Suddenly, he wanted to unscrew the door.
    Yes, he knew they’d be flooded. But just to be able to move freely … to move his arms easily again, even for a