Storming: A Dieselpunk Adventure Read Online Free Page B

straight out of the sky. Everybody laughed at him like they didn’t believe it. They all said maybe it was one of the pilots here for the show, who’d gotten drunk and crashed his plane. But they’d all started talking about the sky people after that.
    Why not sky people? Walter peered upwards. Better that than the gangsters and bootleggers in the radio programs. A shiver lifted the downy hairs on the back of his neck. Now that the airshow was in town, maybe the sky people would be scared off.
    He clambered up onto his rock. The coolness of its pitted surface, still protected by the morning’s shadows, tingled against his feet. He settled down cross-legged, pole across his knees, and reached for the can he’d strapped around his waist. The piece of canvas tied over the top had kept the worms from falling out during his somersault.
    Something splashed. And not a splash from a fish or a splash from a frog, but definitely a splash from a person.
    He froze, then looked up.
    There, on the opposite side of the creek, a few yards down from his special rock, was a lady. She crouched on the bank, leaning forward to drink from the water. She was wearing a big blue dress like people wore in some of Evvy and Annie’s storybooks about fairies and queens. But it was all torn on the bottom, maybe even burned in places.
    She looked up and saw him.
    He stared back, not even daring to breathe.
    Her face was like a face out of the storybooks, pale and kind of glowy. Her hair was long and light brown, but it seemed shriveled, almost melted, at the ends.
    She tilted up the corner of her mouth, and then she grinned full on at him.
    His heart flopped over in his chest, and he grinned back. He even dared a wave.
    She laughed, and it sounded like the creek gurgling past, only deeper. “ Zdravstvuyte ,” she said. “ Prekrasnoe utro , ne tak li ?”
    She didn’t look like anyone around here, so it made a sort of sense she wouldn’t talk like anyone either.
    He shook his head.
    “Mmm.” She rose to her knees and gestured to her clothes. “ Mne nuzhna novaya odezhda. ” She mimed taking off the dirty dress and throwing it away, then pulling on a shirt and a pair of pants. When she was done, she shrugged her shoulders almost to her earlobes.
    Now this was a conversation he knew how to have. The only question was where she could get a new dress. Mama Nan could give him one, but she might not be happy about it. She’d told Molly the other night that she’d have to be more careful about keeping her dresses mended, since only the sweet angels knew where they’d get money for a new one. Molly hadn’t much liked that.
    But still, maybe Mama Nan could give him one to borrow , until the lady could find her real clothes.
    He set his pole down on the rock and stood. He repeated her gesture of putting on new clothes, then pointed to the road. If she could walk over there, she could climb onto the bridge without having to wade through the stream. Her dress was so long she’d get it all wet if she tried to cross here.
    She turned her head to follow his pointing finger, then pushed to her feet. “Umm... tonk yuu.” She bowed her head to him and disappeared into the brush.
    So she spoke real words after all! He gathered up his pole and worm can and ran back through the trees to the road.
    But when he got to the bridge, she wasn’t there.
    He climbed up to stand on the railing. From that height, he could see down the creek on one side, and on the other across Mr. Matthew’s hayfield to the top of the fourth-story tower on Mr. J.W.’s house.
    She was nowhere.
    For five minutes, he waited. Then he climbed down and scouted back up the creek on her side of the bank. Still no lady.
    But maybe she wasn’t a lady. Maybe she was one of the sky people. He leaned his head back to look past the tree branches at the blue glitter of the sky. She looked too nice to murder anybody. So maybe... maybe she was one of Mama Nan’s sweet angels come down for