The Enchantress (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)

through the skies while brilliantly plumaged birds burst through the treetops in splashes of color. Humanoid creatures that looked vaguely simian, though they were coated in feathers, scampered along the crown of the forest, shouting and calling. And from the shadows behind leaves and branches, huge unblinking eyes stared up at the vimana.
    The Rukma vimana lurched again, then plunged, and the right wing ripped a narrow slice out of the canopy. The entire forest screeched, howled and bellowed its disapproval.
    Scathach ducked her head, eyes darting left and right. The forest stretched unbroken in every direction until it was swallowed up by dense billowing clouds on the horizon. “There’s nowhere to land,” she said.
    “I know,” Prometheus said impatiently. “I have flown this route before.”
    “How much farther?” she called.
    “Not far,” Prometheus said grimly. “We need to get to the clouds. We just need to stay in the air for a few more minutes.”
    William Shakespeare turned away from one of the portholes. “Could we settle down atop the trees?” he asked. “Some of them look strong enough to support the weight of the craft. Or perhaps if you were to hover, we could climb down on ropes.”
    “Look again, Bard. Can you see the forest floor? These redwoods are over five hundred feet tall. And even if you did manage to reach the ground unscathed, I doubt you’d get more than a few feet before something with teeth and claws ate you. If you were extremely unlucky, the forest spiders would get to you first and lay their eggs in you.”
    “Why is that considered extremely unlucky?”
    “You’d still be alive when the eggs hatched.”
    “That is probably the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard,” Shakespeare muttered. He pulled out a scrap of paper and a pencil. “I’ve got to make a note of that.”
    A trio of huge black vulture-like creatures flapped up from enormous nests in the trees and flew alongside the vimana. Scathach’s hands fell to her swords, though she knew that if the creatures attacked she’d be able to do nothing about it.
    “They look hungry,” Saint-Germain said, leaning across Joan to stare through the porthole.
    “They’re always hungry,” Prometheus said. “And there are more of them on this side.”
    “Are they dangerous?” the Shadow asked.
    “They’re scavengers,” Prometheus said. “They’re waiting for us to crash so they can feast off the remains.”
    “So they expect us to crash?” Scathach watched the huge birds. They looked like condors, though they were three times the size of any condor she’d ever seen.
    “They know that sooner or later, every vimana crashes,” Prometheus said. “Over the generations they’ve see so many crashes, the knowledge is now bred into them.”
    Suddenly, the glass screen directly in front of the Elder turned black, and then, one at a time, all but one of the pulsing red screens winked out.
    “Hang on!” Prometheus called. “Strap yourselves in!” He jerked back the controller and the Rukma vimana lurched up into the sky, engine straining. The entire ship started to vibrate once again, and everything that wasn’t tied down went crashing to the back of the craft. As the ship rose higher and higher, the wispy white clouds turned thick and solid, plunging the interior of the craft into gloom, and the windows were suddenly streaked with curling rivulets of rain. The temperature within the craft plummeted, and a speckling of water droplets covered everything. The single functioning screen bathed everyone in crimson alternating with blackness.
    Scathach flung herself into a seat that had not been designed for a human body and clutched the arms hard enough to crack the ancient leather. “I thought we were going down!”
    “I’m going to take us up, as high as we can go,” the Elder grunted. His broad face was sheened with sweat turned the color of blood in the screen’s light, and his red hair was plastered to his skull.
    “Up?”
Scathach’s voice was a high-pitched squeak. She swallowed hard and tried again. “Up?” she repeated, her voice normal. “Why up?”
    “So that when the engine gives out we can glide,” Prometheus answered.
    “And when you do think that will—” Scathach began.
    There was a loud bang and the interior of the Rukma vimana was suffused with the stench of burning rubber. And then the low buzzing drone of the vimana’s engine cut to silence.
    “Now what?” Scathach