Enchantée(8)

She took Sophie’s hand, the bones under the skin light as a bird’s. “You’re only fifteen, ma chère.”

“The queen married at fourteen.” Sophie sniffed.

Much good that did her, Camille thought. The French people despised Marie Antoinette. “Still, why not wait? You might—”

“Look!” Sophie slid off the wall. “There’s something in the sky!”

Up, up against the slate-gray clouds, a large object shimmered. Something that hadn’t been there before. It was yellow and white, like a striped silk purse tossed high in the air.

“Dieu, it’s a montgolfière!” Camille cried. “Remember?”

Sophie drifted into the lane, watching the flying machine. “How could I forget?”

Six years ago, Papa had taken them all the way out to the Palace of Versailles. Before they left, at home, he’d hoisted Camille up underneath the ceiling to feel how warm it was there compared to the cold morning floor. Hot air rises, he said. Remember that. She and Sophie were little then, and three bumpy hours from Paris to Versailles in a dray wagon had felt like a long way to go for a sack of hot air. Papa knew someone at the palace, a gardener who let them in through a narrow iron gate. There, in an enormous, crowded courtyard, it waited: a flying machine, its balloon made of paper and decorated like an embroidered pillow.

Her father held her and Sophie in his arms so they could watch as the animals—a sheep, a duck, and a rooster—were loaded into the basket. The stiff balloon tilted in the breeze. People clapped and cheered, chanting “Montauciel! Montauciel!” Camille shouted in her father’s ear to ask who Montauciel was; her father laughed and tweaked her nose. Montauciel was the name of the sheep, “Rise-to-the-Sky.” How the crowd roared when the assistants released the restraints and the flying machine rose into the sky.

It rose, but not like a bird. Like a saint in a church painting, straight up to heaven.

That balloon had been made of paper—the Montgolfiers were paper-makers—but this one was made of a rippling fabric, silk perhaps. In its chariot-like basket, silhouettes moved back and forth.

“We’ll get a better view by the field,” Sophie said. “Hurry! I think people are in it!”

The balloon sailed toward them, higher than any church’s tower. Higher than anything. Like a dandelion seed, Camille thought. Like a wish.

One of the two silhouettes bent over the brazier in the center. The other stood at the chariot’s edge, a spyglass to his eye. The wind caught his dark hair. Behind him, banks of clouds darkened to storm as the pale undersides of the poplar trees flipped over. Rain was coming.

“It’s like something from a fairy tale,” Camille said, her voice low and reverent.

“There aren’t balloons in fairy tales.”

“In mine there are.” Though Camille knew hot air kept the balloon afloat, it still seemed impossible. The balloon rushed down toward them, its gondola swooping over the treetops.

“It’s going to land right here!” Sophie dragged Camille forward, toward a gate in the wall. “Come!”

As the balloon crested the trees, moving faster now, one of the figures heaved something large over the edge of the basket: an anchor. It plummeted to the ground, then scudded into the dirt. But the balloon continued to speed across the field, the anchor dragging uselessly below.

Thick smoke billowed from the brazier. The machine floated too low, neither landing nor going up.

“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Sophie bit her lip.

Over the field, the balloon’s silk shuddered as it rushed along. One of the figures in the balloon shouted to the farmhands, “Help us, mes frères! Catch hold of the basket!”

Frozen by fear or wonder, the workers stared gape-mouthed, sickles dangling from their hands, as the balloon dropped. Inside the gondola, the two silhouettes braced themselves.

“They will die!” Sophie wailed, pressing her face into Camille’s shoulder. “Why won’t the farmers help them?”

Suddenly the balloon careened into the ground, spraying dirt and stones. The impact flung the gondola and the balloonists back into the air, like leaves tossed in a storm. Lost. Powerless. Almost gone.

In death, her parents’ bodies had looked heavy, but empty. As Sophie wept, they were hoisted onto wooden boards and carried down seven dark flights of stairs. Camille followed them. Papa’s arm had fallen loose of the winding sheet, his skin blackened with smallpox, the tips of his fingers gray with faded ink. All that light, snuffed out. She wanted to weep when she thought of the space Maman and Papa had left behind, like holes scissored from the sky.

“Stay here!” Camille shouted. Then she grabbed her skirts and ran.





7


Past the flowering chestnut trees near the fence, through the open gate, and into the soft soil of the field, Camille ran. She ignored the shouts of the farmhands and the violent jump of her pulse.

The balloon sped toward her, now only a few feet above the ground.

“Messieurs! Save us!” yelled the dark-haired balloonist. But the farmhands scattered, shielding their heads with their arms and careening toward the trees.

Camille lost her footing in the loose soil, caught herself, kept running. With each breath, her chest fought against her stays. Her lungs ached, sharp dust in her throat.