The Boy Who Could Fly Without a Motor (3 page)

Jon said to him, "Coward! I just learned how to fly."

Ling Wu had not included best-friend dogs in his orders never to tell anyone about concentrating and levitating, or that he even existed.

Jon realized he could now move his feet in the sand again and took a few steps back to the dock. He looked all around the cove. He went over to the dory. There was no sign that it had been lifted. He went to the pebbly rock where the magician had sat. Not even a trace of Ling Wu's gown and velvet pants, not a stray thread. Was Ling Wu a living ghost? Was it all a silly daydream? Or was he going insane, as Eunice had predicted?

For a moment Jon thought about telling his mother and father what had happened. But then he had a vision of being boiled in dragon's bile, whatever that was, along with having his toes nailed to a shark's back and flaming straw stuffed up his nose.

Best keep it all to himself.

THAT NIGHT AT SUPPER, OVER BEEF STEW
and homemade noodles, his favorite meal, Jon decided to ask his Ether a question. The question wouldn't give away Ling Wu's secret but might help prove Jon wasn't just daydreaming in the cove. "What, exactly, does
levitation
mean?"

Frowning a bit, his Ether answered, "It means 'to rise up, to float in the air'..."

His mother added, "Doesn't happen, Jon. It means 'overcoming gravity.' It's supernatural. Where did you hear the word?"

"
The Moonbeam Show
"A lie. Then, "Mom, what is gravity?"

"It is the force of attraction by which terrestrial bodies tend to fall toward the center of the earth." She was so smart. She'd once been a teacher.

Jon frowned helplessly. What were terrestrial bodies?

She said, "Tomorrow morning we'll go deeper into that. Eat your supper."

He ate a few more bites, then said to both of them, "What is dragon's bile?"

His father laughed. "I guess it's the acid in a dragon's stomach."

His mother said, "Dragon's bile,
ugh.
I should be paying more attention to the shows you listen to."

Jon had his own radio set. He smiled faintly at them. "What is the Celestial Court?"

"It's a heavenly court," said his mother.

He was now certain that Ling Wu had indeed visited Clementine Cove; perhaps Eunice was right and Ling Wu lived in a sea cavern beneath the rock with the other ghosts without getting wet. Or maybe he lived in China. Oh, what his parents
didn't
know. He was pretty sure they'd never talked to a living-dead magician.

"You're asking unusual questions tonight, Jon. But I suppose that's how you get an education," his mother said.

Jon half smiled, anxious to leave the table. Hurriedly finishing the bowl of stew and noodles as his parents began to talk about other things, Jon said, "I think I'll go to bed."

His mother looked over with alarm. He usually fought to stay up late. "Do you feel all right?"

"I'm just sleepy."

So, Jon kissed them both and ran off to his room, Smacks at his heels. He quickly undressed, said his prayers, climbed into bed, then took the deepest breath he could.

It was time to experiment.

Pushing the pillow away so his body would be flat, he began to whisper, "Rise, Jon, rise! Rise, Jon, rise..."
Go to work, brain cells,
he thought.

Smacks cocked his head one way, then the other. He was accustomed to his human friend talking to himself.

The setting was right, Jon thought. A beam of moonlight put a wand through his window. There was no fog, and no ghosts were climbing the cliffs.

He repeated himself again and again, expecting that at any moment he'd feel himself levitating.

Smacks looked and listened for a while, then went to sleep.

Nothing happened. Jon thought that maybe the covers were holding him down. He kicked them off and concentrated once more. Not a fraction of an inch did he move.

Trying to remember exactly what the Great Ling Wu had said, he started all over again, hoping he could gather five hundred million cells into one space in his head, and let them work collectively to raise him up.

"Five hundred million cells, lift me. I order you to lift me!"

That didn't work, either.

So, he went back to repeating, "Rise, Jon, rise." He finally fell asleep while saying it.

At about nine-thirty his mother came into the room and saw that the covers were pushed to the end of the bed. She felt his forehead. No fever. She tucked him in and left the room.

Smacks sighed and went back to sleep. It had been a trying day.

ALL THE NEXT DAY JON PRACTICED.

He practiced down on the pebbly rock where Ling Wu had sat, and up in the coarse grass. He climbed to the top of the lighthouse, to the small walkway outside the lantern room. Smacks followed him, as usual. He was lonesome, too.

Believing it might help to be up that high, 160 feet off the ground, Jon lay down on the steel decking and began to repeat, "Rise, Jon, rise!" Nothing rose except the updrafts of wind. By this time his brain was so tired from all the effort, Jon gave up and went slowly down the spiraling ladder to the inside steps.

At twilight Jon was still exhausted and so went straight to bed after supper. He fell asleep within a few minutes, not thinking once about Ling Wu or levitation. He slept for seven hours straight but awoke suddenly at 2:00
A.M
. He no longer felt tired. His brain was rested, too. He looked around. Every ten seconds the beam of bright light filled his window, and then blackness briefly returned. The wind drummed at the red cottage, and he could hear the surf pounding and sloshing at the base of the rock.

It would be a good time to try again, he thought.

For a moment he lay very still and then pushed the covers down. Breathing slowly, and relaxing, he concentrated. In a small voice inside his head, he directed five hundred million brain cells to lift him. He did not say it aloud this time.

Silently, he commanded,
Rise, Jon, rise.
Then he felt something happening.

Impossibly, incredibly, wondrously, he was lifting up from the sheet. An inch, then another, then another. He was afraid to move a muscle or take a breath. He only moved his eyes. Right and left and down, focusing on his toes.

Was he imagining this? Or was it happening? He was tempted to take one hand and feel beneath his back to make certain he was suspended in air.
No,
he thought.
I'll just stay here a moment and float; be very
still.
If the spell had caught him—if it was true levitation—he didn't want to ruin it.
If only Ling Wu could see me now.

Then he remembered the large mirror on top of his dresser. From the bed he could always look into it. Sometimes on awakening, he even made feces into it.

He looked to the right and waited for the next beam of light to flash by the window. The seconds ticked off, and then in a bright explosion he saw a brown-eyed, brown-haired boy of nine named Jonathan Jeffers floating in the air above his own bed.

He also saw Smacks—with owl eyes, getting ready to sound alarm at his master's strange and dangerous position—and whispered urgently, "Don't bark; you'll ruin everything."

Was there ever a human on earth, old or young or skinny or fat, who hadn't thought about this, dreamed of it? Pumping along on an aerial road that wasn't there. Taking a nap on a cloud. Waving to an eagle. Dancing over rooftops.

Peter Pan had done it!

That Arabian on his carpet had done it!

Ling Wu had done it!

And now Jon Jeffers had done it!

It was impossibly, incredibly wondrous. Jon felt like shouting, screaming, and whooping but didn't dare. Thinking he was having a nightmare, his parents would come rushing in. They'd both feint upon seeing their only son in the midst of levitation. Then they'd ask questions.

Jon took a deep breath and said aloud, "That way." Nothing happened.

So, he focused his mind, harnessed all his cells, and said it silently. Suddenly, he was turning, going straight into the mirror, which fell with a loud bang as Jon bounced off, crying out with pain.

Luckily, he had de-levitated before his parents came running into the room, to find him sprawled on top of the dresser.

"What in the world is going on?" his father shouted, eyes heavy with sleep.

"I must have had a bad dream," said Jon. Another white lie.

"You certainly did," said his mother. "Are you hurt?"

"No," Jon said, but his head throbbed.

"How did you get on top of the dresser?" she asked.

"I don't know," Jon replied, telling his fourth He in two days.

THE NEXT DAY, AFTER HIS LESSONS, JON
stretched out on the cove sand and practiced levitating. Sometimes he rose several inches above the ground, but he didn't dare try to move around. Mostly he did a lot of thinking. He knew he'd have to learn to time himself and to turn at the proper minute or else he'd crash into things.

Once, his father came halfway down the path and shouted, "What are you doing, Jon?"

"Oh, nothing," Jon answered. Another time his mother came down and almost caught him afloat. He was two inches off the sand when she called, "Lunch!"

He descended in a hurry, thinking it was a good thing she hadn't sneaked up on him. How would he explain without telling his parents about Ling Wu and risking having his toes nailed to a shark's back?

The trouble with Clementine was that there was no place to experiment with body flying aside from in his room. Most every square foot of the cove could be seen from the bluff, and the top of the dock was as open as a prairie.

That night Jon listened to the radio with his parents, but his mind wasn't on the Grand Ole Opry. He could think only of getting to his room and on top of his bed. Or on the floor, or anywhere. Maybe he didn't even have to lie down. Maybe he could levitate while he was on his feet. Jon couldn't wait to try. Finally, at eight-thirty, he said good night to his parents, put on his pajamas, said his prayers, and got into bed.

He tossed restlessly for an hour, until he heard his Ether's snores. His mother usually fell asleep first, so Jon figured they were both settled for the night.

Jon concentrated and slowly rose. Timing his turns, he carefully moved himself out from over the bed, having learned a severe lesson the night before. Soon he was floating around the room, corner to corner—turning, rolling, and moving up and down. He flew with his hands out in front of him, and down by his sides. He clasped them behind his neck. He put them under his chin, laughing at himself. Ling Wu was right. He'd never be lonely again. He could go anywhere.

Humming softly, Jon flew around his room for almost an hour and then guided himself back over the bed and gently lowered his body to the mattress. His brain did feel a bit tired from all the lifting, but not overly so. In feet, Jon felt quite good.

Smacks had given up watching the performances. As long as his master didn't crash, he was content to sleep.

Resting, Jon looked out the window and asked himself)
Do I dare?
There didn't seem to be much wind outside. Nothing like the nights when it attacked Clementine with howling force. It wasn't too chilly, either. He looked at the window for a long, long time and then nodded to himself.

Rise, Jon,
he commanded silently, and came off the bed, taking a flight line for the open window. There were no mosquitoes or flies on Clementine, so none of the windows were screened. He went through as easily as a pigeon winging under an arch.

The night breeze flapped the legs of his pajamas and ruffled his hair as he circled over the grassy top of Clementine, keeping low at first, about four feet off the ground, then gaining altitude to ten. Jon couldn't help but grin wildly. He'd never felt so happy. He rolled over on his back to look at the stars and then looked out across Three Fathom Shoal and Persiphone Reef, where white water broke over the rocks.
I'm the luckiest boy in the world,
he thought, and wished he could thank Ling Wu for this best of all gifts.

Clementine's light beam, sweeping around as usual, was too high to capture the pajama-clad figure as it did patterns over the grass and skimmed along the edges of the cliffs that plummeted to the jagged rocks and sea foam below.

Then Jon had an idea.
One brief flight around the top of the light.
He rose and rose and rose, and finally circled the lighthouse at 160 feet. The beam passed beneath him, then he went through it in a swan dive. He couldn't stop a laugh. If only his father and mother could see him. And Eunice Jones. They'd be speechless.

"When he felt himself getting tired and cold, he glided down, slipping through the window as if all windows were made for small levitating boys.

Exhausted but happy, Jon Jeffers went to sleep, thinking about the next night, and the night after that, and the night after that. There was no reason at all not to put on warm clothing and take a float out over the ocean, see what was happening on old Persiphone, maybe even go the other direction, toward the lights of San Francisco.

OVER BREAKFAST THE NEXT MORNING,
Jon's father asked, "No bad dreams last night, huh?"

Jon shook his head but found it difficult to look into his father's eyes. He felt guilty. He couldn't tell his parents about flying all over Clementine last night. He would never ever be able to tell them or anyone else. Keeping the secret was almost more than he could bear. Of course, dragon's bile and flaming straw in his nose would result if he didn't keep his word. It was time to polish the lighthouse's windows and lenses. Even as high as the light tower was, salt spray, blown by the wind, coated the windows that protected the lenses in the old lantern room, so they had to be cleaned every second day. Using white toweling, Jon would rub the lower halves, his Ether the uppers.

About nine o'clock, they started up the winding ladder that ran through the lighthouse's interior for the first 140 feet, then around the exterior of the tower for the last twenty. It was on the exterior part that Jon first floated a few steps.