With a strange, metallic grinding sound, the stairway to the craft rotated slowly upward to completely fill the doorway. Fiona rotated a red lever and the door sealed with an airy hiss. Sasha and Lucia took seats near the middle of the craft, and at first Kiera decided to sit with her friends. She revised this decision when her friends erupted into a fit of passionate kissing. Fiona was seated within a cramped cabin at the very front of the craft, imprisoned in a metal cage covered with colorful gauges and switches.

Awkwardly, Kiera clambered into the second seat in the forward cabin, careful not to touch anything. There was a funny little steering wheel between her legs, but otherwise the seat was comfortable. She allowed her legs to relax and fully extend, only to realize that there were treacherous moving pedals pressed against her feet.

"I figured you would find your way up here eventually," Fiona said.

"Sometimes they gross me out," Kiera said.

Fiona waved her hand dismissively. "They are happy. Young people need to be happy while they still can."

Small droplets of raid had begun to accumulate on the forward windows. With practiced movements, Fiona began to rapidly flip switches all over the place. Things started to make sounds and blink with colorful flashes of light. Somewhere life-ward, a frightful metallic hiss began to grow louder and louder in a whirring crescendo. The same sequence of sounds began on the heaven-ward side of the craft as well. Fiona flipped more switches.

"Did you memorize all this?" Kiera asked.

Fiona reached in between them and grasped what appeared to be a power lever of some sort.

"No. Today was the first time I've flown this particular airframe. I needed to figure out what everything does. There are certain patterns that Sophia follows in her designs, so it didn't take me long. It's just another pair of wings. Watch your feet, love."

Kiera pulled her legs away from the pedals. Fiona slid the lever all the way forward, and this caused the whirring sound to grow very loud. Suddenly, Kiera felt the craft lurch forward, and the ghostly trees outside began to move backwards. Droplets on the forward windows began to spread out to either side as the craft picked up speed. It was not long before they were moving much faster than Sasha's little autocar. It was so fast that the droplets had become horizontal rivers.

The trees beyond the fog merged into a perfect blur. The dark, paved road dropped away and vanished, and then they were lost in the clouds. The motion of the water on the windshield was the only indication that they were moving at all. That roaring, whirring sound continued. Fiona slammed a large lever all the way up, and this caused the airplane to vibrate with a metallic grinding sound. When that sound stopped, the lever lit up with green lights.

"Can you see through this fog?" Kiera asked.

"Yes," Fiona said. "Though the world looks quite different to me than it does to you. It looks like glowing points in a dark void. I use a handful of these points to navigate."

Kiera watched the needles rise on the little gauges of her metal prison. One of the gauges looked a bit like a clock with three hands, and one of those hands was rotating rapidly.

"Is this normal?" she asked.

"That's the altimeter," Fiona replied. "In its current mode, it tracks how far we are above the ground using air pressure. There is another mode that we will use when we get closer to the Spire Annatiki sub-conduit. If my memory serves, the fog should break soon."

Fiona's memory was indeed correct. Suddenly the cabin was illuminated with brilliant sunlight. From the corner window, Kiera peered down at a sharp angle. The fog below coated the whole world like a wintery blanket, and huge billowing pillars of white reached up, grasping for the sapphire sky, juxtaposed against billowing plumes of angry black and gray. Here and there, a few snowclad peaks jutted up through the blanket of fog. To the northeast, the Cloudsea Spire dominated the horizon, marbled copper and onyx and coated with hoarfrost, and immediately to the west stood Spire Nydia. The latter spire was crowned with a huge bowl-shaped city where Nydia the Midwife lorded over her oculomancers and lesser witches.

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"There is another world up here," Kiera said. "The world above the fog."

The craft banked toward Spire Nydia. The whole sky rotated around them, as if they were a fixed point in a giant rotating snow globe. They followed a circular path, with the spire at the very center, until they were facing west. Spire Annatiki, the tallest of the small spires, loomed in the distance, on the island of Vjiskald. To the south, Spire Erika, as tall as the sky, jutted up into the great conduit. Like an airy bridal veil rising into the sky, the conduit continued on and on, all the way to the Sister World.

The Sister World was mottled brown and tan, streaked with huge red dust storms, and spotted with the occasional obsidian lake near the other end of the conduit. Kiera had seen that drab desert planet many times over the years, on the rare days when the sky was clear.

"Fiona?" Kiera asked hesitantly. "Can this machine fly to the Sister World?"

"Of course," Fiona said. "Rath Lake is located just under Spire Titania, at the very opposite side of the conduit. That's where oculomancers get their eyes, in a temple at the bottom of that lake. There are a few colonies of elderly oculomancers living there, but in general, the Elder Saint does not want people living there, in case they turn into witches."

"She doesn't like witches," Kiera said solemnly. "She is not going to like me, is she?"

"She trusts me absolutely. You have a kind heart and a long history of dutiful service to others. You have nothing to worry about. Trust me. You and the Elder Saint might even become friends!"

"I hope so!" Kiera said.

Fiona's words made Kiera feel a lot better. The witch brought Spire Annatiki into the center of the windshield and then trimmed the airplane to fly straight. The flight continued for about an hour. At one point Fiona actually stood up and left the cabin in order to chastise the two girls in the back for being too loud. All the while Kiera kept repeating the same thought in her mind, over and over. She will like me. We can be friends. I like meeting new people, especially a fine woman like the Elder Saint. We can be friends. We can be friends.

As they flew closer to the spire, another airplane caught up with them, overtaking them from behind. The alien thing looked completely different from the white tube in which they flew. It was dark, dark gray, shining with a reflective sheen in the sunlight. It looked predatory, angular and sleek, and Kiera suspected it was a weapon of war.

"What is that?" Kiera asked.

"That's our escort," Fiona said. "One of the fighter jets that patrols Spire Annatiki. Don't worry about her. She's just doing her job."

The sub-conduit was an airy distortion, shaped a bit like the peak of a silk veil suspended over a bed. When they passed into the sub-conduit, the airplane shook violently. Fiona was able to keep the craft flying straight using a combination of the funny steering wheel and the foot pedals. The altimeter went haywire until Fiona flipped a switch and then it returned to its original value of twenty-two thousand feet.

Fiona slammed that lever with the green lights down again, and the same metallic grinding sound was repeated in reverse. She flipped more knobs and switches, and dramatically reduced the power lever, which combined to slow the airplane down. Directly ahead, in the center of the windshield, the upper surface of Spire Annatiki spread out like a porcelain plate. A single long road, perfectly straight and black as night, stretched from edge to edge. It was painted with white symbols and lines, and lit up with brilliant white, red, and yellow lights.

As they got closer to that long road, Kiera was certain they were going to slam down nose-first into the ground and explode. At the last second, Fiona pulled back on the steering wheel, and the nose rose just above the horizon. She held it there, lingering, floating just off the ground for what seemed like an eternity. Then, the craft suddenly dropped like a rock and struck the road. There was a screeching sound from the tires, and a stuttering sound from every direction, as small imperfections in the road rattled the airplane.

More switches, a flurry of activity from the witch, and finally the airplane was driving along the road slower than Sasha's autocar. Ever so gently they slowed to a crawl, and turned off the road to a smaller access path. Women on the ground with bright lights guided them toward a long arm-like structure jutting away from a gleaming glass building.

"Can you go back there and check on them?" Fiona asked. "They will need to be presentable when we go into the city."

The city, Kiera thought. The Elder Saint's own spire. We can be friends, can't we? Please let us be friends.