Rappy's white face shone painfully in the sunlight as she came from the shadowy arbour, looking a little refreshed but a great deal more stressed.

"What has happened?" she asked, clutching at her friends as they gathered round.

Mr Bantleberry, following ineffectually on the fleet heels of the young girl, crashed through the undergrowth, bowed towards the princess and handed her a note. Rappy read it with flitting anxious eyes. Then she smiled and sighed all at once and everyone relaxed.

Then she frowned and everyone looked alarmed again.

"How am I to manage this?" she whispered, having given the contents of the message further consideration. The teacher had already departed so it was only the Flare girls who witnessed these conflicting thoughts. The princess handed Bubbles the note.

"It says here Rappy's to meet the Prime Mover in Gloriosa Winkel."

"That is inland, to the north west, about midway from here to Xenia," Sharshua declared, making finger movements in the air as if drawing a virtual map of Winkel World only she could see.

"This is day three of Foam Fullness," Sunshine added, knowing the significance of the timing for such travel. "The distance is surely too long and the time too short."

"Not if Bubbles Bannatyne has anything to do with it," the auburn-haired harum-scarum girl declared, making a triumphant fist. After all her father was a billionaire aviator with his own fleet of flitters down along the coast, and her gaze soared upwards and away to the fleecy clouds above and even further, to the great storm barriers between Winkels that severed land from land.

The girls gathered round for explanations and if Mr Bantleberry had stayed around to watch he would have seen a fair imitation of human flight as Bubbles spread her arms like graceful wings and ran as if intending to take to the air and soar over the Cherryball Valley right down to the sea. She looped around the others in several circuits and they cheered.

The plan was laid that very afternoon and everyone was eager for the final lesson of the day to end.

Form mistress Fran was bombarded by permission slip requests for the Flare girls to visit Cherryball Flats down in the valley that evening. A grand concert by the latest impresario was the excuse, tickets being magically procured by Sharshua Dragonsong, her family being big in the world of performing arts. She pulled a few strings by shrieking plaintively over the facenet at influential relatives who knew some members of the tour organisers who knew some other people and so on. Privilege was a byword among the Extremely Exclusive pupils of Miss Plazenby's school.

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Then came the ransacking of lockers and drawers for requisite travel supplies, mainly fruity drinks in cartons and bags and bags of snacks. A map of Winkel World disappeared from a classroom wall and the girls bundled themselves into the Seminary car, driven with discreet care by the aged chauffeur who admitted to an aversion to downhill trips and would be only too glad to bring the girls home again when the concert was ended, for that would be uphill.

They waved him a cheery goodbye, saw him out of sight, and darted down the nearest dark alley to the next bright street along the Flats where a hailed cab shot them along a coast road to the Bannatyne Aerodrome. The locked gate was no obstacle to Bubbles and the gatekeeper recognised her with a doffing of his dark cap.

"Just showing the girls around the machines," she said breezily, waving the concert permission slips at the man as he smiled welcome. She knew the value of those bits of paper and had plans to make full use of them at every opportunity when confronted by the pesky obstacle of officialdom. There was only the tiniest doubt in the poor man's security conscious mind as he watched six young ladies march through the gate bundled up in a way that suggested they were expecting a cold evening of it. One of them even seemed to be wearing two turbans and three shawls. When she sneezed extravagantly he understood. The poor dear had summer fever of course.

"Not this way," Bubbles said breathlessly as the others straggled toward a great curving building lit grandly, with one sliding door partly open so that the nose cone and fuselage of a mighty winged beast could just be glimpsed in the Bannatyne livery of strawberry and cream. Instead she led them down some dark steps to a lower airfield platform where flitters were parked, some draped in canvas and others sat within vertical take off rings with arcane markings in luminous red paint upon the tarmac. Like magic circles they were.

"This one's an eight seater," Bubbles explained the gleaming machine they approached.

"You can fly this, may I enquire?" Sharshua whispered doubtfully.

"Mine's a two seater over there," Bubbles waved a hand vaguely at a smaller machine. "Principle's the same, controls a little heavier of course, and clearance much greater so got to have lots of eyes everywhere." This speech, quickly and firmly said, provided a little comfort to the girls as they crossed the magic red circle and sought means to climb aboard. Bubbles laughed and slapped a button upon the metallic side. Flaps popped open and became steps and she gestured everyone aboard, two by two. "Um, not there, Exalted One," she mirthfully added as Princess Rapture settled herself at the front naturally and found her arms and legs tangled with control levers. "That's the pilot's seat. You take the one next to it."

Once they were all settled and strapped in, the power cells were engaged, the great rotors spun to optimum rotation speed and the machine lifted off the ground to shrieks and cheers in equal measure from the girls.

"Which way?" Sunshine asked, pointing this way and that as she spoke.

"Let's get past the security patrols first, before they shoot us down," Bubbles said ominously. "Hold on to your legacies ladies, our adventure of a lifetime's about to begin," and she twisted the flitter so it roared across the field, over the boundary fence and into the western darkness. The shrieks definitely outnumbered the cheers at that moment.