YA Adventure
Date Published: 12-05-2024
Publisher: Empire Studies Press
Fly along with Ruby, Sarra, Isoke and other young heroines as they take to the skies to save their families.
Nine scenarios, nine heroines, nine lessons in flight.
Gia travels from Manhattan’s Lower East Side to the Aleutian Islands to capture one of the most mysterious warplanes of all time – the Mitsubishi A6M Zero.
Young Yi-Tai Jo falls in love with the homely, misunderstood X-1 rocket jet. Heartbroken at X’s failure to break the speed of sound, she may have a solution.
One morning, bratty Anke has a bitter spat with her sister, Romy. Yet when Romy is kidnapped, Anke is the one who can save her – using an old war-kite to glide to the villain’s tower. Can she navigate gliding through the Black Forest and save Romy?
Ship-salvager’s daughter Sarra defies a garrison to save Father from Rome’s wrath. Can her home-made balloon win the day?
“Tom’s delightful stories in The Aviation Girls span ancient ideas
about flight through the Golden Age of aviation to the Age of
Rocketry.”
— Anne Millbrooke, author of the award-winning “Aviation
History
EXCERPT
Within all of us is a varying amount
of space lint and star dust,
the residue from our creation.
It is strongest in those of us who fly.
– K.O. Eckland
EMPIRE STUDIES PRESS
Copyright @ 2024 Tom Durwood. All rights reserved.
1.How Birds Fly
______________________________
A fable about causation.
Is the Tanager right?
ACT ONE: A LOST BABY
When feathery therapod dinosaurs launched
themselves into the air roughly 160 million years ago,
they were limited flyers, fluttering only over short distances
or in tiny bursts. But with only a few exceptions,
the more than 10,000 species of birds descended from
those dinosaurs have evolved into extraordinary flight machines …
— Samik Bhattacharya
Ayaeeewueeiioooo —
It was a Capuchin.
So much pathos showed in the baby monkey’s face, having suddenly become aware of its helplessness. She called for her mother.
The pitiful infant was stranded high in the top branches.
She was lost. Helpless. Terrified.
EEEeeiiioooooo ahuhahuahu …
The high-pitched trill came out in short bursts.
It repeated, worse this time.
The baby had tried to find and touch the pretty lights in the sky and gotten lost in the process.
Disoriented, too many trees away from home and scared, the baby Capuchin called again and again for its mother. Her distress was unbearable to hear.
A storm gathered in the mountain beyond. Raindrops plunked in the foliage. Strong winds bent the branches to and fro.
AYowwww ahuhahuhahuh WAAH!
Far below her, near the first branches up from the ground, a panther crept, silent and stalking.
He was a figure from a nightmare, a walking embodiment of death.
The Capuchin wailed pitifully.
She tried to call out her tormenter’s name, so as to more properly demand help.
“Demon!” It was the only word she could think of.
“Demon! Oh, someone save me. Mama! AAaaagghhh — ”
The baby monkey’s cries were lost in a compound sequence of crashing thunders.
The storm moved closer.
Mesmerized by the way the cat’s powerful muscles moved beneath a blue-black gleaming coat of fur, the baby monkey made no effort to hide.
The Panther’s eyes looked around. He blinked and caught some small movement in the growing storm winds.
The panther stared upward.
He locked eyes with his prey …
ACT TWO: A KETTLE
Birds can completely alter both the aerodynamic
characteristics that govern how air moves over their
wings and the inertial characteristics of their bodies
that determine how they tumble through the air to
complete fast maneuvers.
– Yasemin Saplakoglu
In that very same, storm-riven grove, three trees over, a pair of starlings fluttered, let their wings luff a moment, and alit adroitly on the thick oak branch.
“Go away!” shrieked the baby Capuchin in the adjoining tree crown, to its unseen hunter.
“Help! Help! Help!”
“Has anyone seen that baby monkey?” asked the younger of the two Starlings, with some urgency.
“Yes,” replied the Owl, on a branch higher than the others. “She seems to be trapped in the top of that alder.”
“AYowwww ahuhahuhahuh WAAH!” cried the Monkey, begging for mercy.
The birds were perched in a natural circle, or gathering, formed by interlocking tree limbs, partially shielded from the rain. It was a council, or informal meeting-place of birds. An amphitheatre among the sturdy branches of beeches, araucaria, nothofagus, Patagonian oak.
A parliament. A congregation of birds.
A kettle.
Thunder rumbled ominously.
This particular kettle took place in that part of the world where the Valdivian forests rule, in the shadows of the Grand Concourse, sometimes called the Andes. The kettle included a mix of local and migrating birds – two rough=hewn Gulls, a giant-sized Condor, a Scarlet Tanager (a migrator), an oddball Wren, an Owl and now the two Starlings.
“Something’s closing in on that poor thing,” added the Starling’s older sister, worriedly.
“She’s in big trouble,” echoed the Starling.
“Just a baby, sounds like,” added the Starling’s Sister.
“So what?” asked the First Gull.
“It’s nobody’s business, that’s what,” commented the Second Gull. “Baby monkeys are hunted down every day.”
The Owl fluffed her neck feathers. She tilted her neck until it made a cricking sound.
All seemed to agree, except for the Starlings and the towering, hunched-over Condor, who was busy grooming. Condors have a frill of white feathers which surround the base of the neck, and the feathers here are meticulously kept clean by the birds. This Condor was young, and not so jaded as the others. He glanced around innocently, as he groomed.
Thunder rumbled, not so far away now. Lightning flashed after four beats, meaning the storm front was closing in.
“I’m going to help her,” announced the Starling, preparing to launch —
“You can’t, Dear,” instructed the Owl from her perch (higher than the others). “You’re too small. Too light. That monkey would grip you tight and strangle you and you’d both crash.”
The Starling stopped.
“You could,” said the Starling.
She was looking at the Young Condor.
“You’re big enough.”
“Ba-wang,” said the Wren.
* * *
The Young Condor seemed surprised to be singled out in this manner.
“No, he couldn’t,” corrected the Scarlet Tanager.
“Why not?” demanded the Starling’s Sister. “He can fly. I see his kind fly, every day — ”
“He can soar but he can’t fly,” corrected the Tanager politely. “Not every bird flies the same.”
Tanagers themselves are skilled flyers, long-distance flyers, as well as songbirds. At the approach of the lightning storm, this Tanager had thought it prudent to pause on her journey northward.
“’Soar but not fly’? What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Second Gull.
“How do we fly at all?” asked Young Condor, as though it was a question that had been bothering him for some time. His voice was raspy and foreign-accented, like a Spanish songbird, but with a sore throat.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Well, not every bird flies the same.
__________________________________________________________________________________
This sudden and much larger question caught the group off-guard.
“Well, we fly because we’re chosen,” explained First Gull.
“Wrong!” cried Wren gleefully.
“We fly on the sins of the Deese Mal,” stated the Owl.” By that term, known among birds, the Owl meant to indicate all walkers – lions, turtles, snails, the entire animal kingdom, all fish in the seas. All non-birds. Every being that is unable to fly.
“The stupidity and evil of the Ten Thousand curse the universe,” the Owl continued, speaking plainly and kindly, as a teacher might. “We are the universe’s reward. The world delights in seeing us.”
“I think everyone knows that — ” commented First Gull.
Now, in the western horizon, the long, low rumbles gave way to violent thunderclaps and light displays so bright and so thorough that they illuminated the mountain ranges.
Air within the storm clouds was displaced. An imbalance in the contrasting temperatures generated low, titanic noises and bursts of electricity. Continual inversions spurred rolling peals, thunder which began in the highest peaks and picked up speed as they came down the hills and crescendoed over that deep and moody mountain body of blue water which humans of the region call Llanquihue.
The storm was almost on them.
* * *
The Panther advanced its careful climb up the staircase of slick-bark branches.
Soon …
“Faith,” replied the Starling’s Sister. “We fly because we believe we can. If we ever doubt it, we crash. Destined to crawl with the Tinamou. All the walkers.”
“That’s not true,” objected Scarlet Tanager. “That’s not how we fly.”
“Then how, Finch?” asked First Gull, ‘finch’ being a rude thing to call a tanager. “Why don’t you tell us?” challenged Second Gull.
“Really? Is everything a fight with you?” said the Starling to the Gulls.
“Pretty much,” First Gull replied.
“I saw a gannet,” declared Second Gull.
“I saw a gannet once, fly circles around a pair of sea-hawks,” he continued, “and then dive 200 feet straight down into the deep blue ocean. And swim like a penguin! And she stayed under!
“Expert flier. Swims like a fish,” added Second Gull, to clarify. “Did you ever think about that, hey?”
First Gull shivered, as though the very thought of such a thing rattled his entire belief system.
“Ba-wang!” said the Wren.
Bird in flight is a series of photographs by Eadweard Muybridge (circa 1896)
ACT THREE: CLASHING THEORIES
Evolution has created a far more complicated
flying device than we have ever been able to engineer.
— Samik Bhattacharya
“Can you stop saying that?” demanded the Owl of the Wren. “It’s not at all helpful. What does it even mean?”
The rainstorm had arrived, in its full force.
“The truth,” declared the Scarlet Tanager, “the truth is that our Young Condor friend can’t save that baby monkey because he can’t fly that way.”
“What way?” asked the Starling.
“The big Starling, you might have a chance,” continued the Tanager. “You can hover.”
“What do you even mean?” asked the Starling. “We can all fly …”
“Yes, but the Condor doesn’t fly in a manner that would allow him to do any good,” answered the Tanager. “Do you not realize that? Right away?
“He’s meant to flap, slow, like this, and glide, in the upper middle sky. Not hover low, among the tree crowns. You’ve seen how ponderous it — it’s the opposite of what you’d need. A wasp. A flying ant. A dragonfly. That’s more like it.”
She added a melodic trill from the Tanager songbook — of the chick-burr variety, you would recognize it — for emphasis. She repeated it. The unexpected beauty of the musical call changed the mood (slightly) in the kettle.
“We fly by Magic,” said the Owl, hoping to assert a different way of seeing things.
“No, we don’t,” said the Tanager.
“We can fly because the forward motion of our wings displaces air. That way, the upward force, the lift, can win out,” stated the Tanager. “Over the drag.
“Our bones are so light,” continued she, “that, with propulsion from our chest muscles, our wings flap, with just enough force to keep us aloft.
“That’s how we fly.”
All eyes had turned to the migrating songbird.
Finished talking for now, she groomed her wing feathers, in the front, along the edges, giving the others time to digest what she had said.
“Uh huh,” said First Gull. “Great. That’s great. And what is ‘air’?”
“Air is what surrounds us. We breathe it.” The Tanager demonstrated.
“I can’t see any ‘air,” said the Second Gull. “What does it look like?”
“It’s invisible,” answered the Tanager.
“What?” asked the Starling. “It’s what?”
“Okay,” said First Gull to the Tanager. “I get it.”
He scuffed his talons on the branch where he stood, as though he were making an effort to be patient.
“So you’ve invented an invisib — ”
“What about bumblebees?” asked Second Gull, peeved. “Have you ever seen one of those things fly? I mean, up close?”
“What about gliding?” protested the Starling, belatedly. “That’s done on stiff wings. How does ‘air’ figure into that — ?”
“That doesn’t count,” said the Owl. “That’s flying as in a ‘flying’ squirrel — ”
“Ba-wang!” said the Wren, laughing.
* * *
“Must you?” The Owl turned and displayed, and did so at full extension, talons and all – making as if to attack the Wren, who cowered. Owls are, appearances aside, among the fiercest of raptors.
“Some birds have a fantail, so they can hover,” the Scarlet Tanager said, trying harder to explain. “They can maneuver. Like a butterfly. Ever seen a godwit?”
“Have you been eating some of those fermented berries or something?” snickered First Gull, of the Tanager.
“Well, if we don’t understand how we fly, we certainly can’t help that little monkey,” replied the Tanager. “If we don’t understand how we fly, we can’t — ”
“All right, we get it!” snapped First Gull and Second Gull in unison.
ACT FOUR: RESOLUTION
Modern aircraft can’t do that.
— Christina Harvey
Chackerchackerchacke
The baby monkey was way past panic.
The panther stepped onto the very branch where the baby Capuchin cringed, shivering with terror.
Where was the Mother?
A lightning flash caught the white fur along the front of the creature’s face.
Raw terror — beyond mere fear – now crept into the baby capuchin’s voice. It was a caterwauling tone which every living thing larger than a microbe recognizes: the banshee shriek of violent death. A succession of liquid sounds poured out of the monkey, as though emptying his body – howls, wails, hollers – begging, pleading, weeping, demanding help from any living mammal or reptile who could show some morsel of pity.
The new lightning bolt was forked. Its partnering thunder peal crashed right with it, its sound having changed from a cloth-tearing sound to a cannon-shot.
Now again, thunder and lightning struck and sounded as one.
The storm raged, bending the tree branches to and fro.
“We are alive for a reason,” stated the Starling. She clenched the branch beneath her.
She vaulted straight upward.
About the Author
Tom Durwood is a teacher, writer and editor with an interest in history.
Tom most recently taught English Composition and Empire and Literature at
Valley Forge Military College, where he won the Teacher of the Year Award
five times.
Tom’s historical fiction adventures has been promising. The stories
have won nine literary awards to date. “A true pleasure …
the richness of the layers of Tom’s novel is compelling,” writes
Fatima Sharrafedine in her foreword to “The Illustrated
Boatman’s Daughter.” The Midwest Book Review calls that same
adventure “uniformly gripping and educational … pairing action
and adventure with social issues.” Adds Prairie Review, “A
deeply intriguing, ambitious historical fiction series.”
Contact Links
Purchase Link
