Ravenspell Book 3: Freaky Fly Day by David Farland Page B

not what happened in my vision!”
    Just as suddenly, the great invisible hand seized the plane again, and the engines roared as the pilot gave them all the juice he had. The plane shuddered. The right engine grumbled, and for a moment the jet seemed to be at the heart of a tug-of-war.
    Then the engine burst into flames, exploding in a fireball that singed the wings off a hundred thousand flies in an instant. The flies began dropping in a smoldering rain, and the jet’s right wing went with them.
    Up in the cockpit, the pilot began to scream. He came running out the cockpit door while pulling on a parachute and cried, “It’s every man for himself!”
    He wrestled the emergency door open, and there was a rush of air as the cabin depressurized. Then he leapt out of the plane, doing a swan dive through a storm cloud of flies.
    Serena was knocked off the plane seat, and the force of the wind plastered her against the breast pocket of Mona’s blouse so that she looked like some fancy blue pin.
    “Uh,” Ben’s mom called at the pilot’s back, “where are our parachutes?”
    But it was too late. The pilot had already gone. Flies began whipping through the cabin of the jet, pinging against the wall like hail. The wind was so powerful that Amber feared it would lift her up and send her flying around the room. It might even suck her right out the door. So she just clung to a seat belt with her little paws.
    Now would be a good time to have my powers back, she thought. I was so stupid to have wasted them.
    “Look for the parachutes!” Butch shouted.
    The plane bucked and then dropped into a nosedive, screaming through the sky.
    Ben’s mom and dad looked about frantically, searching through overhead compartments, tossing out water bottles and life preservers.
    Flies came bouncing through the cabin, flies in so many colors and varieties that Amber sat astonished. There were the common houseflies and horseflies of course, but there were dozens of strange varieties, too—bee flies that looked like honeybees and pale moth flies with wispy gray hairs covering their entire bodies, even their wings. There were shiny March flies that looked like angry blue-black wasps, and sand flies the color of sand, and fruit flies with brilliant red eyes and metallic green-and-gold bodies, and mayflies that had wings almost like a butterfly and long mandibles for grabbing things. Many were shiny, with strange-colored stripes going across their faceted eyes or bright stripes on their thoraxes.
    Suddenly Ben spotted a sign above a small door next to the restroom. He shouted, “Parachutes—over there, Dad!” as he pointed frantically.
    Ben’s dad raced to the door, pulling hard on the little knob. He banged on it a few times. “It won’t open!”
    Mona joined him. “It’s locked!” Ben’s mom cried. “Where’s the key?”
    As one, both of them looked out the open door, where the pilot had jumped. Mona said, “I think he had it!”
    Butch screamed like a girl again then totally went ape. He began kicking the door like a madman.
    “Move aside, big fella!” Ben’s mom shouted. She gave a mighty kick. The door folded, its hinges turning into twisted pieces of metal. Mona ripped the door open.
    On the floor lay the parachutes.
    Ben’s mom threw hers on, fastening a couple of straps. “Is this on right?” she asked.
    “How would I know?” Butch cried, shrugging his own parachute over his shoulder.
    The plane seemed to slow, leveling off, and the wind grew less boisterous. Amber suspected that the flies had regained control and were now holding the jet in the air.
    Mona raced through the cabin, grabbing Ben and Amber in the high wind, thrusting them into her pockets as fast as possible. Amber dropped into the safety of the big yellow pocket, heart pounding, and found that it was rapidly filling with dead flies.
    Serena had joined Amber and Ben and just hid in the pocket, panting from fright, her iridescent blue wings quivering.
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