He’d tumbled backward onto his rump into the woven seat, so his huge boots stuck out of the side of the tiny vehicle, almost as high as the crumpled wings. He was screaming that he didn’t want to fly. Knucklebones was shouting too. “Turn around, you idiot! Lean out there and grab that wing!” “Lean out?” Sunbright could barely hear her for the rush of air. The flitter hummed like a bowstring in the punishing wind. But it wobbled, too, and waffled and sideslipped and spun and shuddered. They were falling, as Candlemas had said, in a spiral, like a maple seed, but the tubes and struts and flimsy wings vibrated so badly Sunbright’s teeth clattered. Or perhaps that was fear. “The damned wings got crumpled!” the thief shrilled. “Grab them before they break off and we fall!” “We are falling!” Sunbright scrambled to drag his boots in and get his rump in the seat rather than his shoulders. But the wild bucking made the task as difficult as mounting a running horse. “I mean fall like a rock, you fool!
