Captain Kittyhawk & The Cloud Wars

Chapter 16/The sky palace

Trixie and Fox Oswald were dragged dripping all over the deck  into the flying ship. Kitty rushed up and helped Trixie get out of her wet flying gear.

'Thank heavens you're okay' she said.

Kitty had her hands tied together but otherwise looked fine. She seemed very worried about Trixie, but obviously wouldn't speak to Fox Oswald. Captain Thomas gave the order and the flying boat engines came to life, soon they started to take off. From the direction of the sun Fox Oswald thought they were going back to the Sky Kingdom Islands. They sat on the seats in the mid deck. Their hands tied but free to move around,but  under the unblinking gaze of one of the dog head soldiers. Trixie told Kitty the story of how they got off the island, but carefully didn't mention anything about Nathan and what he was doing. The pirates seemed to be on the run and from the radio it sounded like the Kingdom's fleet was returning back to the sky palace.

A few hours later Fox Oswald pointed out something up ahead.

'Its that the sky place' Fox Oswald said to Kitty while he looking out of the portal.

Kitty said nothing.

'Are you still not talking to me?' Fox Oswald said.

'humf' said Kitty, clearly ignoring him.

'You do realise no problem was ever solved by not talking. No scientific discovery, no war was ended, no invention ever came from people sitting in the same room saying nothing. Not talking is for silly little children- no offence Trixie-, not pirates, not even princesses.'

Kitty said nothing but glanced in Fox Oswald's direction.

'Trixie come look at the sky palace' he told Trixie.

They swapped places and Trixie looked out of the port hole. She could see a large island in the distance. Above the the island hung a group of airships all stuck together like balloons frozen in the middle of a flight.

'What is it ?' asked Trixie.

'The sky palace of Elan, That used to be my home, I grew up there' said Kitty.

'It looks really high up'

'It is' said Kitty 'it's so high you should be able to see all the islands of the Kingdom from it. It's so big it even has a small airfield you can land a plane on and a small hanger you can launch from'.

The Kingdom sea plane approached the sky palace and flew round it once. This close Trixie realised how huge the place was. A thick chain kept the sky palace from floating away. Crawling slowly up it, a cable car the size of a small house carried people to the palace. Trixie saw smaller sea planes landed between two grey airships on a flat airfield. Trixie counted thousands of windows and wondered at the number of rooms.The flying boat kept circling as it dropped down to the sea level. Soon it came into landing at harbour and taxied up to navy dock. At the flying boat they were met by more dog headed guards. One guard with the face of a black Labrador announced him self to Thomas.

'The King has instructed that the prisoners be taken to the palace straight away'. The dog faced guard said.

The three were put into a iron cage on the back of a cart. A miserable changer with the head of a meerkat already sat there.

As they were driven slowly through the streets, Kitty looked out. The streets were dark, old paint crumbled from wood. Signs with 'closing down sale' appeared in many shop windows.

'The shops they all seem to be shut, boarded up. I remember it as a much happier place'

'urrr' the meerkat man began 'you must have been here a long time ago if you remember it like that. After the old King died and the Princess left, Harold took over, he increased the taxes to pay for his armies. All the shops started to shut down, now its all like this. Then he started to make all those laws against animal heads like us. King Harold and his Uncle Richard hate animal heads. The only place that welcomes animal heads these days is the army. I was clockmaker, I stole some bread to feed my family. I was given the choice of army or prison.'