Moving the Castle
In the faint light of false dawn, the castle sits quietly, eerie stillness presages monumental events to come. The top of each trapezoidal tower opens slowly.
Strange sounds emanate as a frothy substance begins to extrude and expand. Bubble-gum blowing on an industrial scale. At first looking like a pastry chef’s hat, the shapeless form continues to expand. Large panel doors four stories high open on the trapezoidal structures to reveal tremendous engines on gimbaled struts. The engines extend outward and deploy.
Overhead, the plastic bubbles continue to expand, like parachutes operating in reverse. They reach up, higher and higher, expanding as they go. Veins of thread and rope-like material begin to show in the surface texture, apparently lending strength to the material. The expanding balloons seem to be like dragonfly wings, growing and inflating from a crumpled nothingness to an iridescent beauty in the early morning sunlight.
The engines fire with a muted roar, their exhaust dark and smoky at first, but soon clearing until only the dancing images show the heat of them. A funnel-shape catches and redirects the hot gases back into the structure. Now the balloons begin to inflate steadily, rising into the cool air of the morning like a slumberer stretching as he rises from his bed.
Soon there is the appearance of a huddle of clouds over the castle. The huge balloons, fully inflated, strain like captured moons to exert their tidal pull on the immovable mass of stone, and earth, and steel.
The jet engines roar to full power, flattening the grasses below them. Steam rises from the ground. Below the castle, the hydraulic vanes spring fully open, and the castle lurches upward half a foot. Then it steadies. Dirt begins to cascade downward around the periphery as the huge steel basket rises up, like a potted plant pulled up by its roots.
The castle rises. The gray steel walls of the basket move upward like the bucket of a tremendous earth-mover. Up, up they rise. A gaping wound in the Earth remains behind. Cascading dirt and water fall like rain. And like a vengeful rain-cloud the tremendous mass hovers over, and shades the pit it is leaving behind.
Upward still, and now the view across the empty pit can be seen. Bare dirt and rock line the walls, and underground springs begin washing muddily down to the bottom. A new lake will be born here; a round empondment called Lake Fate.
Inside the castle, all is as it was. Fires continue to burn in the fireplaces. Kitchen attendants watch over the rising bread. Revelers revel.
Those who are sleeping continue to sleep. Few notice the gentle turning of the sun across the walls as the castle spins very slowly in the air. The jet engines continue to roar with undiminished intensity, but inside the courtyard, the sound seems distant. Birds flutter among the fruit trees near the castle walls.
Majestically, magically, the castle rises, slowly moving eastward, rushing to meet the new day. Gaining altitude, it picks up a little speed with the upper air currents, but this will be a leisurely trip, like the old-fashioned dirigibles. Stately, dignified, and this one is not flammable.
The journey to its
new home has begun.