Higher Mythology Read Online Free PDF Page B

Common Room and laid out his plan.
    Upon hearing Keith’s theories of mythological beings, Winslow made it clear he thought Keith was nuts, but decided he liked his company and wouldn’t mind indulging him to test out his ideas. Frank was perfecting the Skyship Iris for a round-the-world race. It cost nothing extra to have an extra body in the basket while he ran distances he would have covered anyway: he’d probably have a passenger along during his long-distance runs. All he asked for was a portion of his propane costs, like sharing gas money. Keith thought that was more than fair. The flat plains of Illinois were as good a place as any to practice sea-level skimming techniques, pretending the land was the sea.
    As Keith opened up his senses, he felt disappointed. Both outer and inner sight told him that the sky was empty. The odd bird intruded its neutral presence on his mental radar. He ignored it, feeling further out.
    Something flared suddenly into his consciousness. Off in the distance to the north, he sensed tantalizing hints of a presence , a strong one. Tamping down his delight, he concentrated all his thought in following them, projecting as hard as he could thoughts that he was harmless and friendly.
    The wave of his mental touch broke over the thing he sensed, and it scattered abruptly into countless alarmed fragments and vanished, losing power and definition as it dissipated, like the sparks from an exploding firecracker. It receded ever further into nonexistence as if it could feel his pursuit. In a moment, there was nothing on which he could put a mental finger. Dismayed, Keith was left wondering if he had just imagined the contact. He sighed, planting his elbow on the edge of the basket and his chin on his hand. Another time. He sent his thoughts around, seeking other magical realities.
    There were no more in the air. Below and ahead, the concentrated presence of the Little Folk at Hollow Tree Farm was the strongest magical thing he knew. Anything else seemed unreal and insubstantial, as far as magical traces went. As he got more practice at inner sensing, all the natural things around him acquired a more genuine aura of reality than he had ever known before. A few things just felt more real than others.
    “Do you think there’s anything out there?” Keith asked Winslow.
    “All the time,” Frank said. “Not sentient magical beings—well not secular ones, anyway. Got my own ideas about the sky, Gods and elementals and stuff like that. Almost holy.” He turned a suspicious eye toward Keith. “You don’t want to hear it.”
    “Sure I do,” Keith said. “I’m looking for any kind of clues I can find.”
    “Well …” Winslow began to explain haltingly, in his usual laconic style. Soon, he warmed to his subject and began babbling like a brook, defensively hurling forth ideas as if he expected Keith to refute them, talking about gods and forces of nature and sentient spirits. Keith pulled a tattered spiral notebook out of his pocket and began to take notes. Frank’s personal cosmology was as interesting as anything he’d read in mythology books. Keith guessed that he was the first person Winslow had ever opened up to about his ideas. There was something useful in being known as the weirdest person on the block: it made other people feel that maybe they weren’t quite so off the wall when all they were was sensitive or creative.
    The sky above them was blue and daubed here and there with cottony white clouds. In the distance, Keith saw birds doing aerial acrobatics, and wondered if Little Folk of the sky would sport like that. Below them, the flat, checkered, green expanse of Illinois farmland stretched out to every horizon. Like a piece on a game board, the miniature shadow of the balloon skimmed from square to square. Winslow pulled the ring on the gas jet for more altitude. The crosscurrent swept them slightly more northeast than north.
    “You sure you can find this farm?” Winslow shouted