Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld Read Free Book Online Page B

another patch of sun, the medusa made a soft sighing noise, expanding its airbag to dry itself.

Deryn felt herself drifting higher.

She groaned, looking at the blue skies ahead. She could see all the way to the farmlands of Surrey now. And past that would be the English Channel.

For two long years Deryn had wanted nothing more than to go aloft again, like when Da had been alive— and here she was, marooned in the sky. Maybe this was punishment for acting like a boy, just like her mum had always warned.

The wind steadied, pushing the beast toward France.

It was going to be a long day.

The Huxley noticed it first.

The pilot’s rig jolted under Deryn, like a carriage going over a pothole. Shaken from a catnap, she glared up at the Huxley.

“Getting bored?”

The airbeast seemed to be glowing, the sun shining straight down through iridescent skin. It was noon, so she’d been aloft more than six hours. The English Channel sparkled not far ahead, set against a perfect sky. They’d left London’s gray clouds far behind.

Deryn scowled and stretched.

“Barking lovely weather,” she croaked. Her lips were parched and her bum was very, very sore.

Then she saw the tentacles coiling around her.

“What now?” she moaned, though she’d have welcomed a flock of birds attacking them, as long as it brought the beastie down. A bumpy landing was better than hanging here till she died of thirst.

Deryn scanned the horizon and saw nothing. But she felt a trembling in the leather cords of her pilot’s rig and heard the thrum of engines in the air.

Her eyes widened.

A huge airbeast was emerging from the gray clouds behind her, its reflective silver topside glistening in the sunlight.

The thing was gigantic—larger than St. Paul’s Cathedral, longer than the oceangoing dreadnought Orion that she’d seen in the Thames the week before. The shining cylinder was shaped like a zeppelin, but the flanks pulsed with the motion of its cilia, and the air around it swarmed with symbiotic bats and birds.

The medusa made an unhappy whistling sound.

“No, beastie. Don’t fret!” she called softly. “They’re here to help!”

At least, Deryn assumed they were. But she hadn’t been expecting anything quite so big to come hunting her down.

The airship drew closer, until Deryn could make out the gondola suspended from the beastie’s belly. The foot-tall letters under the bridge windows came slowly into focus… . Leviathan .

She swallowed. “And barking famous, these friends are.”

The Leviathan had been the first of the great hydrogen breathers fabricated to rival the kaiser’s zeppelins. A few beasties had grown larger since, but no other had yet made the trip to India and back, breaking German airship records all the way.

The Leviathan ’s body was made from the life threads

    “THE LEVIATHAN APPROACHES.”

    of a whale, but a hundred other species were tangled into its design, countless creatures fitting together like the gears of a stopwatch. Flocks of fabricated birds swarmed around it—scouts, fighters, and predators to gather food. Deryn saw message lizards and other beasties scampering across its skin.

According to her aerology manual, the big hydrogen breathers were modeled on the tiny South American islands where Darwin had made his famous discoveries. The Leviathan wasn’t one beastie, but a vast web of life in ever shifting balance.

The motivator engines changed pitch, nudging the creature’s nose up. The airbeast obeyed, cilia along its flanks undulating like a sea of grass in the wind—a host of tiny oars rowing backward, slowing the Leviathan almost to a halt.

The huge shape drifted slowly overhead, blotting out the sky. Its belly was all mottled grays, camouflage for night raids.

In the sudden coolness of the huge shadow, Deryn stared up, spellbound. This vast, fantastic creature had actually come to rescue her .

The Huxley shuddered again, wondering where the sun had gone.

“Hush, beastie.