I opened my eyes. There was no Whizzy, but the storm had moved up the hill and was nearly on top of me, and by the time I realised that and had stood up to run, it was too late. The wind rushed straight at me, smelling like the inside of a cave, roaring in my ears, and down I went again with a slam, trying to blink away the grit that had blown into my eyes. An enormous flash arrived from nowhere and everywhere at once, leaving heat behind, very close, and I remembered too late – trees aren’t the best things to head for in a thunderstorm. My lungs went tight. My cheeks were hot. Streams of stinky black smoke rose from somewhere near my feet and I didn’t know which way to turn, but a second later, the smoke was drowned by a deluge of wet. I can’t even call it rain, because it didn’t fall from anywhere – it just appeared.

Spit gathered in my mouth like I might throw up and I wanted to scream, but there was no air to get a breath. Whizzy came back, and she was big. Frightening. And busy, so busy, doing that yanking thing again to the air itself. I hunkered as low as I could get. There was no way to tell if she knew what would happen to me if I got in the way of her work.

Then a tearing sound crept up close behind and I was snatched into the air – it felt like a massive Hoover was sucking me – and I stayed there. Up. Suddenly I was in the cloud.

Gasping, winded – the breath had been sucked out of me – but I was rising. The air looked solid but I rose through it. Higher. The cloud thinned and I could see the Mandeville Centre below me now: a bunch of floating lights, like candles on the sea.

I tried to move. My ribs still hurt, but I could stretch and turn. Riding, that’s what I was doing. Riding the air. Every part of me was cold, but not wet any more. The wind was blowing me dry.

My eyes were getting used to the wind and I realised the silver shape that kept flashing below me, then above, wasn’t going away. Whizzy? There were no more flames. If it was her, she circled me in deep spiralling overlapping arcs, and my heart hammered. So Whizzy was doing this. That’s what all the yanking had been for. Was it safe? Just how? Probably physics, but it felt like magic.

The whole world was made of rushing and cold and tiredness. I closed my eyes. I could just ride. Let the air take me wherever. Whizzy was in charge.

When I woke up, the spiralling silver shape had dis-appeared. The sky was now steel grey, like one of Dad’s batches. Water droplets on my sleeves shone like pale little jewels.