A whole flock of bodies flashed past Quentin and fell behind and down. Quentin struggled to track Betsy: she was dropping like a rock, still holding the case with one hand. Incredibly the woman had a grip on it too. They spun around each other, their clothes rippling and burring frantically in the wind. Quentin pointed his handlebars at them and dived, as close to vertical as he could get.

He hit terminal velocity and kept accelerating, speed stripping away what was left of conscious thought. The land loomed up toward them, dark green and wrinkled with low mountains. He clenched his teeth and pushed the ancient bicycle down faster and harder, the wind singing in the spokes, the effort tearing at his chest from the inside. They were coming into focus now: neither woman could break her fall without letting go of the case first, and neither one was willing to let go, so they were going at each other with their teeth and free hands and whatever spells they could work one-handed under the circumstances.

Given time he might have stopped one of them from falling with magic, but there were two of them and there was no time. Details in the landscape were resolving themselves, magnifying and magnifying, a stream, a field, individual trees. He matched course with them, swayed over to them, bumped them—the woman grabbed at him but tore loose again. He wasn’t going to be able to do this gracefully. He wasn’t sure he could do it at all. Now the ground was close, very close. Quentin’s knees were shaking, and the spindly front wheel collapsed and tore away. He bulled into them again, felt both of them clutch at him with their free hands. He heard the woman screaming wordlessly, and he felt her get a hand in his hair. She wasn’t screaming, she was laughing.

He was going to slow gradually, then he checked the ground and panicked and braked hard. Underneath them a pine tree exploded from a toy into a grasping, pricking monster and together the three of them slammed into the penny-farthing and the penny-farthing slammed into branches. He had time to think: fuck them all if he died like this! For a case that he didn’t even know what was in it! Pine needles slapped him and then they hit the ground and his vision went white.

Something was ringing like a bell. It was his head. His chest was empty, and he writhed on the ground like a grub. He tried to take in some air, any air at all, and weird creaking and crying sounds came out of his mouth. Either his ribcage had collapsed and crushed his lungs and he was dying, or he’d just got the wind knocked out of him and would be fine in a minute.

He pushed himself up. The world was turning around him like a carousel.