The Cloud Captains

By Jacqueline Hodder

A climate adventure story about clouds, family and saving a world.

Always in the shadow of her famous sister, Sally Winter arrives at Cloud Academy desperate to prove herself but some things never work out as they're supposed to. So, when Sally disgraces herself and is forced o

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blue Wren Press
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9780648899426

Book preview

Chapter

One

Yesterday I was sitting on the balcony of the apartment Central Control gave to Mum and Dad when they moved to Eliante City. Today, I’m on an old bus struggling up the hill to Cloud Academy. Yesterday I was free, today I’m not. In just a minute this old bus will creak to a stop and I’ll be trapped. Trapped in the stupid Academy while they work out if I’ve got what it takes to be a Cloud Captain. I bet I already know the answer to that one – I don’t.

I have no idea why Mum and Dad made me promise to give it a go. I’m not like Sophie, my older sister, the perfect, amazing Sophie Winter. Not even close. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to do the things she’s done. Youngest recruit! Youngest graduate! Youngest pilot ever! I can hear Mum and Dad slapping each other on the back, congratulating themselves on the amazing daughter they created, forgetting they have another daughter, me – the daughter who thinks she’s a pod planted in this family by mistake.

Dad’s high up, someone important in Central Control. Mum’s high up in Central Control too. Central Control wanted both to come to the city, Dad as Head of Research and Development and Mum as Head of Navigation. Mum’s famous for her navigation inventions, Dad for his lead in Cloud Design, and Sophie for being the best Cloud Captain that ever lived, which leaves me… Sally Winter. The only person in her family to be dumb at everything. The girl everyone forgets. The girl who sneaks away when there’s too much going on in the house. The one who used to spend all day lying on the hill out the back of our old house, daydreaming, looking up at the few clouds that still passed by overhead, wishing she could run away with them while her sister Sophie hogs the limelight. Sophie Winter, darling of the Academy. The famous Sophie Winter, daughter of the deeply respected John and Norah Winter. And who am I? Dumb old Sally Winter. Not famous. Not clever. Not anything.

The bus jerks and I’m thrown against the seat in front. My head bumps into the back of the boy sitting there and he turns around. I know he’s an Aqaalim because of the cloak he and his two friends wear but, besides the man who came to our house one night, ages ago, I’ve never seen one up close like this before. It’s true what they say about their noses – beak-like, hooked over at the end. I mumble my apologies. The Aqaalim draws his cloak over his head so all that’s peeking out are his deep brown eyes. I shuffle back in my seat and look out the window but not before I catch a gleam in the boy’s eye and I swear he winks at me before pulling the cloak further over his head. The cloaks are orange like the desert sands where the Aqaalim live. Mum told me the hoods keep their eyes protected from the endless sun and dry heat. They’re wearing sandals that look like they’re made of rope. Dad wears sandals like these too, now he’s promoted, like it’s the only bit of him left that remembers how he was once friends with the Aqaalim. Dad threw out the cloak someone gave him because Central Control told him his loyalty lay with them now and not with our neighbours to the East. I glance again at the three Aqaalim. I wonder how they wear those cloaks all day in the desert, wouldn’t they be boiling hot? Mum told me it’s cooler that way. I can’t see how but maybe I shouldn’t judge, maybe one day us in Valle Verde will be forced to wear hoods and cloaks like the Aqaalim - one day soon if the Cloud Capture fails again.

The boy I bumped into is whispering to the Aqaalim beside him, a girl. The third Aqaalim (taller than the others, a boy) who’s seated across the aisle from them leans in and whispers too. I can’t understand what they’re saying. They’re speaking in a strange language; it sounds like the wind, all whooshes and shooshes. I remember when the other Aqaalim came to our house – when my parents had a party to celebrate Dad’s promotion to Head of Research and Development – I forget his name. Mum told me she and Dad knew him years ago when they were all at Cloud Academy together. That was before the Fence, before they shut the Aqaalim out of Valle Verde. Mum told me he had something to do with Central Control, some partnership project or something, and he was kind of a big deal. He dressed like it too – braiding all down his uniform, a sash, and epaulets on his shoulders, all covered in a long orange cloak. I didn’t talk to him that day. Everyone was all focused on Dad and Sophie. Dad because of his promotion and Sophie, because she was Sophie and she’d won Best Pilot or something.

I sat in a corner while Sophie flitted around and watched the Aqaalim man talk with my mother. There was something intense about the way his bushy eyebrows narrowed over his nose as he concentrated on what my mother was saying. He said little but when he did speak it was in a thick voice, low and deep and with a hint of that whooshing sound I heard now from the Aqaalim in the seat in front. He spoke through lips held tight over his teeth. They did that, Mum told me later, to stop the sand getting in their mouths.

‘You must find a way for me to get into the Academy,’ said the Aqaalim man.

My mother shook her head.

‘I don’t see how,’ she said and laid her hand on his.

I didn’t like the way they looked at each other, like they were friends, but better.

‘The project belongs to the Aqaalim just as much as Valle Verde, Norah.’

‘I know –‘ my mother broke off when she saw me watching them. ‘Sally?’

I ran out the back, and over the hill to my favourite spot and stared up at the blue sky. Here, where I could breathe, I decided the Aqaalim man was up to no good. I didn’t like the way he’d touched my mother’s arm, a gesture he found too easy to make. I hated the way he leaned in close, and what was he planning with his project and how did it involve Mum?

Back on the bus nearing Cloud Academy, I look away from the Aqaalim. They’re still talking in that difficult language of theirs. The boy I bumped into tilts his head to one side as he glances back at me and leans in close to his friends. I get a sick feeling in my stomach because I’m sure they’re talking about me. I shuffle closer to the window and press my nose against the hard glass. It’s warm, like it always is these days. I close my eyes and feel the heat from the sun pressing on my lids. What am I doing here? Cloud Academy is for people who’re clever, like Mum and Dad and Sophie, not for people like me who’re clumsy and have no idea what they’re doing.

The bus slows and I open my eyes. We’re running parallel to a high brick wall and I can’t see over the top of it. The bus turns in under a huge arched gate crowned with twin steel structures that join together to form a single spiraling shape – a giant cumulo-nimbus cloud. The bus jerks through the open gates while the driver crunches through the gears, rocking us backwards and forwards in our seats before the bus picks up speed again. I gaze at the rusted metalwork, at the curling iron cloud, relic of a time when there were actual clouds that size and shape.

The bus jerks and I just manage to stop myself bumping into the Aqaalim boy again. He’s laughing with his friends. Nothing seems to worry him, even the angry looks he and his friends are getting from the other cadets on the bus.

When we picked the Aqaalim up, on the outskirts of Eliante City, the other cadets scoffed.

‘Why’re we picking up sandy hooks?’ a skinny boy in the back said. The girl next to him held a finger to her nose and pinched it.

‘They stink, EJ,’ she said. Her nails, sharpened to a fine point, looked like claws.

‘Why don’t they go back to their desert hole, Avinnia,’ laughed the boy, so loudly we all heard.

‘Stop it,’ Avinnia said but, by the way she nudged up to EJ, I knew she didn’t mean it.

I glance at the Aqaalim now and feel the same hot rush of shame as I did then. They might look different to us and wear different clothes and go about with no shoes and dusty cloaks but they’re our neighbours. I remembered how Avinnia and EJ, and the others snickered when the Aqaalim sat down. I know our country hates them but I don’t understand why. They’re no threat to us, except maybe because they don’t have any water anymore and we do. That’s why they line up along the Fence, waiting to get through the only gate into our country, waiting for permission to enter Valle Verde. Everyone knows how hard it is for the people in the Aqaalim Homelands; drought and famine and dust storms, but why do we have to be mean to them as well?

The boy in the back, EJ, mutters something about a ‘hole in the fence’ but if the Aqaalim hear him, they say nothing. This is the insult everyone uses about the Aqaalim since Valle Verde shut the pass. There’s still a bit of trade and sometimes you see one or two Aqaalim like the man who visited our house, but it isn’t common. None of us expected to find Aqaalim on our bus to Cloud Academy. I thought they might’ve got angry or sad when the cadets on the bus were so mean to them, but maybe they didn’t understand EJ or Avinnia, or maybe they decided to ignore them. I kind of admire their dignity. It can’t be easy walking around Valle Verde being watched everywhere you go.

Chapter

Two

The bus squeals to a stop at the bottom of a set of what looks like a hundred steps leading up to the double doors of a huge building. So this is Cloud Academy. It’s like a mansion only bigger and squat and square. It’s older than I expect. Bits of the roof are falling off in places and the windows are streaked with dirt just like everything else in this country.

The bus drives off in a cloud of dust leaving us cadets lined up at the bottom of the steps waiting for something to happen. Do we go in? Is someone going to meet us? Is it a test of some sort? We get restless and shuffle our feet and scratch our heads wondering what to do. The Aqaalim stand to one side, tall, silent, alone. They don’t seem to care though, they just keep talking to each other in that strange unearthly language. Then the boy, the one I bumped into, looks up suddenly from under his cloak and stares right at me. My face turns bright red and I look away. When I glance back a second later, he’s still looking at me. Then he has the nerve to wink. He has thick brows that join in the middle, just like the Aqaalim man that came to our house before. I frown at him and he laughs. I screw up my face and turn away, just in time to see a woman in uniform surging down the steps towards us.

She’s dressed in a blue uniform – the colour of the sky after dusk, and moves as if she’s itching for a fight, arms pounding by her side, her face creased with an angry look.

‘Attention!’ she roars.

We snap our legs together and stiffen our arms by our sides.

‘Time to straighten up now you’re here at Cloud Academy,’ she yells, and her spit rains down on us as she barks her commands.

‘When you see me, you salute. When you see someone with epaulets like mine,’ she points to a ridge of colour on her shoulder, ‘you salute. When you see anyone who is your superior, you salute. You cadets, are the lowest of the low. You have to prove to us that you have what it takes to make it as a pilot. It’s not going to be easy and you’re not going to like it but if you want the privilege of flying clouds, this is what it takes.’

She moves down a step.

‘My name is Captain Corner and I am your Officer-in-charge. Now, let’s see what you losers can do.’

For the next half an hour Captain Corner barks a series of commands at us: ‘Attention’, ‘At ease’, ‘Salute’, and make us run up and down the stairs over and over again. A small crowd gathers at the doors, laughing and pointing at us.

Finally, Captain Corner bellows, ‘At ease’ and we stop, panting, hands behind our backs. Then she repeats the ‘Salute’ drill until I’m so tired I hit my eye instead of my eyebrow. She makes us salute so many times my brow’s got a small bruise. Then she makes us do our ‘Attentions’ again. I’m pretty quick with these. Sophie’s been practicing her ‘Attentions!’ on me since we were little. Others in the line though have no idea. The girl from the back of the bus, the one called Avinnia, jumps too fast. Her long braids twist around her face and slap her in the eye. She yells, ‘ouch’, stumbles over her bag and falls flat on her bottom. EJ, the boy who was mean to the Aqaalim, laughs. Avinnia scowls at him and sticks out her tongue, and EJ responds by putting up the rude finger.

‘Cadet!’ shouts Captain Corner in EJ’s ear. She’s a hot breath away from his face.

‘You’re out of line, Cadet.’

The boy hangs his head and mumbles something under his breath.

‘Louder, Cadet, I can’t hear you.’

‘Sorry,’ says EJ.

‘Louder!’ shouts Captain Corner, holding a hand to her ear.

‘Sorry!’ shouts EJ.

‘Ma’am,’ yells Captain Corner. ‘Show some respect Cadet. You address all your superiors as either ‘Ma’am’ or ‘Sir’.’

‘Sorry, Ma’am,’ yells EJ. He yells so hard his voice squeaks.

Captain Corner steps away from EJ and scans the line of cadets. There’s ten of us in the line and we all stare straight ahead, not blinking, not moving. No one wants to draw attention to themselves. Avinnia picks herself up and joins the row a few cadets away from EJ.

Captain Corner marches up and down, studying each of us as if we’re specimens in a museum.

‘So,’ she sneers, stopping in front of me.

I hang my head.

‘I do believe we have a celebrity in our midst.’

Everyone’s eyes shoot in my direction and I hang my head further. I should have known; ‘Winter’ is written all over my bags.

‘A Winter,’ Captain Corner says.

There’s a gasp from down the line to my right. It came from the direction of the Aqaalim but I daren’t look up. I focus on the woman’s black shiny boots. One toe is tapping slightly. If I say nothing, do nothing, think nothing, this might be over sooner.

‘The famous Winter family.’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ I shout.

Captain Corner scoffs.

‘You think you’re as good as your sister?’ she says.

‘No, Ma’am.’

‘You’re going to be