Sally stood up. She bent her arms and legs.
She hopped up and down. Nothing was broken.
Kyniska got there first, with the others close behind.
“It’s all right!” Sally called out. “I’m not hurt!”
Shoving the girl aside, Kyniska bent and picked up a sliver of wood.
“I’m sorry, Princess,” Sally said. “It just looked so fun!”
“First my driver, now my chariot,” Kyniska moaned. “What demon of Hades brought you people to Olympia?”
“We’re not really sure,” Abby said.
“Maybe it can be fixed,” Amelia suggested. She looked around at the scattered chariot pieces. There were hundreds. “Maybe not.”
Sally looked down at her feet.
“Come on,” Doc said. “We don’t hate you.”
“I do,” Kyniska said, taking an angry step toward Sally.
“Calm down,” Abby said. “It was just an accident.”
“Thanks, Abby,” Sally said, backing away. “But maybe I better head home. See you later?”
“Sure,” Doc said. “See you.”
Sally turned and ran out of the hippodrome.
Kyniska turned and looked at Amelia Earhart’s airplane.
“Well,” she said. “At least I get to keep the flying chariot.”
That night, in the hippodrome, Abby, Doc, and Amelia Earhart sat around a campfire.
Abby poked the fire with a long, thin piece of wood—part of the remains of Kyniska’s chariot. They’d used other pieces to start the fire.
From the crowded plains above came joyful sounds of laughter and music.
In the hippodrome, no one was laughing.
Doc nibbled a stale cracker. Dinner that night came from a small tin of emergency rations in Amelia’s plane.
Amelia stared sadly at her plane. It sat at the edge of the field, guarded by four big-armed men. Kyniska’s men.
“She’ll take it away in the morning,”
Amelia said. “I’ll never see my Vega again after tonight.”
“No, don’t say that,” Doc said.
“I’m just trying to face the truth. No more Atlantic dreams for me …”
“But Ms. Earhart,” Abby said. “Amelia. Didn’t you fly across the Atlantic once already?”
Amelia nodded, smiling at the memory.
“Yes,” she said. “It was the flight that made me famous. Though I hardly deserved the fame.”
“Why not?” asked Doc.
“This was back in 1928,” Amelia began. “No woman had ever flown over the Atlantic, even as a passenger. It’s such a dangerous thing to try. Well, a New York City publisher, George Putnam—”
“Your husband?” Abby asked.
“Not at the time,” Amelia said. “I’d never met him. In any case, he knew a good story when he saw one. He helped arrange the flight. I was to fly across the ocean with two men, a pilot and a navigator. Of course, I knew they were just using me to get attention. But what an adventure! Besides, I’d been a licensed pilot for years and was hoping to get a chance at the controls.
“As it turned out, the weather was lousy the whole way across. I never got a chance to fly. We made it, though. Just over twenty hours to the coast of Britain. And for that—for sitting in the back of a plane like a sack of potatoes—I achieved instant fame!”
Amelia laughed. “I can’t complain. I’ve been making a good living ever since, giving lectures about flying, writing articles, even a book. But I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that I don’t deserve all the praise, all the fame. That’s why I am so determined to cross the Atlantic again. This time, alone.”
They all sat silently for a while, staring into the fire.
Abby said, “There’s got to be some way to win that race tomorrow.”
“If only there was a chariot we could use,” Doc said.
Abby looked over at Amelia’s plane. “Maybe there is.”
“It’s a little heavy,” Doc pointed out.
“Better than nothing,” Amelia said. “At least I’d have a chance!”
