There is still magic to be found. Even in the bleakest of places.<br><br>Hank Goodenough has spent his entire life in the smoggy streets of London trying to keep his head down and not to get noticed. Not an easy feat when you’re the tallest one in the room and have a brass funnel protruding from your head. When he finds himself laid off work once again, his dad wants to drag him away on a crazy quest. Before he can figure out how to get out of it, he finds himself on a steam-driven airship in search of Odin, the old Norse God, and is sharing a room with Captain Elazar Steel, a man strutting around on one high-heeled boot and one peg leg.<br><br>Steel doesn’t care that the winks, smiles, and small touches he and Hank share might get them hanged once they land on the ground again. He is determined to show Hank there is magic in the world and that there is no better place to be than on his balloon ship steering towards the Arctic Circle.

Eight Feet of Magic

“I like having you here, Hank. I don’t like your father much, but I needed the money, and it’s an adventure, is it not?”


Heat blossomed in Hank’s gut. “It is.”


“We’ll travel the skies all the way up to the Arctic Circle. It’s better than slaving away in the gutters in London, don’t you think?”


“You might be right.” Hank blinked out into the dim room. It was all too crazy to him, but Steel had a point. What would he have been doing back home now? Shovel coal into the hearth not to freeze during the night, and in the morning he’d go out and search for a job, scared to death someone would be able to tell what he was merely by looking at himStorms and Ratlines


In the old days, the goddess of storms and drowned dead lured men into her net and then pulled them down under the surface.


Hank woke with a start. The grey morning light was spilling in through the window, and he hurried to get up. He and Elazar had taken turns getting up to watch the fire.


Chapter 13