How We Land

Prologue

Nanaimo, Vancouver Island, early Spring

Before the Fall

The wind smelled of thawing earth and salt. Even in mid-April, winter still clung to the mountains, its icy breath curling through the evergreens, leaving frost-glazed shadows beneath their towering limbs. But here on Vancouver Island, the seasons never shifted cleanly.

The Pacific dictated its own rhythm, teasing the land with Fool’s Spring and prolonged chills.

The air held the crisp bite of leftover frost in the morning, but by midday, the damp warmth of spring would creep in, softening the ground and bringing new life from the earth.

The gulls over Nanaimo wheeled overhead, their cries carried on the wind.

Today, the sky had opened up at last. A sheet of blue stretched wide above the airfield, and for the first time all season, the hangar doors creaked open.

Alicia ran her hands over the smooth wing of the glider, fingertips skating across the familiar surface.

Finally, after months of off-season stillness, it was time to take flight.

Her father waited in his wheelchair a few feet behind her, his coat zipped high, knit cap pulled low.

He didn’t say much; he never did, but she could feel his quiet pride in the way he nodded when she met his gaze.

He’d worked with planes all his life, after all.

But she no longer flew to carry on the family legacy: she carved her own path as a glider pilot.

And because she loved it. She planned to upgrade to an experienced instructor soon.

Class 1, maybe—to teach others how to love the sky.

The tow plane coughed, then roared to life.

The propeller sent a low tremor through the air.

Alicia climbed into the glider cockpit behind it, strapping in, breath uneasy.

She blinked it away. It was the first flight of the season, after all, and it was time to go.

The canopy clicked shut above her, cocooning her in silence.

The tug came a heartbeat later, the sudden lurch as the rope stretched, the glider jerking forward, wheels skimming over the runway.

Faster. Higher. Her breath caught as the tow plane lifted her into the sky, the earth peeling away beneath her.

Forests shrank, water gleamed. This was home; this was freedom.

“Still with me, Sky Queen?” her father crackled through the headset. The signal cut in and out.

Alicia smirked. “Where else would I be?”

“Adam’s watching from the fence,” her dad added. “Waving his arms like a lunatic.”

Alicia laughed, about to release the towrope. “Tell him he owes me five dollars if I spot him from the sky.”

“You’ll have to fight him for it. He says you cheated.”

“Classic.”

Finally, the glider soared freely. She eased the nose into a slow bank, found a thermal, and rose. The rhythm came back to her without effort. The old hunger returned too: to stay aloft, to stay here forever.

She opened her eyes again. The instruments were steady. The lift held. And then, somewhere deep in her chest, something fluttered, like a thermal slipping beneath the wings. Almost nothing. She adjusted her heading and checked her altitude; everything looked right.

She shook off her unease and smiled to herself: “Don’t be dramatic, Alicia.” But the air was just… wrong, off-key. That strike of intuition quickly gave in to the exhilarating feeling that if she just kept flying, she might never have to come down.

But of course, everything does, one way or another.

Terrain ahead.

Terrain ahead.

Terrain ahead.