Sometimes life hands us a moment so odd, all we can do is run with it—pun intended, for this one. Because once I actually heard someone across the room say that as superpowers go, “what’s the use in only being able to fly halfway?” And I had to pause a busy day with my boardgaming friends to explain that I had a whole book about exploring how half-flying might be better than getting off the ground.

It’s a central part of The High Road: how many ways would gravity-controlling magic actually work… and what would it be like wearing that belt and starting to see how many barriers around you had just fallen away? And, which ones would be worth hopping over?

So, these are the main ways that my protagonist Mark Petrie explores what that magic can do. (For spoilers’ sake, I’ll concentrate on Mark, because my other star Angie Dennard’s history with the belt is… complicated.) But with each step you read, I hope you’ll ask yourself: what would you do with it?

 

Windrider Dreams

First of all, what the magic does is something less than true flying (though I’ve blogged about that too), and also more: it controls gravity. Meaning, it can reduce (or increase) something’s weight, but not “steer” gravity… as in, Mark can’t turn. Kate (Angie’s mother) sums it up in the short story Solo Flight:

Except for what the wind did to them, it let them move only three ways: lift up, drop down, or whichever way they jumped.

So Mark can leap sometimes a block or more, or float up and ride the wind, but once he floats up he’s limited to the wind except for shifting up and down. (Writing friends of mine say that makes him a human weather balloon, and that’s mostly true.)

–Why did I clip my heroes’ wings that way? The truth is, for most of my life I’ve had vivid dreams of flying—no surprise, with all the comics I’ve read—but they always came in that limited form. And I like the organic feeling of working with the wind or the rooftops instead of simply defying them.

“Flying” this way over the city only works with the air currents. And if you think about it, that makes Mark actually more vulnerable in the air than on the ground. After all, if something dangerous happens—and what are the odds of that?—his only moves are to shoot upward, or drop down, maybe all the way out of the sky to get something under his feet again and let him maneuver.

On the other hand, he can duck out of anything just by rocketing upward. Imagine that feeling, that there’s a whole other world in the sky just moments away… Mark has had moments where he truly hates to go indoors or anywhere that seals him in. Or when he’s been in danger in broad daylight and everything from the clouds to the voices of the passersby seems to be daring him to stop hiding the magic and just zoom away with a thought. It’s a seductive idea, especially for Mark and Angie at age 19.

And their story would have been so much simpler if The High Road had been set in a superhero world, or a supernatural one where magic was public knowledge. I’ve written before about the tradeoffs a writer has with “a Masquerade,” but this time my choice was simple. Most of the fun of flying is in simple freedom… but that also makes it maybe the most frustrating magic ever to try to hide, because using it puts you up where everyone can see you! And a challenge like that is one of the reasons I write.

Mark has had to learn how much safer flying is if nobody knows they should look up at all, and that starts by him only going up by night… as long as he’s very careful not to soar into power lines! And the storyline is open to possibilities that range from getting greater control of the magic, to sending him chasing things like carrier pigeons that can wing rings around him, to him and Angie wracking their brains for other ways to use it or maximize what it can do. And most of those do happen.

 

Half Flying, Full Control

Remember that conversation I stumbled into, about flying halfway? It’s one answer to the “look, up in the sky” problem.

Since the magic actually reduces Mark’s weight instead of jetting him around, he doesn’t have to be seen floating away. If Mark is up out of sight in the rooftops, he’s free to eat up distance with long bounds that move him faster than he could out in the wind—though he has to watch where he’s going a lot more than in the open air. And even down in a crowd, he can make a jump go a few extra feet, and nobody’s likely to see more than a lucky leap.

And running is nothing but short, fast jumps.

So if he can keep the balance of being just light enough and jumping just far enough, he can run in long strides that let the magic carry most of the weight. His best description of how it feels is

swinging on a rope while hopping along stepping-stones

It’s not a move that can go much faster than ordinary sprinting, since the point is not to jump too far and be seen bouncing up and down the street. But his muscles do less of the work, so it means he can run as fast as anyone and barely tire at all… as long as his supply of magic and his control hold out.

Then there are other uses. There’s a moment in the second book where he scurries up a wall’s drainpipe; cutting his weight makes any kind of movement easier.

But then, he doesn’t have to stop with his own weight.

 

World Made of Feathers (and Lead)

How do you get a night’s sleep if you think some thug just might break into your apartment? For Mark, it only takes a touch to make his bed light enough to lift over and block the door.

Reducing things’ weight means he really can carry almost anything that isn’t nailed down. (And it’s one more reason to keep the magic secret; otherwise everyone he’d ever met would want his help on their moving day.)

But, gravity lifting isn’t as much like superhuman strength as it seems: it doesn’t let Mark lift or hit any harder, only makes an object light enough that his own strength can move it. If he throws a boulder against a door, it won’t hit any harder than a big rocky pillow.

Then again, if he carries it high over the building’s roof and drops it…

And he has another weaponized option: the magic can’t add force to his muscles, but it can generate its own force by increasing something’s weight. Anyone Mark can reach, he can slam to the ground and pin there by making them too heavy to move. Use more power, and that weight increases to metal-bending, crushing levels—that’s one move he sometimes worries comes too easily when he’s angry enough. He knows he’s better off simply lifting a threat against a wall or pinning them to the floor in what looks like a simple act of strength.

(Meanwhile, the truly ruthless tactic would be to simply toss an enemy fifty feet up. Or let them keep on rising, so there’s no body to find.)

 

Imagine it. Walking through your home neighborhood, know there isn’t much around you that’s too heavy to move if you want it to enough, and that even something fastened down can be flattened with a touch. Or run clear across the city without tiring, or duck out of sight and shoot up to ride the night air or rule the rooftops.

Mark Petrie is no superhero; he struggles with everything from the belt’s power limits to his own very different motives. But gravity magic does have a few nods to the comics, with both flying and just maybe throwing cars around. Still, anyone with a gun would have him out-ranged, and he’s not bulletproof.

But come to think of it, how much kevlar could you wear if you didn’t feel the weight?

(Or, if an enemy tries to drive away from him, could he figure out how to attach some antigravity to a crossbow quarrel and shoot the car with a lightening bolt?)

 

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