by Gin Hollan
Soon the road split. Following the format that they had chosen, she needed to stick to the wider of the two roads. That meant she turned right. Not that it mattered. She had no idea where she was.
It wasn't long until a new sound came. A couple people talking, along with the clattering of some metal-rimmed wheels. Arabeth considered hiding in the tree line until she could see who it was, but it sounded like an older man and a young girl talking.
As they approached, Arabeth thought they didn’t look like highway bandits or thieves. Still, she tucked the chain from her pocket watch into the pocket and removed her necklace, slipping it into an interior pocket. She latched her satchel shut and made her best effort to stay positive about this impending contact. If they panicked when they heard her language, or accent, or whatever else set her apart, she decided she’d run into the trees instead of back down the road to her friends.
She tried to seem casual as the two approached, refusing to put her hands in her pockets to avoid creating the impression she was hiding something. The girl stood a little taller than her grandfather's waist, but he was very tall. Taller than Sam, she realized, even as the old man hunched. The girl looked to be about twelve years old. The age reference brought back the memory of Matty running to her and telling her about Constable Dawson’s injury, before she’d ever found out about the automatons—back when all of this had barely started. These people might know Tanner. They might know more.
A grey and white horse followed, glancing at her approach just once. Bored. The horse was bored, she realized, nearly laughing. The horse was smaller than Arabeth was used to. She started to wonder if people from her side of the mountains were simply tall—not that this girl and the old man were short. Then again, Tanner was tall. Really tall.
She looked at the horse again as the travellers neared. It pulled a small wooden wagon with only two large wheels in the centre of each side. It reminded her of the wagons used to take a coffin to a funeral.
That felt a little morbid, but she couldn't think of another use for a wagon that size. Maybe farmers used that sort of wagon to haul produce from the fields here. Maybe Sam was right; she really had spent too much time in the city, and was starting to lament her lack of exposure to anything else.
When they came close, Arabeth frowned. The horse wasn't actually pulling the wagon. It was attached by a thin rope, as though to guide the wagon, but it currently hung loose. Arabeth stopped and bent over to look as it approached. The axle was ordinary wood, but in the centre, there was a square wooden box the size of her forearm.
It has to be perpetual motion gear, she thought. She'd love a closer look. Something like that would save effort, no matter the industry.
The girl said something to her in a language that Arabeth did not understand.
"Sorry, I don’t know what you’re saying,” she said.
The girl paused a moment, then smiled. "Goodness, your dialect is ancient. Elsian, but I understand you. Grandfather didn't tell me you were from the other side of the mountain.” She looked up at the old man briefly. “This will be quite a story for my friends."
The old man simply nodded.
"Ancient? I suppose it would be archaic. We haven't allowed any outsiders for several generations now.” Suddenly Arabeth understood what the girl implied. “Wait—you knew we were here?”
"Grandfather saw you and the others as you left the crystal field. We've come to help."
Arabeth desperately wanted to believe in their altruism, and it would be rude to ask if there was a fee attached. Still, to help Melanie, almost any price was worth it. She decided to stay her skepticism and accept this offer.
"You have my gratitude." She bowed slightly, then wondered if that was the custom here as well.
The girl turned and relayed the information to her grandfather. The old man grunted and started walking. The horse watched her as it passed, still bored but somehow curious at the same time.
Forced to choose, Arabeth decided to walk back with them instead of continuing down the road. There was no guarantee she’d meet others that spoke her language, and this girl did.
Arabeth quickly followed, matching the pace as she walked beside the girl and her grandfather. "Tell me, do you have scouts out here or is there some other way you monitor?" Her own work with radar made her curious. The technology here could easily be advanced, considering the resources and people they would have available to work on things.
"No, we have people who can see long distances."
Arabeth did not want to argue with the girl, but wondered how they could see through the trees and beyond the event horizon.
"You don't have the crystals where you come from, do you?" the girl asked.
"No, what do they do? What happened to my friend?" Arabeth replied.
"I'm not sure how to exactly explain it. At the age of transition, everyone goes to a crystal field. There are lots of them around. That's when we find out if we're gifted or not. I got translation, with a secondary for cartography." She shrugged. "They usually pair up a physical and a mental thing."
Arabeth nodded. "I can see how that would be useful. What other mental abilities are there?"
"There are too many to list. I think she’ll be a Seer, but Grandfather thinks your friend is going to be an Elementalist. You will want to keep that a secret. They still hunt those here." The girl turned and smiled widely at Arabeth. "I've never met an Elementalist before. I wonder what they do."
"Me too." Arabeth chuckled. "I mean, besides sleep a lot. You’ve met a Seer, though?"
“There are a few still. We had one, but he died and the king’s advisor didn’t send another one. They’re too rare now.”
What would that mean for Melanie, if she were a Seer? Arabeth wondered. Good advice to keep it a secret, either way, but how easy would that be?
After travelling a ways down the road, they finally saw Graham and Sam reclining in the grass, with Melanie still asleep in the stretcher.
As Arabeth walked up, Graham jumped to his feet. "Hey, just how close are we?"
"I don’t know. We met on the road." Arabeth turned to the old man and his daughter. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch your names. What do we call you?"
"I am Mabel. This is my grandfather, Sidrew."
Arabeth introduced the others as the old man moved over to Melanie. He placed his hand on her forehead, then used two main fingers to check the pulse along her neck. He turned to his granddaughter and spoke a few sentences before looking at Arabeth.
"Grandfather wants to know if he can take her shoes off. He needs to check the colour of the bottom of her feet."
"I’m sure that would be fine," Arabeth said, puzzled.
The old man waved Sam over, pointed at Melanie, then pointed to the back of the wagon. Together, they lifted Melanie up to rest in the back of the empty wagon. The old man untied one shoe and tossed in the back beside her. Arabeth went over to see if she could tell anything by looking at her feet, but they looked ... normal. The old man nodded, then clucked at the horse. Hearing her cue, the horse turned, walking the wagon around to face back up the road and started walking. Just like that, they were on their way again.
Arabeth made a mental note to buy a horse as soon as possible, then realized she wouldn't have access to her bank account on this side of the mountain. All she had were a few large bills she carried for emergencies, and they might not be accepted outside Blastborn. She might have to pawn some of the gadgeteering tools she carried out of habit or other items from her satchel, unless they found one of the subterranean shuttle connections and used that to get home.
She didn’t like the odds on any of this. The shuttle system was hidden, at least on the Blastborn side, and the people here may have inventions that make her modified tools laughable. They had automaton technology, after all.
An hour into their walk the trees fell away and Arabeth spotted a strange shape off one side of the road, a fair distance into the shrubs. It looked like there was another au
tomaton. It wasn’t moving. Its posture and the direction it was facing reminded her of a sentinel, as though it were standing watch.
Her heart skipped a beat. If it was watching, who was it reporting to? She didn’t want to say anything to the others. She would ask Mabel sometime when they were out of earshot. There seemed to be no sense getting them alarmed. Graham was having enough trouble dealing with his present reality as it was.
The day drew long, and the sun was getting low before a settlement came into view. From a distance, it looked like a walled village—not large, or tall, but well-enclosed. As they got close, Arabeth realized the outer ring of the village was made from a long line of caravan wagons, like she'd heard about in gypsy stories.
These one had the wheels removed and sat fully on the ground. There had to be at least a hundred of them. A gap between two would let four people walking abreast through, but nothing with height. A three-sided metal bar straddled the gap, forcing anyone on horseback to dismount, and sharp enough to hurt anyone who refused.
"Interesting. How many people live here?" Arabeth wondered.
"No one really keeps a count,” Mable said. "Only members of the original twenty families can stay, although we do have travellers that visit for a day or two, if they pay well enough."
The wagon stopped just outside the circle. Although the road split in either direction at that point, circling around, there was a narrow path in. Arabeth followed Mable, Sidrew, and the wagon inside, but the old man held a up hand to stop Sam and Graham. Arabeth shrugged.
“Their home, their rules,” she said, glad they let her in. The more she saw, the more curious she became.
Tiny amber lights hovered everywhere overhead like fireflies. She couldn't see wires connecting them and became more curious. Arabeth walked forward, looking. More caravan wagons filled the interior.
She picked Marble up, setting the animal up on her shoulder and took a few steps forward along the road. For a moment, the fox acted like she might jump down again, but then rested with her front elbows hooked in front of Arabeth’s shoulder and let her legs sink into Arabeth’s hood.
The interior wagon rings were well-spaced, as though to give people a little privacy. Very little, Arabeth thought. Still, not everyone liked to hear their neighbours’ personal goings-on.
There were five lines of tall, wooden, highly embellished wagons—the outside ring and four more at thirty-foot intervals inward. There could be more than twenty families living here, Arabeth realized. The descendants of twenty families, though…. How many people really did live here? It seemed well established.
Arabeth continued walking, enchanted by the strangeness of it. The centre was an enormous circular area divided into quadrants. Between the quadrants was more dirt road, about the same width as the gap between the two rings of caravans, leading out in four directions—north, east, west, and south. One quadrant was for small farm animals, like goats and chickens.
Another quadrant was full of worktables and equipment, including saw tables and a forge. A third quadrant seemed to be for parking vehicles, like other small wagons similar to the one Melanie was on. It was hard to tell what the fourth quadrant was for. It seemed to hold parts for things. The fourth was strange; there was a long, tall etched-glass cylinder, four feet across the middle and reaching up to the roof. Arabeth walked over, wanting a look in one of three small unetched half-circles sitting at eye level.
Mabel jogged up and pulled on Arabeth’s cuff.
"Miss, you need to wait by the wagon. No wandering off. Outsiders are not allowed in this area."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to wander, but I've never seen anything like this settlement. It's fascinating, like stepping into a different world." She smiled and turned to face the girl. "Has the doctor arrived?"
"Soon." The girl nodded. "Grandfather went to fetch her. You should wait with your friend."
Arabeth followed slowly, a little sad that she was being pulled back.
"Mable, what is that glass box for?" she asked.
"That's a grimshaw. Seers use it to talk to other cities, for trade and news," she said, shrugging.
As they walked up to the wagon, Arabeth saw a second person laying in the wagon and started to worry. She noticed Sam and Graham had been allowed to enter the caravan ring, too.
"What's going on?" Oddly, her voice seemed muffled.
A tall, thin woman stepped up to her with both hands extended. She took one of Arabeth's hands and started talking, nodding, and shaking her head now and then as she went. Arabeth didn't understand a word of what she was saying. "Mabel. Help," she said, looking for the girl.
"Oh, right." The girl trotted over and shook the sleeve of the thin woman before starting to talk to her.
The woman let Arabeth's hand slide free and began to talk rapidly to Mable.
"She says your friend is lucky to be alive. The transition usually kills foreigners. There is nothing she can do. You need to keep her comfortable and give her water until she wakes up fully."
"Who is the other person?" Arabeth asked, then covered her worry with another concern. "And where can we exchange our money to buy food and water?"
Mabel asked the thin woman.
"The other woman is a favour. Taoma wants to hire you to take her to a doctor in the nearby city."
"She looks dead."
"She is, but we can't bury her. She refuses to stay dead." The girl's voice shook as she spoke.
"What?" Arabeth and Sam both exclaimed.
"Taoma will exchange your money, as well as supply you with two days’ food and water if you will do this favour."
"What do you mean, won't stay dead?"
"She sits up and starts moaning about things. Her ghost won't go away. We send it out, and it comes back later. She needs to be exor … ecksa…. She needs her ghost sent on to the next world."
Suddenly Arabeth realized Mabel's perpetual smile had faded, replaced with a strange sadness.
"Well, I've never heard of such a thing. Of course we won't do this," Graham interrupted.
Arabeth looked over at him. He really had his hackles up about this, it seemed.
// Chapter 5 //
THE EVENING AIR shifted, sending a cool breeze wafting past. With the amber lights above in the coming twilight, it gave the moment a sense of peace. Arabeth closed her eyes. They needed to stop thinking moment to moment. What was the long-term game here?
Yes, home was the goal, but this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see how people lived out here, to learn about their gadgets and other technology…. It was a rare chance and, well, that was a powerful lure for Arabeth. She wouldn't share that information with the others. They'd think she'd slipped a cog.
"We need food and water. We need our money exchanged. I can't see how we have a choice," Sam said. "This is our ticket into a place where they might see this as a favour as well."
"Or they may lock us up and hang us in the morning, seeing a half-dead woman and another that is in the back of this thing."
She sighed and closed her eyes. At least Sam saw reason. Graham hadn’t had a rational thought all day, so she wasn’t listening to him.
Mabel spoke to Taoma again and the woman nodded.
"We can put a bonnet up.”
“A what?” Sam asked.
“It’s a canopy that goes over the top of the wagon box. It's going to get really warm out tomorrow anyway," she said.
Arabeth squinted out through half-closed eyes and smiled. That would be a definite help. It was late afternoon now, and she wanted to keep going today.
“Can someone put the bonnet up now? I think we need to keep going,” she said. There was no sign of rain and that was a plus, as far as she was concerned. Melanie would be in the wagon, but the rest of them would be walking.
“I’ll go ask,” Mabel said as she turned and jogged away.
Taoma moved to the far side of the wagon, seeming to check the woman’s physical state. When she did, Arabeth turned to Sam.
"You trust them?" Graham looked at her with wide eyes.
"Until they prove untrustworthy, I don’t see why not. They didn't have to come help us on the road, or let us in when we got here. Now they're giving us everything we need in exchange for a favour. Adjust your viewfinder, Graham. This is a good thing."
"You've heard of confidence games, right? They get you to trust them increasingly over time until you turn over your one thing of real value."
"And what might that be, Graham? Do they want your goggles or something?" Sam snapped, adjusting his own glasses. “You know we need this.”
Graham clamped his mouth shut, glaring at the wagon.
Mable jogged back over, a broad smile on her face. “Masun has to find the spare bonnet, but he’ll put it on before you go,” she said, a little short of breath.
"Then it’s settled," Arabeth told the girl. “We’ll do it.”
Taoma smiled and walked over to take one of Arabeth's hands again, saying a few short, soft sentences before letting her go and leaving.
"She thanks you. She thinks you have a good heart, and says your friend should only sleep about five days more."
A man walked past them, leaving the town ring, giving barely a nod as he passed. Arabeth realized that if this had been Blastborn, a crowd would have formed. Was that their culture, or caution? Either way, Arabeth was grateful.
"Follow him. His shop is that way." Mabel pointed at the man as he waited just outside the town ring. "I have to go help Taoma."
Arabeth didn't move, preferring to stay by her friend, still feeling a little guilty about wandering off earlier. It was weird, seeing Melanie lay next to a corpse, looking nearly as dead.