by T.A. Barron
Much more, though, had changed. Nothing showed that more dramatically than the graceful, bright-spirited young woman with flowing red hair who strode out of the pastry shop this morning. In her hands she carried a still-steaming rhubarb and cherry pie. Just as she stepped into the street, she glanced at the room upstairs whose window was wide open to the spring air.
Shangri grinned. He’s writin’ right now, she told herself. I’m sure of it.
More and more these days, her thoughts turned to that handsome young man upstairs. He still dreamed of becoming a famous bard, though he had yet to discover the story that would inspire his very best writing—what he continued to call his “one great story.”
Today, however, her thoughts moved to someone else—someone she hadn’t seen for five whole years. Even so, the memory of their last conversation seemed as fresh as if it had happened just yesterday.
Promi.
Where is he now? she wondered, though she felt sure he was somewhere in the spirit realm. Recalling what he’d told her about how time moved slower there, she guessed that he might feel that he’d left only recently. But for Shangri, it was a long time ago.
Yet she remembered the details of everything he had told her that day on the cliffs above the sea. The origins of Atlantis. The description of the spirit realm—especially its sweet rivers of honey. The way prayers from mortals could travel all the way to that faraway world, thanks to wind lions.
And most of all . . . the way he spoke about Atlanta. While Shangri remembered all the words he’d said about her, what she’d noticed most was that look in his eyes. A look so full of love.
A bit of hot cherry juice dripped onto her hand, jolting her back to the present. No more dallyin’, she told herself. I’ve got a pie to deliver before it’s stone cold!
Her well-worn sandals tapped the cobblestones as she walked toward the market square. But when she came to the alley she’d taken countless times to the square, she didn’t turn. Instead, she just kept going and turned down a completely different street—one that led into the heart of the City’s newest neighborhood, what most people called the Machines District.
As someone who had always been observant of people and her surroundings, Shangri’s sharp eyes didn’t miss much. She had certainly noticed how much the City had changed in the last several years. Especially in this neighborhood where the Greeks lived and worked.
Led by Reocoles, their ship’s captain, they called themselves the people delivered by Poseidon. And they’d brought with them many new words and songs, ceremonies and skills. They even had their own array of gods and goddesses who lived in a part of the spirit realm they called Mount Olympus. But the most striking thing they’d brought to Atlantis was a great industriousness that produced all sorts of new machines—machines that had already changed everyone’s lives.
Plumbing, for one. Every street in the City now had ducts and drains like the gleaming copper duct that ran beside Shangri, bubbling with water, at this very moment. Not to mention all the pipes that ran up the mud-brick walls into every home and storefront and stable, carrying water in and out. Cisterns, fed by pumps from the ducts, sat on the roofs of most buildings. So did little windmills that turned the frequent ocean breezes into power for the pumps.
Even more amazing, coal-fired boilers now sat on the roofs of homes belonging to the wealthiest merchants, as well as the Divine Monk. Their purpose? According to the rumors Shangri had heard—which seemed utterly impossible—those boilers made hot water available to everyone in the homes. At any time. So whenever the Divine Monk wanted a hot bath, all he needed to do was turn a valve and hot water flowed automatically into his tub!
Shangri shook her flowing red curls, sending up a puff of flour from her morning’s work at the bakery. That jest can’t be true, she told herself. Though I’ve seen a few other things happen I never s’posed could be true.
Like modern, coal-fired cookstoves that allowed some people to make three or four times the amount of pastries that her father could produce with his old one. And without any wood chopping needed. Sure, those stoves made the City’s air more smoky and sometimes got so hot they caused fires . . . but most people didn’t seem to mind.
Or like other examples she could think of easily. The tall torch lamps that now illuminated almost every street corner after dark. The machines (whose gears she could hear whirring and cranking in the building she was passing right now) that made new, cheaper tools for carpenters and blacksmiths, as well as parts for more machines. The strange new medicines, made by something called chemistry, which were starting to appear on apothecaries’ shelves. The big vehicles with such screechy wheels that carried up to ten cartloads of wood, rocks, or coal—as well as the heavy boiler to make those wheels turn. And the much bigger vehicles used for mining all the coal needed to power so many machines.
Those mining vehicles stood so large they never came into the City. Like buildings on wheels, they moved very slowly and only came to the City’s gates, where men unloaded the coal and moved it to vehicles that could fit on the streets. Most people didn’t even know those mining machines existed. It was only last month, when Shangri decided to take a stroll outside the gates, that she’d seen one being unloaded. And the sight of such a huge, lumbering contraption had made her jaw drop.
As Shangri walked through the streets of the Machines District, she couldn’t help but notice how busy everyone looked. Yet . . . their bustling seemed strangely different from when her father was busily making his latest pie or cake creation. No, these people seemed busy in an unsatisfied way, as if they were carrying invisible loads on their backs, loads they didn’t like carrying.
On top of that, everyone here scurried about as if they were late for an important meeting. No one stopped to chat or even say hello. They just kept walking as fast as they could to wherever they were going, their minds elsewhere.
The most uncomfortable part of this neighborhood, though, was simply the air. Fumes from all the machines and vehicles hung in the high, narrow streets. Shangri’s throat itched and her eyes watered. Around her on the streets, some people held kerchiefs over their mouths as they moved along.
Suddenly a pair of men hurried out from a door and knocked into Shangri. She barely managed to keep herself from dropping the rhubarb cherry pie. But the ceramic bowl of whipped cream she’d also been carrying smashed on the cobblestones, breaking into shards. Neither of the men paused to apologize.
She took a deep breath to calm herself—but inhaled so much of the fume-filled air, her throat burned. Slowly, she continued on her way. But now she watched every door carefully before she passed and tried to walk in the least crowded places she could find. Of course, on some stretches she couldn’t avoid the crowds, especially if one or more of those screechy-wheeled vehicles went hurrying past.
Finally, she saw a new building, larger than any others on the street. Three big chimneys belched black smoke from its roof. From the roof’s peak waved a flag with a blue dolphin, the same design as the sail of the doomed ship. The whole building, covered in plaster, looked like it had been painted just recently. It shone pearl white except for the shadowy smudges of coal dust under the chimneys.
Shangri strode up to the building and read the copper nameplate:
REOCOLES
MASTER MACHINIST
Balancing the fruit pie on one open hand, she lifted the heavy knocker shaped like a trident. It slammed down, though Shangri wasn’t sure how anyone inside could hear it above the street noise. But a few seconds later, the door opened.
CHAPTER 26
Nature’s Bounty
A big, broad-shouldered man opened the door for Shangri. Wearing a brown tunic with sea blue arm bands and Greek symbols on the shoulders, he looked like a soldier in uniform—but not a uniform she’d seen before. He nodded, then turned to a heavyset, gray-haired man who was seated in the middle of several machine
s that filled the wide room.
In a voice loud enough to be heard above the clatter and squeal of the machines, he announced, “Master, the girl with the pie is here.”
Right away, the heavyset man looked up from a table covered with machine parts where he was working. Putting aside a large gear and some sort of tool he was holding, he stood up and wiped his grimy hands on his apron—a rather wide one, given the size of his waist. Shangri noticed that it resembled the aprons worn by her father and other bakers. Yet this one had lots more pockets and smudges from grease instead of fruit preserves and flour.
The man approached Shangri, walking with a pronounced limp that made him wobble like a misshapen gear. He smiled in greeting. “Welcome, my dear. I am Reocoles. And you are?”
“Shangri, daughter o’—”
“The most famous baker in the City,” finished Reocoles. “A pleasure to welcome you, Shangri! As well as the pie I ordered.”
With a glance at the uniformed man, he said, “Take this delicious-looking pie from the young lady and set it over there.”
Nodding obediently, the man carried the rhubarb and cherry pie over to a table nearby. That table, unlike the other ones in the room, didn’t hold any machine parts or other gadgets. Instead, the only thing on it was a large map. It looked to Shangri like a map of a forest, maybe the Great Forest outside the City. Yet . . . unlike the Great Forest, this one was crisscrossed by dozens of roads and bridges.
“I am delighted you came,” continued Reocoles. “Having heard a great deal about your father’s fruit pies, I decided to have one delivered. But I never expected it to be brought by such a lovely young woman.”
Shangri blushed, her cheeks only slightly less red than her hair.
“Come,” said Reocoles, extending his arm to her. “Let me give you a tour of my humble workshop.”
Guiding her away from the table with the map, he brought her to a large brown lever that protruded from the wall. He grabbed the lever with both hands and pulled it down. Immediately, all the whirring and clattering ceased as the machines stopped.
“There,” he said with a sigh, “it’s quiet enough to talk.” Without much feeling, like a bard saying a line that’s been rehearsed too many times, he added, “I do so enjoy the quiet.”
He pointed to a huge bellows beside the largest furnace Shangri had ever seen. “One of my earliest inventions, that bellows. It keeps my fires hotter for longer periods, which helps me mix the metals I need.”
Sweeping his arm around that part of the room, he said, “See those shelves up to the ceiling? Various ores I use for different purposes. And there, next to the bellows, my area devoted to making stronger, lighter tools and weapons.”
Creasing her brow, Shangri wondered, “Weapons? Fer what?”
“Oh,” he replied, guiding her over to another part of the room. “You never know. Just in theory. What I meant to say was those are all experimental devices.”
He stopped by a table arrayed with pieces of glass, as well as quartz crystals, plus half a dozen tools for cutting and polishing. Picking up a concave crystal, he handed it to her. “Can you guess, my dear, what that is for?”
Shangri felt the crystal’s smooth edges and flat surface. “Not sure.” Then, on a whim, she held it up to her eye. She caught her breath. “Bigger. Everythin’s bigger!”
“Good for you, bright one. It’s called a lens, capable of magnifying whatever you want to see.”
“Amazin’!” Shangri looked around the room, seeing how the lens made all the machinery seem closer. Then, as her gaze fell on the table with the map, she froze. For she could plainly see, written on the map’s bottom edge, the words Great Forest Plan.
Then she saw something even more strange. Under those words, in smaller lettering, was the phrase Resources for the Empire.
What resources? she wondered. And what empire?
“Right you are,” said the master machinist. “Modern science is truly amazing.”
Deftly, he snatched away the lens and put it back on the table. “This particular lens is going to be for a device called a telescope—something I can use to gaze up at the stars.”
But how, wondered Shangri, will ye be able to see them through all the smoke?
“Now look over there.” Reocoles pointed to a long table where two more men were working with slabs of metal and glass. “They are working on a different set of projects.”
Shangri noticed that both men wore the same sort of uniform as the man who had let her in. That man, she also saw, had returned to his position by the door, standing as straight as one of the axle rods piled beside him. Why, she wondered, were uniforms needed at all?
“They are making,” continued Reocoles, “the prototypes for more, shall we say, futuristic devices.”
“Like what?”
“Like a new kind of torch lamp that won’t need to be soaked in oil every day to burn through the night.” Seeing Shangri’s surprise, Reocoles explained proudly, “It will burn instead from a kind of gas I’ve been developing in my laboratory across the street. Gas that will someday be piped to every lamp on every street corner. And perhaps, into people’s homes.”
The inventor paused to chuckle. “Of course, such an amazing service would be expensive . . . as well as profitable.”
“What’s that?” asked Shangri, pointing at a complex mass of gears strapped together with wires and rods.
“That,” he answered proudly, “is my astrolocator—a device to predict the motions of stars. It still needs a lot of work, but one day I will be able to tell you exactly when there will be a lunar or solar eclipse.”
Gesturing at the workmen, he went on, “And I’m also developing an entirely new kind of game! Yes—a game that can be played by just one person.”
Shangri cocked her head in puzzlement. “But games are meant fer sharin’. People come together jest to play them.”
“Sure,” said Reocoles with a gleam in his eye. “Yet this new game would allow you to play all by yourself if you ever chose! Why, you wouldn’t need to speak to another person, or even see him, if you didn’t want to. Isn’t that wonderful?”
She scrunched her nose, not sure that was the word she would have used.
“Come see another marvel.” Reocoles led her over to a table next to the far wall. As before, he limped badly. Shangri glanced down and saw that he wore an elaborate metal brace around his left leg, complete with a set of gears at the knee.
“You will be impressed by this,” the inventor boasted. Waving at the table, he added, “My most ambitious project.”
To Shangri’s surprise, the table displayed at least twenty squares of grassy turf. On some of them, the grass looked green and vital; on others, yellow and withered—or completely dead. More perplexing still, one side of the table held a row of glass jars that looked a lot like her father’s jars of baking spices, flour, and sugar. These ones, though, held very different items. They were crammed full of insects, ranging from tiny aphids to enormous grasshoppers.
“What,” she asked, “is this?”
He beamed. “I’m developing something called pesticides and herbicides. So that farms and vineyards won’t be invaded by unwanted insects and weeds. That way farmers can produce more. If they are lucky enough to have my products, that is.”
“Wait,” protested Shangri. “If those poisons kill the insects who eat the plants, don’t ye s’pose they could also hurt the people who eat them?”
“Nonsense. These methods are perfectly safe.”
“But how can ye know that?” Shangri shook her head. “Seems to me, people should leave nature alone, at least till they’re sure that messin’ with nature won’t do somethin’ bad.”
Reocoles frowned. “Here, my dear. Let me show you something.”
He led her over to a most unusual object—a large wooden wheel studded with kno
bs. Mounted on a pedestal by the building’s largest window, the wheel glistened with flecks of white sea salt.
“The wheel from yer ship,” said Shangri, amazed.
“That’s right.” Reocoles placed his hand on the wheel, gently touching its knobs like the face of an old friend. “My captain’s wheel.”
He pointed to a chipped brass plate affixed to the pedestal. Though the letters inscribed on the plate were Greek, Shangri looked at them with fascination:
τον έλεγχο της φύσης
“The name of my ship,” Reocoles explained. “It means ‘the Control of Nature.’ For that is the highest and best use of the gifts we humans got long ago from Zeus, the king of our gods, as well as Hephaestus.”
Confused, Shangri asked, “As well as who?”
“Hephaestus, the most clever god of them all—the god of making crafts, machines, and inventions.”
She nodded. “Ye admire him ’specially, I see.”
“True, my dear.” He patted his leg brace. “Like me, Hephaestus was lame, though in my case it happened at birth and in his, when he fell off Mount Olympus.”
He straightened his back. “Both of us overcame our difficulties through ingenuity and hard work. And both of us learned how to use nature for the benefit of others.”
Leaning toward Shangri, he said, “That is why our ship’s motto was the same as my own: ‘to find nature’s bounty and make use of it all.’”
Though she’d heard that phrase before, it had never given her the same pause as it did this time. But she said nothing.
“Poseidon, our god of the sea, saved my life and the lives of my shipmates for a reason,” he declared.