Terra Nova

by Shane Arbuthnott

  “Do you have anywhere you need to be? Do you think maybe we could go see Legerdemain again tonight?”

  “I would like that,” Ariel said.

  “But you already went today,” Kiernan said. “It’s getting late.”

  “I know. I just…I sleep better with Legerdemain. I’ll be back in the morning.”

  “Fair enough. If I’m not here, you can find me at the Unionist building.”

  Molly nodded. “I’ll find you.”

  She and Ariel stepped out into the night air. “Can we fly?”

  “It would be faster to make your own font and cross over here,” Ariel said.

  “I thought maybe we could try to find one. Spend a little extra time in the air. If you don’t mind.”

  “I do not,” Ariel said. “If you are ready.”

  “Yes,” Molly said. “Please.”

  Ariel lifted her off the ground, and Molly closed her eyes, feeling the air rush by, the pull of gravity lightening. She spread her hands and felt the wind passing between her fingers. She held it for a moment, pulling it along with them, and then released it again. Her muddled thoughts about Brighid scattered behind her with the winds, and she smiled.

  She opened her eyes. Terra Nova was stretched out below her, the docks still glimmering above, held aloft by a nest of winds woven by powerful, and free, spirits. She looked down at the city. It was changing, and she didn’t know what it would look like when it was done. Maybe it would never be done.

  “What am I going to do now?” Molly asked.

  “What do you want to do?” Ariel asked.

  “I don’t know. Just go see Legerdemain right now.” She stared down at the buildings below. She had played a part in starting the changes, but she didn’t know what part she might play in seeing them through. There were things that gave her hope—people working with spirits, people understanding when the spirits were too angry to work with humans. And there were still spiritual machines out there—they were such an ingrained part of the city that it would take ages to find them all and release the spirits. There were companies hoarding their supply of machines, who wouldn’t listen to reason. More work to do. Always more work to do.

  Maybe I could go traveling, she thought. Spend more time in the spirit world. Or go see where Wîskacân is from, if he would let me.

  They flew past the city, out into the darkness beyond, following the course of the winds in the upper air. Molly closed her eyes again. She could feel Ariel all around her, tight against her skin. It was so quiet up here. They were flying, and no one would try to stop them.

  “I do not see any fonts nearby,” Ariel said. “Shall we land?”

  “If you’re tired.”

  “I am not.”

  “Then let’s keep flying.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Having Molly’s story find its way into the world, into the hands and hearts of readers, has been a dream come true for me. I want to thank everyone who helped it happen.

  First, the staff at Orca Book Publishers, who are unfailingly fabulous people. They’ve championed this story and also fielded all my new-author questions with patience and wisdom. Second, my editor, Robin Stevenson, without whom this would be a very different (and very much worse) book. Thank you for seeing the book it could be and helping me get there.

  My children are a constant inspiration, reminding me how clever and how powerful the young can be. Soon enough they will take the lead, just like Molly, and I’ll be struggling to keep up and give support where I can.

  And lastly, the one who has helped me more than any other: my wife, Alexis. You’ve given me unceasing support as I pursued this unrealistic dream. Thank you for all the years we’ve had, my love, and for all the years yet to come.

  SHANE ARBUTHNOTT grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and now lives in southern Ontario with his family. Dominion, his debut novel, was released in 2017. His short fiction has previously appeared in On Spec and Open Spaces. When he is not writing, he can be seen chasing his three adventurous children, trying to convince them to eat green things. For more information, visit www.shanearbuthnott.com.

  ACT ONE

  AIRBORNE

  ONE

  They had been chasing the font for days, and Molly knew the engine was getting tired. While the Legerdemain hurtled through the air, the engine’s rivets groaned, and from the aft vents Molly could hear a low chuffing like a horse ridden too hard. Perched atop the mainmast, the huge engine began to tremble with exhaustion, and the entire ship shook with it.

  Molly scurried up the mast until she hung just beneath the metal curvature of the engine. She ran her hands along its iron plates and rested her cheek against it. “Not much farther,” she whispered. “You’re doing well. We’ve almost caught up.”

  “What was that, Moll?” a voice shouted up from below.

  She pulled herself away from the engine, hoping no one had seen her whispering to it. But her father stared up at her from the deck, a dozen yards down. “Nothing, Da!” she said. “The engine’s struggling, is all!”

  He looked as tired as the engine, his hair and beard wind-mussed. “Keep it running!” he said. “This one’s given us good chase, but we’ll catch it within the hour!”

  “I know, Da. I mean, aye aye, Captain!” she said and then clambered through the rigging to the back of the engine, to get away from his watchful eyes. Back here, with the vents straight above her, the engine’s chuff, chuff, chuff almost blocked out the sound of the wind.

  “You heard him,” she whispered into the noisy vents. “Within the hour. This chase is almost done.” She didn’t think it would hear her, but the bone-shuddering tremors seemed to ease.

  “Kier! Drop starboard nets!” her father’s voice boomed.

  “Aye aye!” another voice responded. Molly swung out to the right and looked down as her brother Kiernan scrambled across the ship’s deck to the gunwale. He struggled momentarily with a knot, and then the nets were loosed—long wooden beams swiveling out from the hull, heavy cords trailing beneath them. The metal filaments in the nets glimmered in the bright sky, dark against the white clouds.

  Molly turned her eyes forward and was caught by the view. They were racing through the upper atmosphere, nothing between them and the sun. The Legerdemain’s pale wooden keel dug a deep trench in the clouds below. The sails on the fore and aft masts were furled for speed, letting the full force of the wind blow across the deck and across Molly where she hung from the engine. She smiled as the boisterous winds chafed her cheeks and sent her hair sailing out behind her. They were making incredible speed: tired or not, the Legerdemain was in fine form.

  Up ahead, their quarry sparked and sizzled, disappearing and reappearing against the blue of the sky. The font. They had caught sight of it a week ago, an aetheric font of fair size sitting at the crossing of two wind currents. They had been drawing close when the font drifted upward into the high atmosphere and sailed away on a fast easterly wind. Now, three days later, they had almost caught up.

  During the chase, the font had filled their nets with smaller spirits. Their hold was already near bursting. But the font was growing. Molly knew what that meant: something big was getting ready to come through. Catching the slower eighth- and ninth-level spirits was easy, but if they wanted to catch whatever was about to come through, they would need to be right alongside the font when it emerged. It would need to be in their nets before it even knew they were there.

  The ship suddenly rocked, and the crew on the deck stumbled. Kiernan hung far over the gunwale, above open air, before catching himself.

  “Engineer!” her father’s voice roared.

  Molly winced; he only called her by title when she’d done something wrong. She felt the mast below her fingers shivering as the engine juddered atop it. “I’m on it!” she cried.

  She did a quick inventory. The plates and access hatches along the starboard side of the engine looked fine. On the fore everything was clear; the intake vents were wide
, the engine drinking in air. On the port side she could see a few of the iron plates rattling; those would have to be patched to keep the engine’s spirit from breaking free, but loose plates didn’t explain the rocking. She swung to the aft.

  There it was. One of the aft vents was jammed, slats half open. The air from the intakes would be backing up inside, choking the engine. She clambered up the rigging and took hold of one of the handles riveted to the engine’s sides.

  The engine shook fiercely, and she heard cries from below as the Legerdemain swung sideways, deck boards groaning. She looked down quickly to check that the mast still held strong to the deck; if it broke, the ship would plummet to the ground.

  She reached the jammed vent and ran her fingers over it. One of the long slats had fractured, wedging another slat shut with a metal fragment. She pulled a screwdriver from her belt and heaved herself closer.

  The effluent from the vent washed over her, warm, thick and oxygen rich. She took one deep breath of it, then bent to her task.

  The wedged slat was beginning to bend now, the force of the air behind it buckling the metal. Molly levered it down with her screwdriver, pulling at the metal fragment with her arm awkwardly hooked through a handle. The air from the vents pushed against her. With a shove that nearly unbalanced her, Molly forced the slat down and yanked the fragment out. As soon as it was free, the vent flew open, blasting Molly with warm air and knocking the screwdriver from her hand. She watched it fall astern. It had a long way to fall before it hit the ground.

  That was a good screwdriver, she thought. Probably can’t afford to replace it with one as nice. With a curse she threw the piece of metal to join it.

  The Legerdemain steadied out and began picking up speed. Molly took a moment to scan the deck. Things were chaotic but not panicked. No hands lost, then. To be sure, she did a roll call of the Stouts on board: her father—at the helm, correcting the Legerdemain’s heading; her brother Kiernan—trying to untangle a net with one of the long fetch poles; her brother Rory—standing aft, a line wrapped around his hand for safety. For a moment she found herself looking for her sister, Brighid. She stopped as soon as she realized what she was doing.

  With her adrenaline abating, her arms were beginning to ache. She climbed down to the engineer’s loft—the round platform halfway up the mast—and sat down.

  The broken vent had slowed the chase but not by too much. The font was still only a short way off their bow, and with the ship’s course evening out, they were gaining again.

  It was a lively one, no doubt about it. Some of the aetheric fonts barely glimmered, almost as invisible as the air that birthed them. This one sparked and spat like a ball of blue fire. The fonts fascinated her. She remembered the first catch she had really been part of, when she was six and working as a deckhand. That font had looked like a pulsing indigo orb tucked between their nets, surging with the colors of deep-blue evening and white burning sunlight. In its depths there had been a shadow, like an open doorway, and she remembered straining to see deeper inside, leaning over the gunwale until she almost lost her balance.

  Fonts were capricious, dangerous. And she could stare at them for hours.

  There was a large crackle from the font, and a loop of energy surged out from its surface to brush their bow. The ship rocked. Molly got to her feet. “Oh no,” she muttered. “No, no…” She got a hold of the rigging. “Da!” she shouted. “It’s gonna—”

  But he had already seen. “Hard to port!” he shouted. “Get those nets on it!”

  She saw him spin the wheel, and the tiller shifted. Sails were unfurled, catching the wind with a snap and turning them sharply. The font was growing in leaps now, swelling outward. In its center, she could see that telltale shadow. The dark door that led…She didn’t really know where. Elsewhere. To the Void, most people said, that terrible place that birthed spirits. Something powerful was coming through, and their nets weren’t going to be close enough.

  She was up into the rigging and to the engine in seconds. There was a heady moment when the ship slued sideways and she found herself hanging from one hand, momentum trying to pluck her away into the endless sky. It was the kind of thing that would have seen most of the crew losing their lunch. For Molly, who had grown up amid the clouds, it simply sent a brief electricity along her spine, and then gravity took hold again and she kept climbing, almost to the apex of the engine. She pressed her cheek to the metal and ran her hand over the engine’s plates.

  “I know you’re tired,” she said, “but just a little more. One more push to bring us up alongside and get our nets around. Please!”

  The engine’s only answer was a bone-shaking groan.

  “Please,” she said again before a sound like the sky shattering brought her head up.

  The energy rushing across the surface of the font sped to a frenzy and then vanished, leaving something new behind.

  The spirit was almost invisible against the open air. It could be seen in a bending of the light and in white brushstrokes of wind that scudded across its surface. But despite its subtlety, something about it seized her attention and made it impossible to turn away. Molly could feel the spirit’s power—and the lingering trace of the Void on the other side of the font.

  The spirit hung in the air, yards from their nets, and the eyes of every person on the Legerdemain hung on it. And then, with the nets still rushing toward the font, the spirit shifted upward.

  The movement broke the spirit’s spell, and the crew lurched back into action. “Hand nets!” Molly heard her father calling. “Hand nets!”

  It was moving through the air like a hummingbird, almost too fast to follow. What could a hand net do to that? she thought. But she reached to her belt and pulled the small hand net out, the iron-laced mesh heavy in her hand.

  The Legerdemain cut sideways through the dispersing remnants of the font, and before most of the crew could ready their nets, the spirit was in the air above the deck. Molly saw Kiernan swing his fetch pole at it, and she flinched as it retorted with a blast of wind. Kiernan slid halfway across the deck before stopping.

  Molly tried to track the spirit, but the engine blocked her sight. She let go of the handle and fell to the loft below. She landed hard and hugged the wood until she had her balance back.

  From the crew’s movement she could tell that the spirit was near the bow, perhaps ten yards from her. It took her a moment to pick it out, but there it was, dodging hand nets like a sparrow flitting between branches. Even from a distance, she could feel the force of the winds the spirit was throwing back at the crew. One woman was hanging from the ship’s nets, and Molly thought she saw fingers gripping the gunwale. She couldn’t tell if anyone had been lost. She focused on the spirit again and caught a glimpse of slender, glimmering limbs. And then, shifting as quickly and unexpectedly as a zephyr, the spirit was beside her.

  She was staring into its face, its blue eyes swirling with clouds. Time hung about them in a frozen shroud. They aren’t supposed to have faces, she thought. They aren’t supposed to have eyes. Spirits, she knew, were utterly inhuman. Incapable of anything except a vague, unfeeling malice, spirits would either kill or drive mad any humans who let them get too close. But this one looks almost human. As the spirit held its position in front of her, it became clearer, flickers of light and air forming into neck, limbs, body. It was shorter than her by perhaps a few inches, but it held the shape of a grown woman. Molly looked on, fascinated into stillness. And the spirit looked back.

  It leaned closer, and Molly felt a breeze skitter across her skin. “Haviland?” the spirit said in a light, fluting voice.

  Molly started back, the familiar name on those alien lips shocking her. “Did you just say…did you just speak?” she whispered when her voice returned. The spirit took a step forward, ghostly hands rising. And then the stillness that had momentarily seemed to surround them was shattered by the booming voice of Molly’s father.

  “Moll! Molly!” She heard footsteps poundin
g across the deck.

  She was suddenly aware of her position. She was perched on the loft, high above the deck. One puff of wind could send her sailing out into the abyss, with no hope of rescue. She looked at the spirit’s hands, still moving toward her. Hand net. She flicked her wrist out, and the weighted net spread, arcing wide over the spirit. Molly brought it down, and with a cry that was far too human, the spirit lost its form. Shrinking away from the iron in the net, it drew its body inward until all that remained was a small orb of light and movement, shivering and shimmering. Molly pulled the net closed before it could escape.

  She heard a thud behind her and turned to see her father pulling himself up onto the engineer’s loft. As he straightened, she saw his face. For a moment it was suffused with fear, and then he took in the closed net, the trapped spirit and Molly.

  “You’ve got it then,” he said with surprise.

  “Aye,” she said weakly, holding up her catch. As the iron-laced net shifted around it, the spirit crackled unhappily.

  A grin spread across her father’s face. “Quite a catch,” he said. “No little seventh-level breeze. I’d say fourth, at least. And fast. Your first wild catch, isn’t it?”

  Molly looked down at the spirit, and the implications hit her. “It is my first,” she said, “but something like this, the ship should—”

  “The ship be damned,” he said.

  “But Da, this would sell for—”

  “That catch is yours. The first wild catch a sailor makes goes to the sailor, not the ship. You know the rule, and so does every hand aboard the Legerdemain.” He gripped her shoulder with his strong hand. His eyes glowed with pride—a look that made him almost as alien to her as the spirit. And then that pride was replaced with a more familiar pain. The grip on her shoulder weakened, and after a moment he let go. “That’s fine work,” he said and then descended from the loft.

  Molly took a breath and let it out. She held up the net to look at the spirit inside.