After they crossed a thick river obscured by the dark, Jack whirled the aught-to-mobile to a screeching halt and hopped out. He rounded the vehicle, popped her door open, and pulled Deliverance to her feet. The wind left her as she took in the gigantic wheel in front of them. There were hardly any people around this early in the morning, and the structure seemed, although gaily lit with lights brighter than Deliverance had ever seen, asleep.
“Come along,” Jack said as he brought her closer to the behemoth monster. “It normally does not run at this hour…but well, I called in a favor.”
Affixed to the wheel were numerous translucent pods, taller than a man and the size of several hog pens.
“You don’t mean we’re going into those…bubbles!?” Deliverance said, pulling back, suddenly a little apprehensive.
“It’s perfectly safe, I assure you,” Jack said. “I’ll be right there. Just like I was on our skydive.”
Deliverance shook her head as if to clear it. Of course, he was right. If he could go into one of those little pods, then so could she. Cautiously, she edged her way into the waiting bubble-room. It had begun to move slowly, rotating along the massive wheel, but its motion was so slight she relaxed a bit.
“Does it go faster?” Deliverance asked, venturing to the edge of the pod after glancing over her shoulder at Jack to ensure it was okay for her to traverse near the windows.
“Nope. It is actually quite tame compared to some of our previous endeavors,” Jack replied, joining her by the edge of the window.
“Look! The sun is rising!” Deliverance cried, as they rounded the bottom of the massive, spoked contraption and began to rise themselves. The God of Horizons donned peaches and vermilions as he discarded his indigo night robes. The illuminated palaces along the sluggish river below them began to glow of their own accord, although the clock face of the giant clock tower still shone an eerie cat’s eye yellow despite the rising sun. She was transfixed. The enormity of the scene alighting before her eyes stole the very breath from her lungs. It was not until Jack reminded her to breathe that she realized it. They climbed higher as the sun pulled itself into a full orb on the horizon. The city was absolutely massive and it was beginning to wake.
“There are no other people in the pods,” Deliverance remarked, not peeling her eyes from the city unfolding before her. Who knew anything like this could exist in the world?
“No, I called in a favor to get them to run the Ferris Wheel for me. I wanted you to see the world…I want you to see the whole world,” Jack said, not watching the scene, but watching her. He seemed to be deriving as much pleasure from watching her take in the Arcanton capital of Lontown as she was taking it in.
“Can we see Nar from here?” she asked, her hand on the glass making small ghosts.
“No. This is just a small piece of the world. But I would show you the whole thing if I could,” Jack said gently, eyes never leaving her.
For a moment, Deliverance slid her eyes sideways and assessed him. “You must be pretty important to call in favors such as this… Senator.”
At this he coughed uncomfortably. “Not nearly as influential as I would like to be and far more in the public’s eye than I would like to be as well. I see you caught my title.”
“Yes, I do not know much about Arcanton, but I do know it is a Republic and the Senate is the highest level of lawmaking in it,” Deliverance replied. “Are you not too young to be a Senator?”
“I am 27. And no, unfortunately things in Lontown, like much of the world, depend on where you were born and who you know. Which is entirely unfair and yet so is much of life. For better or worse I was born into a position where I could affect some good. After some prodding in my younger years, I realized it was foolish not to make use of what God granted me.”
“You were in the military before?” Deliverance asked, still absorbing the scenery, but keen to also absorb everything she could about this mysterious pirate-turned-senator.
“Aye. I was a bit of a rebellious sort in my younger years. Did not want much to do with the status and wealth I was born with. As soon as I was old enough, I enlisted in the Arcanton Republic military and was sent to a fire breather brigade. It was not until I served a few tours and life had knocked some sense into me that I began to understand it was not necessarily what I wanted out of life that mattered, but what those around me needed. The Plaedes-Arcanton conflict was…brutal. Most of the men were there out of necessity to feed their families and the government was not making enough efforts to actually win or end the conflict. Around the same time Eleanor fell ill, my brigade was nearly wiped out in a battle, save for three of my men and I. I was offered a chance to gain an appointment to the Senate, and was going to turn it down, but it was my sergeant’s dying wish that I take the appointment.” Jack cleared his throat, choking down the emotional memory. “He knew Eleanor needed me and that I, unlike so many of them, actually had a chance to affect real change. He told me the fight was not necessarily always on the field of battle. That stuck with me ever since.”
He fell silent after this revelation and regarded the skyline. They had reached the pinnacle of the wheel. Deliverance’s mind was also wheeling, not from just the immense sights but the depths of the man next to her. There was so much she wanted to know. She reached over and covered his hand, resting on the metal railing, with her own. At first she could feel his power wanting to leap into the capillaries of the undersides of her fingers, but she blocked it, and soon it became natural…just two hands joined in comfort.
After a while, a niggling thought itched in the back of Deliverance’s mind. The shape of the skyline seemed…familiar somehow. It could not be possible. She would have remembered seeing a painting or sketching of such an immense city if it were in any of the few books she had seen on Nar. But something about the colors and the dramatic sweeps of the bridges…
“My glass globe!” Deliverance exclaimed.
“Come again?” Jack asked, frowning.
“My glass globe…it was a small trinket I had back home on Nar. It was a small glass orb about yeah big on a pedestal. When you would shake it, little fake snow would flutter around the fairy city inside…this fairy city,” Deliverance said, pieces starting to click in place.
“So you’re saying…you had a snow globe of Arcanton?” Jack asked incredulously.
“Snow globe? If that is what you call such a thing, then yes. I have one. It is stowed away in our floorboard cache where we keep our books and other items we do not necessarily want the menfolk of Nar knowing we have,” Deliverance said. In her mind’s eye she could see the rough, knotted pine boards and the small catch in the seam where they would pry them up. In it, their treasures—the couple books she and Cat had in their careworn leather covers, some heirloom lockets and brooches, paper and quills for her mother’s messages, some curious flags or other knickknacks Deliverance had been warned not to mess with, her mother’s herbal physick grimoire, and among the bits and bobs, Deliverance’s snow globe. She could not remember how she had come to possess it. Perhaps it too had been an heirloom?
“That is rather an odd possession for a Narisi woman,” Jack said, affirming what she was thinking. How on earth had it come into their care?
The city awakened as they descended. Steam di
rigibles, smaller than the ship they came in on, dotted the sky over the city. Automobiles, Deliverance learned from Jack earlier, not aught-to-mobiles, piled up like worker ants along the twisted streets and the muddy, sluggish river reluctantly tugged vessels of every size in its brackish waters. There were several pedestrians about as Deliverance and Jack alit from the Ferris Wheel and returned to his car. Car was another word for aught-to…no, automobile.
As they came down the ramp, Deliverance spotted a woman more unusual than she had ever seen in her life. The woman, not much older than her mother, had an elegant carriage, fine silks clinging to her skin, and beautiful high cheekbones. But her skin seemed to be burnt. Deliverance could not help but stop and stare. The woman did not take any notice of her in return but was fussing with a baby pram as she ambled down the pathway. No, her skin was not burnt. It was glowing with health…it was simply the color of burnished ebony. Her hair hung in intricate braids that wap-wap-waped along her back as she pushed her baby carriage along, like tiny fishing net lines, except built for ensnaring glances rather than fishes.
Jack coughed beside her, breaking her trance. Very slyly, he reached up under her chin and closed her gaping mouth. “It’s rather bad form to stare, love,” he said with a smile.
Immediately Deliverance colored in embarrassment. “I…oh. Sorry. It’s just I have never seen anyone so beautiful before,” Deliverance murmured, ashamed of her poor manners.
“Yes, from what I understand, Nar is quite ethnically homogenous,” Jack replied, not unkindly. He seemed to understand her faux pas and take it in stride.
“Most everyone has blond hair or brunette, or sometimes even red. There is no one such as that woman. Is she…born that way?” Deliverance asked curiously, sneaking another sideways glance at the foreign woman.
“Yes, quite. And you will find the world is made of people of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Traditionally Arcantons were like Narisis. But in the past several hundred years, our demographics have expanded both because of friendly relations and some misguiding colonial efforts. We’ve had dark times, unfortunately, when people of color, or people with darker skintones like that woman, were oppressed or enslaved even. We have since reformed, or at least the vast majority of society has, but we are not proud of that piece of our history. It is part of my job as a man of law to make sure that does not happen again,” Jack explained as they took a jaunt on the path beside the river.
“I can’t imagine,” Deliverance exclaimed.
“Can you not?” Jack answered, his tone indifferent, but his look seemingly baiting.
“I do not know what you mean.” Deliverance replied.
“Can you make law?” Jack asked.
“What, here?”
“No. On Nar. Are you eligible to make legal decisions?”
“I…no. I suppose not. The assembly is made of men. They select their representatives at the Men’s Hall. I know not of their procedures,” Deliverance replied, unsure.
“Okay. Well then can a married woman on Nar own property then?” Jack asked, going a different direction.
“Well…I suppose she would not have the need to. Her husband would be in charge of whatever property there was in a marital union,” Deliverance replied again.
“So, if you were to marry, all your possessions would really be your husband’s?” Jack asked, following a line of logic Deliverance did not see the end of yet. She nodded. “So, really all you own, you own because you are either not married or exclude yourselves from society?”
He was right. Cat and Deliverance had reign over their homestead because it was just them and they kept to themselves. Effie had some freedom, but she had to wheel and deal for it, and owed a large portion of whatever she came by back to the Village Common.
“What of punishments? Who decides those?” Jack asked again.
“In the village? The Reave and sometimes a council selected from the Men’s Hall,” Deliverance answered, starting to feel an uncomfortable truth revealed before her.
“Ah…so men again. What about marriage then? Does a woman select her husband?” Jack interrogated.
“Don’t be daft! No, a father does…although usually with his wife’s council.” Deliverance protested.
“Ah, with his wife’s council…but he has the final say though then?” Jack ferreted out. She nodded again.
“Reading?”
“Discouraged for women.”
“Trades?”
“Only with the husband’s permission and only a select few like seamstress or baker’s assistant.”
“And your gods?”
“They’re…all male,” Deliverance admitted, resigning to something she could never quite put her finger on until now. Inequity.
“So, let me get this straight. You cannot vote. You cannot hold offices of power. You can only own property in a limited capacity. And you cannot even read for the most part,” Jack enumerated.
Deliverance nodded with a lump in her throat. When he put it so blatantly it seemed entirely and horrifically unfair.
“Sounds to me like you do know a thing or two about oppression then, wouldn’t you say, my love?” Jack made his point as they ambled along. Deliverance nodded gravely. It seemed so simple. How had she not thought about it until now?
She fell silent as she contemplated this, coupled with the surroundings. The river below became more congested as the morning drew on and the crass cries of boatmen mixed with seagulls and motorists’ horns. Two-wheeled contraptions whirled by them on the promenade, weaving around pedestrians in an assortment of dress. Many were decked out in suits for the men, or ornate multilayered dresses not unlike the one Deliverance was wearing, for the women. But occasionally she would see both men and women in plain pajama-looking clothing or long white jackets, which Jack explained meant they probably worked in medicine or science. The men with rougher looking pants, tool belts, and shiny, bulbous hats were construction workers of various sorts. Deliverance used to feel odd wearing her leather pants back on Nar. Women did not usually wear such things, but they gave her greater freedom of motion in the forest and were better for farm work, and so she bore the stares of the village people if they happened upon her in such garb. Here there were so many people in such an array of dress that no one looked sideways at a woman in pants…or a man in a dress, even. Jack did mention the man in a dress was wearing something called a kilt, but still, Deliverance decided it was quite progressive.
“What about women here?” Deliverance asked finally, deciding to end her brooding and find out more about Arcanton instead.
“They are all different. They are wives, mothers, sisters. But they are also university professors, doctors, lawyers, and politicians. Our senate is full of women representatives,” Jack said.
Deliverance thought of Effie. “What about…women who like other women?” She couldn’t quite believe what he had said on the ship about Arcantons being so accepting.
Jack glanced at her and for a second Deliverance thought he might say something untoward, but unexpectedly he asked, “Why, are you…?”
“What? Oh—no, I don’t think so at least. The reason I asked is because of my best friend, Effie. She…is like
that from what I gather. It’s one of the reasons we’re in this mess, I suppose,” Deliverance said.
“No, we’re in this mess because the men of Nar have their heads stuck up their arses and have had them firmly affixed there for several hundred years. If you ask me, they feel really inadequate because they’ve no magic themselves,” Jack replied. “But to answer your question, like I said before, it is something that is allowed here. Women marrying women, or vice versus, men marrying men. We try not to discriminate based upon skin color or what you like to do in the bedroom. At least that’s the idea of it. What we strive for. It may fall short sometimes in reality. But that’s the job of a senator—to help society become more open and progressive.”
Deliverance had colored a little at the mention of the bedroom. After her friendship with Effie, she was well aware of the mechanics of what went on there…she just had never had the inkling of wanting to find out in the first person. It was not the sort of thing one discussed openly on Nar…only behind closed doors if your best friend was a whore.
“Well we had best be back. Mrs. Potter is having kittens that I brought you out here, but frankly I refuse to shutter you up like a caged animal. This is the world, and I mean to show it to you as best I can!” Jack announced. “However, she might neuter me if we are not back in time for breakfast, so in the interest of any future little Jacks that may occur, let’s get back to the manor.”
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