24 DAYS. 23 HOURS. 17 MINUTES
The following day, Meena woke me up with a promise of breakfast and a surprise. I didn’t know what this surprise entailed, but Meena’s eyes sparkled as she hopped from foot to foot. The smile practically jumped off her face.
“C’mon.” She yanked me out the door the moment I was dressed. “I don’t want to miss a single moment.”
We dined for breakfast in a small hall with enough seating for six people, but today it only had three: Meena, myself, and Hera. Hera looked at me with a gentle curiosity while Meena chatted endlessly about what might await us in Eto Valley, leaving out the real reason we were going, of course, but I indulged her.
“Apparently it’s flat, with no levels whatsoever, and resembles a town of old.”
“Really?” I asked.
“There are a few flat towns,” Hera said. “I’ve seen a couple on my travels, but the two cities on the island are, of course, up-leveled.” She looked at Meena with a question on her face, and Meena nodded in encouragement. “Jemeena has asked me to show you around the engines today, so you can see how they work for yourself.”
I placed my fork back on the table a little too vigorously and grinned at Hera. “Really? That would be okay?”
“Sure. But I’m only escorting you there. I’ll leave you in the engine master’s capable hands after that. He’ll probably know more than me anyway.”
I looked at Meena with gratitude and whispered, “Thank you. I’ll just grab IoN and then we can go.”
“Okay, but be quick,” Hera said. “I’m a busy woman.”
I sprinted to the room, told IoN about it, and grabbed him before heading back. “It’s gonna be so cool. We’re going to get to see everything!”
“It will be interesting.”
He settled into my arms in his usual position before we entered the dining room, and Hera escorted all of us down a few flights of stairs to the engine rooms. “We are here.” She waited until the door opened. A portly man stood on the other side, wearing a floppy hat and more grease than I’d ever seen on a person. Hera bowed to Meena and tipped her hat at me, then left.
“Hello, Miss Ferning, Princess Jemeena,” the man standing in the doorway said. “Welcome to the engine room.” He gathered us inside and shut the door before starting our tour. “This dirigible has four engines, being that it’s smaller than other larger passenger models, but it takes over a dozen workers to keep her in the sky.” He walked up to a giant metal contraption that was so large, I couldn’t see it all without moving around it. “This is engine one. We like to call her Merida. She has water pumped from the tank below”—he stamped his foot on the ground twice—“which is then rapidly heated by use of coal to create steam, which powers the various mechanics onboard. The entire ship is laid with pipes that can carry steam to anywhere onboard.”
“Do you use the Baryman Method to keep everything cool and safe, or do you need to use another system for something this large?”
“Well, we start with a basic BM, but we do have to modulate things to adapt them to a complex system, such as the pipes in the metalwork of the ship itself, which use a ventilation system to let the hot air escape at every meter.”
That was clever. Could they use something like that throughout the mines? Maybe vents that let out on the ground floor to keep the miners cooler and safer?
He showed us every nook and cranny, answered every question I had, and even took us down to the tank below so I could watch the water being siphoned up into the engines. It was magical, and, despite probably being bored out of her mind, Meena was with me for the entire day. Eventually we had to retire for the afternoon and prep ourselves for dinner, which was a laid-back affair of cheeses, breads, olives, and spreads that we ate while chatting.
18 DAYS. 16 HOURS. 31 MINUTES
We had been traveling for six straight days, the dirigible having managed to stay in the air the entire time other than to refuel at a town en route, and I had not, to my utter relief, gotten motion sick. Meena and I had spent most of the time chatting about Dad’s research, the trip he took, and comparing notes on how much we knew about our destination. One thing we both agreed on was that no one other than us three should know about our real purpose, not even Captain Hera.
Meena didn’t like lying to her friend, but it was necessary. Who knew a person’s real motive when possessed with the knowledge of the potential altering of life time? I had apologized thrice since that first day about my behavior toward the captain, but she shrugged it off and ignored me—whenever Meena was around. Whenever it was just the two of us, her charm and friendly attitude diminished a little; she returned to the cold-shoulder mannerisms I had first pegged her with.
I didn’t know what I had done, but I was determined not to let it ruin this trip. In a few hours, we would land at our destination: Eto Valley. According to Dad’s notes, this was where Varissa was, and according to Meena, it was a small village community made of a collection of smaller villages and towns that had grown laterally over the years, instead of vertically like us.
Despite trying numerous times, I couldn’t make out Dad’s scribblings about what had happened in Eto Valley, but we were hoping this Varissa person could tell us—assuming they were still alive.
A knock at my chamber door had me scrambling to gather all the paperwork I’d spread over the bed in the past hour. “Just a minute!” I shoved everything under my pillows and scampered to the door.
A short gentleman wearing a servant’s uniform and slicked-back black hair greeted me with a small bow. “We will be descending soon, Lady Ferning.”
“Than-n-n-k you.” I bowed back, and he turned on his heels and departed back down the corridor.
It was weird being treated like a noble, and I still blushed and stumbled over myself whenever someone bowed or called me lady, but it was...nice to be respected. At least, it was nice compared to the daily name-calling, ridiculing, and bossing around that I was used to. But I was only here for eighteen more days, and then it was back to normality.
“El!” Meena shouted to get my attention from her chamber doorway next to mine. “You with me?” She tugged the sleeves of her dress down over the golden material she always had wrapped around her lifeclock. “It’s time to descend.”
“Err . . . right.” I shook my head and stepped outside. “Coming, IoN?”
“Yes.” He whizzed ahead of us, and soon it was just us walking toward the disembarkation deck on the lower floor.
We had exited the desert late yesterday evening and had since descended into the grassy valley that sat at the base of the Eto Mountains. The valley, surrounded by shrubbery and small patches of woodland that looked to be as boggy as level zero was dark, was flat with a river that ran through the houses and into a small lake at the center.
“This is Eto Valley?” I asked myself. It wasn’t much.
“Yeah... They live a simpler life out here.”
A rattling sound came over the radio speakers at the front of the disembarkation deck. “Please step onto the boarding platform,” the captain spoke. “We have reached our destination.” And just as she finished her announcement, the dirigible met solid ground and my legs became heavy and stiff.
Meena and I stepped onto the small platform due to descend any minute and grabbed the railing that surrounded the central mechanism and each other.
I handed Meena a piece of material I’d ripped from one of my shirts and stitched into a mask that would help with the dust outside. “Here.”
She looked at me. “I should be fine outside of the desert, but thank you.”
I shrugged. “Can’t have you dying before we finish our trip.” Not that that was likely, unless her time suddenly descended. Rare, but it happened from time to time.
The dusty window that showed us our surroundings was hard to see through, but I could tell that Eto Valley had a starkly different way of life from us. They had sunlight touching everything I could see, and nothing was taller than one or two stories. It was...refreshing. Like the stories Mom used to tell me of what it was supposedly like before we discovered steam power, when we lived in one-story towns made entirely of stone and wood. Every bit of the ground floor—the only floor, I guess—was covered in broken pieces of pavement, stone, and metal, and tufts of grass and weeds poked through at every inch. It was like nature was taking back her planet, and the people here just let her.
Meena held on tight to my arm, her grip like ice on my otherwise balmy skin—the desert had been scorching hot, even inside the safety of the dirigible—and I looked at her with worry. Although her lungs had recovered from her earlier trip across the sands, she hadn’t. I could tell by the way her skin was paler than ever. She was unsteady on her feet, even though she tried to cover it up and act okay, and she was losing weight. I could see the bones of her shoulders more prominently than ever.
I was worried. Worried we wouldn’t be able to complete this trip before she died and worried about what would happen when she did die.
I shook my head. I could deal with that when it came. For now, I wanted to try to save her life.
The platform lowered just as the door slid open and we descended into Eto Valley. The first thing I saw was green. Everywhere was covered in green. Not the kind of rotting moss that saturated the walls of floor zero, but bright green grass and ferns and flowers that dotted every spare surface they could find, and if they couldn’t find one, they made one; some of the plants even grew out of the sides of the small houses.
The dirigible landed about a mile outside of the center by the looks of things, but even this far out, the place was bustling with people carrying baskets of food, managing unruly children, hanging washing out to dry in the morning sun, and tending to their vast gardens.
“Oh, wow,” Meena said. “Look at all the tracheophyta and liliales.” She stepped off the platform and walked up to a small garden fenced in by old wooden pickets, and she marveled at the sight. She brushed her fingers against a particularly bright purple flower. “I could not make an orchid grow like this if I tried.”
An older gentleman coughed and chuckled. “It ain’t that hard, miss. All an orchid needs is a good wet and dry pattern of waterin’.” He gestured to the patch of similar-looking flowers surrounding it—all orchids, I assumed—and said, “See, they like breaks in between their waterin’, and most folk just try to give ’em as much as possible in fear o’ killin’ ’em. But they’ll drown if you do that.”
“What about the type of food you feed them out here?” she asked, excitement buoying her every step.
“Well”—he scratched his head—“we don’ have access to fancy food they feed flowers in richer cities, so I jus’ feed ’em whatever dead stuff I can, miss. Leaves, leavings, and so on.”
“Ah, so just natural nitrogen, then?”
He shrugged. “Guess so.”
“Er...Meena?” I tugged on her sleeve. She looked at me, and I gestured her closer. “We need to get going.” I flashed my eyes to her lifeclock.
“Right.” She turned back to the gentleman. “I am so sorry, but I must be moving on. We are on a rather tight deadline.”
“O’ course, miss.” He tipped his wide-brimmed hat and bowed his head lightly. “It’s been a pleasure.”
“The pleasure has been all mine, sir.” She bowed her head in return and looped her arm through mine. “Come on. We should go to the town center and find this Varissa person.”
The short journey to the center of the collaboration of villages took no longer than two hours, but it was two hours of walking through a totally different world. You could see where villages had developed, grew over time, and eventually merged with one another, with the occasional boundary to mark space.
“This place is so...flat,” I whispered as we walked down another sun-filled path. “Light touches everything.”
“You would like it out here, would you not?” Meena asked, curious about my fascination with this place.
“I like the endless sun. The freedom these people have.” I gestured to three children playing with laughter and bruises. “But I’d quickly get frustrated with the lack of steam-powered technology.”
Meena laughed, wheezing. “Yes. For without your garage, who are you really?”
“Right?” I feigned surprised hurt and we laughed for a bit before Meena had to stop as she started coughing.
She leaned over her knees, this fit lasting longer than any I’d seen. I rubbed circles over her back, hoping it might help, but I eventually made us sit on some nearby stone benches.
“You know,” she said between coughs, “it does bring into question what your father was doing out here.”
“Huh?”
She gestured to all around us. “This place is far from technologically capable. Why here?”
“You know, you have a point.”
IoN had been suspiciously silent on our trip so far, but he chose that moment to wake up. “There could be a number of reasons, Princess. We should continue as soon as you are able.”
“Right, of course.” She stood with renewed determination.
“Wait.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “We can rest a moment longer if needed.” I scowled at IoN.
She shook her head. “IoN is right. We need to keep moving. Just eighteen days left.” She frowned at the wrapped lifeclock on her wrist. “Come on.”
We continued walking, and eventually the town got more modern, more central, and just when we were about to cross the line into the central township, I noticed the first sign of modern technology. “Look, a steam-powered sign!” It said Welcome to Eto Center in bright yellow letters on a worn-out scrap of metal that I assumed was once white. “So, they do know about steam power here.”
“Seems that way,” Meena said, a little out of breath.
“Come on.” I guided her to a nearby rock to rest. “We can find someone to question in a moment. You should rest first.”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “I am fed up with resting!” She jumped to her feet and stalked forward. “All I bloody do is rest. I am sick of it.” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “If I do not do something, I am going to...”
She couldn’t finish the sentence, for her breaths had grown short and raspy and she was forced to stop.
“Okay, okay,” I hushed. “We can keep going if that’s what you want.”
She walked ahead of me while wheezing. I jogged to catch up. Soon we walked hand-in-hand to the biggest building in the center of the valley. It was marked Eto Valley Guild Hall . Hopefully, someone in there could answer our questions.
We entered the guild hall, IoN whizzing by my head in silence as usual, and I stood aghast at the sight before me. Everywhere I looked stood benches, tables, metal railings, and an entire system of steam-powered technology that lit up the building like a signpost. It was so... “Bright.”
“Yes, this place is rather . . . like home.”
She was right. It did remind me of the higher levels of home, but with the charm of Mother Nature poking through every available crack in the cement.
“So,” she began as she spun on the spot, “where to?”
I glanced around to take in the signs and bustle of people doing their jobs and eventually settled on a small desk in the far corner with a lovely elderly lady sitting behind an Ask Me for Help sign. How useful. “This way.” I dragged Meena behind me and stood in front of the desk, impatiently tapping my foot. “Hello?”
The elderly lady looked up from her growing pile of paperwork. “Hello.” Her accent was thick. “How can I help you?”
Meena stepped forward and undid her scarf, mask, and headpiece, letting her full face show.
The woman gasped and stood to attention. “Princess Jemeena!” She bowed. “I’m sorry I did not recognize you sooner.”
Meena waved the woman’s concerns away. “It is of no concern. Please.” She gestured to the chair the woman had vacated. “We are looking for someone. Someone named Varissa?”
The old lady’s eyes widened as she spluttered into a closed fist. After regaining herself and brushing imaginary dust off her immaculate dress, she shook her head. “I am sorry, but that won’t be possible.”
Meena frowned. “Why not?”
The lady bowed her head with a sad face. “Because she is currently serving a life sentence in Vine Valley.”
Meena’s eyes widened as she took a step closer to the desk. In a low voice, she whispered, “Can you please tell me what for?”
The old lady leaned in, looked both ways, as if checking to see if the auditory coast was clear, and whispered back, “People say she helped murder someone.” She sat back and shrugged. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know much more.”
“But—”
I grabbed Meena’s hand and pulled her toward me. “C’mon, Meena. She doesn’t want to share any more information.” I gestured to her shaking hands and nervous eyes. “She’ll probably get in trouble for saying more.”
Meena’s eyes glowed in understanding. “Ah, you’re probably right.” She turned back to the old lady. “I am sorry we have bothered you. Please, have a nice day.” She returned her scarf and mask back to normal before turning toward the door and gesturing us outside.
In the high sun, we sat on a bench under the shade of a tree Meena told me was a sumac tree. IoN remained as silent as he had been for the rest of the day, but I had questions.
“I wonder what she was arrested for?” I looked at Meena. “Do you think it’s true what people say? That she helped murder someone?”
Meena bit the edges of her bottom lip, and I found it hard to pull my gaze away. “It’s just...” She took as deep a breath as she could manage. “People don’t get sent to Vine Valley for any simple crime. It’s where we send our most dangerous prisoners so they’re out of the cities and towns that harbor people.”
“From all over the island?”
She nodded.
“Wow.” I didn’t know what else to say. “That’s...”
“For the best,” IoN chirped in his mechanical voice.
“You think?” I rubbed the back of my neck with unease. “Doesn’t it seem a little...isolating?”
“El,” IoN said in his taking-no-nonsense voice I only hear him use when he’s trying to school me in something other than engineering. “Just think about it for a moment. What would you do with murderers and other serious criminals? We are not talking about thieves or smugglers here.”
“Yeah,” I whispered. The thought of Bobby being around people like that flitted across my mind, and I instantly changed my opinion. “Yeah, I guess that’s for the best.” My eyes met Meena’s green ones again, renewed with confidence in at least one part of our system. “It’s keeping us all safe.”
Meena’s eyes lit with something akin to pride and delight. “It’s in everyone’s best interests.”
I agreed, not really thinking about much more than whatever would make her happy. “So will finding an answer to your”—I glanced at the strip of golden cloth glinting in the sunlight—“problem.”
“Yes,” IoN said, “so we best decide what to do from here.” He looked at me.
“IoN’s right. We need to meet Varissa.” Meena stood, a renewed vigor running through her.
“You don’t mean . . . ?”
“Yes.” She spun on her heel and faced me, her expression set in stone. “We are going to Vine Valley.”