The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance (5 page)

chapter six

Derbyshire

With a blast
of steam, the Derwent Valley train pulled out of Derby’s station before sunrise. Annmar heaved a sigh of relief. Worrying someone would stop her was ludicrous, but that hadn’t kept her stomach from knotting up while waiting for the train to leave. Though unhappy, Mrs. Rennet had merely threatened to fill Annmar’s position as soon as she found a replacement. Losing Annmar meant inconveniencing Mr. Shearing. Annmar hadn’t dared to ask if the shopkeeper would share the information immediately, or avoid him for as long as possible.

So, Annmar had left at her first opportunity. Mr. Fetcher’s job might turn out to be a fool’s errand, seeing her back before the week was out, but the gold half sovereigns were real. The solid coins between her fingers sparked dreams of independence and fueled her curiosity to see the land of Mother’s childhood.

The train crossed the misty fields of the outlying farms. Outside the rattling windows, orange-lit clouds lined the eastern horizon. An unusually large grouping of five barns and three silos caught her eye, and Annmar sensed the spread belonged to Shearing Enterprises even before spotting his logo on the tallest silo. Huge fields dwarfed a line of self-propelled threshing machines, equipment Annmar knew from firsthand experience to be enormous. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t.

She wasn’t beyond his reach yet.

The churning of the train wheels seemed to agree, singing the motto The Latest in Agricultural Technology, no matter how much she wished to dismiss it.

“Duffield,” a conductor announced, walking through the car. “Fifteen-minute stop while we unload cargo. Reboard at the first whistle.”

The train jammed to a halt. A few passengers entered, and Annmar pulled her shawl closer as they took seats. Beneath the soft wool of Mother’s favored wrap, she slipped her hand into her satchel and stroked her sketchbook. She’d love to draw one of these women dressed for a special day out. Their fancy hats, trimmed with ribbon and knotted threads, would keep her pencil busy for hours. But Annmar shouldn’t call attention to herself. While she thought she might stop if anyone took notice, she never did, forgetting herself in her imaginings.

Two well-dressed men took nearby seats. One said, “We’ll get him brought over. Who else is on today’s list?”

They commenced arguing over the best route to get around to several farms. A man in bib-and-brace trousers got up and, with a glare to the town men, left the car.

Annmar took a second look. Their green jackets bore a familiar gold insignia above the breast pocket—Shearing’s. Oh, Lord, these are his recruitment men. Obviously, the departing farmer refused to even listen to the talk Polly also hated: Should small landholders give over their property and become workers on the larger “cooperative” farms that Mr. Shearing touted as the wave of the future? Polly said the so-called co-owners ended up with no say, and from the angry looks of the other passengers, there must be some truth to it.

“Eh,” said one of Shearing’s men. “Won’t be long before we’re riding to the end of the line and taking our message right to the Peaks.”

A man seated before them turned around. “You think you can get those backward Peaks dwellers to join you? They refuse to move into the nineteenth century, and it’s half over.”

Annmar huddled, facing the window, watching a steam loader trundle away with stacks of low crates bearing a fancy trademark of GSG, the scripted initials in the outline of a sheep. Still, she couldn’t block the twisting conversation of how Shearing Enterprises’ mechanized engines would convert “the northern hinterlands of Derbyshire” into a model of progress. She’d had no idea how far-reaching Mr. Shearing’s plan was.

Another farmer approached them. “I’d like to sign up,” he said.

One green-jacketed man shuffled through his papers, looked up the acreage and finally shook his head. “Can’t do it.”

“Why not?” the farmer asked. “It’s good land, the other representative said. Exactly the holdings the company is looking for.”

“You’ve turned Mr. Shearing down. Twice,” came the abrupt answer.

The farmer argued, then begged for consideration, until Shearing’s men waved him off. “Two chances, that’s it. He’ll buy your holding on the debtor’s prison block.”

Annmar swallowed. Mr. Shearing planned to expand to the Peaks and its villages. He would view her taking this position with an independent farm as traitorous. If his influence up north grew to anything like it was in Derby and he took over the Gapton farms, he might find a reason to have her fired, even ostracized, making it difficult for her to find work in other commercial ventures.

Annmar clenched her sketchbook. Had she made a terrible mistake?

* * *

The conductor announced
the stops, people got on and off, including Mr. Shearing’s men. Annmar took out her letter and scanned its instructions again. At the end of the main line, she was to take a branch line into the Peaks. The Gapton stationmaster, a Mr. Yates, would arrange her transport to Wellspring Collective. She fingered the dangling seal—her Proof.

Because of her fear Mr. Shearing might track her down, Annmar had told Polly the same story as Mrs. Rennet, that Mother’s business matters, which this could be, required her attention.  Annmar left the location vaguely “in the Peak District.” But she couldn’t help sharing the mysterious Proof. While Annmar packed, Polly had whispered it must be a special talisman, one Annmar could trade for a first-class rail coach, or better yet, metals from the Peaks’ mines. Or perhaps the sight of it would tame the Peaks’ rumored beasts, making pussycats of the tigers escaped from traveling menageries. Polly’s ideas had grown as fantastical as the serials she loved, and Annmar had giggled along with her.

She already missed Polly and her spinning of wild yarns. Yet her friend had good reason to speculate on the strange seal. Blue wax wasn’t commonly used, and this medallion felt heavy. Polly had suggested scratching off an edge—just to check if it covered Peaks’ copper or silver. But Annmar didn’t dare ruin the Proof. She folded the seal back into the paper and put it away in her satchel.

“Last stop, Rowsley,” the conductor finally called. Under the gray sky, she spotted her trunk among a mishmash of cargo, including the sheep-marked crates. From the stenciled names and trademarks on stacks of vegetable flats, one name popped out: Wellspring Collective.

Relief flooded her. The farm was nearby, and indeed the operation could use an artist’s help, if the plain black lettering was a sample of their image.

A porter hauled her trunk to the branch line’s platform. The rail tracks wound up the Peaks hillside. She looked up, and up again, gawking at the unfamiliar terrain. Cream-colored rock rimmed pits where the ground had fallen in. Terraced farmland wove around these potholes, fields little bigger than kitchen gardens held by limestone retaining walls. Yet, up and down the hillside, farmers harvested their crops into crates like the ones on the platform.

This was the land producing the Gapton vegetables? Surely Mr. Shearing would end his plans for model farms short of these shelf-like hillsides. No modern machinery could work here, and it looked so rough compared to the rest of gently rolling Derbyshire.

With a start, she realized her hand was pressed to the gold half sovereigns hidden in the secret pocket she’d sewn into each of her skirt waistbands.

Still there, three of them. Three more she’d hidden in her bodice, and the remains from buying her tickets were tucked in her satchel. She had the means to leave, but...what did she have to go back to with no money for a shop?

Annmar boarded the smaller railway’s single coach with a few country women carrying market baskets. On the ride up, the terrain only became more irregular and rocky, the farmers scarcer, until the uppermost fields lay unattended. Below the low clouds at the top, rugged gray rock jutted between dense trees. Mother once told her making a living alongside the forest and its wild animals was tough.

Even aside from Polly’s serials, Annmar had heard people say wolves still roamed these woods, though scientists said they’d been extinct for a century. Nothing moved there, and she refused to let her imagination decide otherwise, focusing instead on the cluster of shabby buildings perched on the ridge.

Was this the Gap? Where was… The faded lettering, G-A-P-T-O-N, was worn to outlines on a small station, its blue paint peeling. The train stopped, and the women, who had cast Annmar curious glances, left with their baskets. She followed them out of the coach, carrying her valise. The wind snatched her bonnet and carried it off.

“Oh!” She ran a step, then realized the ground beyond the railway platform dropped off to more rock. She’d have to get another at—she looked around the few buildings dotting the ridge—somewhere.

“Lady?” A boy in a farmer’s bib-and-brace tugged at her shawl, then took her valise. “Who are yous here to see?”

She grabbed her slipping shawl and secured it with the strap of her satchel, hugging the soft knit to her. Though the time was nearing noon, the breeze raised goose bumps on her arms beneath her long-sleeved blouse. “I…uh.” Annmar took a breath. “Mr. Yates, the Gapton stationmaster.”

His brow lifted. “Ah. Yous was told his name, then.” The boy glanced to the station.

She followed his gaze. Tall rock outcrops rose behind the old building—a tollbooth, converted from the days when the residents charged for passage on the abandoned Roman roads. The old road must cross through the cliff narrows, the gap. It’d be lovely to draw it in its glory, with the golden ash trees arching overhead.

“He’ll be here directly,” the boy said. “Had to see to some business.”

A man walked up with her trunk and set it down. The boy put her valise on top and followed the man to help the workmen transfer crates to a steam loader. Though they looked rougher in their worn bib-and-braces, these men went about their business without leering at her, unlike those in town.

Taking her instructions from her satchel, Annmar assured herself the Proof seal was still in place and skimmed to Mr. Yates’ name, her last listed contact. She folded the paper and glanced to the piles of wooden boxes still to be moved. They bore the names of many farms besides Wellspring Collective. Gapton was a trade center, Mr. Fetcher had said, and Mr. Shearing must know of their active commerce.

Annmar shook her head. Mr. Shearing and his doings must not follow her any longer. She should dismiss thoughts of him as she hoped he would do of her. With the paper-covered seal weighing her hand, she strode to the station building.

It was empty. Rail tracks led past the building, tracks the steam loader operated on. Mr. Yates’ business must be there, at a second platform. Annmar squeezed the seal. She was eager to get this next transport arranged, so followed a path of paving stones behind the station into shadows. The rails ran in the old roadway, closed in on either side by rock outcrops. The stones canted eerily. A frigid breeze swept down from the overarching trees. This place prickled the hairs on the back of her neck, like passages from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

She stopped and drew in her shawl. The gorge’s curving walls seemed to converge, like a perspective drawing with no end in sight. Strangely, she felt this convergence was real, that the dark end ahead would be so narrow she wouldn’t be able to turn and escape it.

Polly’s stories have caught hold of me. She was being ridiculous. But in the dimming light, her determination ebbed toward turning around—

Brrrroo. The rumbling—or was it a growl?—echoed off the walls, surrounding her. Could it be a wolf? Waiting on a ledge, ready to spring? Annmar darted searching looks across the cliffs and stumbled. Flinging out a hand, she scraped stone and felt the paper in her hand slip—

She clenched the packet, and though her shoulder jammed into the rocks, she didn’t lose her Proof seal. Warmth spread across her palm. Mercy, I’m bleeding. Her glove must be tattered, ruined. If only she could see.

Then she could see. The rock canyon around her lightened, as if the sun had come from behind a cloud. Under her feet, a wide platform proceeded along the railbed to an open area steps ahead.

Annmar glanced at her hand. The glove wasn’t ripped, or bloodstained. But it was blue.

Had the seal melted under the heat of her hand? Shaking, she transferred the paper packet to her other hand. The blue faded as she raised her hand to a shaft of light.

What had happened? She’d felt the warmth, seen the coloring. But as she turned them, neither the paper nor her gloves were stained. Had it been a trick of the light? Or—Annmar pressed a hand to her mouth—nerves?

Indeed, her escape from Mr. Shearing and the excitement of her trip must be wearing on her nerves. However, she had to consider the new employment. She could not afford to be dismissed for suspicion of being prone to vapors, even if her stomach felt like she was back in Mr. Shearing’s presence. Lowering her hand, Annmar drew a deep breath and forced herself to walk forward. Nothing of the incident or her worries need be mentioned.

The crisp mountain breezes teased her uncovered hair and perked her nostrils with the rich smells of the ground and growing things. She followed them to where the railway platform ended in nothing. Heart pounding, she gasped at the panorama before her. Mountains circled the perimeter of an oblong crater, and down within it—farther than the hillside she’d come up—rolled gentle hills patchworked with fields, pastures and woodlots. Streams glinted like satin ribbons, meandering between the mounds. Roads connected clusters of buildings, each village spouting a spire or two.