By the time the sun was fully in the sky, a little village had come into sight.

Aldwithy—it was so small it hadn't earned a Kaihongo name—was a single square kilometer of land carved into an island by irrigation canals. On the opposite side of the canals rose barbed wire fences with gates connected to the village by bridges. Beyond that lay rows and rows of apple trees to the horizon. Sayuri ascertained this was the main economic driver of the village.

Unlike the piers in Suigen, Aldwithy was empty and silent. Birds twittered in the distance, timbered houses creaked in the wind, and the tide washed against the rocky shore. Apple-pickers in the distance were the only signs that the village was not abandoned.

"Are we gonna be able to patch up the boat here?" Chester asked

"Sure! Just gotta let my buddy know I'm coming," said Fukuzawa.

He gestured to where the cobblestone quay had collapsed. The rubble spilled onto a small beach where a line of wooden pallets lay tied together, the last of which was partially submerged.

Æfrian beaches were all pitiful. The sun rarely shined, the shores were rocky and hurt one's feet, and the temperature was never pleasantly toasty in the way a Kaihon summer was. Kaihon beaches also did not have barbed wire fences looming over them. No doubt an orchardist owned the property immediately surrounding the village. Sadly, it was his Right of Property to put up the fences.

"What does Aldwithy mean? I assume it is classical Afujin," Sayuri asked.

"Old Willows," Fukuzawa said, lining the Daisagi-Maru up with the wooden pallets.

"There are no willow trees in sight."

"Those old willows must've finally kicked the bucket."

With a rev, Fukuzawa took the boat out of the water and onto the pallets. Wasting no time, he shut off the engine and hopped onto the sand.

Chester elected to go ashore for supplies and Sayuri accompanied him, hoping to be of some small help in carrying supplies. The woman stayed behind to lounge idly under her blanket.

The two-story, timber-framed houses of Aldwithy and their tiny yards and gardens were charmingly quaint. Chickens clucked at her behind a wattle fence of willow wood. With her rudimentary knowledge of Afujin architecture—it had been merely a footnote in her Afugaku textbook—she guessed the cottages were centuries old. The entire village was rather like a single clan, she thought, given the individual "families" merely jumbled their names every generation, save the infrequent genetic import.

"Perhaps we ought to purchase a souvenir to improve your friend’s mood, should we not?"

"My friend? Oh. We’ll see what they’ve got at the general store,” Chester said.

"Hmm, they will generally have things, yes."

She looked to his face to see if he had perceived her pun and was disappointed to find by his lack of reaction that it had been above him. She knew little of Afujin humor, the topic being absent from her Afugaku textbook, though it was possible puns were not a preferred delivery device. Their culture’s lack of homophonic ideograms was no doubt the reason, though she was happy enough to call this a chance of linguistic fortune rather than a lack of refinement.

"Watch out for the sign," Chester said.

His words reached her at the same time as a sign reading "General Store."

~~~

The General Store whose sign bonked Sayuri’s head was a wooden lodge sweating mildew from its walls. Tires, rusty farming tools, and a bicycle with a bent frame lay about in front of it. In rattan baskets sat bulk staples like corn and potatoes with thin layers of cheesecloth to stop the clouds of swarming flies.

The inside was lit by natural light and there were shelves stocked with bags of flour, soda, sugary snacks, and coffee tins with the crest of the Chanomi Bottling Company and cans of herring, potted meat, vegetables, and whole hen with Moji Whaling logos. None of it had been canned this year, Thomas suspected.

A few more rows of half-rotten shelving held second-hand branded clothing, Hidari Consumer Products appliances in dubious working order, an incomplete set of tools, poorly-made dresses, baskets, and pots probably produced by the villagers themselves, and videocassette tapes with nothing to play them on. Everything had a skin of dust.

And apples. Lots and lots and lots of apples, mostly rotten.

The store owner, an older man with a bushy gray mustache and shaggy hair, looked up from his puzzle book. “Gods, what hath Hel sent now?”

Sayuri’s eyes lit up. “Ah! Thou speakest high Æfrian tongue? From noble stock doth thee comest?”

The man looked to Thomas. “What’s the little lass sayin’? City slang is it?”

“Something like that. We’re heading downriver and wanted to stock up,” Thomas replied.

“Bring it up and we’ll ring it up!” the owner laughed with a few missing teeth.

Shuu hadn’t told him where they were stopping next, but he had a hunch it was Burnehithe on account of being the only major populated town between Suigen and Éstfýr. At a cruising speed of 17 knots, they would be in Burnehithe by tomorrow afternoon, Éstfýr another three days after that.

The rest of the river looked like Aldwithy, or worse. There were plenty of river ghost towns where conglomerates had pulled their property out, leaving behind masses of unemployed people in a state of anarchy. Aldwithy, for as much as it looked like a zoo exhibit, had gotten lucky.

Planning for the worst, Thomas bought 40lbs of food, mostly cheap carbs. Ten pounds of potatoes, ten of corn, three heads of cabbage, six pounds of carrots, and, after doing some mental math to figure out the cheapest protein, twenty tins of canned herring, good for the canning oil too.

As the store owner shoveled Thomas’s purchases into a burlap sack, he said, “how about apples? They’re ten dō each!”

Thomas glanced at the baskets of apples. All were in various stages of decomposition, a puddle of sticky, fermented juice leaking out the bottom.

“No thank you.”

“Ten dō? That sounds like heaven!” Sayuri called out from some far corner of the store.

“The girl wants an apple, eh? Surely ya can’t disappoint her!”

Thomas poked one of the apples. His finger sunk into it.

“No.”

“Five dō? Please, help me get rid of the horrid things. We’re bursting at the seams with ‘em!”

Thomas raised an eyebrow. “Why so many?”

“Mr. Kudatani, the fella who owns the orchard, pays part of his worker’s wages in apples. Everyone in Aldwithy’s sick of the damned things. The taste, the smell… gods above and below even our shit smells like apples here!”

“Why buy them from the orchard workers then?” Thomas asked.

“Cuz who in Hel else will!?” the man said.

Thomas sighed and slapped a 100 dō coin on the counter. “Find me the freshest ten.”

“Of course, big man! Name’s Wilbur, by the way, you?”

Thomas’ thought about lying, but the Genji flotilla would be here soon, and they’d grill Wilbur about whether he’d seen a Kaihonjin girl and a man in a grenadier’s jacket. Better to save the man some trouble and help him cooperate with the Genkai-Wabu so they didn’t give him trouble. And unlike Shuu, Wilbur wasn’t in position to sell them out.

“Thomas. The one pawing at your books over there is Sayuri,” he said, nodding his head towards the girl perusing a dusty shelf of books. They were all different shapes and sizes and the only thing they had in common were pages the color of turmeric.

“Pleasure to meet ya. Come down the river often? Might need more fruity snacks in the future, perchance?”

Thomas shook his head.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Aye, well, worth a try.”

“How much are the books?” Thomas asked.

“100 dō each. And there’s no hagglin’ on those since they come and go quick enough.”

In a way, the store probably functioned like a communal library for Aldwithy. Thomas wandered over to where Sayuri had picked out half the bookshelf and was selecting another.

“One book,” he said.

“One book? Mr. Chester, 100 dō is a trifle. Surely we can afford more than one?”

“Sayuri, we don’t even have enough for a ship to Kaihon yet and we’ve already spent more than I wanted to. One book.”

Sayuri grumpily put most of the other books back until she had just one leather-bound thing from before Kaihonjin glue-bindery. It was coal-black and thicker than her arm with white, boilerplate font reading: On Warfare and Grand Strategy.

“That’s fine. Let’s get something for Milly.”

“Oh yes. I found something for her.”

Sayuri guided him to the bins of clothing and picked up a burgundy shirt with logos plastered on the sleeves. Kaihongo characters read, according to Sayuri’s helpful translation, “Ueden Bo-Taoshi Club,” accompanied by a variation on the clan-conglomerate’s logo with firearms replaced by two posts. On the back was the number 12 and a player’s name.

Thomas ignored the suggestion. “Hey, Wilbur, you folks make apple wine here?”

“By the tun!”

“We’ll get a jug of that too,” he said, aware he was also buying the souvenir for himself.

To that Thomas added three wool blankets, three corn husk pillows, and some tarps. Once Wilbur rang him up for 988 dō, he threw the 60lbs sack of odds and ends over his shoulder and headed back towards the boat. Sayuri read her book all the way back, requiring Thomas to steer her around bushes, fences, and people’s yards.

Shuu and an Æfrian man in blue overalls were squatting on the beach with a growling motor pumping water from the hull. Around them lay a welding torch, gloves and goggles, sheets of aluminum, and a basket of apples.

“Should be done in a minute, then we can get to welding,” Shuu’s friend said. “What in Hel’d ya do to get riddled full a’ holes, Shuu?”

“Got too close to some river pirates,” Shuu replied.

“Pirates with 14mm machine guns?”

“They get worse all the time.”

“Blazes, take care of yourself, geezer! Gods know we got plenty a’ empty houses if y’ever decide to stop playin’ captain.”

He realized Shuu was lying for the sake of a good story, but the thought was a disturbing one. He knew they were around, but the last time he’d been down this stretch they were just unemployed folk misdirecting freight into hazards to snatch the cargo. He’d heard they were more like militias now.

Milly sat on the shore, the river running over her pale ankles. Her face was obscured by her green cloak, her arms hooked under her legs.

“Why don’t you go read your book over there?” Thomas told Sayuri, pointing to a nook formed by a small boulder and the quay.

She looked over at the motor pump. “Does it matter where I read? I will be beset by clamor regardless.”

“I think it should be quieter over there.”

“I highly doubt it, but I shall try,” she said, wandering off.

Thomas sat down beside Milly in the sand and stared across to the far shore affected by the Shroud. He wondered if it affected all life, sapient or not, since the grass was drier, smaller, and more brittle on the side affected by freight-crawler discharge.

“Feeling any better?” Thomas asked.

“No,” Milly said without looking up from the water.

Ribbons of algae swirled, combined, and dissolved in a gooey flux along the surface. Thomas liked the world of sharp edges and hard divides. The chaotic slime looked too much like how the inside of his body felt. He wished he could pluck it all out and return the river to how it looked when he was young. All he could do was stick a finger in and watch goop froth against his knuckle.

He gazed at Milly, solid as marble, frozen like ice. A mask of detachment. “It’s because it felt good, wasn’t it?”

Her mask dissolved. Ugly tears ran from her eyes.

“When I-I shot them— it— he just d-dropped a-and it was easy! I felt relieved! Why was it so easy Thomas!?” she said, her voice choking.

He couldn’t tell her the question never went away, that it only dulled, forever a question mark on your own humanity. But it never went away. He had hurt himself looking for an answer to something that wasn’t a question, only a condition. He put his arm around her heaving shoulder.

“It felt good because you saved lives, Milly. Not because you ended one. If you’re upset it’s because you’re human. You’re going to feel awful, for a while, but things will settle.”

“How… How long did it take for you?”

“A year or so,” he lied.

“A year…”

“In the meantime, I’ve got some supplies you can help me store away.”

She picked herself up. After boosting Milly back onto the boat, Thomas heaved the sack of groceries on deck before handing the three-liter jug of apple wine directly to her.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“Medicine.”

“For what?”

“Your brain.”

Milly half-laughed, half-scoffed. “You’re trying to turn me into you.”

“Oh… We, um, we still have time, I can run and go get something else.”

“No! No, Tommy I was kidding. I need a drink,” she said.

They stored their supplies while Shuu and his Æfrian friend did the noisy work of welding the hull shut. What little Thomas knew about welding, aluminum was not easy to work with. It wasn’t impossible for a boat captain to have the skill, but it felt odd, though not enough to press Shuu about it.

Sayuri joined them on deck, still devouring her book of military philosophy, and Milly started in on the apple wine. Thomas wondered if he should’ve bought her more books after all, since the girl was a tenth of the way through it in just a few short hours. He wondered how much she was retaining.

“Did you know…” Sayuri said, without looking up from her hunched, cross-legged posture in the pilot’s seat. Thomas thought she looked like a frog. “...that warfare is merely the extension of politics? Politics is merely warfare at rest, and warfare merely politics in a state of surplus energy. If we consider the thermodynamics of human activity, reality has a rhyming consonance with the metaphor of energy states, does it not? The nature of surplus is a double-edged sword, after all. Surplus can be an engine of growth, but if poorly channeled, it strains a system…”

“What in Hel are you talking about?” Milly said. Admittedly, Thomas couldn’t make out any more of the verbal flood than she could.

“About— well… I’m talking about the unity of the two concepts insofar as they describe the continuity of power and decision-making, and how not only the existence of war, but its very contours, are shaped by the contingencies of politics. Feudal warfare must therefore carry within it the political conditions from whence it sprung, so too for tribal warfare and that of industrial Propertism. This naturally leads one to the corollary that economic modes of production are therefore present in the conduct of warfare. This is more significant than one might initially suspect, as by inverting the logic, it further suggests that economics modes and that of political reality are as much a part of inseparable continuity as politics and warfare, and—”

“Sayuri, ya wanna know what “fuck” means?” Milly asked.

Finally, the girl looked up from her book. “Oh yes, I had wanted to know.”

Thomas’ head jerked up from watching the river. “Hold on…”

“No, no, shh,” Milly said, pressing her finger to Thomas’ lips. His stomach fluttered and his objection ground to a halt.

Milly sauntered over to the bridge and leaned on the railing. “You know about sex, right?”

Sayuri’s face flushed the same color as Milly’s drunk cheeks and nodded. Milly then leaned in and whispered things into Sayuri’s ear that turned her even more red before slapping her back.

“But most folks don’t use the word like that! Ya really just say it ta emphasize yer point, or let someone know yer angry with ‘em, or surprised, or… fuck it, you’ll pick it up,” Milly slurred.

“I-I do not wish to!” Sayuri said.

“C’mon, jus’ fuckin’ say it, ya know ya want to! Such a dirty word comin’ from such a squeaky clean lil’ girl. You wanna know what it’ll sound like outta yer mouth, don’tcha?”

“No!”

“Milly, that’s enough,” Thomas said, finally regaining his wits, “you’ve been drinking.”

“Oooh yes I have, Thomas, and who’s fault is that?”

“Maybe I shouldn’t—”

“Fuck…”

They both paused and stared at Sayuri.

“Th-There, I said it…”

Slowly, like the fiery sun heralding the dawn, a grin of surplus mischievousness and self-satisfaction grew on Milly’s face, recruiting the surrounding muscle, building to a toothy crescendo.

“Louder,” she ordered.

“Fuck!”

Despite her show of mortification, Thomas thought Sayuri agreed a little too quickly. Milly spent the rest of the afternoon running through every use case of the word she could recall. Sayuri had forgotten all her embarrassment and was absorbed in cramming as much profane linguistic knowledge into her head as she could. By mid-afternoon, the welding was finished and they were ready to launch the boat.

“You wanna pilot the boat for a bit, Captain Ashimoto?” Shuu asked.

Sayuri blinked. “Me? You jest.”

“Why not? I showed ya how to switch her on last night. We’re gonna push her off the pallets and all you gotta do is keep her close enough to shore we can hop on. Don’t pull the throttle hard, just little touches. Not the end of the world if you hit the sand, she’s built for beaching. Got that?”

“W-Wait, I don’t know if—”

Shuu hopped off the boat and joined Thomas and his friend on the beach. Despite the weight, the boat wasn’t difficult to launch since it was angled towards the water and had a fairly flat bottom. Thomas could just see Sayuri’s head poking over the top of the bridge looking both terrified and thrilled to be in command of more energy than she was used to. With three hefty shouts of “dokkoi!” they had the Daisagi-Maru out on the river where it drifted downstream.

“Fire her up!” Shuu called out.

After a minute of fiddling, the boat rumbled to life and Sayuri laughed maniacally. She was almost past the border of Aldwithy before she figured out how much gas to give the throttle and with barely enough motion to fight against the ponderous river’s currents, she backed the boat up. Shuu beamed.

Eventually Sayuri steered the boat parallel to the boat ramp and held it there.

“Thank ya Andrew. This oughta be a fair payment,” Shuu said, peeling off 10,000 dō worth of bills to hand to the man.

“More than fair, Geezer. Take half of it back or you won’t have anything for gas!”

Shuu made a fart noise with his mouth. “Money comes, money goes. I’d drive myself crazy keeping track.”

The man bowed and Shuu shook his hand. By this time shadows were creeping along trees and buildings and the cool steel clouds were turning the color of pig iron. Shuu hopped on the boat and took over piloting. Thomas helped ease a dizzy, tired, and starting-to-burn Milly off the sand and onto the boat. Once they were all aboard, Shuu steered towards the center of the river.

“Fuck,” Sayuri said.

“Good girl…” Milly mumbled, half-asleep against the stern gun mount.

Thomas followed Sayuri’s gaze to a group of four river monitors flying Genji colors, chugging towards them.