The day of the Alderrow excursion came. Attending students and faculty went to Lilydale and got a train going north-east. The excursion had to sync up with enough strangers who also wanted to reach Alderrow, to ensure we reached the population threshold deemed safe to journey through the Dusk.
The risks were minimal, given the amount of people and the short distance to Alderrow. If the trains had issues, the Academy might’ve used vans, since we had a decent group of people and not far to travel.
We left when the morning still had a crisp tint of cold blue. Our breath made fog, and I pretended to be a dragon, until Victoria walked up to me. She wore a chic outfit: Rich, dark blue sweater over a white shirt, the crisp collar pleasingly over the collarbone, with lighter-toned jeans. Her furnace pendant, as well.
‘From what I’ve gathered,’ Victoria said immediately, ‘the halved man, Nicodemo, was in the Rainy Lands to see someone named Lady Marsh.’
‘And a good morning to you,’ I said. ‘Where’d you get that info?’
‘Contacts.’
She didn’t elaborate, and I felt obligated to share. ‘Sergio thought someone was going to kill him. So I hear.’
‘How do you know?’ She waved a hand to quiet me, knowing I wanted to give a witty, mirrored answer. ‘Here’s the plan: The excursion will start with a tour in the morning, before we stop for lunch. In that hour, we’ll need to find Lady Marsh and ask her about Nicodemo.’
‘We could sneak away beforehand.’
‘We…could. But I don’t think it’s a good idea.’
I should’ve guessed. Skipping class wasn’t her style. No matter how Victoria felt about Sergio, she wasn’t going to mess up her reputation at the Academy.
When it came time to board the train, an odd socio-chemical reaction occurred. I took a window seat, and Victoria took the seat adjacent. The other students—or, chemicals—were repelled by me but drawn to Victoria. A few of these chemicals boarded the train, scanned their classmates, and spotted Victoria, walking to her with unambiguous interest, only to notice me at the last second and fall into a stutter-step, looking back and forth, suddenly lost like they didn’t even want to be on the train. One of them asked Victoria outright if she wanted to sit with their group of friends instead. That was verbatim: Instead. Victoria declined.
In the end, Cecilia, who’d arrived late, sat opposite me, and our trio put our bags on the fourth seat. My backpack looked like a muddy dog among housecats. Cecilia’s tennis bag: A sleek black cat with spots of white. Victoria’s satchel: An old, refined tabby.
I couldn’t help feeling embarrassed about the difference in our bags, but it wasn’t like I had money to buy a new one.
All tickets had been checked, all passengers boarded. The train pulled away from the station.
I stared often out the window. During the train heist earlier in the year, I’d thought about someday buying a ticket and taking a train ride recreationally, which seemed unlikely, yet there I sat with two classmates, resting on the soft but musty seats instead of climbing outside.
‘You’re smiling,’ Xandria whispered from my shoulder.
‘I’m not.’
‘What’re you smiling about?’
I ignored her.
As we neared the Rainy Lands, they lived up to the name. Rain poured in dense sheets, but the name didn’t mention how randomly the droplets fell. Closer to Alderrow, the effect became clearer. In one section of the town, the rain might batter rooftops with an explosiveness like God wanted to punch through, while in the same moment, across the street, a person could sit on their veranda and enjoy the ambience of a light drizzle.
But we didn’t go to Alderrow to see the rain. We went to see what the rain did. The Central Sentinel Bureau estimated the various towns in the Rainy Lands produced around two-thirds of Melbourne and Sydney’s crops. Hard to believe, until our train pulled into the town’s train station.
Vendor carts, wheelbarrows, and kids with burlap sacks lined the covered street outside the exit ramp. They sold tomatoes, pumpkins, zucchinis, cucumbers, cauliccoli (cauliflower-broccoli hybrid), carrots in a range of warm shades, and a bunch of other vegetables, along with fruit of immense variety. I had eaten most of what they sold, but I rarely saw them before they got cut. They were larger than I imagined: Vegetables you needed to hold with two hands, or hoist onto your shoulder. Pumpkins like boulders. Carrots like spears.
The rains in the aptly-named Rainy Lands had unique properties. Most notably, it made all the crops huge. Each one would’ve held a size record in pre-Dusk days. Yet, the rain seemed to want balance. The water made crops big, but the same water wasn’t good for people. Contact with it made skin dry, crack, and bleed, before peeling away in chunks. Drinking the rain directly caused stomach ulcers and blood in your poop. Though, if you kept the rain in a container for a few hours, it became drinkable.
The people living in Alderrow made great efforts to waterproof their buildings, and they wore layers of waterproof material, along with oils and creams on their skin. Saying they wore wide-brimmed hats was an understatement. They wore massive saucers on their heads, conical around the middle, flat and rigid past it. People said their necks were the strongest in the country. The wide brims inclined downward made it hard to see their eyes, giving a mysteriousness to the farmers. They didn’t talk much either, to prevent water from getting in their mouths, adding to the secretive aura. They used hand signals instead, a local dialect of gestures, motions less quick than other sign languages, but instead slow and flowing, to avoid flicking water around.
In the years before I was born, people objected to farming in the Rainy Lands. They figured the weird rain and weirder crops would make people weird. Some level of worry made sense, but the end of the Chaotic Era didn’t mean food supply magically improved. People needed to eat, and the Rainy Lands produced food aplenty. These days, there wasn’t a food shortage. Everyone ate. Not everyone had access to rare fruits, but basic needs were met.
Ironically, a few years ago, people protested food from the Rainy Lands. It became trendy to only get food from the other farming towns, even if it cost way more. I heard some shops bragged about their “original” size of vegetables, and services let you rent pre-Dusk sized fruits for parties.
Victoria tapped my shoulder. ‘Have you ever tried pineapple, Eleanor?’
‘I might’ve.’
‘I’ll buy us some if they have it.’
I frowned. All around us, vendors sold apples like cannonballs. Red, green, golden. Grainy, tart, sweet, and more. I didn’t see a “pine” variety, though.
We got off the train alongside workers and tourists. The Vandagriff Academy offered the Alderrow excursion because a lot of Aquarius mages worked in the Rainy Lands. Some contracted for a few weeks, while others lived there. Their work involved…water. They prevented flooding, unclogged drains, maintained water tanks, did research, and made ice from the fresh rain to be transported elsewhere. A few other types of mages worked there, too, like Caelum mages, who cut crops for packaging, or Fornax mages, who used their fire to produce steam energy, work furnaces, or dry equipment.
‘I just realised,’ I said. ‘You’re named after the magic.’
‘You just realised?’ Victoria smiled, with an expression I couldn’t read.
‘Or, did they name the constellation after you?’
She laughed harder. ‘No, we changed our name after the Chaotic Era, since we have the best control over Fornax-class magic. It means furnace, hence…’ She tapped her pendant.
Cecilia shouldered her tennis bag. ‘Is your family really the best?’
‘Really, really.’
‘Is the Erudite of Fire your relative?’
‘Well, no, but…’ Victoria toyed with her pendant. ‘I don’t have a response to that.’
In the train station, the faculty opened big plastic containers filled with the waterproof clothes we needed to wear. True to her word, Victoria gave me a raincoat to borrow, which she said was more breathable than basic stuff the faculty handed out. The train station had vast changing rooms for new arrivals. Victoria, Cecilia, and I went with the other girls to change.
‘Being sweaty in the rain is the worst,’ Victoria said, pulling on the waterproof gear.
The raincoat was merely an outer layer. We also needed: A rigid, synthetic skirt down to our ankles, smock, mantle around our shoulders, gloves, hood, mask, and finally the raincoat and wide-brimmed hat. My classmates and I made the mistake of putting on the hats in the changing room, causing just about everyone to hit each other with the rims, before we learned to take them off and fold it along a pre-designed seam.
With rain protection, everyone looked roughly the same. Except Victoria and I. Our raincoats had floral patterns in blue-yellow and red-purple respectively. It brought more attention than I bargained for.
Three faculty members supervised us: Mrs Geisler, Mr Willigan, and Mr Porter.
‘I need to go over a few things before we set off,’ Mr Willigan said. ‘Find a buddy and stay together during the tour. Do not remove your rain gear. If it gets uncomfortable, suck it up until we get into a building, and then ask one of the tour guides for help. Do not—I repeat—do not drink the rain. If you do, we’ll have to stop the entire excursion and get you back to the city.’
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Mr Willigan turned, but Mr Porter whispered something, causing him to turn back with a dramatic, middle-aged-guy sigh. ‘Some of you may have heard about a…witch.’ The titters and chatter around us proved him correct. ‘There is no witch, yeah? Do not wander off to find a witch. Do not ask the townspeople about a witch. They’ve heard it all before, and we don’t need that kind of conduct reflected on Vandagriff. Am I clear?’
Scattered mumbles.
‘Am I clear?’
‘Yes, Mr Willigan,’ the students said in unison.
With that, we left the train station. Victoria kept to my side, presuming we’d pair off. I glanced at Cecilia, but she’s already moved away. I hoped she wasn’t annoyed.
‘Think there’s a witch?’ Victoria asked me, voice muffled by the gear around her face. I nodded. It felt like Mr Willigan said “witch” too many times for there not to be one. At least, that’s how my internal logic worked.
We met up with the tour guide and walked around some of the basic facilities, like storage sheds and loading bays. Which foods went where, how much—not important.
On a path alongside the fields, Xandria grew excited, dashing around my body. ‘The farmers are armed,’ she said. I looked closer. Sure enough, they all had a revolver at their hip or bolt-action rifles slung over their shoulders. ‘Ask the guide about it. Please. Please.’
I really didn’t want to bring myself more attention, but Xandria’s begging didn’t stop. I tentatively raised my hand. ‘Why do the farmers have guns?’
‘Very observant,’ the guide replied. Making a finger-pistol, he “fired” at the distant fields. ‘Entities are the most obvious threat, but they’re not the most threatening. Do any of you want to guess what is?’
‘Bandits,’ someone answered.
‘Nailed it. The town is far enough for the city to tempt thieves, but not far enough to make the Dusk a strong deterrent. I’d say every few weeks we get someone trying to steal. Sometimes they come on the train. More daring fellas drive from the city. Rare lucky ones get some crops, but most of them run away after a few shots. Nobody on either side has died for years. What really annoys me is why they do it. They can’t be starving, so they must be doing it for money or kicks. Most of the time they try stealing the rare fruit, stuff like pineapple and mango.’
Someone raised their hand. ‘Is it true the Hunter-Yao gang stole sixteen tonnes of mango?’
The guide gave a thin, haughty smile. ‘No. That would be impossible.’
Someone else chimed in. ‘I heard the Rail Snakes dig tunnels and crawl underneath the fields.’
‘Again, that’s impossible.’
‘If only they were this eager to ask questions in class,’ Mr Willigan told the guide, and they laughed in that adults-among-children way.
Third student. ‘What about when the crops go to the city? Do they ever get attacked?’
‘Well, that subject is the next part of the tour, so if you’d follow me…’
We went to a wide, covered vehicle depot. Intricate drains and channels kept water well away from the vehicles, and we had to remove a couple layers of our gear in an antechamber. The floor was dry concrete, the ceiling corrugated metal. Sounds of awe came from the students, but I’d seen the vehicles before.
Aurochs.
The Aurochs could’ve been called trucks, but like a lot of things in the Rainy Lands, that name wasn’t enough. They were massive chunks of metal on wheels. No windows, just slits on the sides and front.
While the guide expounded on the power of the Aurochs, four or five students nearby whispered. I overhead “Hunter-Yao”, tensed up, and I shuffled nearer.
Whisper-whisper:
‘I heard the gang hit a convoy two weeks ago.’
‘Obviously farmers aren’t going to admit that.’
‘You ever see that video online from ages ago? The main guy’s robbing a store or something.’
‘How do you not know Stefan Hunter? His name is literally half the gang.’
‘Whatever. All I know is I wouldn’t mind being robbed by him.’
‘Yeah, nah.’
‘You wanna call him daddy and shit.’
‘Well, have you seen him?’
‘I’m not literally saying I want to be robbed, but like, if he ran from the cops and needed a place to stay…’
I hadn’t noticed Cecilia in the mass of uniform rain gear, but she’d also moved closer to the group. ‘You shouldn’t say that,’ she stated.
‘What?’ The group turned to her.
‘Hunter-Yao aren’t celebrities,’ Cecilia said.
‘Okay. Um. Noted.’ The group shuffled a couple steps away and ignored Cecilia.
Visible tension coursed through Cecilia. Muscles in her jaw worked. She fidgeted in her pocket, only to find nothing. Getting some distance from the excursion group, she leaned on the vehicle depot wall, chin to her chest.
I would’ve said something, but mention of Hunter-Yao caused me to panic. Whether I defended or criticised the gang, it’d be tainted with lies. I existed as a lie. For the first time, I wanted to tell Cecilia my true identity.
The guide slapped the side of an Auroch and a metallic echo filled the depot. ‘Anyone wanna hop in?’
Students took turns climbing on and taking pictures. Satisfied, everyone looked ready to continue the tour, but the guide had a sly grin. ‘We actually offer trips back to the city for students. It’s quite the experience.’
Silence. Glances at the faculty. Mr Willigan rubbed his eyes and said Vandagriff had already permitted it, though only two students could go. The silence felt thick, as if before an execution. Not only would the Auroch be an uncomfortable ride, it’d be outright dangerous. Sure, the convoys had run smoothly for years, but students weren’t eager to tempt fate.
In the silence, I raised my hand.
‘That’s one,’ the guide said. I volunteered partly as a dare for myself, but partly because the gang might want information on the transporting process. By raising my hand, I suppressed the other students. Now they really didn’t want to go. Except, two more hands went up. Victoria and Cecilia. They looked to me, as if they wanted me to make a decision. Oh, shit. They actually did want me to choose.
‘Maybe you two could do rock-paper-scissors,’ Mr Willigan suggested, but they kept their eyes on me. Victoria’s eyes seemed to say: We’re on a mission. Cecilia’s seemed to say: This’ll be fun.
I subtly cocked my head at Victoria. Immediately, Cecilia lowered her hand. I would’ve picked her if it weren’t for the current situation, but giving excuses might’ve insulted her.
The guide checked his watch. ‘Let’s break for lunch. You’ve got an hour, so go ahead and check out our shops on the main street. But, don’t forget: Do not drink the rain.’
Victoria and I followed everyone to the main street and waited for numbers to thin before we made our move. We needed to find Lady Marsh. Alderrow didn’t have a huge population, but still way too many people for an hour. ‘Just need to ask around,’ Victoria said. Small town communities tended to be tight-knit.
We picked the only café in town, a place called Dry Your Socks. According to Victoria’s older sister, a café like this one served as a hub for gossip.
A bell chimed as we stepped into a glass-walled antechamber. We dried off with shelves of towels, while at the press of a button, industrial heaters blasted us with warm air. The dangerous rainwater from our clothes flowed into grates in the floor. We weren’t fully dry, but dry enough to take off our gloves, hats, and face coverings.
‘I’ll handle this. Oh, and, how do you take your coffee?’ Victoria asked me.
‘Black,’ I lied.
She raised a brow. Going to the counter, she ordered and paid for a latte and long black. After the order got relayed, she leaned in and asked the guy behind the counter for help. He looked more than willing. ‘We’re on an excursion with Vandagriff Academy, and one of the activities is to interview someone from town.’
The guy’s face lit up. ‘I can take a break in a few minutes.’
Victoria stammered. So much for handling it, I thought, and stepped up to the counter. I said:
‘We’ve been told to interview someone named Lady Marsh. Do you know where we can find her?’
Enthusiasm vanished. The guy paled. ‘Who told you to interview her?’
‘Uh. A friend’s suggestion.’
‘Not that it’s my business, but you should consider ending that friendship.’
‘Do you know where she is or not?’
He swallowed. No customers waited behind us. We appeared to have all the time in the world for him to tell us. Another staff member brought our coffees, but still we waited. ‘Up the main street, take a right at the processing factory, and then at the edge of the Dusk—the fenced boundary markers—that’s where you’ll find her.’ I turned away, and Victoria thanked the guy, but he called us back and pulled out a palm-sized bag of coffee beans from under the counter. ‘Give her these. They’ll put her in a good mood.’
‘How much?’ Victoria asked.
‘No. Nah. Call it a favour, or a lucky charm.’
Victoria rolled the bag over, saw the price tag, and paid the guy, plus a bit extra. We took our coffees and sat on a bench by the window.
‘How much was this?’ I asked, sipping my long black.
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘How much?’
‘It’s just a coffee.’
I dropped the issue. I didn’t have much money, but I resolved to pay her back at a later day.
Around half the cafe’s seats had customers. Jazz music played from a cassette. Rain fell in a soft drizzle. Victoria whispered, ‘Why do you think he got spooked?’
I glanced at the guy working the counter. ‘I can guess.’
‘So can I.’ Victoria toyed with the foam on her latte. ‘Really hope we’re wrong.’
‘Would it change anything?’ I’d continue my objective without Victoria, but I wanted to know if she matched my determination. It took a few moments of listening to the rain, but…
‘I want answers,’ Victoria said.
Her words were decent, but her tone felt flat. I suspected she cared about finding out what happened to Sergio, but it wasn’t for Sergio’s sake. Then again, wasn’t I the same? I cared about Sergio, but I wouldn’t have investigated his death unless Stefan and Wei put me up to it. Would I?
Victoria and I finished our coffees, got our rain gear, and per instructions went up the main street to a factory. The smell of coffee beans reminded me of Seo-Joon’s magic, which reminded me of the gang, which reminded me I was supposed to be feeling sad. I had been sad before and after playing tennis with Cecilia, and I’d felt sad before sitting next to Victoria on the train. I’d probably feel sad after the excursion ended. If I were more aware of myself, I might’ve understood the obvious solution staring me in the face.
The factory’s shutter doors hung halfway open. I peered inside as we passed. Fruit and vegetables got filtered by size, before sliding along conveyor belts to employees, who arranged them as best they could into neat square moulds. The moulds returned to a single conveyor belt, and at the end mages with Caelum-class magic cut the goods into pieces. Using machines to cut might’ve been easier, but mages were more adaptable and reliable, especially in the Rainy Lands.
Continuing on our way, the town’s buildings and populace thinned in a way that left me unnerved, always looking over my shoulder, feeling deaf beneath the sounds of rain. The town had lots of safety measures to mitigate damage from the rain, but the further we got from the centre, the less infrastructure existed.
Soon, streets and buildings got replaced with marshland. Victoria and I had to step carefully on a lightly-trodden path. The ground felt stable, but a wrong step might put us knee-deep in rainwater, so we took roundabout ways.
Finally, we spotted the boundary markers, which amounted to iron fence posts topped with reflective material. A single building stood nearby: A high-ceilinged clay cube with multiple eaves and a broad, industrial chimney. Compared to the town’s methods to keep away rain, this house was a fortress. It had multiple trenches, gutters, and pipes, along with eaves, water tanks, and canvas or plastic tarps around the roof.
‘Hello?’ Victoria called out, when we reached the first ring of trenches. Nothing. I could barely hear her, so hard did the rain fall.
I took a running start and hopped over the first trench, and the next two, before landing nimbly before the front door.
‘Perhaps we should wait,’ Victoria yelled.
‘We only have an hour for lunch.’
Victoria shifted her weight between feet, hesitant, but she sprinted and cleared the first trench. Except, that was her mistake. It wasn’t a wide trench, and the distance to the second trench wasn’t far, so she stumbled and had to make a hasty, weaker jump to clear it. She skidded toward the third trench and couldn’t jump. She couldn’t do anything but kick out her leg, suspending herself over the third trench like she was trying to do the splits.
‘Help,’ she shouted. ‘Help me up!’ Her boots slid incrementally on the eroded concrete. I braced my own boot against a gutter and reached out, but our wet gloves couldn’t get a firm grip. The risks hit me. If she got submerged in the trench, she’d do more than drink a bit of rain. I stretched further, despite the gutter bowing against my weight.
With the last of her flexibility, Victoria kicked from the far edge. I tried to grab her forearms, but she fell away too quickly. She toppled toward the water.
A body splashed in the trench, but it wasn’t Victoria. I angled my hat up. A nude woman stood waist-height in the water, arms supporting Victoria from below like she were a fencepost. With the woman’s help, I managed to pull Victoria free from the trench, where she clutched me and trembled, as if any second the water would jump up and pull her under.
As the woman pulled herself from the trench, I was less surprised at her nudity than the pale, scarred skin that ran from her right shoulder to her left hip, rimmed by dark purple.
The woman climbed out, walked into the clay house, and came out with a towel over her shoulders. ‘You coming in?’ she asked us.