Page 12 of Mistletoe

The town was not what he expected.

He had seen the civil engineer’s plans. He saw the schematics, the actual blueprints, and not just the glossy pamphlet given to the colonists. The ship itself would be disassembled and converted into power and housing for the initial stage. Printers would convert raw matter into building material. Housing was designed to be modular, the pieces quick to produce, easy to assemble, and expand as needed. It was a highly efficient system, if aesthetically dull. Considering that the colony needed to provide adequate housing to thousands of colonists nearly overnight, fast and boring was the way to go.

This was not boring.

This was chaos.

The buildings were wooden, cobbled together without regard to standardization or regulation. Wood. Might as well make the town out of matchsticks since no one cared about fire safety.

The streets were… not there. More mud. More horses and carts. People shouted. Animals made noises. Wagons creaked. Wood banged against wood as someone flung open a door. The noise, combined with the stench of smoke and stagnant water, overpowered his senses.

Some regression of technology could be expected, but the colony ship had the equipment to build the necessary tools for a modern society. Had the colony’s governors abandoned clean energy? Did every building burn wood or coal for fuel? Conditions were alarmingly primitive and absolutely filthy.

Draven had said that technology failed but Hal never considered what that meant.

He fashioned the blanket into a hooded cloak and continued following Emma, who had become his touchstone in this strange environment. As she made her way through the town, he crept behind. The red scarf she wore guided him through the washed-out, drab environment as he slunk along the back of buildings and hid in the shadows. If anyone got a good look at him—well, he imagined it wouldn’t end well.

A whistle rose above the noise of the town. Hal slammed his hands over his ears, desperate to turn the volume down on existence.

A relic rolled in on iron tracks. A hulking gray steam engine thundered down the tracks, blocking Hal’s view of the town. It slowed and rolled into a train station.

A train.

They had trains on Earth, obviously. But the trains he was familiar with ran on maglev tracks and glided along, near silent. That steam-powered monstrosity was a fossil.

Now that he had seen it, other pieces fell into place. The horse-drawn carts. The flickering gas lamps instead of electric lights. The primitive conditions. Technology had not failed. It vanished.

What was this place?

Emma

Sweetwater Point

In the morning,once the sun had a chance to warm the air to a temperature greater than soul-crushingly frozen, they made the journey to Sweetwater Point. Traveling took longer than usual, thanks to muddy roads. Winter travel was never easy.

But they’d do it again tomorrow and every day thereafter until they knew Felix was safe.

The entire journey, Emma felt eyes watching her. She twisted in her seat but did not see any fellow traveler or a rogue ratite. The flightless birds tended to avoid humans, but they were territorial. If a person encroached too closely, they attacked. While they looked silly with their long necks, fluffy feathers, and useless wings, the razor-sharp talons on their feet could split a stomach open in a heartbeat.

Yes, the wisest course of action was to simply avoid the creatures.

Still, the feelings of being watched did not fade. A sensation of constant monitoring was always present, thanks to vampire Lord Draven high above in his mountain fortress, but that was removed. Distant. It was a phenomenon that she learned to ignore. This felt immediate and raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

It was most disagreeable.

“The contract terms are so ungenerous I intend to reply that I might as well publish the book myself,” her father said, interrupting her thoughts.

“What? No,” she said.

“Emma, yes,” Oscar replied. “What is publishing? Throwing ink on paper. Binding pages together. I’ve already written the book. That’s the difficult bit.”

She didn’t know where to begin. “Bookbinding is a craft. You’ll need leather, tools, and a means of printing. There is also the difficulty of setting the type when you cannot see.”

He made a dismissive noise and said, “We have a printing press.”

“We most certainly do not.” A variety of junk had accumulated in the workshop over the years, but no printing press. While she had tinkered in the workshop lately, she’d have noticed the apparatus.

“From my old broadsheet days,” he explained, which made it worse.

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