Chapter 10: First Ride
The skiff’s steam drive sang beneath them, a deep vibration that Hannah felt in her bones. Each gauge and lever waited beneath her hands like promises, their brass surfaces catching morning light and turning it to liquid gold. Thomas pressed against her side, his breath coming quick and shallow – from excitement or fear, she couldn’t tell. Perhaps both. The wasteland stretched before them like an ocean, its vastness both invitation and warning.
“Ready?” she asked, though readiness was a luxury they’d left behind with their tiny hovel and its dirt floors. Thomas nodded, one hand clutching Sebastian in his pocket, the other gripping the edge of his seat. The mechanical mouse’s soft clicking seemed to count down the moments between who they had been and who they must become.
Hannah engaged the drive fully, feeling power surge through the vessel. The runners bit into packed earth, then lifted slightly as steam pressure built. Everything James had taught her about machines whispered through her mind – the way power flowed like water, how every mechanism had its own heartbeat, its own song. This skiff’s song spoke of speed and freedom, of distances devoured and horizons chased.
The first real surge of motion drew a gasp from Thomas. Dead Man’s Grasp fell away behind them, its reaching fingers no longer a landmark but a memory. Wind whipped past, carrying the last traces of Coghaven’s familiar scents – metal and steam and too many bodies pressed too close together. Ahead, the air grew increasingly dry, tasting of distance and dust.
“Look, Mama!” Thomas’s voice carried wonder as the auto-expanding sails vibrated like a song in the wind. The mechanisms moved with liquid grace, each panel catching sunlight like the wings of some mechanical bird awakening. The surge of speed that followed pressed them both back into their seats.
Hannah let her hands learn the skiff’s rhythms, the way it responded to the slightest adjustment. The vessel seemed eager, as if it had waited too long in Dead Man’s Grasp’s shadow, dreaming of open spaces and clean horizons. James would have loved this, she thought – the blend of old-world technology and new, the perfect marriage of form and function. She could almost hear his voice describing each system, explaining to Thomas how miracles could be built from gears and steam and dreams.
Their first real challenge came when Hannah spotted the massive dune rising before them like a wave frozen in sand. The skiff’s momentum carried them upward, steam drive singing with the effort. Thomas gripped the edge of his seat, eyes wide as they crested the peak. For a heartbeat, they were suspended between sand and sky, the horizon stretching endlessly in every direction. The runners lost contact with the ground, and Hannah felt Thomas’s soft gasp of wonder beside her.
Then they were falling, the world tilting as they descended. Hannah’s heart leaped into her throat as the runners sliced back into the sand below, sending up twin plumes like the wings of some great desert bird. The impact rattled through them, but the skiff absorbed it with grace, ancient technology dancing with gravity and momentum. Thomas released his breath in a laugh that echoed with pure joy.
“We’re flying!” he cried as they shot forward across the desert floor, his voice full of wonder and excitement. The sails adjusted automatically to their new speed, catching morning light like dreams made manifest. Thomas’ breathing seemed easier in that moment, as if the sheer exhilaration had temporarily burned away the weight in his lungs.
They rode in silence for a while, each lost in their own thoughts as Coghaven’s silhouette grew smaller behind them. The sails adjusted themselves continuously, reading wind patterns Hannah could only guess at. Every now and then, Thomas would point to something – a rock formation that looked like a sleeping giant, a patch of ground where the sand itself seemed to shimmer like water, a distant heat mirage that painted impossible cities on the horizon.
The sun climbed higher, its heat beginning to press against them like a physical presence. Hannah checked their water supply, then Thomas’s breathing, measuring resources against necessities. The trader had said they could easily reach Steelwatch in a day if they were lucky. Looking at the endless waves of sand ahead, she understood why luck needed to play its part.
Thomas looked back toward where Coghaven had disappeared behind waves of heat and distance. “Do you think we’ll ever go back?”
The question hung in the air between them, heavy with all they’d left behind. Hannah thought of their tiny home, of the marks on the wall measuring Thomas’s growth, of the corner where James had last kissed her goodbye. “Some journeys,” she said softly, “only go forward, love. But we carry the important parts with us – in memory, in heart, in hope.”
Thomas nodded, wisdom beyond his years settling in his eyes. “Like Papa’s compass,” he said, touching the precious instrument where it rode in his pocket. “Always pointing toward what matters most.”
The skiff crested another rise, revealing endless waves of sand stretching toward a horizon that shimmered with heat. Somewhere out there, past Steelwatch and the Iron Mountains’ embrace, waited James’s last gift to them. Hannah felt the crystal’s absence like a phantom warmth against her hip, replaced now by the steady thrum of the steam drive beneath them.
They had traded one light for another, she realized – the crystal’s pure glow exchanged for this vessel’s promise of freedom. Now they just had to survive long enough to reach what waited at the journey’s end. The sun climbed higher, the sails danced with invisible winds, and the skiff carried them forward into whatever fate had written in the sand.