Chapter 1

Perched on a moonlit crag, Akul inhaled crisp air laced with pine resin and damp earth. His breath misted in the predawn chill as he flexed his gloved hands. The Ipai valley spread before him, studded with stumps.

Torchlight flickered along the lakeshore below where the villagers gathered, their murmurs drifting up to him. Beyond the stumps, Akul knew steel tracks trembled with the approach of the freight train. Beneath the croaks of frogs and chirps of insects came the still distant groan of the locomotive.

Our plan is simple enough, but still rather dangerous, he admitted to himself. His concern extended beyond the operation itself, to the escape, when everyone needed to be clear from the train before it curved along the river.

Just then, a blue glimmer darted through underbrush: an yvishda, small as a field mouse. In the forests of Akul’s homeland, the spirits sometimes took the form of towering bears or yaks, but here in Ipai, they were diminished in both size and character. Yesterday, though, he’d seen one shaped as a skeletal stag. He’d never seen one so close to death. It wasn’t just a mirror of Ipai’s despair, but a symptom of an interwoven affliction. When a land dies, so do the yvishda; and when they die, the land follows.

Like shattered bones protruding from the earth, each stump testified to Ipai’s fate, the valley gutted by the Chain’s hunger for timber. Akul had seen that hunger etched into calloused hands and gaunt cheeks, and passed homes abandoned by those now laboring in the Chain’s cities, feeding the very machine that had consumed their former lives. The Chain’s mills, mines, and rail lines spread like a blight, leaving vestiges like Ipai in their wake.

Akul’s own people, the Owikci—secure in their northern mountain stronghold—believed themselves unassailable. But since leaving the Owikci Domain a moonspan ago, he’d wondered more than once: How long before the Chain’s iron veins creep into our territory, too? He’d already encountered an ore mine gnawing at their southern border—its existence, he suspected, the rotten fruit of his uncle’s complacency, or worse, his complicity.

Kieran Lirran, the honored Owikci ambassador to Cascade City. Taking a sharp breath in the cold clarity of this early morning, Akul pushed his stubborn uncle from his mind. They’d not seen one another since his time as a student under his uncle’s charge in the Chain’s coastal capital, Cascade City, ten years ago.

Instead, he latched onto the sense of purpose that steadied him now. The powerlessness of his youth had given way to agency, granted by his Anakawa, the yearlong Owikci rite of passage. Although, traditionally, one’s Anakawa meant wandering among the clans of the Owikci Domain, communing with nature and the yvishda, Akul had chosen a different path for his: clandestine resistance against the Chain’s encroachment, far beyond his homeland’s borders.

After leaving the Domain, he’d slipped onto a series of freight trains bound for Cascade City, but on impulse, disembarked here, in Ipai. The village headman, an elder named Ghorst, had first greeted him with wary suspicion, the distrust thawing as Akul listened intently to the old man’s recounting of Ipai’s slow death. Generations of tranquility undone by deforestation, the land flayed, its soil eroded. Harvests failed; the population dwindled. Unlike other logging villages born and buried by the Chain’s hunger, Ipai had endured for centuries before its imminent collapse.

As the thrum of the freight train reverberated through the valley, Akul rose to his feet, a wry smirk touching his lips. This morning marks my first act as an “anti-ambassador.” Seems my mission extends beyond yours, Uncle. These people—they aren’t even our people. 

Confident of the train’s approach, he slid down a series of slopes and waded through a field of tall, dewy grass. Moisture seeped into his leather breeches as grasshoppers burst from the blades, their wings winking in the moonlight. A few clung to his hair and he batted them away before stepping into the torchlight where Ghorst stood addressing the villagers.

“It comes,” Akul told him.

The headman’s knuckles blanched around his walking stick. His voice, gravel and grit, cut through the murmurs: “Douse the flames! To the tracks!” Catching Akul’s eye, he offered a single, grateful nod.

As the villagers dispersed, Akul scanned the darkness for his borrowed family. He found them beneath the weeping fronds of a willow. Borum leaned heavily against its trunk, a bottle dangling from his grip, while Prosha watched her father with quiet resignation; her younger brother Yip clutched a torch like a weapon. In his short time in Ipai, Akul had toiled beside them in their fields, his efforts barely dulling the edge of their hardship. For Ipai’s last stand, Borum had sworn sobriety, but—

“Papa won’t be joining us.” Prosha smoothed damp hair from his brow.

“Yeah….” Yip scuffed the dirt. “He can’t even stand now.”

“Stay with the tree, Papa.” Prosha pressed a kiss to his forehead. “And don’t drown yourself.”

Yip hurled the torch into the lake where it sputtered out with a hiss.

Akul held aside the willow’s tendrils for the siblings to pass. Moonlight gilded their faces as they joined the others—thirty-odd shadows hunched along the railside. Axes passed from hand to hand, their edges glinting in the gloom, followed by blankets for hiding under when the train drew near.

Ghorst stood on the tracks, his white hair a pale banner. “I’m too old to swing steel and…jettison logs from a moving train. But I will surely bear witness. The magnates of Cascade City may ignore us, but today, we force them to remember we exist!”

“For Ipai!” a voice shouted as Ghorst stepped aside. 

Warmth surged in Akul’s chest. He planned to depart Ipai tomorrow—onward with his Anakawa—but the village’s tenacious heart had forever etched itself into his own. Even as Ipai’s first and likely last act of resistance proved ephemeral, participating in it felt like a privilege.

The earth trembled as the locomotive approached, its vibrations climbing Akul’s legs. Its mechanical thunder swallowed the valley’s night chorus, drowning out the frogs and insects. A covey of quail burst from the undergrowth, their wings beating panic into the dark. Two yvishda flickered among them like embers, fleeing the iron beast.

When Akul snugged wax plugs into his ears, Yip tugged his sleeve. “You’re the only Owikci here! We need your heightened senses! Though we should probably hide your glow-in-the-dark eyes.”

“I can still hear everything,” Akul assured him, tapping one plugged ear. “I just can’t let the train ruin my ears.” He drew a blanket over himself and the boy, and peeked out.

The locomotive, slowed by an incline, exploded into view. Smoke vomited from its stack in greasy waves, veiling shadowed figures in the dimly-lit cab—Liovana, no doubt, as the Chain always assigned them such roles. Twenty or so cars back, a brakeman would likely be nursing a flask in the caboose.

As ore cars rattled past, their clickety-clack punched through Akul’s earplugs. He imagined the operation in his mind, the villagers split evenly between two log cars, and his own treacherous task between the cars.

“Now!” he cried, and the blanket flew off as he lunged forward, Yip and the other villagers quick at his heels.

The last of the ore cars clattered beside them, followed by low-sided flatcars, their loads secured by hinged metal stanchions. On each car, two great stacks of logs were separated by wooden posts and secured with chains. Akul’s and villagers’ thrown axes arced through the air, thudding onto the stacked timber of the first two log cars.

Akul seized the short ladder on the car’s side, the cold iron biting through his gloves. He hauled himself up, boots scrambling for purchase on the rough bark until he could hook an arm around a stanchion and climb onto the summit of the pile. From the opposite side, the lumberjack Thom appeared, his face hewn between anger and absolution.

The car wobbled and rocked, as more villagers clambered aboard, their expressions taut with apprehension and resolve. Akul’s gaze swept to the second car, where Prosha and Yip clung to a stanchion, the wind whipping at their clothes. He watched until they safely gained the top of their log stack, bracing themselves against gusts.

Thom was already at work, swinging an axe. Sparks danced as sharp steel bit into dull iron links. “Feels good,” he grunted to Akul between blows, “to cut the Chain’s bonds for once.” He and the others snapped the chains securing a stack of logs, jangling them aside.

Meanwhile, Akul edged toward the shuddering divide between the two cars. He dropped to his haunches, peering into the shadows beneath the log piles where a dizzying strip of moonlight flickered over the moving tracks. There, on the bulkhead, were two spaced iron turn-releases for the stanchions on each side. Across the coupling, on the adjacent car Prosha and Yip were on, were two more.

“I see them! Are the chains loose?” Akul called out.

Thom and Prosha confirmed.

“Okay, I’m heading down. Everyone, move to your secure stack!” Akul found a foothold and climbed carefully down the sides of logs and rounded the edge of the deck. On a narrow nook, he steadied himself on three limbs and perilously kicked at the greased release. With a shriek of protesting metal, it eventually turned, and the locked stanchions on the right side of the car swung down, the stack of logs shifting. They began tumbling off the train with a series of heavy thuds.

“Careful now!” Thom shouted. Akul imagined the villagers climbing down from the still-secure stack to unload any residual logs.

He crawled across the coupling, gingerly, so he could turn the release on the second car. The other load of logs crashed onto the gravel. He then pictured Prosha and Yip climbing down.

By the time he could return to the deck of the first car, the villagers had nearly finished rolling off the remaining logs. He assisted with the final, monstrous one, everyone straining against it until it tipped over the edge. As the weight released, the car lurched upward and villagers stumbled, grabbing for each other for balance as the deck tilted.

Across the gap, Prosha’s group was still struggling with their logs.

“I’ve got them!” Thom hollered, leaping across the divide.

Akul wiped sweat from his brow, taking in the fretful, excited expressions of those around him. “We leave now,” he reminded, “before this car jumps the tracks!” At that, the villagers queued anxiously at the ladders. They found sure footing on the iron rungs to jump onto the passing ground, while some of them simply leapt from the edge into swaying tall grasses.

Akul remained and scanned the surroundings. The train was traversing a vast, dark and angled plain. The locomotive, its smoke staining a star-flecked break in the clouds, would soon regain speed before the bend at the Liovana River. Somewhere on that curve lay their goal: the sharper turn alongside the river where an unbalanced car would ideally derail and even plunge the rest of the train into the ravine.

A triumphant shout from Yip drew his attention. The boy waved from the neighboring car as their final log tumbled into the night. His brilliant grin vanished when the car angled ominously from the shifted weight. He regained his balance and grinned again, waving some more.

Akul snorted in faint amusement. Then he spotted a figure in the distance—The brakeman!—sprinting along the log stacks with a lantern swinging wildly.

“The brakeman’s coming!” Akul yelled over the din. Despite everything else going to plan, their hope that the predawn darkness would conceal the dispatched logs had been evidently misplaced.

Something else moved alongside the train: a lone wolf yvishda running in tandem with the brakeman. It was scrawny with hunger, but resolute. Akul stared at it, befuddled. But I thought yvishda stay far from trains…. 

An orderly panic rippled through the remaining villagers on the second car who’d only just begun to abscond. They funneled toward the ladders like rats from a flooding hold—all but Thom. The lumberjack climbed atop the still-secure pile of logs and raised an axe, not in threat, but invitation.

Akul stepped toward the edge of his car. “Thom, we cannot risk implicating ourselves. And we’re not here to hurt anyone!”

Thom watched the others leaving, including Prosha and Yip. He laughed and shouted back: “They took everything from Ipai! Let’s see them take me!” 

Akul sighed, his cheeks puffing out. I should’ve anticipated this. With so little left to lose, someone was bound to act recklessly.

As the last of the villagers disappeared into the dark, Akul’s choice crystallized: flee with them to preserve his Anakawa’s purpose, or stay for one irresponsible lumberjack. For a moment, he delayed, his eyes darting toward where the wolf yvishda had been—but it’d vanished. He turned to leave too late, as the brakeman sprang onto Thom’s car. 

He was dark-skinned, a Liovana man a few years younger than Akul, his chest heaving as he took in the lowered stanchions and the gutted car, his face cycling through shock and confusion. His uniform cap sat askew on his head from his haste.

“Wha—?” His voice cracked as he lifted his lantern, his attention shifting to Thom and his brandished axe. “Do you know how dangerous this is?”

Not anger, accusation or even fright. Just raw concern and bewilderment. Akul felt something tighten in his chest.

The brakeman’s eyes—light brown, Akul noted absurdly—snapped down at him and squinted. “Are you Owikci? What are you—?” He gasped as the cars rounded the curve and a terrible screech came from their wheels. 

Instinctively, Akul covered his ears with his hands as he grimaced.

The brakeman’s expression shifted to dawning horror as he peered into the distance. “We’re only a couple minutes from the river!” Ignoring Thom, he moved with sudden determination, vaulting down from the log stack and fumbling with his lantern, twisting its base to reveal a ruby-red lens.

He leapt onto Akul’s car, ran past him, and scrambled up the ladder of the adjoining ore car. As he climbed, his silhouette was backlit by the red lantern attached to his belt hook. On the edge of the higher car—a better vantage point—he lifted the lantern, waving it vigorously as a signal to the far-off engineer to stop the train.

When he turned back and looked down at Akul, Akul’s heart skipped a beat. “Please!” he urged, pointing to an iron-spoked wheel brake at the front of the log car. “Turn that!”

Akul gaped at it, flummoxed. Is he serious? “But we’re the ones sabotaging your train!” 

The hurt that flashed across the young man’s face struck Akul.

Thom put a hand on Akul’s shoulder. “Let’s move.”

Akul hesitated with annoyance at Thom. He gripped the ladder, watching the brakeman rush down to turn the wheel brake himself. A grinding metallic wail joined an already deafening clangor as sparks erupted from the train’s locking wheels. 

Akul hit the gravel, his boots barely cushioning the impact. He and Thom dashed from the train to distance themselves as the two unbalanced cars careened off the tracks, their massive frames angling at a deadly slant. A few of the following cars jackknifed, also derailing.

A wave of worry sent Akul jogging alongside the slowing train, searching for the brakeman. He spotted him, thankfully, turning brakes with swift precision to bring the train to a gradual halt.

Akul breathed a sigh of relief, his chest loosening. He looked to the calm flow of the wide Liovana River, wondering, oddly hoping his and the brakeman’s paths would cross again. Then he considered, having been seen, how his Owikci status could pose a problem. 

He rejoined the villagers who were waiting jubilantly in a nearby wood, some of them, including Prosha and Yip, dancing in celebration. With them, he disappeared into the dawn.