The Unraveling, Volume One of The Luminated Threads: A Steampunk Fantasy Romance by Laurel Wanrow

away in her satchel.
    “Last stop, Rowsley,” the conductor finally called. Under the gray sky, she spotted her trunk among a mishmash of cargo, including the sheep-marked crates. From the stenciled names and trademarks on stacks of vegetable flats, one name popped out: Wellspring Collective.
    Relief flooded her. The farm was nearby, and indeed the operation could use an artist’s help, if the plain black lettering was a sample of their image.
    A porter hauled her trunk to the branch line’s platform. The rail tracks wound up the Peaks hillside. She looked up, and up again, gawking at the unfamiliar terrain. Cream-colored rock rimmed pits where the ground had fallen in. Terraced farmland wove around these potholes, fields little bigger than kitchen gardens held by limestone retaining walls. Yet, up and down the hillside, farmers harvested their crops into crates like the ones on the platform.
    This was the land producing the Gapton vegetables? Surely Mr. Shearing would end his plans for model farms short of these shelf-like hillsides. No modern machinery could work here, and it looked so rough compared to the rest of gently rolling Derbyshire.
    With a start, she realized her hand was pressed to the gold half sovereigns hidden in the secret pocket she’d sewn into each of her skirt waistbands.
    Still there, three of them. Three more she’d hidden in her bodice, and the remains from buying her tickets were tucked in her satchel. She had the means to leave, but...what did she have to go back to with no money for a shop?
    Annmar boarded the smaller railway’s single coach with a few country women carrying market baskets. On the ride up, the terrain only became more irregular and rocky, the farmers scarcer, until the uppermost fields lay unattended. Below the low clouds at the top, rugged gray rock jutted between dense trees. Mother once told her making a living alongside the forest and its wild animals was tough.
    Even aside from Polly’s serials, Annmar had heard people say wolves still roamed these woods, though scientists said they’d been extinct for a century. Nothing moved there, and she refused to let her imagination decide otherwise, focusing instead on the cluster of shabby buildings perched on the ridge.
    Was this the Gap? Where was… The faded lettering, G-A-P-T-O-N, was worn to outlines on a small station, its blue paint peeling. The train stopped, and the women, who had cast Annmar curious glances, left with their baskets. She followed them out of the coach, carrying her valise. The wind snatched her bonnet and carried it off.
    “Oh!” She ran a step, then realized the ground beyond the railway platform dropped off to more rock. She’d have to get another at—she looked around the few buildings dotting the ridge—somewhere.
    “Lady?” A boy in a farmer’s bib-and-brace tugged at her shawl, then took her valise. “Who are yous here to see?”
    She grabbed her slipping shawl and secured it with the strap of her satchel, hugging the soft knit to her. Though the time was nearing noon, the breeze raised goose bumps on her arms beneath her long-sleeved blouse. “I…uh.” Annmar took a breath. “Mr. Yates, the Gapton stationmaster.”
    His brow lifted. “Ah. Yous was told his name, then.” The boy glanced to the station.
    She followed his gaze. Tall rock outcrops rose behind the old building—a tollbooth, converted from the days when the residents charged for passage on the abandoned Roman roads. The old road must cross through the cliff narrows, the gap. It’d be lovely to draw it in its glory, with the golden ash trees arching overhead.
    “He’ll be here directly,” the boy said. “Had to see to some business.”
    A man walked up with her trunk and set it down. The boy put her valise on top and followed the man to help the workmen transfer crates to a steam loader. Though they looked rougher in their worn bib-and-braces, these men went about their business without leering at her, unlike those