Magic in the Air: The Traveler and the Exile

Chapter 5

Please Note: This book has not yet been fully edited. I hope that any typos, awkward phrasing, or holes in research that might remain don't dampen your enjoyment of the story.

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The train whistle's shriek and the subsequent chugging of its gears and wheels seemed like an all new sound to Dean. Standing outside of the station building amidst the others of the Selene maintenance crew, he felt as if he were back. Not just back in the lush green lands he remembered so well, but back before the sound of the whistle had seemed so lonely as when he and Flynn had come this way just a year earlier. Or when he stepped off the same train and onto the grey cobblestones beneath the grey walls of Hemmark.

The head of the crew waved and hollered from the back of a hay wagon that was only half-full. Dean had wondered for most of the train ride how they would close the gap between the train station in Hefyston and the actual settlement of Selene. He wasn't sure if any of the rest of the crew even realized the two were different places until he pointed out the fact to Mikkel, the man hollering from the hay wagon. The man was discrete enough, or shy enough – Dean wasn't sure which – to keep that information to himself. Which may have been why it looked as if the rest of the crew was so confused.

"Come on," Dean shouted to the others after he'd moved between the group and the wagon. "We've got to take the wagon the rest of the way."

The flared glances and mutterings weren't lost on Dean. As he breathed in the fresh spring air he remembered so well with its scent of lavender and grasses just starting to grow long for summer reaping, he felt as if he could feel the worms and beetles in the earth beneath him and trace the birds' paths through the sky in his mind's eye. He looked back only once to make sure the group was following. No doubt, in his mind, because of the captain's continuing hollering, event he older members of the crew were following the boy over to the wagon.

All told the crew was made up of 10 guild members. All of them were men, Dean being the youngest, and the title of oldest being split between three men who looked old enough to have seen Hemmark's founding as a village outpost. When he had first been told about the crew in their initial briefing, he was surprised to find out that the captain was somewhere in the middle of the crew's age range. His face was far stormier, and his hair was thinning, but Dean was sure that Mikkel was no older than Orin had been. At first this similarity, small as it was, was distracting, almost as distracting as the excitement that had been coursing through his body when Martin brought him the bright news that his application had been reconsidered and he was now admitted into the crew. But, like that excitement, his distraction with Mikkel's similarities to Orin fizzled out over time. Observing him on the train ride out of Hemmark, Dean hadn't seen him laugh or smile once. And the few words he did say had been unadorned and to the point. Unlike the rest of the crew, most of whom seemed closer to Eloise's age. Dean remembered seeing their faces around the mess before, but had never learned their names. Even now, after spending hours with them on the train, he was uncertain of what most of them called themselves.

As the last crew member climbed onto the wagon Mikkel signaled to the driver. Dean also saw him pass the man a coin. Its glint in the full sun was unmistakable. Dean had wished that Mikkel had followed his advice and hired a covered wagon of which Dean saw one or two huddled against nearby buildings, but was grateful for the cushion the hay provided. Sitting around all winter, it had become. It was a welcome reprieve from the oppressively stiff seats on the train. Dean had wondered why so many people had brought pillows with them before they boarded in Hemmark. Now, hours later and miles away he knew why he had assumed before that he and Flynn had just been in the cheapest part of the train. Why treat a criminal to the finder things? But as it turned out most of the train was the cheapest part of it.