Chapter 7

Wednesday morning began for Millie with the familiar rocking of a horse-drawn coach.

The journey from Moondrop Village to Zephyr Town was one she knew well enough that she hardly needed to look out the window anymore. She recognized bends in the road by the way the carriage leaned, knew where the wheels would rattle over rougher patches of earth, and could almost predict when the forests would part enough for the first familiar landmarks of Zephyr to appear in the distance. Usually, the journey meant errands. There would be a shopping list tucked into her apron, money entrusted to her by her family, and a mental schedule built around everything she needed to accomplish before the coach carried her home again.

Today, there was no shopping list.

When the coach finally stopped in Zephyr Town, Hans was already waiting for her. Millie stepped down carrying only a small bag with the things she would need for the day, and the smile that appeared when she saw him seemed impossible for her to suppress. There was something different about meeting Hans this morning. They had spent time together before, certainly, but those afternoons had happened almost accidentally. Today had been planned. Hans had set aside the day for her, and Millie had awakened that morning knowing exactly where she was going and who would be waiting when she arrived.

Their walk to the railway station was short. Millie had sat there with Hans before, looking down those very tracks while he attempted to explain a city she couldn't imagine. Now she stood on the platform knowing that sometime within the next few hours, all of those confusing descriptions would become real.

The distant whistle came first. Millie immediately turned toward the sound.

The train appeared beyond the station, growing larger as it approached. She had seen trains during previous visits to Zephyr, but she'd never had a reason to board one. Standing there knowing that this one was hers made the machine seem altogether different. The locomotive rolled into the station with a tremendous mechanical presence, metal wheels slowing against the rails while the platform filled with the sounds of brakes, machinery, opening doors, and passengers preparing to board.

Millie gasped. Hans looked at her and smiled. For him, the train was transportation. For Millie, the adventure had already begun.

They boarded together and found seats beside a window. Millie immediately claimed the window seat, though Hans doubted he could have persuaded her to sit anywhere else. When the train finally lurched into motion, she gripped the edge of the window for a moment before relaxing as Zephyr's station began sliding away.

The countryside moved past them.

At first, Millie knew this world. Fields stretched alongside the tracks, occasionally divided by fences or narrow roads. Farmhouses appeared and disappeared between hills. Forests swallowed the train for several minutes at a time, filling the window with endless shades of green before suddenly opening into broad valleys beneath the morning sky. Rivers flashed beneath bridges. Distant mountains rose beyond the trees. Small settlements appeared along the route, some no more than clusters of homes around a road or station.

Millie barely moved from the window.

Hans occasionally pointed something out, but before long he realized there was no need to explain much of anything. Millie was perfectly content simply watching.

Then the landscape began to change. The transformation wasn't sudden enough to identify precisely where the countryside ended and Atland began. There was no line across the earth announcing that they had entered the city. Instead, nature slowly surrendered space to human construction. Houses appeared more frequently. Roads widened. Farm fields became neighborhoods. Small buildings gathered into commercial streets, and those streets gradually became denser. Cars traveled beside the railway. Electrical lines crossed overhead. Warehouses and industrial buildings appeared where forests had dominated the view less than an hour earlier.

Millie sat a little straighter. Buildings grew taller. The gaps between them became smaller.

Another set of railway tracks appeared beside theirs, then another. Trains passed in the opposite direction. Roads crossed beneath them, carrying more people than Millie was accustomed to seeing outside the Grand Bazaar. Apartment buildings rose above neighborhoods, followed by office towers that made Zephyr's largest structures seem almost miniature by comparison.

And then, beyond everything else, the skyline appeared. Millie's eyes widened. There it was, Atland. Hans didn't need to tell her. The city filled the horizon.

The train carried them deeper into it until the skyscrapers no longer existed somewhere in the distance but towered around them. Millie tried to look upward through the window and discovered that the roof of the train prevented her from seeing the tops of some buildings. Every few seconds there was something else to notice—a bridge, another train, a street packed with vehicles, an enormous building covered in windows, signs larger than entire storefronts.

Hans watched her attempt to absorb all of it. He remembered telling her that Atland was big. He had severely underestimated how inadequate that word was.

When they finally entered the central station, Millie had barely recovered from the skyline before the doors opened and presented her with something else entirely. People, they were everywhere.

Passengers stepped from multiple trains at once while others hurried toward departing platforms. People carrying briefcases moved alongside travelers pulling luggage. Students with bags over their shoulders navigated through families, workers, tourists, and groups of friends. Announcements echoed overhead. Departure boards changed constantly. Somewhere nearby, another train arrived, sending another wave of passengers into the station.

Millie instinctively moved closer to Hans.

The Grand Bazaar attracted enormous crowds, but those crowds had always made sense to her. Everyone was there for the same reason. They wandered, stopped, browsed, talked, and eventually went home.

Atland's crowds moved with purpose. Thousands of separate lives seemed to intersect for only a few seconds before separating again.

Hans stayed beside her as they made their way through the station, slowing his pace whenever Millie became distracted by something around them. By the time they emerged onto the street, she thought she had finally adjusted.

Then she looked up. The city rose around her.

Skyscrapers framed the sky in narrow strips of blue. Windows reflected sunlight from impossible heights, while the streets below remained alive with cars, buses, bicycles, pedestrians, and the constant movement of a city that seemed incapable of becoming still. Millie turned slowly as she walked, trying to see everything at once.

Hans led her toward the city square. That was where Atland became almost overwhelming.

Enormous billboards covered the surrounding buildings, advertising clothing, restaurants, concerts, businesses, household products, travel destinations, entertainment, and things Millie couldn't even identify before the advertisements changed into something else. Bright signs competed for attention above storefronts while crowds crossed the square in every direction. Screens large enough to be visible from blocks away displayed moving images against buildings that would have been landmarks by themselves anywhere near Moondrop.

Millie stood near the center of it all with her mouth slightly open. Hans remembered her staring up at Zephyr's windmills. The comparison made him laugh quietly.

They spent much of the late morning wandering through the surrounding streets. Hans deliberately avoided rushing from landmark to landmark. There was enough in Atland that simply walking became part of the experience. Millie stopped constantly. A shop window could capture her attention just as easily as a skyscraper, and the ordinary details of city life fascinated her almost as much as the famous attractions.

The food was particularly successful. Small shops and street vendors offered things meant to be eaten while walking, and Hans turned their exploration into an informal sampling of whatever looked interesting. They shared pastries from one shop, tried a savory snack from another, and stopped again less than a block later when Millie noticed something being prepared behind a counter. Some flavors were familiar, others completely new, but everything seemed to earn the same delighted expression.

By lunchtime, Millie had already begun organizing the stories she would tell at home. She would have to explain the station first. No, the train. Actually, the skyline needed to come before the station made sense. Then there were the advertisements, and the street food, and the building that seemed to disappear into the clouds, and the intersection where so many people crossed at once that she couldn't understand how nobody collided.

Her family would never believe half of it.

Then Hans took her to the Great Mall of Atland. Millie stopped outside. Hans stopped beside her. She looked at the building, then at him. Then back at the building.

His explanation at Zephyr's railway station had not prepared her. The mall wasn't merely a large shop. It was an enormous enclosed world of polished floors, multiple levels, wide corridors, escalators, restaurants, fountains, displays, and more stores than Millie could reasonably visit in a day. People leaned against railings on upper floors while crowds moved beneath them. Signs pointed toward entire sections of the building that weren't visible from where she stood.

Once inside, Millie seemed incapable of deciding where to look. Clothing stores made sense. Moondrop had clothing. Jewelry stores made sense too. Then they passed another clothing store. And another, and another.

Some sold formal clothes. Others specialized in everyday fashion. One seemed devoted almost entirely to shoes. Another displayed handbags in its windows as though each one belonged in a museum. Millie gradually began to understand what Hans had meant when he couldn't tell her how many stores were inside.

Then they passed a store filled with luggage. Millie stopped. Rows of suitcases stood beneath carefully arranged lights. Large ones, small ones, hard cases, soft cases, travel bags, rolling luggage, and entire matching sets occupied a store dedicated solely to the business of carrying things somewhere else.

Millie stared through the window. Hans waited. After several seconds, she looked at him with an expression of absolute disbelief.

"There is an entire store for luggage!" she shouted.

Hans nodded. Millie looked back through the window.

For some reason, that seemed to be the detail that finally convinced her Atland was completely ridiculous.

By the time they left the mall, Millie's feet were tired and her mind was full. There was still one more place Hans wanted her to see. Atland University offered a very different side of the city.

The campus was spacious compared with the commercial districts, with broad walkways passing between academic buildings and green spaces where students sat beneath trees or gathered around benches. Young men and women crossed the grounds carrying books beneath their arms or bags heavy with whatever they needed for their studies. Some hurried toward classes. Others sat together reading, discussing assignments, or eating between lectures.

Millie became quieter there. She watched a group of students pass them, their conversation filled with terminology she didn't understand. Another student sat alone nearby with several books spread around him and pages of handwritten notes covering the table.

Hans explained that people came to Atland University from many different places. Some wanted to become doctors. Others studied business, engineering, art, education, agriculture, science, and countless other subjects. For many of them, these buildings represented the beginning of whatever life they hoped to build.

Millie looked around again. At Moondrop, most people learned their work through family and community. Fishermen taught their children to fish. Crafts and trades passed between generations. Millie herself had grown up around her family's market, learning its routines so gradually that she couldn't remember when helping there had stopped being something she imitated and became something she genuinely knew how to do.

Here, thousands of people had come specifically because they wanted to learn how to become something they weren't yet.

The thought fascinated her.

They continued walking until the position of the sun reminded Hans of something neither of them wanted to acknowledge. They had to go. And yet, there was still so much of Atland left.

Millie hadn't seen the harbor. They hadn't explored many of the older neighborhoods or visited the entertainment districts. Hans had wanted to show her how the city transformed after sunset, when windows illuminated the skyline and the billboards turned entire streets into corridors of light.

But Atland could remain awake long after Millie could. The last coach to Moondrop Village would not wait because she wanted to see the city at night.

Missing it would mean finding somewhere to stay in Zephyr until morning, and more importantly, Millie's family would expect her home. They knew she had traveled to Atland with Hans, but knowing where she was wouldn't stop them from worrying if she simply failed to return. So they went back to the station.

Millie was noticeably quieter aboard the return train, though not from disappointment. She sat beside the window again, watching Atland slowly reverse the transformation she'd witnessed that morning. Skyscrapers became smaller buildings. Dense streets became neighborhoods. Neighborhoods thinned into open land. Roads separated. Trees returned. Before long, the enormous city existed behind them instead of around them.

Millie rested against the seat, tired in the satisfying way that came from having spent an entire day doing something worth remembering.

She had enough stories for weeks. She would tell her family about the train and how quickly the countryside changed beyond its windows. She would describe the station filled with more people than she could count, the skyscrapers that hurt her neck when she tried to find their tops, and the enormous moving advertisements in the city square. She would tell them about every snack she could remember and probably regret not learning the names of some of them. She would describe the mall, though she already knew nobody would understand its size until they saw it themselves.

She was absolutely going to tell everyone about the luggage store. And she would tell them about the university, where thousands of people carried books toward futures they were still learning how to reach.

Outside the window, the countryside rolled past beneath the late-afternoon sun. Hans sat beside her. Millie smiled.

Atland had been everything she'd imagined. It had also been almost nothing like she'd imagined. There had simply been too much of it for stories to capture properly.

Perhaps that was why, despite all the things she wanted to tell her family when she returned to Moondrop Village, Millie already knew there was one part of the day she wouldn't be able to explain quite as easily.

Whenever she remembered the skyscrapers, Hans had been standing beside her. When she'd tasted something new, he'd been the first person she'd looked toward. When the station overwhelmed her, she'd moved closer to him without thinking. When she'd stared in disbelief at an entire store filled with luggage, Hans had been there trying not to laugh.

Atland had given Millie more new experiences in a single day than she could count. Somewhere along the way, however, the city had stopped being the only reason the day felt special.

The train continued toward Zephyr Town, carrying them back toward the waiting coach that would eventually take Millie home. There would be other opportunities to see Atland at night.

Today, she had seen more than enough to dream about until then.