While Asher rests in a sliver of shade beside Harlie’s hut, she shows me inside. The walls are awash with markings, her plans for the wind wagon carved right into her home.

“Most everything I needed—pulleys, rope, lumber—I had to trade for, which is part of why it’s taken me so long. The wagon was mine, made the move up here with me. It used to have two Old World tires, but I had to replace one.”

“We’ll want spares when we head north,” I say.

“What do you take me for—some bright-eyed babe? I’ve got two spares already stowed beneath the deck.”

“Deck?”

“The wagon bed—the wood you stood on. That would be called the deck on a boat.”

“I’ve been on a boat. It was nothing like your wind wagon. Metal-made, massive. And it didn’t have those weird post things.” I make a motion up and down, illustrating their height.

“The masts? Girl, those are what will let us sail.” She tugs me toward a different drawing, where the fabric I saw cinched against the posts—masts—is unfurled. “They’ll catch the wind.”

She walks me through her plans. Soon I know all about rigging and sails, how a boat has a starboard and port side, how the bow is narrower to cut through the water—or, in our case, simply to create less drag as we move over the earth. The lever I saw near the front of the boat—a tiller, she calls it—will steer the wagon by forcing the axle to turn left or right.

“Real trouble is, I can’t stop safely. Winds can get the wagon moving pretty fast, which is a risk for rolling. And turning can only be done at slower speeds. I rolled last time I took the thing out, busted the portside and part of the mainmast. That was a year ago, when my pack left. Been repairing ever since. Gotta say, I’m a bit terrified to take it out again. If something goes wrong, I might have to walk away from it.”

“And you’re too proud for that,” I conclude.

Harlie smiles. Her lips are paper-thin and her face full of wrinkles, but her expression exudes youth.

“Where’d you learn all this?” I ask.

Her eyes twinkle. “My ma passed it to me through stories, and her ma did the same for her. Someone must have sailed in our family, eons ago, back in the Old World when the ocean wasn’t dry.”

“How’d they stop their vessels?”