“Combination of things. Turning into the wind and lowering sails, mainly. But my wagon’s not on water and can’t turn quickly. They also had anchors—big, heavy hooks you could throw overboard to drag along the ground and stop the boat, but that won’t work for us either. I had one on my first model. Flipped the whole wagon when I dropped it. Nearly killed myself. We gotta brake another way.”

She explains everything she’s tried. Mostly it involves the sails.

I stare at her plans, mind racing. Mule-drawn wagons stop because the power ceases. The beast stops moving, so the cart does as well, with the yoke and line bracing against the animal. But closing the sails hasn’t slowed Harlie’s wagon quickly enough. We need to slow the wheels, too, not just take away the wind. An anchor feels like the obvious solution, but Harlie says it’s unsafe. If we can’t use an anchor and we can’t use the sails, what can we use?

I sort through every wheeled contraption I’ve ever encountered. Wheelbarrows, rickshaws, rovers. I don’t know how the Old World rovers worked, but presumably they had an easy way to cut off the power, force the wheels to stop turning. Otherwise they’d slide down hills or slopes.

This makes me think of the time I extended the dock at Dead River, how my dragger holding supplies kept slipping down the bank. I propped rocks against it to hold it in place. I’ve seen traders do the same thing with their rickshaws after lowering them, positioning a rock behind the wheels so the cart can’t slide.

We can’t put a rock beneath the wind wagon wheels while moving—that would be disastrous—but we can press something against the wheels. And if we press hard enough, the wheels will turn slower and slower and eventually . . . stop.

I plop myself down right in the middle of Harlie’s hut and start drawing in the dirt.

At some point my eyes start to hurt and I realize it’s because the sun is setting. Asher lights a candle on the room’s lone table.

“Onto something?” he asks.

I nod.

“You should eat.”

I nod to that too.

“We have a fire going. Harlie’s sharing some fowl and a bit of moonblitz, too, to celebrate the solstice.”

“Maybe in a minute,” I say, but I know it will be far longer.

Later, when I can no longer hear the warm timbre of Asher’s voice or Harlie laughing at his stories, there is a creak behind me. “You should sleep,” the woman says. “Your friend is.”

“I think this might work,” I say, standing. After sketching and wiping the dirt clean and sketching again, I finally have something promising.