He approaches a tangle of beautiful people, who all immediately fall into orbit around him. I assume one of the girls must be his girlfriend when he kisses her on the mouth, but then another girl takes firm possession of his biceps and rises on her tiptoes for a kiss of her own. I force myself to look away.

“I should warn you,” Michael says stiffly as we continue walking. “There are some among our society who don’t approve of accepting those raised in the provincial world. If anyone gives you any trouble, come see me immediately.”

Ah. So even Utopia has bigots. Why am I not surprised?

“That’s strange,” Michael mutters, narrowing his eyes at two guards who are stonily observing everyone coming out of the station. They look like medieval superheroes, wearing black capes over knee-length leather jackets with silver buttons down the front and a silver dragon embroidered on the left side of the chest.

“They’re not usually here?” Having guards at the train station of a secret island seems normal to me, but the long swords strapped to their backs are certainly unsettling.

“No. The Avant Guard is a military group trained to protect Maker territories from provincial threats. They’re ordinarily based in Avant, where those Makers who didn’t want to travel to the New World hid and established our other academy.”

I feel like I need to be writing all this down. Do the Families even know about Avant?

Despite the guards, the village itself could not be more inviting. A strip of quaint shops of varied sizes, shapes, and colors—as if a child with scissors cut out buildings from different time periods and pasted them together haphazardly—line a central square with a large fountain. The area is bustling with pedestrians, many of whom are dressed in the same blend of old and new as the couple on the train.

Other passengers from our train join a line of people waiting to get onto gliders that look like a cross between a bicycle and a paper airplane made of old parchment. My stomach drops as I watch one careen down a mini runway, alight into the air, and fly away. It looks flimsy, like it could easily be taken down by an aggressive seagull. We’d better not be getting onto one of those.

“Not quite New York City or Florence,” Michael says, looking out at the village, “but it’s home to the best biscuits and tea in the world.” He motions toward a tea shop that’s built out of a repurposed train car. There’s a gleam in his eyes, and I can tell he’s happy to be home.