Milldacken

They say in the Railway Regions that if you want something to turn, you should build it in Milldacken. It's the milltown that began milltowns. At the edge of the cliff it's built on, the river is as strong as it gets before it leaps down to the foothills and turns placid and wavy, like a well-fed snake. You can hear the town's thousand waterwheels from miles away - though at this time of year, of course, only the waterwheels under the ice are still moving. They're loud enough by themselves. The sails of the inn's largest windmill go past my window every few seconds.

Milldacken isn't quite as much of an architectural hash as the beaver town of Fishrick, where the inhabitants are constantly dismantling roads, canals, and other people's buildings to use the mud in their own projects, but it's close. All the wheels and gears and drive shafts make you feel like you're in an enormous wood-and-stone clock. Everything is centered around machinery; if the best place to put a drive shaft is through the middle of a dining room, everyone will just get used to ducking when they serve the potatoes. There's hardly a single building that doesn't have some sort of mill on it.

Living in a city where everything turns, the Milldackeners design everything in circles. All the buildings are round. The streets are laid out in loops like irregular chain mail. There isn't a single local dance step that moves in a straight line. The railroad runs along the cliff and spirals around the tower of the Train station, which makes the whole building look like a large screw. (Ironically, it's one of the only things in Milldacken that doesn't turn.)

Being on the edge (quite literally) of the Railway Regions, Milldackeners can look out from the cliff here and see miles and miles across the Mountainous Plains. It's almost as good as the view from the Needle Tower. (Coincidentally, I could see the light of the Tower's beacon salamander above Sconth last night.) The buildings at the edge of the cliff go down almost forty levels of terraces in the rock before they run out of horizontal space and release the waterfall to roar its freedom out into emptiness. The cliff below Milldacken is honeycombed with the intricately carved ruins of an old cliff city, an abandoned labyrinth of tunnels and pillars and galleries in wet black stone. No one lives there anymore except bats and a few cliff lions. At this time of year, ice from the waterfall coats the outer ruins like a million years' cobwebs. The mills right on the edge of the cataract grow enormous tresses of ice in the Winter, like fossilized lace or upside-down cacti, which rip whole waterwheels off of buildings if given the chance. The edge millers go out every day, armed with pickaxes and spiked shoes, to check on them. They're not about to lose their wheels to giant felonious icicles.

It's even worse during the Spring thaw (which, apparently, is less than a month away). When its tributaries start flowing again, the entire river, frozen solid over the Winter, breaks up into chunks of ice the size of buildings. Teams of Milldackeners go out onto the bridges with long poles to push the ice into the center of the river. (There are bridges there, very high ones, but no buildings.) The shards grind over the cliff like giant teeth and plummet to the ground far below. Children line up along the terraces to watch them explode. If all goes well, the ice jostles its way through the town and only bites chunks out of the occasional bridge or shed; if not, it's been known to carry off whole buildings. Everyone who lives next to the river leaves until the worst of the thaw is over.

The townspeople seem to disagree about which river Milldacken is actually on; I've gotten a different answer from everyone I've asked. I've been told that it's the Kastel, the Rushel, the Glom, the Tanterill, and the Snail. One miller even said it was the Jagarmelt, which is ridiculous. You can't even SEE across the Jagarmelt this low in the mountains, much less build a city across it.

Before the tributaties freeze in the early Winter, the river carves out tunnels and caverns underneath the thick surface ice. They dry out as the water slows to a trickle. At this time of year, they're crawling with explorers, glacier climbers, cryo-geologists, and children (though most of them aren't allowed to go far into the caverns). Apparently, there's some sort of festival held under the ice just before the thaw. I hope the Train doesn't get here until after that.

Coming and Going

Well, I'm back, after another long and unexplained absence. At least I can make it a long and explained absence, if nothing else.

However a Wayfinder's abilities work - whatever it is that enables them to find any place, no matter how elusive - I think I must have the opposite. I've been lost in a single building for over a month. I spent Christmas in the Galleria (and there will be a whole post on that later), then wandered around for a few more weeks until I found the door. I could hardly believe it; I was starting to think I wouldn't get out until Spring.

I wonder, now, if the Galleria was just keeping me until I had given it enough paintings. Artists and architects are its life; I can't imagine it would be eager to let them go, especially the traveling ones, who may never find their way back.

When I left, I found Plack sitting right by the door and eating grass. He looked extremely bored. Once he saw me, he let me know that he had, in fact, BEEN extremely bored, and what had taken me so long? I explained that I had gotten lost; he snorted, as if that was only to be expected, and walked away without another word.

We left Jijangola completely unnoticed. Everyone was inside, lost in their own creations, and wouldn't have been interested if they had seen us. It was starting to snow as we left. So much for reaching the Train before the first snowfall... Oh well. The Jijangolans have never gotten around to building a Train station (the foundations of one are gradually being engulfed by the outskirts of the Galleria, but the builder seems to have lost interest before laying any track. Someone else is busy covering the gap-toothed bricks with red and white tiles).

After leaving Jijangola, we wandered through the Trackless forests of the Railway Regions for another month or two, looking for a Train station. We managed to miss every single one of the little foothill towns; the few small villages (and one slug farm, of course) that we passed through were too small to afford a station. Some of them were little more than a collection of cabins. However little room they had, though, they were always just as welcoming as everyone else in the Railway Regions. A blanket on the floor of someone's root cellar is much more comfortable than sleeping outside in January. Plack and I both grew our Winter coats a few weeks after leaving Jijangola, so we were rarely too cold, but it's been a bit too wet in the Regions this year to sleep outside. I can't even imagine what it would have been like if we'd come in through the Great Shwamp instead of the foothills.

We arrived yesterday, tired and muddy from months of travel, in Milldacken. The whole city rumbles day and night - even now, when the river's mostly frozen - but it's still relaxing, if only because it has a Train station. No more trudging through the snow for me. It also has a post office (few postbirds visit Jijangola, as the people there are mostly uninterested in the outside world), so I can finally write again.

Unfortunately, reaching the Train does not put an end to trudging through the snow for Plack. The Train hasn't arrived yet, but there's no need for him to carry my luggage when I'll be able to just cram it safely into the baggage rack in my compartment. I doubt turnstile trolls will be a problem on the railroad.

We said goodbye this morning. Plack said that it had been an interesting trip, if nothing else, and that I was less annoying than he'd expected. (I think that's a good thing.) He even let me draw a sketch of him after I'd taken the luggage off.

The last I saw of him, he was leaving with a large samoval (why do I keep saying that? They're all large), whose luggage consisted mostly of a gigantic baritone balinga in a leather case. Plack did not look happy.

Well, he never does, really, but I'll miss him anyway.