This Perilous Path: A Blackburn Chronicles Free Read

by Raquel Byrnes

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Blackburn Chronciles Freebies

  The Tremblers

  Wind Reapers

  Chasm Walkers

  Sneak Peek at The Tremblers

  Thank you

  This Perilous Path

  A Blackburn Chronicles Free Read

  Raquel Byrnes

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  This Perilous Path

  COPYRIGHT  by Raquel Byrnes

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Pelican Ventures, LLC except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  eBook editions are licensed for your personal enjoyment only. eBooks may not be re-sold, copied or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a courtesy free read. Free reads are lightly edited or unedited.

  Contact Information: customer@pelicanbookgroup.com

  Cover Art by Pelican Ventures, LLC

  Pelican Ventures, LLC

  www.pelicanbookgroup.com PO Box 1738 *Aztec, NM * 87410

  Publishing History

  First Watershed Edition, 2017

  Electronic ISBN 978-1-5223-0067-0

  Published in the United States of America

  Piedmont, Virginia - 1875

  Lizzie cringed as she pulled on the greasy stocking. Filthy with grime and grit, the material resisted her tired hands as she tried to avoid tearing the blisters on her fingers. The rumble of the trains across the street pushed her to hurry, and she tripped over a sleeping girl on the mat by the door. Over a month working at the garment factory, and she still found it so hard to wake in the morning. She checked the bundle of money she had stashed in secret pocket sewn into her work dress and felt immediate relief. Just a bit more. A little while longer until you can go home, she told herself.

  “Careful, Lizzie,” Mildred mumbled.

  Lizzie could barely make her out on the dark floor. Covered in the soot of the foundry in which she worked, Mildred’s stained skin and clothes blended with the shadows. Lizzie crept into the hallway of the boarding house. The stirring girls rose with winces, moaning over aches and stretching stiff backs. Mrs. Morrogan was very particular about the boarders keeping quiet, a feat in itself considering nearly a dozen of them slept in just two rooms upstairs. Aware of the terrible skin rashes common to the factory and foundry workers, Lizzie knew that in order to have enough time to wash properly, she had to rise before all of them flooded the small water closet. Too exhausted to do anything more than stumble home, eat the meal Morrogan provided, and collapse, most girls didn't bother with washing much. But the voice in Lizzie's head was her mother's, and no one had been more persistent than Beatrice Francis.

  What they see is what they expect, Lizzie. Let them see your best.

  “Nearly time for the train!” Lizzie called up from the kitchen. The girls stirred, filling the house with the shuffle of tired feet and grumpy muttering. “Ten minutes!”

  She turned back to her breakfast and tried to savor every bite. Her toast and coffee barely took the edge off the constant hunger. A low rumble started, thrumming at the soles of her boots.

  The train.

  Lizzie grabbed her satchel and ran for the door. She sprinted across the road. The train’s approaching column of black smoke rose in fast puffs over the far buildings. Through the station entrance, she joined the throng of workers queued at the platform. A jolt moved underneath her feet, and she stumbled, catching her breath. Like a wave underneath the ground, it was gone in a moment.

  What was that?

  She glanced around, spotted a few other curious glances, now sure it wasn’t imagined. The screech of the train's brakes pierced the tunnel. Hot air billowed over the waiting passengers as the metal behemoth slid to a stop.

  Pushing the strange incident from her mind, Lizzie made her way into one of the cars and wound through the wave of people flooding the cramped space. Children, young men, craggy old workers, all forced together, let off the stench of sweat and dirt and grease. The train left the station in a rattle of metal and hiss of steam, lurching forward. Closing her eyes, she tried to keep her wits about her, not to feel the air thinning or the space around her getting hot with the bodies crushing against her.

  Just hang on, Lizzie, she told herself. This is not forever. Things will get better. They must or she could not bear it.

  The cacophony of the machinery filled the train car as soon as the doors opened at the Piedmont Station. Built next to the river that powered it, the massive boxy building stood eight stories tall. Wind off the water swirled frigid and wet around her, and she let out sneeze while disembarking with the dozens of other workers.

  A figure ahead turned at the sound and then waved. William, her brother, tilted his head and gave her an exasperated look. His dark hair fell into his eyes like a shaggy curtain as he stepped over a crack in the ground. Nearly a foot across, it zigzagged along the river’s fence line. A glance behind William showed more fissures snaking down the slope leading away from the water. Lizzie raised a brow, searching the area and wondering how long that had been there.

  “Where were you Lizzie? We had more than we hoped.” He smiled, his dimples pulling a smile from her as they had in their childhood.

  “Sorry Wills,” Lizzie muttered. Her gaze snapped to those around them looking for anyone watching. “I don’t want to cause any trouble.”

  “We are trying to prevent more trouble.” William shook a sheaf of leaflets at her. One whipped away in the wind. Tumbling along the gravel, it fluttered against the foot of a guard. “Things cannot go on as they are—”

  “Enough, Wills,” Lizzie hissed. A knot pulled at her middle. “Do not include me in your foolhardy endeavor.” She nodded to the wad of papers in his hand. “How much of your own pay did you waste getting someone to press those leaflets for you?”

  William blinked at her, baffled. “Lizzie…” He lifted her hand between them. The blisters looked angry red even in the early morning gloom. “You are already part of it whether you like it or not.”

  Heat flushed to her cheeks, and she yanked her hand from her brother.

  “I’ve gotten blisters before, Wills. Service is service. Whether in a nice warm home or in a factory. Since we were twelve, we’ve been slaving away wherever there’s work. Why are you making trouble over it now?”

  “Because this is more dangerous that being a nursery maid, sister. People…children are like fodder for these places. You have heard the stories. People dying of fumes or getting mangled up in the works. Some burned in the foundries when simple changes could have prevent—”

  “You and your friends are getting a bad name, Will,” Lizzie cut across him. “Troublemakers and criminals is what I heard.”

  He shook his head, lips a thin line. “They are the lawbreakers.”

  “Wills,” She leaned in, her voice a whisper, “there’s talk about responding.”

  “Good.”

  “Not good,” Lizzie cast an angry look at her younger sibling. “People get hurt in more ways than accidents. You need to think about what you are doing, Wills!”

  “I am thinking of us!” William shook his head and stepped back, adjusting his mangy c
oat. His gaze was intense and bore through her. “Nothing will change on its own. We have to demand it.”

  Lizzie put up her hands in surrender. Once he set his mind on something she could never alter his course, not even as children. Not even if it cost him.

  “I just want you to be careful, Wills.”

  He shrugged. “Hopkins lets those beggar children gather scraps beneath the twining levers—”

  “The children are the only ones who can fit underneath the gear shafts. It is dangerous, but all the garment factories use them. All the floor managers. Who am I to say different?”

  “Just because what you think is in the minority, doesn’t mean you’re wrong,” William said and bumped her with his shoulder the way he used to when they shared a secret as children, but his gaze was desperate. “Please come to the next rally.”

  “I will think about it.” Lizzie frowned.

  “There are just as many women working in these conditions as children. You have a stronger voice than them. You should use it.” He folded a leaflet and slipped it into the pocket of her apron.

  “I am just trying to survive, William,” Lizzie said quietly.

  “You need to do more than that.” William rolled the leaflets and shoved them into his coat. He fixed her with that disappointed gaze of his and Lizzie’s heart fell. “You were raised to do what’s right.”

  “Enough,” her gaze darted around them, worried about someone hearing. The factories had posters up urging others to report ‘disruptive’ behavior. “There are a hundred girls out there to take my place. We know it, and they know it.”

  “They don’t let us ever forget how replaceable we all are,” William snapped.

  “I am not starving again. I can’t go back to being cold and…” she shook her head. Eyes filling, Lizzie’s voice broke. “P-please you are only one person. You can’t take on an entire company.”

  “Shh, it is OK.” William’s face softened and tried to smile despite the worry lining his eyes. He hugged her. “I will see you tonight.” He left, disappearing into the milling group crowding the factory entrance.

  Overhead, a klaxon sounded. The start of day. Lizzie shuffled forward in the line, her gaze on the looming building ahead.

  “You can do something, you know,” a voice sounded behind her.

  “Pardon?” Lizzie glanced back and met a pair of piercing blue eyes. Fordham Brooks, the floor mechanic held her gaze. Like the blue of sky, she’d thought, when she saw him her first day. Heat rose up her neck.

  He leaned down, his voice barely a whisper. “Enough of us ban together, and we can do something.”

  A thorn of worry shifted in Lizzie’s chest. Someone had overheard her and her brother. She caught sight of William in the crowd, and her heart ramped up.

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” she replied as calmly as she could.

  “Your brother is right.” Fordham leaned in, his gaze earnest. “We cannot, as a decent people, see what is wrong and do nothing to stop it.”

  “No one can stop it,” Lizzie breathed in frustration. Least of all a nursemaid.

  He shook his head slowly, his steady gaze pinning her in place. “Do you know why so few can do what they please to so many of us?”

  “No…” her voice caught in her throat.

  “Because no one will take that first step out of the shadow of fear and into the daylight of truth.”

  A guard barked at a group of women in line, yelling for them to hurry.

  “Please, Fordam,” Lizzie warned. “Be quiet.”

  “If you fail to speak while you are still able, then you have already lost.”

  Lizzie opened her mouth to argue, but he was already turning to leave. She watched him weave through the throng and join with William. A whisper of worry moved through her. She felt as if she was losing her brother to the cause. To those who agreed with him. Fought alongside him.

  The cluster of buildings along the river swarmed with workers while black smoke blotted the sky overhead. Lizzie entered the Gaspar building taking the stairs to the eighth floor. The garment factory workers, mostly women and girls, queued down the long corridor to get into the sewing room. Her brother and the other men filed into the nearby foundry. She stood silently, listening to the conversations around her. Still, it was a job, something her brother had worked so hard to help her secure.

  It had been so difficult after being let go from her former position as a nursery maid. Lizzie remembered desperate hunger and worry. Surely William remembered as well. How then, could he risk getting fired for people he didn’t even know? How could he expect her to?

  The line moved through the doors and onto the work floor. Lizzie sighed, hugged herself in the sweltering heat. The factory floor chugged alive. The metal behemoths beat and spun and chugged all around her. Raucous clanging and vibrations throbbed through her. The length of a field, the Gaspar textile floor seemed so vast, so powerful. What could so few do against something so big?

  ****

  A week later, Lizzie sat at her cotton loom machine. Head pounding from the relentless clanging of the churning machines, she took in breath and glanced up at the small windows that let in the dying sun. It happened in the span of a breath, in the time it took Lizzie to look away and mop her brow. The child, one of the workers at the spinning line further down the floor flickered at the corner of her vision. Too close, he was too close. Lizzie turned in time to see the small form dart between the gears and belts of the ring frame spinner next to her.

  “Wait,” Lizzie reached for him an instant too late. The child, perhaps unaware that he had grown over the past weeks, reached down to piece together a length of thread that had snapped. It was what he was hired for. To splice together ends on the loom. But he was bigger now. Not by much, but enough. When he rose, his shirt sleeve caught, and the metal rollers that powered the threading machine yanked his shirt into its churning maw. He screamed, eyes going wide.

  Lizzie lunged for him. Screaming for help, she grabbed at his shirt and yanked. Churning without mercy, gears chewed at his sleeve dragging him closer to the spinning gears. His hand caught, and he shrieked, sending a wave of cold dread ripping through Lizzie.

  “Help me!” Lizzie planted her feet against the machine, wrapping her arms around his small torso. His terrified face turned up to her, and she shook her head. “If you go, I go.” She grunted, straining against the might of the ringer. “I won’t let it get you!”

  Her coworkers scrambled around them, the floor manager shouting for the mechanic to stop the machine. All around her, screaming women and churning machinery roared, but Lizzie kept her eyes on the boy, held his gaze as if that connection were the only thing that might save him. And then it all ground to a shrieking halt. The break engaged. The gears snapped still. The boy blinked once, twice, with surprise, and then collapsed in her arms. Warmth pooled around her hands. His small hand ripped and misshapen.

  “Get him out,” she shouted. “Hurry, please!”

  They carried him out. His tiny form barely moving in their arms. Lizzie stood in the center of the work floor, her bodice and sleeve heavy with crimson. Heaving, she staggered to the trash bin and vomited. Weak and shaking, she slid down the wall to the floor taking in the shaking heads and tears even as the workers turned once again to their tasks. His terrified eyes, the pain filled screams, the helpless agony swirled in her mind as she fought to keep her wits about her. William was right. He tried to get her to help. Maybe if she had acted, had not been too terrified about her own skin, that little boy would not be disfigured for life. Guilt and anger gripped her, and she ground her teeth against the urge to scream.

  On the floor, a mechanic poked at the ringer, swearing under his breath while a washwoman mopped the area with filthy water. The gears shifted, launching the machine back to life. The clatter snapped Lizzie back.

  “Back on the line,” Hopkins shouted. He glanced at Lizzie. Go get cleaned up.”

  Lizzie stared at him
. Her breath still coming in hitches. “But he…” she pointed at the floor.

  “I said go get cleaned up and get back to the line,” Hopkins said over the noise. “That or I find someone else.”

  “Go, go.” An older woman appeared at her side, urging her towards the back. Her accent thick as she muttered in Italian under her breath. “Sangue innocente.” Innocent blood.

  Lizzie went with her, numb and with a cold settling in her gut. In the small water closet, she pumped the primer and dipped her hands under the freezing water. It washed pink into the basin. She shook. From the cold. From the memory of the child’s pitiful screams. From the icy grip of dread squeezing her heart. The old woman paced outside the doorway as if guarding Lizzie from the urge to run from this place.

  Fordham’s words echoed in her head.

  If you fail to speak while you are still able, then you have already lost.

  She adjusted her apron, wondering if she could stomach working with it stained with blood. The leaflet William had shoved in her pocket fell to the floor. Caught against the door jam, his drawing of a raised fist peeked out from the folded paper. With a shaking hand, she picked it up and smoothed out the wrinkles. His sharp script leapt off the page: Defy the tyranny.

  She stared at the crimson on her sleeves, still under her nails, and took in a shaking breath. Using the sharp end of the wrench, she stabbed the leaflet to the wall over the basin and walked out.

  The old woman stared over her shoulder, shaking her head. “This path, is a perilous one, young girl.”

  Snapping the strings of her apron, Lizzie let it fall to the ground. “At least it is one of my own choosing.”

  ****

  Another aftershock rocked the small warehouse, rattling the windows and sending dust raining down on the small crowd. Lizzie clutched the table riding out the tremor, her heart racing. Eyes clenched, she fought to keep her breathing even. William squeezed her hand, his reassuring nod a beacon in a sea of fearful faces. At least thirty of them were gathered this night. There was more every time. William told her there were others. Others left to fend for themselves in the wake of this disaster. Others to join them.