by Sarah Chorn
I was five, and alone. I had no one to hold me, and so I held myself and blinked back stinging tears as their conversation bit a chunk out of the morning.
“She’s inside. I just… I wanted to warn you before you saw her. I need your help, Imogen. I can’t let her leave the cabin the way she is, and the task is so big…”
Footsteps, and then a stranger’s face in the doorway. Pale blue skin, straight indigo hair, and lapis eyes. She was beautiful, short and curvy, and her round face reminded me of the moon. There was a glow in her eyes that put me at ease. “Come on out,” she said. “My name’s Imogen, and I won’t hurt you. ”
She crooned at me like I was a feral cat, and eventually, her voice lured me out onto the front porch, where I stood before the two women awkwardly, in a dress that felt like I was trying on someone else’s life, with my black hair in two tight braids. They studied me, and I shifted my feet under the heat of their gazes, butterflies alighting in my gut.
“She’s not full shine, is she?” Imogen asked.
“I don’t know much,” Annie admitted. “After what happened at the refinery… well, at some point he met a woman who’d come out here from the Union and got a child on her.”
They studied me, and I shifted under their penetrating gazes.
“Jasper says they’d have done away with her if she was a baby,” Annie’s voice was trembling. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “You know the law, but now she’s a girl and they’ll just have to deal with her, elsewise it would cause a stir that would likely go beyond the Boundary and nobody wants that. But being a half-breed, and the daughter of Christopher Hobson… I just don’t know what to expect. We’re watched close enough as it is, if only because I share his blood. She’s just a child. It’s not her fault who her father is.”
“Oh,” Imogen whispered. “Oh, wow.” She sat down, boneless and watery, as if the full implication of my presence was finally just sinking in. I didn’t understand what any of this meant. As a girl, I just knew I was on display and found wanting. “Well, there’s enough shine in her to give her our eyes, violet, like her pa’s. Like yours. That’s something.”
“Chris said he brought her through the Boundary,” Annie whispered.
“How did he manage that?”
“Don’t know. He refused to say anything about it.” Annie replied. “I think he’s sticking around, from what I gather. Likely going to stir up more trouble, which won’t help us at all, but he’ll do what he does. There’s no keeping him from it.” Then she colored and glanced at me, as though regretting what she’d just said. Regretting the hope they gave me.
“Tell people she’s from the Teeth. No one knows what they do up there, in the hinterlands of the Territory. Up by the shine mines,” Imogen suggested. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but the idea seemed to settle in Annie, calming her in a way nothing else had.
“People will assume her mixed-blood, but no one can know for certain,” Annie whispered. She stared off at the nearby meadow. “She got through the Boundary, Imogen. Chris said she didn’t even take ill from it. She’s traveled through it twice, once to leave and once to come back, and is hale as a horse. ”
The silence that fell was heavy and uncomfortable. I did not understand these deeper waters, I did not know why they were so focused on the Boundary, but I knew it scared Annie, and that, in turn, frightened me.
“She’ll be harassed for who she is,” Imogen said. She was perched on the edge of her seat, staring at me with a socking intensity. I was frozen before her. “That’s just something you both will have to learn how to deal with.”
Annie sighed, a wounded sound.
“This isn’t an unclimbable mountain, Annie. We can figure this out. First things first, the child isn’t civilized. She needs to learn how to be a girl before we can let her out into the world. My daughter is of an age with her. They can play together. What did Chris bring with her?”
“Sleeping rolls, two pots,” Annie shrugged. “Not much else.”
“The dress she’s in is too big for her. One of Harriett’s?” Imogen didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll see if any of Ianthe’s fit her. I can get some cloth and we can sew up some shifts, some basics. Probably doesn’t have shoes either?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “She needs everything. Beautiful little waif, isn’t she? Probably better for Chris to leave her here. He has no notion of the things a girl needs.”
“It took us two days to teach her to eat with a fork without making a mess,” Annie replied. She sounded so defeated. “She knows knives, and she knows spoons.”
“Fate save us from empty-headed men,” Imogen said with a sigh. “My Ben is off digging for shine in the mines for the next fortnight. I’ve got time. I can help. She’s not a stupid child. She just needs some direction. Come here, Cassandra.”
I went to her. She had such a commanding air about her, she was impossible to turn away from. I went to her and let her clasp my chin, waited while she studied me. “You have such potential, child.” She whispered.
And that was the end of that.
I was to be remade.
Every day, after the house emptied, Imogen and Annie would take me through my lessons, teaching me how to behave at a table (take small bites, do not slurp) and how to act in a house (quiet, obedient, and always ready to be of service). To walk with grace, rather than clomping about. To say yes, and no, and thank you, and wait my turn. They were tearing me apart, piece by piece, and rebuilding me from the wreckage. Turning me into something that fit into the world I now found myself in.
I threw myself into my lessons with an abandon which quickly turned into exhaustion. I was anxious for their approval and eager to earn their smiles. Even so, I made mistakes. I had been in the wild so long, it was hard to smooth all my rough edges, but we all made a go of it and I dedicated myself to the task. However, not without frustration. I wanted to be a person who belonged in this world, but, much like I imagine a feral animal in a cage, I felt confined. I chaffed at my carefully controlled world and the tedium of my days.
I was a child. I wanted meadows and open spaces, and what I got were tables and chairs, afternoons spent in close quarters, and the anxious tittering of women I barely knew.
It wasn’t until nearly a month had passed, until a blanket of beautiful, orange foliage lay strewn about the ground, that Annie and Imogen saw fit to introduce me to others. Annie helped me into a dark blue dress with light blue flowers, a bonnet affixed to my head and braided my hair down my back, smiling all the while, her eyes dancing. Likely, she was as tired of her cabin’s walls as I was. Then, she stood back and studied me. “You’ve cleaned up well,” she said. “I’m proud of you, Cassandra.”
I will never forget that day. How uncomfortable I was with that bow tied around my waist, pinching and twisting each time I moved, the knot of it digging into my back or the way the dress caught on my legs with every step. The shoes she put on me pinched my toes. Yet, I hadn’t ever seen Annie this happy, and so I kept my discomfort to myself, afraid of souring her mood.
We left the homestead soon after my cousins departed, Harriet to school, and Jack to the fields to help with the harvest. Annie looped a basket over one arm and clutched my hand with the other, leading us forward, toward the house in the distance, across the meadow. Imogen’s house was larger than ours, painted white, with a wraparound porch. Large and majestic, I loved it. Behind, I could see farmland, a barn, a field, and further back, a forest. In the distance, purple mountains tipped with white scraped against the sky.
Recognition was a punch in the gut, sucking the air from my lungs. I knew those mountains. I’d spent time with my father walking up and down their spines. I had a dim recollection of a small cabin and those jagged, pine-studded peaks looming over it. Home.
It felt good, to know my place. To be able to look at a point, and know I’d lain my eyes upon it before. The world was not so strange, nor so as large, as I’d once imagined.
Imogen was waiting for us on th
e porch, a basket at her feet and a girl beside her. It was the girl who drew my attention. She had alabaster hair, marbled with gray, and silver eyes. Veins, blue as the sky, traced under her pale skin. She looked like a statue. If she was still, I’d think she was one. She was not beautiful, but frightening, and somehow fragile. Imogen fussed about her once we rounded the bend, making sure her daughter was as covered as possible, in clothes warmer than the weather dictated, before turning to greet Annie.
I stared at the girl while the two women chatted, utterly baffled by her. Imogen walked her daughter to a cart that had one sturdy horse tied to it and helped her onto it. I’d never ridden in a cart before, and I stared at the contraption until Annie helped me into it. The girl watched me, all the while, with wide, curious eyes.
We didn’t speak; I was too shy to even look at her. So I sat, awkward and stiff, watching and not watching her, while Imogen got the cart going, over bumps, jolting on roots, and winding around curves.
The countryside rolled past. Tall trees scraped against the sky. The sun cast dappled shadows. The track had been driven many times before, and the further along we got, the easier the journey became as the road smoothed out. Cabins appeared more often, and closer together. A small wooden bridge crossed a dry creek bed, the horse and cart sounded thunderously loud on the wooden planks. And then, on the other side of it, the town splayed out before us.
Grove wasn’t quite a town, not really. One wide dirt road down the center, with wooden buildings on either side. There was a fork in the road about halfway through, and at the end of that left turn, I could see railroad tracks and an encampment of canvas tents around it. Working men headed to or from the shine fields, I assumed. The town itself, however, had a quaint feel to it. Men shouted at each other from under awnings. Women with baskets and swaying skirts strolled from one building to the other, as they picked up what provisions they needed. On the corner, was a large saloon. Ladies, with breasts heaving from their dresses and impressively painted faces, lurked around the wide doorway.
In the distance, out beyond those tents, the sky was filled with black smoke and I smelled the faint sickly-sweet odor of shine in the air. At the time, I did not understand it. Mayhap, I thought, there was a fire out there. Now, I know it was smoke from the shine fields, always there, and always fragrant.
Imogen turned the cart around a corner and parked it in a small alleyway between a saloon and an apothecary shop. She slid down and hitched the horse to a post before helping her daughter down, and turning to me with a smile. Already, people were staring, jewel-toned strangers standing all around us, whispering, wondering who the dark-haired girl in their midst could be. I had never felt so seen. In a world of rainbows, I stuck out. There was no hiding what I was.
“My brother’s daughter,” Annie said to no one in particular, as though just saying it would give me some small measure of protection from the world, and maybe it did. In the way of small towns, introductions mattered. They made the unknown, known. She grabbed my hand and gave it a kind squeeze. I loved her for that, for not leaving me alone to fight the wolves.
Murmurs trailed after us as we moved at a stately pace toward the general store. We were followed by whispers and wonder. My father, I gathered, was someone the people of Grove knew well, and having me appear in their midst was somewhat akin to having a mythic creature pop out of the ashes. Chris left years ago. No one expected to hear from him again. Outlaws departed. They didn’t return. And yet, here I was. Not Chris, but close enough.
I wish I had known then what I know now, that some burdens are too heavy to put down, and some sin never washes off. My father left me with his own dull patina. Even so young, I saw the truth laid bare in all those prying eyes, in their guffaws and pointing fingers. Heard it in their quiet, shocked voices. I was a mystery, a puzzle. I was something that should not be.
I do not think it is in my nature to know peace. Some people are born with a fight in their bones. I was a rock thrown into a still pond. Already, the ripples were spreading. My very existence was a conflict.
Those whispers, however, grew louder, and closer. There was no escaping them. The eyes that were fixed on me grew hotter. The world started to fade until there was nothing but me, small and uncertain, standing before a crowd of gossiping strangers. Sweat beaded my brow. My vision went black, save for one spot of light at the center of all that dark. My heart hammered beneath my ribs, and air sawed into, and out of, my lungs.
Until this moment, I had been numb.
Numb is not what people think it is. It is not the act of not feeling. Numb is cold. When my father left, winter entered my soul while a storm flooded my body. I waited, day after day, for my bones to become branches of light. There was a hurricane ache deep in my frostbitten heart, and it had overwhelmed me.
That is what numb is. It is the ice. It is the tempest.
Now, that numbness snapped like a dry tree limb. I had been waiting to feel something again, anything, and now all that feeling was rushing in and I was drowning. It was too much. I was lost in a deluge, and all of it happening with an audience. I was on display. Surrounded. It was the terror of that experience that broke through the brittle crust that had protected me.
It is a strange thing to be alone, yet surrounded at the same time. I felt as though I could scream, right then and there, and no one would hear me. I was sure I was suffocating. Panic filled my veins with knives, slicing me from the inside out.
I was too young to know how to steel myself in the face of the hurricane that was buffeting me. I was nothing but a girl, unprepared for all this attention. A gasp tore through me. Tears, hot and potent, pricked my eyes. My nails bit into my palms until I feared they would cut.
I swayed on my feet. The street spun around me. My dress stuck to me with my cold sweat.
Suddenly, a hand shot out, warm and small as my own. “It will get easier,” a quiet voice whispered. I turned to see Ianthe, pale as new snow, beside me. She was solid and real, and I clung to her, wrapped my hand around hers and held on. “It will get easier,” she said again, wise beyond her years.
It was the beginning. The first connection between us. The first tentative threads of that which would bind us.
Back in Union City, there had been all sorts of copper-piece stories about the Wild West, and they’d enchanted Arlen. He’d filled himself up with the tales he’d bought without his father knowing, about shine slingers and wide-open spaces. About a landscape that pitted man against nature. That is, perhaps, what he’d naively anticipated when coming out to Shine Territory. He’d wanted to find himself in one of those stories.
Instead, what amazed him wasn’t how untamed the West was, but how normal everything appeared to be. The streets were wide and cobbled. Women wore the same dresses women wore back east, compete with flirty hats or bonnets. Mothers walked with children in tow. Fathers tipped hats and made way for the gentler sex. Business went on.
There was a large bank down the street from their rooms, and a tavern nearby, a haberdashery across the street, and a tailor’s shop next to it. Down the way, he could see a barbershop, a healer’s clinic, and everything else he could imagine. In the distance, here and there, steeples from Fate churches adorned the skyline, their bells filling the air with their crystalline music a few times each day. The Boundary might as well not have existed.
Freetown smelled like horse shit, just like Union City.
“We’re here,” Elroy said, slapping him on the shoulder.
They stood before a small, brick building squashed between two stores. The door was painted a brilliant green, with gold lettering saying Shine Company Transfer office. Arlen stared at the door. Something in his gut churned. He hated these places. Hated them with an intensity that always surprised him.
Elroy pushed the door open. The cramped room was blessedly empty save for the official, who was slumped over his messy, paper-strewn desk, drool dripping down the side of his face, eyes unfocused. His skin had the waxen, pale
tone of someone who was both sick and never out in natural light.
Elroy snapped his fingers in front of the man’s face a few times, gaining no response. “This one is almost burned out,” he muttered. “I’ll let Matthew know it’s time to send a new one to take his place.” More snapping. “HELLO!”
That roar finally stirred the man. Arlen watched as he unfolded himself, rubbed his eyes, and then stared blankly at the wall before reaching for another dram of crude shine and drinking it down in one swallow.
And that, right there, was why he hated transfer offices. The naked addiction, the obvious burnout. The men who worked there were doggedly loyal to the company, but they had no families, no outside lives or obligations. They spent their days and nights in this tiny, lightless room, dealing in secrets and drinking shine to keep themselves as high as possible, for as long as possible, in order to touch minds and relay messages with other officials in far-flung offices. When burnout came, it came hard and fast. Most didn’t survive to see a day past forty.
“I’m ready,” the man finally slurred, the words mashing together into near incomprehensibility. Incredible, that he’d trust this creature with a missive to his father.
“Go ahead,” Arlen motioned for Elroy to go first. The man shrugged and took a seat opposite the desk, waiting impatiently, foot tapping, while the official made himself comfortable in his chair, his eyes sliding closed. To all the world, he looked like he’d fallen asleep again. That line of drool moved down his chin, dripping onto his shirt. The room smelled fetid, like body odor and time.
The windows were blacked out to provide privacy and protect secrecy. On the official’s hip, was a pistol, loaded with shooting shine. If anyone tried to break into this office, he was to shoot on sight, no questions asked. His job was not just to relay messages, but to protect the secrets of the company with his life, and all officials took that job seriously. Though how, in truth, he’d be able to use a gun when he was that high was beyond Arlen.
