Of Honey and Wildfires

by Sarah Chorn

  He turned his attention to the woman. Rose was older. She had an orange tint to her skin and eyes, though her hair was shot through with gray. Likely, she’d been a beauty before, but now she was in the twilight of her years, and she looked more like the grandmother he’d always wanted to confide in. Her dress was worn, her apron stained, and there was flour on her cheeks, but she was smiling and her eyes were twinkling. “Come on, come on,” she said, ushering them forward. “Just made dinner.”

  “Who else is here?” Christopher asked.

  “Yoren and Hank. Mind yourself, Chris. There’s no fighting in my house. I’ll shoot you as soon as look at you if a fight breaks out. Don’t care how much I like you.”

  Chris put his hands up. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Rose. Not in your sacred space. If we decide to gut each other, we’ll do it outside.”

  Rose led them into the house, rambling the whole time about dinner, a roasted chicken, fresh bread, and plenty of beer. Arlen’s hunger fell on him with shocking intensity. They’d stopped to eat lunch, but it had been a meager affair of jerky and some cheese. Nothing really to sustain him, and they’d been walking so far, for so long. Now, the empty ache in his belly was damn near crippling.

  The house in the distance loomed larger with each step. Impossible to make out any details in this darkness, but as long as it had a chair for him to rest in, Arlen didn’t much care. “Got some good shine, too, which I added to the food so it’ll taste great,” Rose said, opening the door. Arlen suppressed a groan of revulsion. One good thing about traveling with Chris was, his food was blissfully shine-free. “Got any wounds, Chris? Anything that needs healing? Got enough shine to stitch you up right good.”

  “Unfortunately, I’m uninjured this time, Rose. I know how much you like stabbing me with needles.”

  Rose opened the door and yellow light spilled out. They found themselves in a dining room, of sorts. Two long tables filled the space, empty, save for two men, just as rough and tumble as Christopher, eating their food at one end of the room. The smell of shine filled the air. The fire in the fireplace was almost white and didn’t pop or jerk about as normal fire did. A large, rainbow-hued shine rock sat in the center of the fireplace, fueling the flame and filling the air with its sickly-sweet smell.

  Chris led him in, and they both sat at the table. Arlen let out a sigh of relief when his rump hit the chair. He stretched out his legs and got comfortable.

  “Ho, Chris,” one of the men said. He was violet, like Chris, but much darker, almost a deep purple. “A lawman passed through here earlier today. Had something to say about a train robbery. Wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

  “Mind your own fucking business, Yoren,” Chris grumbled. Rose disappeared around a corner, and the sounds of pots banging filled the room.

  “I mean, what with you showing up with this fancy boy and all. Him in his suit with his nice fucking clothes. Can’t find them in the forest, can you? Can’t pull one up from the earth, neither. Tell me, Christopher, what tree did you pick this fancy shine man from?”

  Rose slid plates of dinner in front of them and gave everyone in the room an eyeful that was a threat and warning rolled into one.

  “Back the fuck off,” the other man grumbled in Yoren’s direction. Hank, Arlen surmised. He was blue from head to toe. A deep, midnight blue.

  “Why are you both so dark?” Arlen asked, remembering the dark men and boys who had gone to work in the shine mines. The question was out before he could catch it, before he could think. It fell into the room like rocks into a pond, stillness following in their wake and he blushed under the eyes fixed on him. Those incredulous stares, wide and surprised at his callous manners.

  “We work in the mines,” Yoren replied. “Rubbing up against shine like that, day after day, with no sun, makes us all dark. Makes some of us more like animals, too.” There was shifting under the table the sound of a boot hitting flesh. Something bumped the table and Yoren cursed. “We’re coming back up from Grove. Doing a stint in the mines.”

  Chris went stiff. “Did you see Cassandra?”

  “She’s fine. Well, far as I can tell. Keeps herself to herself. She’s got the law sniffing around her though. Couldn’t get close. Just saw her from a distance,” Hank said. “She’s alive, and she’s getting older. Seems to spend most of her time in the sanatorium with Ianthe.”

  “She’s had the law sniffing around her since she was five,” Chris replied. Yoren pulled some meat from a chicken bone, juice dripping down his chin. For all they might bark at each other, Yoren’s eyes were full of sorrow, not glee, at Chris’s plight.

  “Yeah, but she’s got the law stationed on the property now, and hanging around the sanatorium, too. Saw one standing at the cabin’s door, keeping watch. Two off in the fields, hiding. They’re loitering in the street in Grove, too. Right outside the sanatorium. They all got guns, and more shine to shoot with than I ever saw a man carry,” Yoren said. “I’m sorry, Chris.”

  Chris chewed on his food and then pushed his plate away, apparently losing his appetite. He crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at the world. Then, he stood abruptly and went outside, the door slamming shut behind him.

  “Leave him,” Yoren said. “He always gets tied in knots when his daughter comes up. The company has been crawling all over her since his last… incident. I think they hope to find Chris out there, visiting most likely.”

  “Incident?” Arlen asked. He knew what Yoren was alluding to, but calling it an incident was mild in the extreme, considering what happened and how many people died. He nibbled on some chicken. It had flavor, but not an explosion of it. The slightly oily shine coating it told him why, but he was far too hungry to give it much thought.

  “When Chris blew up the wells,” Yoren replied. “They’ve always been on her, mind, but they started sticking to her after that, being real obvious about it, and he worries.”

  “Wasn’t his fault,” Hank grumbled. “They changed the work orders last minute. No one should have been there. How was he to know?”

  For a moment, everyone went silent. Arlen’s father—Matthew—had been the most upset he’d ever seen him, nigh unto incapacitated by rage. He’d spend hours in his study, important men coming and going while he paced and swore. Once, he’d thrown a crystal decanter at the wall, and Arlen had watched it shatter, shocked. Matthew Esco never lost control of himself like that, but after the wells were blown up, he became a different person. He became a man who raged.

  As odds would have it, it was Arlen who had eventually brought up the idea of increasing the cost of shine marginally, which boosted the company profits. The market was tight enough, what with Shine Company being the only exporter and seller of the stuff, that there would always be a market for it, no matter how high the cost went. Within a year, the price increase had brought in enough money to fix the destroyed wells and bring their production up to seventy percent. Within a year and a half, the prices dropped again and Shine Company was exporting the expected amount of shine, and all the wells were functioning again.

  Now he was here, seeing the truth of what his ingenuity had wrought.

  At least a hundred innocent men had died at Christopher’s hand.

  Chris was a murderer. Arlen had always known that. A cold-blooded killer. Stories said he’d gut a man and talk about what to eat for dinner while doing it. He knew what Chris was capable of. He’d read the reports. It made him cold to think of it. Why was he trusting the outlaw? Why was he walking into the back end of nowhere with a man he hardly knew? A man who so callously killed?

  Something had driven Chris to become an outlaw. To give up everything he’d ever had, and somehow it was all tied up in Shine Company. Though, Arlen realized, it was his story, too. That’s why he was out here, with the outlaw, walking away from everything he’d ever known. He wanted answers. No. He needed answers.

  “Tell me about the mines,” Arlen said. The two men went still. “I’m… curious.
” He amended. He watched them look at each other, exchanging a silent conversation.

  “What is it you want to know?”

  “I saw boys,” Arlen said. He steered clear from mentioning the train, though he was sure both men knew where he’d come from. They had him pinned down. There was no hiding who he worked for. “Young boys going to the mines to work. I know it is standard practice. We have kids working in the cloth mills and other factories back east, but mining seems…” his voice trailed off. He shook his head and looked down at his clenched fists. He’d been so hungry. Now, it was all he could do to keep eating. All he could see were those faces, so small and drawn. Those eyes that had seen so much life in just a few short years.

  “Which version of the story can you live with?” Yoren asked, fixing his penetrating stare on Arlen.

  “Tell him true,” Christopher said. When did he come back inside? “That’s why he’s out here. To learn the truth of the damned shine the Company wants so badly. The only reason I haven’t found a way to collapse the mines is because of the children stuck down inside of them. I may be brutal, but I ain’t no Fate’s-damned child killer.” His voice was rough now, deep, like he’d just spent some time howling out his pain and was learning the way of words again. Chris slid his chair out and sat in it with a groan.

  “We are told,” Arlen said, licking his lips. Rose appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. She pulled out a seat on Arlen’s other side and sank onto it, the wood creaked under her weight. “That the children who work in the mines do so because they have no other option. It saves their families. We’re told about it in such a way that it seems noble, both them working, and the company allowing them to.” He remembered Elroy’s explanation about poverty and necessity, and they made sense. Children worked for the same reasons in the textile mills and other factories in Union City. Sometimes a parent or both parents would die, and all the responsibility for the family would fall on the oldest child. What else could they do?

  It was so easy to dismiss it. Or it had been, until he’d seen the children on that train platform, waiting with all those roughneck men. Knowing a thing and seeing it were two different beasts entirely.

  “Suppose that’s true enough,” Chris said, running his hand over his beard, nodding. “Suppose sometimes there’s no other way for a family to carry on. What do they do? Starve, or head to the mines? There’s always work in the mines. Especially for small children who can fit into tight places. Never enough of them, and the money is good. Company pays their ticket on the train so they go home every two weeks for two days. Sounds good enough on the surface, right? Food in your belly. Family don’t starve. A place to lay your head at night, and job security.”

  Arlen nodded.

  “A normal day for a miner is about twelve to fourteen hours long. The young ones get up around one or two in the morning, get lowered down into the pit around three, and then don’t see light again until six at night, sometimes later, depending.” Hank said.

  Yoren shifted in his seat, propped his elbows on the table and fixed Arlen with a glare. “Down there, the earth is wet, and most kids are nearly half-naked in that dark and damp. They get tied to the carts so they don’t get lost, you see. They get paid four copper a day for work done, and often get beaten for mistakes,” he paused, drew in a breath. His words were coming faster and louder, becoming fevered. “Just imagine it, down there in the dark. All sorts of things can happen without anybody knowing the difference. You want to know more, company man, or is that enough for you?”

  “There was a boy once,” Hank interrupted. “Got burned bad. All his skin came off. Had to carry him to the camp, watch them slather him with shine. His skin… fell off in my hands. Poor boy couldn’t work for months, and soon as he was alive enough to move without shedding off bits of himself, he went right back down into that pit. Needed to support his family. Couldn’t have been more than eight.” Hank studied his beer and shook his head.

  “The camps,” Chris said. “Tell him about the camps.”

  There was a scream rising in Arlen. All this pressure. All this anxiety. All this knowledge. He felt sick. All he could picture were those boys, their small bodies locked down in the dark, chained to carts, half-naked, wet, starving and beaten, and all for four coppers a day.

  He tried to keep his features still, tried to lock his upset in. Rose rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. He was a willow, bending under the force of this storm.

  “We live in tents,” Hank said. “A few buildings, but most of them are for the fallen women and saloons, those who have an addiction and need a fix, you see. So we live in tents in a camp. Mud. Lots of dysentery and cholera. Lots of mosquito flu and vermin.”

  “Enough,” Arlen said, covering his face with his hands. “Enough. Please.”

  “And once you get there,” Yoren said, “you're locked in. Company hands you a paper and makes you carve your mark on it, saying you’ll work a seam for at least a year, you get me, company man? And by that time, you are so indebted to the company for the train fare, and the place to sleep and the medicine you’ll need so you can see another day, you can’t just walk away. It’s not free. Oh, it’s sold that way. Look at all this shit you get and you don’t even need to pinch for it. All you gotta do is carry a shovel a bit. But the foremen, they keep tabs. They mark down how often you ride their trains, eat their food, use their pillows, blankets, and tents. Fate forbid you catch ill. The shine they use to fix you is the good stuff, and even a drop of it will ensure you’re paying back the company for your survival for the rest of your life. You get four coppers a day, your family sees one, and that’s after you pay back what you owe the company men for your room and board, for your medicine, your train fare, your food.” Yoren stopped abruptly as though to catch his breath.

  “It’s worse for the kids,” Hank said, leaning back in his chair. “They don’t know any better, and they are selling their whole lives away without any clue as to what they’re doing. To them, it’s just a mark on paper. To their family, it’s food and a roof over their heads. But really, they are selling away their lives. Their lives, for shine. Do you think that’s fair?”

  They were looking at him, both of them. If they knew they were talking to the man set to inherit the whole company, how would this conversation change? He shifted in his chair, but there was no comfort to be had. No escaping those gazes or the words they were throwing at him.

  “And if you’re a kid down in the dark,” Yoren said, “and someone does something to you, there ain’t no justice, because the law don’t care about the miners as long as they get their fucking shine out of that rip in the world. And it’s dark, so you can’t prove anything anyway. Ask me how I know. Ask me what happened down in the belly of the world when I was six. Go ahead! Fucking ask!”

  “Enough!” Arlen shouted, pushing to his feet. Dimly, he was aware of the chair clattering to the floor behind him. Aware of how hot and close the room felt, and those eyes on him, burning like a brand. Marking him.

  He staggered outside and drew in a deep lungful of air. Let it fill him up. Tried to push those horrible images from his mind.

  He’d lived such a close, protected life. He’d always known where his next meal would come from.

  He was so unbelievably lucky.

  And maybe that’s why this cut so deep. He’d finally seen what a life of want looked like. He’d seen the hollow eyes and the stooped shoulders. He’d seen the children, haunted and haggard, about to be swallowed up by the earth. They were young. So unbelievably young. Their lives were over before they even began.

  All in the name of Shine Company.

  This was, Arlen realized, half the reason for this journey. Christopher was taking him somewhere, to see something, but along the way he wanted Arlen to understand the unfiltered version of company rule. He wanted Arlen to know how people endured, toiled, survived, under his father’s reign.

  He wanted Arlen to know.

  And oh, he
thought he’d felt like he was being stabbed before, but now he felt like he was being torn in half. Ripped apart. Shredded.

  He was part of this. Him in his fancy suit, out here in the West looking for copper-piece story-worthy adventure, and not seeing the misery until he was walking through the middle of it. His hands were dirty. He feared they’d never come clean. This was his legacy. His name was written across Shine Territory as surely as Mathew Esco’s was.

  There he stood, just him and all that sky. He fixed his eye on the distant horizon, that sun-kissed promise. Its siren’s call shivered through him, pulsing like a heart, and all he wanted to do was sink his teeth into it and bite down.

  “Arlen?” The word spilled between them like starlight, silver-edged and ephemeral. “Are you okay?” Pain filled him up, demanded all his attention, gave him a new understanding of the word swollen.

  He closed his eyes and drew in a breath. “Sometimes,” he spoke into the gloaming, “I wish my heart was ice.”

  “It’s okay to break, Arlen,” Chris replied, resting a hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “Sometimes that’s the only thing you can do. Shatter, and then rebuild yourself from the pieces. It’s hard out here. A hard life. The company, you lot who come out here in your fine clothes, only see the surface of it, but this place, it’s in your blood. It’s part of your story. You should see the dirt Matthew Esco tries so hard to hide.”

  He felt it happening, deep inside, that long, slow tear. That crack shivered through him. It was the slow, steady rupture of everything he’d ever thought he knew. He took his spectacles off with shaking hands, wiped them on a kerchief and put them back on.

  All those kids trapped down in the dark.

  He wondered if the earth felt pain.

  He wondered if he was standing on the buried screams of forgotten children.