Chapter Three #2
Once the Mission was operational, the ferry house would be my primary post. I’d make sure the radiance lines that traveled all the way from the closest Generator plant were wired correctly and safely.
I’d maintain the machinery and teach the locals how to switch the flow of radiance on and off.
The ferry had to run smoothly in any season for Frostbrook to grow as a trading post.
A twinge of urgency made me quicken my steps.
The sooner I arrived at the Mission, the sooner I could make my talents known to my Senior.
Even without live radiance lines to work on, I could show them that I was useful and clever.
Every day would be a chance to prove my worth so that, eventually, they’d recommend me for a promotion.
Henry gave me a dubious look over his shoulder. “In a hurry to get inside, ma’am?”
No one had ever called me ma’am before, and I laughed softly, the sound surprising me. “No. This weather is quite perfect.”
“You must be hot in all those skirts and sleeves and that scarf.”
“I don’t get terribly hot.” But he was right, my dress was overly stuffy and ill-suited for country life this time of year.
Tabitha had been correct, as usual. Only steps from the train, I already yearned for a pair of trousers and shorter sleeves.
Hopefully my new Senior would allow me to visit a tailor with my small allowance.
“I expected it to be a little cooler here with a name like Frostbrook,” I added, smiling so he’d know I wasn’t cross about it.
“It gets real cold in the winter, just you wait.”
The thought of winter made my heart sink. It was already difficult to imagine spending entire seasons here. “I suppose I’ll see.”
“Heard the train was robbed.” Henry broke a dead branch off a tree alongside the narrow road and swung it around like a sword.
He walked backward, watching me with his relentless toothless grin.
I found myself missing the youngest children at the House, those who had recently arrived.
The little ones had always seemed to be either laughing or crying—with nothing in between. Certainly nothing quiet.
Apparently, news traveled faster than trains. Ignoring an itch of unease, I gripped my bag more tightly. “Shadowy bandits. They came for our souls, but I fought them off!”
Henry snorted. “Are you sure they weren’t wood spirits?”
I’d never heard that ghost story. But then, most of the foundlings in the home I’d grown up in before the House didn’t need to tell scary stories. We’d lived them already. “What’s that?”
“They protect the trees. And the—”
“Henry Vale, bite your tongue.” A woman’s voice broke out like a thunderclap. I whirled to see her burst onto the porch of a shack so run-down, I’d mistaken it for an abandoned dwelling. Hurriedly, I tucked my clenched fingers into my skirts, ashamed to have been caught hearing a foolish story.
Looking closer, I saw fluttering drapes in the windows and two goats tied up in the side yard.
The woman was round-faced and round-hipped, with white skin kissed pink by the spring sun.
She didn’t look all that much older than me, but she carried herself with authority, and Henry dropped his stick and stood straight at her command.
“Yes, ma’am.”
I wasn’t sure what he’d said or done wrong, and for a quick moment, I worried he’d be punished.
After life in the foundling home, I had no stomach for seeing children beaten simply for having the natural impulsivity and curiosity of youth.
Henry’s grin soon returned, though, and he leaped onto her porch and threw his arms around her.
“I’m taking the apprentice Conductor to the Senior at the Mission.
I get two dozen eggs for showing her the way! ”
“Don’t break them when you carry them back,” she said, laughing. Our eyes met, and her smile didn’t falter, but something changed in her pale brown eyes. She tucked her heavy fawn-brown braid behind her shoulder. “I’m Ainsley Vale. Henry is my ward.”
There was no mistaking the challenge in her voice. Something in me answered it, a flash of recognition. This girl refused to be underestimated. Was she also an orphan like Henry? Like me?
“I’m Josephine Haven. Thank you for sparing Henry’s time. He’s a good boy, and so strong,” I said, making sure Henry heard me.
“With an appetite to match.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “Be home by dark, Henry. And we’ll feast on those eggs.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Be careful, Miss Haven.”
Henry skipped ahead, but her words rooted me in place. Was this a sincere warning or a threat?
In Sterling City, I’d struggled to comprehend why anyone could resent the House of Industry.
But seeing where Ainsley lived, the way her porch sagged and her skirts had clearly been mended time and again, I wondered what she thought of me in my fine dress and finer scarf.
I hadn’t wanted for food in more than a decade.
My lingering headache throbbed in time with the prickling threat of an ugly mood. If only people understood that with Progress came prosperity. For everyone.
I smiled despite her unsettling warning—despite knowing better than to try to make an acquaintance when I wasn’t supposed to be meeting anyone at all.
The longing for someone to simply talk to was a quiet, unwelcome thing inside me.
I wished I could excise the weakness, cut it out like rot from a spoiling apple. “I will. Thank you.”
When we were out of earshot, I asked Henry, “Ainsley cares for you? She hardly looks a day over seventeen.”
“She takes good care of me. I even call her Ma, sometimes, when my belly aches or I’m real sleepy.”
“I hope your belly doesn’t ache too often.”
“Not anymore.” He looked back over his shoulder, smiling.
I shivered, recalling the foundlings on the streets of Sterling City who scraped and begged to survive. While a child in the countryside wouldn’t die in a piss-soaked gutter, they might be carried off by wolves or starve in the bitter cold.
“There’s nowhere kind in this world,” I muttered to myself.
Henry picked up a rock and threw it into a small thicket of vivid pink flowers. “Plenty of kind people here. You’ll see.”
It occurred to me that he might think I was questioning the integrity of the town within minutes of arriving. “Oh, I was simply being maudlin. I’m an orphan. When I think of hungry children, it makes me sad.”
“Did your parents get sick?”
Cold, unnamable guilt lanced through me. “I think so. Lots of people get sick in the city.”
“My parents worked on the railway. They strung up miles and miles of radiance lines, and they got sick and they died.”
“It was very brave of them to work on the railway. Radiance can travel far, all because of the hard work of people like them.”
“Ezra says the railway carries poison into Frostbrook, that it poisoned my parents and poisons the workers, and that’s why they get weak and have to sleep all day and can’t work anymore.”
My boots scuffled to a stop on the dirt path. I caught my breath, reminding myself that if scores of workers were getting sick, we’d have heard about it in the city. Shame on whoever was telling this boy such vile tales. “It sounds like Ezra likes to tell you stories to frighten you.”
“He likes to tell nice stories, too!”
“Is Ezra your friend? I’d like to meet him and hear his nice stories.
” And ask him exactly why he was telling lies about the railway and radiance.
These were exactly the kinds of rumors and conspiracies that prompted resistors to vandalize Missions and radiance lines and attack Children of Industry. To kill them, even.
“Miss Ainsley says he can’t be my friend. But we go fishing anyway. I caught a bluegill as big as my foot yesterday.”
I filed this information away—the first bits of Frostbrook gossip I could use to understand how this town worked. I’d only ever lived in the foundling home and the House of Industry, and I had little practice navigating the whims and worries of entire communities.
But I had to learn. People were no different than machines. Complicated. Reliable only until they ceased to be counted on. Strong only until a vulnerability made itself known. Then everything was liable to fall apart, all at once.
I had to understand everything. I had to be perfect.
The Frostbrook Mission was built along a steep riverbank, high on a stone retaining wall. My back tightened at the thought of the work it must have taken here, so far from the heart of Progress, to build such a structure.
“It’s a castle,” Henry announced, solemn and wondrous. Surely he’d seen it before, but as he looked up at the towering wall, he took my hand. His small fingers were cold.
“It’s not really a castle,” I said weakly, unable to think of anything else to compare it to.
The windows were narrow, designed to let only slivers of light through.
The walls were too high and smooth to scale.
Unlike the imposing yet beautiful House of Industry, this Mission was utilitarian.
Stark as a fortress, at odds with the curves of the river and the bright wildflowers.
Perhaps, this far from society, beauty and refinement didn’t matter.
Unsettling shame muddied any pride I should have taken in my new home.
Shaking my head to clear the foggy shadows of my thoughts, I squeezed Henry’s hand to reassure him.
There was no call for hesitance. This was my destiny embodied—an impressive monument to Progress.
And whether the townspeople recognized the potential or not, we’d transform the entire region into a bustling trade destination.
Fortunes would be made here. Without having to rely on muscle and grit to power the river crossing, Frostbrook would serve as a launching place for further exploration into the high mountains to the west and the wild forests and glaciers to the north.