Chapter Five #3
“I am not!” I tucked my unruly hands into the pockets of my dress, half to avoid scaring him and half to avoid knocking him off his feet with a completely ordinary push for accusing me of something so untoward.
“I’m trying, and clearly failing, to make things right.
Although I believe it should be noted that you struck me with a projectile first, when I was doing nothing but enjoying a morning walk. ”
“Are you sure you’re not a barrister?” he asked, his mouth quirking in something I was relieved to identify as close to a smile. He eased his weight from the tree to the balls of his feet, but his shoulders remained tense. “You argue like one.”
We faced each other, both breathing coarsely, and something oddly familiar struck me about the way he held himself.
I brushed it off, shook my hands out of my pockets, and gestured to the path that sloped downhill to a clearing where I could make out a handful of finely thatched roofs.
“I’ve been given my duties, and I’m doing them backward so I can start in town and finish at the mill.
Would you mind helping me find the conduction box between the barber and the general store? ”
“Somehow I don’t believe you’ll have any trouble identifying either one of those places of business.”
I let out a sigh. After nearly killing him, it was only common decency to extend courtesies. He didn’t have to be so obtuse. “Ezra,” I said, drawing my words out with annoyance, “would you like to walk with me?”
He said nothing. In the silence, my insides shivered like the leaves on the trees around us. His mouth twitched.
After a moment, I realized he was hesitating to tease me.
“Ezra!”
“Gladly, gladly.” He grinned and started walking with a gait that wasn’t quite comfortable, sidestepping to avoid brushing my shoulder. “On the way, I’ll think about how you’ll be making things right for nearly killing me.”
Although his back was tight and his feet didn’t fall as gracefully as they had on the path along the river, there was no real threat in his tone.
Still, my heart beat too fast. I took a long, slow breath before I followed him.
“You’re sure this is the entirety of Frostbrook?
” I asked for the third time, staring at a total of six buildings.
They faced one another, separated by a ribbon of dusty earth dotted with horseshit and scarred with wagon tracks.
One of the houses was painted yellow, which was the only pleasant thing I could say about the town.
“Yes. I’m sure. You’ve got Stella’s Saloon and the inn upstairs, which have both been closed since Stella got sick and died,” Ezra said, dodging a suspicious-looking puddle.
“The general store. That one is just a burned-out building … Not sure what it was before. That’s the barbershop.
This place here is the bank and the jail and town hall, depending on who’s around.
The blacksmith has a workshop behind this house here and rents the front out to boarders and a few of the Mission workers when they get paid and get half a mind to sleep in a real bed for a night or two. ”
“Is there a mayor?”
“Of Frostbrook?” Ezra laughed. “No. A few days’ ride north and you’re in Harlington.
Their mayor rides in once a month or so to check on the Mission progress and the radiance line and to tell people that she’ll send Transistors after train robbers and resistors, and then she rides back home and we keep carrying on as we always have. Unbothered.”
“‘Unbothered’? Shouldn’t you be bothered by resistors and train robbers?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “I’ve never been on a train, so … no, I’m not much bothered by train robbers.”
I couldn’t help but notice he didn’t comment on resistors. But surely he wouldn’t be so friendly with me if he believed I were better off dead than doing my weekly duties as an apprentice Conductor.
My hand drifted to the high collar that hid the bruises at my throat. He watched me for a moment, gaze clouded, before he gestured to the high wooden fence between the barbershop and the general store. The fence rose to sharp points like dozens of spears.
“I suppose that’s your conduction box.”
“Yes,” I said, waving my hand at it dismissively. “But surely there’s a tailor in town. At the general store?”
“A tailor? Likely not.”
With a sigh, I reminded myself that my first duty was to the Mission, not to finding trousers.
I approached the tall gated fence that surrounded the conduction box.
It had a rudimentary lock that I easily opened with little more than a breath of the radiance that was always there, as sure as my pulse.
Ezra hung back, and his posture stiffened once more. “You can unlock things that easily? With your mind?”
I snorted. “Not with my mind. It isn’t magic.”
“Right. Of course it isn’t magic.” His bitter tone surprised me, but when I glanced at him, he watched me calmly, and I wondered if I’d imagined it.
“The mechanism is simple. It’s meant to keep people from opening the box and getting hurt.
Especially curious children. Important things are locked more elaborately.
” I swung the gate open, revealing the intricate machine that slept, waiting for a current of radiance to bring it to life.
Ezra, and my fussy skirt, and all of Frostbrook melted away when I put my hands on the silent machine.
New technology. Fresh grease. “Oh. It’s lovely. ”
“It was a mighty fuss getting it here from the train station,” Ezra said, muted and lingering at the gate. “What does it do?”
“When radiance travels along the lines, it’s too powerful to integrate with most household or even industrial machines.
The conduction box holds a charge and releases the precise amount of radiance required.
Once the Mission is up and running, this will be able to power the lights in all …
six of these buildings here. And streetlights as well, if Frostbrook ever installs them.
It’ll also condition the radiance to power nearby homes and farms.” The ones who could afford it, anyway.
“I suppose it’s like a miniature Mission. ”
I looked back, a wild grin on my face, expecting to see Ezra mirroring my excitement. But he was frowning and scratching his arm. “I need to get to work. I’ll leave you to it.”
Before I could ask him where the midwife’s house was, he ducked out of my line of sight, leaving me to the cold metal under my fingers.
I didn’t understand why my belly ached.
It wasn’t like he’d left me alone. I was never alone in the presence of a beautiful machine.
Though Ezra’s puzzling behavior nagged at me like a splinter of glass, the conduction box quickly won all my attention.
I sank into work as if slipping into a warm bath.
It encompassed me, drawing my focus to a single goal: ensuring that the conduction box was ready to be powered up when the time came.
When I was working, I didn’t question my purpose.
I had the House of Industry to thank for that. What would I be without my calling?
I ignored a whisper of longing at the back of my mind. I hadn’t always wanted to be a Conductor, but that didn’t mean it was the wrong calling. It didn’t mean I was meant to do anything else.
It wasn’t until the noon sun warmed the back of my neck that I realized the entire morning had passed. My fingers were grease stained, and a small cut at my knuckle bled like a smear of red paint. A fine sheen of sweat dampened my hair at my temples. My arms were sore.
I’d checked every connection and tested every copper wire with a fine current of radiance. The settings on the meter had been off by half an ampere, and I’d recalibrated it.
My stomach rumbled. I turned my face to the high sun for a moment, letting its heat wash over me.
I imagined the sun having a pulse of its own, like the steady beat of my heart.
That was how it felt, like endless waves that rocked through my body when I let myself become aware.
But even the comforting sunlight wasn’t enough to distract me from the fact that I’d foolishly neglected to carry food with me for my day away from the Mission.
I packed up my tools, wiping each carefully on the towel fastened to my belt before tucking them back into their roll. My hands would need a good scrubbing with sand and a bar of soap.
The dusty, sad excuse for a street was quiet when I emerged from the box and locked the barbed fence around it. I didn’t see so much as a stray cat. Irritated, I silently cursed Julian for neglecting to tell me there was no tailor in town.
“Get on with it, Josephine,” I told myself, drawing his directions from my pocket. I still needed to service the mill. “You’re not done with work.”
Unlike the dying trees and scraggly bushes alongside the railroad, the landscape around Frostbrook bloomed with the hardiness of life forced to erupt and flourish between harsh winters.
The wildness unsettled me despite its beauty.
In Sterling City, I’d understood exactly what kinds of dangers lurked.
I knew what treachery looked like. But here, I was as unschooled as a babe.
I wouldn’t know a harmless rat snake from a venomous creature, or what plants were poisonous, or what bugs or vermin were harmful.
As much as I liked the novelty of being surrounded by untamed nature, I didn’t like not knowing what to be wary of.
The river, at least, was familiar. I reached the path Ezra had led me on, though we’d been farther upriver.
Clanging metal and hollow thuds sounded in the distance, but the trees were too high on the bank for me to make out the walls of the Mission.
I consulted my directions once more, paying mind to the hand-drawn flow of the river, and headed downstream toward the mill.
The path was easier with shoes on, but more difficult than I preferred in my unnecessarily full skirt.
“I’ll never be rid of this dress,” I muttered to myself, before letting out a frustrated, unseemly moan.
A bee buzzed by my ear, and I shied away like a startled horse, tripping on the hem.
When I tried to right myself, I merely succeeded in tangling myself further in the infernal fabric.
The momentum sent me hurtling toward the steep bank and the sharp rocks below.
I had only enough time to curse my dress one last time before I pitched off the edge.