Fireside Magazine by Liu Wendig Yant Buckell

Author:Liu, Wendig, Yant, Buckell [Liu, Wendig, Yant, Buckell]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub

TEMPERANCE, CALIFORNIA — there would be no relief for him in this town. Dry as a bone, surely, and righteous as hell about it.

The road into town was muddy and pitted with tracks, and the high winds whipped his face, cold and smelling of the sea. He twisted his ankle painfully before he’d gone a quarter mile; he limped past fields of plants cultivated in careful rows and past the dark-skinned Japanese immigrants who tended them. They took no notice of the dejected stranger trudging his way toward town, where maybe he could find a room for the night before boarding the steamer to San Francisco.

People were forever sending Anthony away from wherever he was. Bodie, Omaha, Leadville — he’d been through and driven out of them all. He’d go wherever they pointed him, generally, as long as it wasn’t toward home. He had reached the edge of town when he heard the slow, clip-clop crescendo of approaching horses as the funeral party returned from the hill. The party would overtake him soon; humiliation made his cheeks burn despite the cold. He shivered and quickened his pace toward the nearest shelter, a sturdy brick building with no sign to identify its purpose.

A door in the front stood wide open, but Anthony could see nothing in the darkness within. He took a step inside and was assailed by the heat. A furnace burned bright in the corner, and he recognized the trappings of a foundry: scrap metal in one pile, finished hinges and gadgets in another. He took a seat on a rickety stool, and within minutes the chill had finally left his bones, for what seemed like the first time since he’d been shut out of the comfort of his father’s house.

He pulled his watch from the safety of his coat pocket; it had been in the family for three generations. He’d had to buy his tools back three times now, but somehow Anthony had never lost the watch, nor sold it, nor had it stolen, nor gambled it away. He could say the same for nothing else in his life.

He opened the case with a soft click and held it to his ear. It was hard to hear above the roar of the furnace and the wind in the rafters, but the smooth tick-tick sound it made comforted him.

A sound from behind him made him jump to his feet. He expected to find the foundry owner, ready to accuse him of trespass and chase him out. Instead he found a young woman on her hands and knees in a pool of light from a source he could not see, feeling around on the dirt floor and talking under her breath. Her hair was a dark brown, and styled in a peculiar fashion: cropped boyishly short across the brow and the rest pinned back and curled under, falling only to her collar. What he could see of her dress was plain and shorter by far than was decent, but despite

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