Laura Anne Gilman - West Wind's Fool_and Other Stories of the Devil's West by Gilman

Author:Gilman [Gilman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2018-09-25T05:00:00+00:00

It was, in fact, two more hills, and the road flattened, revealing the checkmarks of fields in the distance, the blue-green ribbon of a river curling through the flat-bottomed valley, and between them, at the end of the road, a cluster of unprepossessing buildings, and the faint stink of something bitter yet not unpleasant in the air.

The breeze pushed behind her knees again, and she let it, her stride long now that she knew her destination.

She had no sooner crested the final hill than the wind dropped off, an odd tingle running through her skin as it disappeared, leaving the fabric of her skirt suddenly heavier against her legs, the faintest hint of laughter echoing about her ears. But she had no chance to wonder at it, the road flattening out for the final few lengths into town.

Assuming one could even call it that. She sniffed once, stopping to consider the structures in front of her.

Once she left Connecticut, she’d not expected to see another city, and the towns she had passed through had been small even by those standards. But what was ahead of her could barely even claim to be a village. Five buildings set along a single street, all of them made of weathered grey lumber, as though whitewash had never been heard of on the side of the river. They were low-slung and battered, with none of the bits and bobs most folk set out around their homes; no trim or flowers, not even a rocking chair on the porch of the single building that had one. There was a blacksmiths’ chimney smoking at the far end of the street, the black smoke the source of the odd tang in the air, like rotted eggs, dipped in honey. Her nose wrinkled again: how could they live with that smell in the air?

Still, she supposed it was no worse than the mills back home, and people became accustomed to those as well. But she wondered what metals the blacksmith worked with, that his fire caused such a stink.

“Not silver, certainly.” He father had taken her to a silversmith’s once, in New London. The smell of heated metal had been bitter, but a greenish bitterness, like raw onion, not this.

Already the smell was fading, and she thought that without the wind, it might not be so bad after all.

That settled, she took a second look at the town. It was small, yes, but the buildings were not quite so isolated as she’d first thought: there was a path coming from the other side that she’d missed before, that presumably led to the farms beyond. She noted it now only because someone was coming down it, pulling a three-wheeled cart behind him. His head was bowed low with the strain, and she wondered what he was bringing, and from where. Produce from one of the farms in the distance, maybe, but for what cause? There could be no market here, so far from everything⏤

She stopped and laughed at herself. Everything here was far from everything.

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