Candle in the Attic Window Part 25

As G.o.d is my witness, I rattle my saber. I shake my bones. No matter what takes me, the angels or the devils, I am not finished here, upon this Earth. I am not finished.

I will walk, my friends, my loves, all those I've yet to meet.

I will walk the pa.s.sages. You will hear my footsteps. There, the creak upon your floorboards. That will be me, what I may yet become. It's always one of us, for good or for ill. I pray the angels win. But it's always war, just beyond the limits of our flesh and the corners of our eyes.

Every sound you hear.

Every whisper, every creak of a settling house.

You're hearing war.

You cannot end it; you cannot avoid it; mankind made it and seems unable to do without it. Even without bodies, it wages on for you.

Listen, friends, and take up whatever arms you will.

Listen: It is at the doorstep.

Leanna Renee Hieber graduated with a theatre degree and focus in the Victorian Era. While performing as a professional actress, she adapted 19th-century fiction for the stage and her first publications were hot-headed little plays which have been produced around the U.S. Her novella, Dark Nest, won the 2009 Prism Award for excellence in Futuristic, Fantasy or Paranormal Romance. Her Strangely Beautiful series debut (Gaslight Fantasy), The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, hit Barnes & n.o.ble's Bestseller lists, won two 2010 Prism Awards (Best Fantasy, Best First Book) and has been optioned for adaptation into a Broadway musical, currently in early stages of development. A proud member of Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers of America and Romance Writers of America and also a member of actors unions AEA, AFTRA and SAG, Leanna works often in film and television. She lives in New York City with her real-life hero and their beloved rescued lab rabbit. "At the Doorstep" is set within the Gaslight Gothic world of Magic Most Foul, releasing November 2011 from Sourcebooks Fire, beginning withDarker Still: A Novel of Magic Most Foul Please visit her at http://leannareneehieber.com/, on Twitter @leannarenee and Facebook.com/lrhieber.

Frozen Souls.

By Sarah Hans.

"Are you nervous about tomorrow, Li?" Shen asks, between mouthfuls of rice.

Lien shrugs. "I've done it before." She sips her tea, watching him over the rim of the tiny porcelain cup.

"I would be scared," Shen says, trying to goad her into an embarra.s.sing confession.

Lien knows this trick and deflects the conversation.

"I know. That's why they send me instead of you."

"They send you because you're the smallest," Shen replies. This is a dance they have done before; he knows the steps.

"They send Li because he's the bravest," the ordinarily reticent Bao adds. "He volunteered and you did not."

Lien lowers her head, a show of respect whose real intent is to hide her blus.h.i.+ng cheeks. Her affection for Bao has become bothersome. Sometimes, she even thinks, when he defends her like this, that he knows her secret. Earlier today, his hand brushed hers while they worked and, though he seemed not to notice, the unexpected contact drew a shuddering breath from Lien. Her skin touching his was like an electric shock, sending a tingle to parts of her that she has long ignored.

The flap of the canvas tent opens and the Foreman enters. Though the crew is almost entirely Chinese, the Foreman is a huge Irishman. He counts on his enormous size and grizzled appearance to intimidate his workers; he does not know that they call him "Max Tuan Xiong" "The Circus Bear" mocking his size, hirsutism, and the way he takes orders from the Superintendent, always ingratiatingly willing to please. 's...o...b..idge' is his name, but when he enters, Bao boldly says: "Xiong! How can we help you today?" in heavily-accented English.

The others stifle their laughter at the mocking name behind sips of tea and mouthfuls of rice. Many become engrossed in their reading or ch.o.r.es.

"Will Li-Li be ready tomorrow?" s...o...b..idge demands, his voice deep and rasping, with an edge of menace. 'Li-Li' is the white man's nickname for Lien, who is one of the tiniest of the Chinese workers.

"Yes, Li will be ready," Bao replies, nodding to Lien. She averts her eyes, not wanting to attract the Foreman's attention.

"Good. Be up at dawn so we can get to work."

s...o...b..idge lumbers back to the tent flap, a blast of freezing air rus.h.i.+ng in as he exits.

Lien s.h.i.+vers, pulling the rough wool blanket closer about her shoulders.

Shen starts laughing, first, and the others join him in low, appreciative chuckles.

"Bao, you are too bold!"

Bao ignores the laughter, looking at Lien.

"Sounds like the blasting did not go well today."

Lien nods.

"It's too cold; the rock will be too hard. But the Superintendent demands satisfaction, so the white men ignore our engineers and the blasting will proceed."

"With our lives the ones at risk," Shen says bitterly.

"We knew the risks when we signed our contracts," Lien reminds him, but her voice is bleak, and she stares with regret at her cracked and callused hands.

The tent flap opens again, and the a.s.sembled men groan and mumble about the cold as a few more workers enter. They rush to the cooking fire to warm their frostbitten hands, ill-covered in mittens full of holes. Lien counts them and finds only six.

"Where is Fa?" she asks. There is a hard knot in her belly while she awaits the answer.

One of the men by the fire turns slowly to her, a warm bowl of soup held in his palms to warm them. His expression is sorrowful. "He fell," he says, and the others nod somberly.

Lien tries to fight back tears. Like her, Fa was small and nimble, perfect for the dangerous work of blasting the cliffs. He had taught her the ancient Chinese art, and had been the quickest and most agile of all the dynamite-setters. She can't believe that he fell. Her mind reels with conspiracy theories, but just as quickly, she dismisses them. The work is dangerous and men die blasting the tunnels for the railroad every day. It was only a matter of time before Fa, too, met his end.

She can't allow the other workers to see her tears, so she rises and hurries out of the tent, with the blanket still clutched about her. She has to be stronger and braver than the others to prevent suspicion. They have seen many men perish in the grueling work on the railroad and she has cried for those who were her friends, but always in secret.

So much of her life is a secret.

Lien finds her way through the tent city to the latrine pits, which are thankfully less noisome in the extreme cold than they are in the summer months. No one wants to venture far from the warm tents, so the men have been urinating in the snow nearby, rather than make the trek to the designated area. The latrines are virtually abandoned, a silent sanctuary for her tears.

Lien takes a few moments to empty her bladder, squatting on the far side of the latrine behind some snow-covered bushes. Once relieved, she feels a little less like weeping. She stands near the pits, forlorn, unwilling to return to the tent but unable to cry. She thinks of Fa and tries to mourn him as he deserves, but she has been exhausted by the sorrow of the last terrible weeks and can't muster much beyond a few sad sniffles.

While she stands there, knee-deep in snow, waiting for the cold to leech the heat from her bones before she returns to the fire, snowflakes begin to drift down from above. There are only a few at first, spinning like tops, but as she watches, they begin to crowd the sky, falling faster and faster. Soon, the dark landscape is all but blotted out in the torrent of snow. Panicked, Lien quickly stumbles back to her tent before the snow obliterates her path and makes walking impossible. Though she is not far from her tent, she recalls vividly when several men were lost in a blizzard the first week on the mountain, found the next morning only a few feet from their dwelling, unable to make their way to safety in the disorienting whiteness.

Bao is standing at the tent flap, pulling on his boots. He looks relieved to see her.

"Li! I was going to come find you," he says. "It's not safe in a storm."

Lien is touched by his concern, but doesn't dare show it.

"I was at the latrine," she says.

"Of course," Bao replies, his mien equally icy.

Without another word, they go to their cots, where Lien lies awake, listening to the breathing of the sleeping men, thinking only of how she is likely to meet her death tomorrow. She whispers many prayers to the ancestors, wondering whether Fa did the same. In the wee hours, she finally finds sleep, but it is a restless sleep and she awakens many times in the night to the frightening feeling of falling from a great height.

The next morning finds Lien dangling over a cliff face in a huge basket of woven reeds. The basket is large enough to hold a man twice Lien's size, but the job is easier if the contents are as light as possible, and the dynamite takes up its share of the container. As she does every time she is lowered over a precipice, Lien eyes the dynamite in the bottom of the basket warily, knowing how volatile it is. Their hands cold, the men lowering her over the cliff with a rope are stopping and starting more than usual, and the jerking movements of the basket remind her of the seasickness on the voyage from Qw.a.n.gtung to California. She closes her eyes and thinks of warm summer fields full of wildflowers. She thinks of hot, soothing tea and her mother's kind smile. She thinks of Bao's brown hand brus.h.i.+ng hers so carelessly. She thinks of anything other than the dizzying height, the bone-numbing cold, the jerking rope, and the unstable explosives.

Finally, the jerking stops. She looks up at the lip of the cliff. A boy appears and gives her a hand signal. She signals back and scoots around in the basket so that she can slowly tip it towards the cliff wall. She braces with her feet and knees until she is perched perilously on the side of the basket. The woven reeds creak and groan beneath her weight.

She grabs the dynamite, heedless of the danger, ignoring the terrifying possibility that the basket might break beneath her. The cliff face is already defiled with the marks of an explosion and Lien shakes her head. Why would they blast the same place over and over again? She wants to cry, thinking of Fa and how her life will be wasted alongside his in this careless manner, but she marshals herself. The Chinese workers are no more valuable to their white masters than hammers or chisels they are simply tools to do a job, interchangeable and replaceable. This is their fate this is her fate.

Sighing, reluctantly resigned to her doom, she jams several dynamite sticks into the shallow creva.s.ses of the cliff's face. Once they're secure, she lights a match on her teeth, presses the match to the wicks, and drops the match without watching its descent. She takes a deep breath and observes the flames' progress with the skill of experience; this is the part of blasting that requires finesse. Timing is everything.

She silently thanks Fa for his wisdom as the wicks burn faster than usual, spurred by the cold, dry air. She presses her feet flat against the stone and then pushes with all her strength, rolling backwards so the basket tips upright again, hopefully protecting her from the blast.

The hard, frozen stone refuses to give way to the dynamite, and the explosion has only one outlet. Instead of tunneling into the cliff, the blast explodes into the open air, pus.h.i.+ng Lien's basket away from the cliff face. Above, the men gripping the rope struggle to maintain a hold on her lifeline, the explosion yanking the rope over the edge of the precipice with such force that they can't hold it for long. They cry out in dismay as the rope is torn from their protesting fingers, the pulley on the edge snapping under the pressure, the basket spinning away from the cliff and falling, taking Lien with it to the ground.

Lien dreams of women in bonnets and children in straw hats. She can't see their faces, and their voices are strange and m.u.f.fled, so that no matter how much she strains to hear their words, the sounds remain elusive. They sit in the dark, cl.u.s.tered around a tiny fire. Around them, the night is an empty, starless void. They are small and vulnerable, and the children are s.h.i.+vering in their cotton clothes, but she can't find any blankets in the dark, and the women don't respond when she tries to tell them the children are cold. The figures and their fire seem to grow smaller and more indistinct. Then they are simply gone and Lien is alone in darkness.

She awakens to warmth and light, but above her is the starless void. She realizes gradually that she is not in her tent, on her cot; she is lying on hard, frozen earth, without a blanket, and her limbs are stiff with the cold. She tries to sit up and screams as pain sears through her head.

One of her legs is immobilized. In the dim firelight, she can see that it has been splinted with slender branches. It aches dully and attempting to move it results in a sharp, grinding pain that takes her breath away. She must have broken it in the fall, she muses, though her thoughts are hard to grasp, slippery as eels.

She wakes again later to more light and warmth, the fire having been fed and burning brightly. A few feet away, on the ground, she sees the shape of another person, lying p.r.o.ne. She slowly sits up, fighting pain in her head as she does, until she can make out some details.

"Fa?" She cries, recognizing the bruised face turned toward the fire. Fa's eyes are closed. Even though she calls his name several times, he does not wake. She fears for a moment that perhaps he's dead, but then sees that his chest is rising and falling with slow, even breaths. His right arm and right leg have both been splinted in the same manner as hers.

With the fire burning so brightly, Lien can at last make out her surroundings. She is ensconced in a cavern with vaulted ceilings so high they are hidden in shadow. She can't determine which way is the entrance; she licks a finger and raises it as high as she can, hoping to feel the chill breeze coming off the mountains, but the air is still.

Terrified and desperate, she tries to crawl around the fire to join Fa, hoping to find comfort beside her teacher. Constant pain sings in her head and every movement of her broken leg is excruciating. She is sobbing in agony by the time she reaches him. She grasps for one of his limp hands; unconsciousness swells up and over her and drags her down into darkness.

Again, Lien dreams, but this time, there is a pale man at her side, ministering to her injuries. He is mumbling in some foreign tongue, so quietly that she can barely make out the sounds. She tries to speak to him, but her words are only gibberish and he ignores her. She tries to make out his features, but they are indistinct; she can't determine the colour of his eyes or the shape of his mouth, no matter how intently she focuses.

When next she wakes, she is still beside Fa, but she is on her back, once again looking up at the ceiling shrouded in darkness. Beside them, the fire burns low and a copper tea kettle nestled in the flames is whistling, the shrill sound echoing in the ma.s.sive cavern. Baffled, Lien looks about for the invisible caretaker who put the kettle on the fire. The cavern remains empty and mysterious, giving up none of its secrets.

Her head protesting the whistling, Lien crawls to the fire and s.n.a.t.c.hes out the kettle, barely avoiding burning her fingers. A copper cup rests beside the fire ring and she fills it with boiling water from the kettle. The scent of coffee rises up with the steam and Lien grimaces; she despises the American drink. She is desperate enough to drink a few mouthfuls of the bitter brew, however, much as she detests the strong flavour.

Next, she pours coffee for Fa, and awkwardly ignoring the burning in her head and the cramping in her leg she raises the cup to his lips. She pours a little into his mouth, and he sputters and spits it out without waking. The second time, she is more successful and he drinks a little, smacking and pursing his lips in displeasure.

Exhausted, Lien drinks a little more coffee and then returns to her p.r.o.ne position beside Fa. Her stomach burbles hungrily and she wonders whether their mysterious benefactor will provide them with food. She feels, at least, less afraid and more hopeful, with warm drink in her belly. She drifts off into a dreamless sleep.

When she wakes again, she is cold. The fire has died down to mere coals, and a fierce breeze has entered the cavern and spoiled their warm hideaway, carrying with it a flurry of snow.

Lien thinks she hears voices and sits up, crying out wordlessly and then shouting, "Here! We're in here!" Her head feels as if it will split in two, so she collapses back to the dirt and remains silent, until the voices are louder and she can be sure she isn't imagining the sound. She calls again. This time, she receives a faint reply.

"Li? Li?"

Is that ... Bao?! She sits up again and calls to him, then has to stop because the pain in her head is unbearable. Darkness threatens to take her into unconsciousness again, but she won't let it, not so close to rescue.

Finally, the voices are nearby, and she hears Bao saying, "Li? Li, is that you? You're alive!" He appears beside her, his brown face suffused with joy, his smile wider than she has ever seen it.

"And Fa, too," says another familiar voice: Foreman s...o...b..idge, whose lumbering bulk appears behind Bao, looking down with disapproval at the injured workers. Several other workers, all Chinese, gather around him. They're wearing heavy furs and boots. Some carry lanterns and climbing ropes.

"I'm alive; someone's been taking care of us," Lien tells Bao. Tears stream from her eyes. "They made us a fire and put splints on our broken bones. And there was coffee." She casts about for the copper tea kettle with its matching cup, but both are gone.

Bao's expression is worried as he looks at her broken leg.

"Who did this?" he asks.

"I don't know," Lien says. She starts to shake her head, but has to stop because of the pain.

"I only remember a pale man. I must have been feverish; I don't remember much."

"It's good work," he confesses. "This stranger saved your life." Then he sighs and turns to her with earnestness sparkling in his black eyes. "I have to tell you; we thought you were dead. We came down here to look for a tunnel and collect your bodies."

"But we're not dead!" Lien declares.

"And it's truly a miracle!"

s...o...b..idge says something gruffly to Bao, so low and rapid that Lien doesn't understand with her limited English. Bao replies; s...o...b..idge walks away with a curt nod.

"We're going to set up camp here and explore these caverns," Bao explains. He gets up and goes to check on Fa, who remains unconscious, then returns to Lien. "I wish we knew who was taking care of you."

"I'm sure he'll return. He has to," Lien offers. Her stomach growls and she laughs. "Until then, do you have some food?"

The workers are experienced in setting up camp rapidly. Tents are erected, the fire stoked to a healthy blaze, and tea kettles set to whistling within the hour. Both Lien and Fa are fed, though Fa is still unconscious and is given primarily tea. Lien devours dried fish and fruit from Bao's rations, and gulps down hot tea while it's still boiling.

The Chinese workers sit near their injured brethren and listen to Lien describe the pale man who cared for her wounds. When she describes how she couldn't focus on his face and make out his features, they start murmuring. She hears the whispered word "demon".

"Stop being foolish," Bao chides the men. "We owe a debt of grat.i.tude to this mysterious stranger, not whispered accusations."

"He saved my life!" Lien confirms.

But when the stranger doesn't return that evening, the murmurs grow and Lien catches suspicious glances from the other workers. She asks Bao to sleep beside her that night.

"I don't trust the others," she confesses.

Bao nods.

"They're superst.i.tious because this is all so mysterious. We really weren't expecting to find you alive."

Something about his guilty expression makes Lien ask, "Exactly how long have we been down here?"

Bao swallows.