Switch: Part One

Flies Like a Rock

Ear to the iron rail, Flies Like a Rock could feel it coming. Breathing fire, roaring faster and louder than a stampede of bison, the thing came every day, and this was the day he would chase it and see how far it went. He jumped onto his mare and she ran ahead, farther than they had gone yet. He was so far from home, he had no home. He was free to follow the thunder.

Running, running, the noise of the train swallowing the sound of hoofbeats, he tilted his head as the monster bore down the track. Faces inside the beast stared back at him. He hadn't believed it, but now he saw with his own eyes. The iron monster carried white men in its belly and spit them out somewhere, or ate them, and it always came back the next day.

He could not ask the wise man how it could be so. Flies Like a Rock was dead to his people.

But he was learning to speak the white man’s tongue, and soon, soon, he would know.

Ding! Five Minutes Passed
Five Minute FreeWrite goes on...

Mail Order Bride

Olivia tried to think of it as a rare and romantic prospect. She tried not to think she was too plain to marry, or too sassy, but that women were so scarce in the New World, men had to special-order a wife out east and have her delivered by train.

Riding the rails was more noisy and bumpy than romantic, but she would not complain. She would meet her husband with humility. He would not send her back. He couldn’t.

The long journey was about to end; she would soon step out onto the platform of the station and begin a new life, far from anyone and anything familiar.

As the chugging began to slow, she looked out at the strange land passing like a river beneath her. Rocks and sand, empty spaces, sky without end. And then--a spotted horse, running right alongside the train, with a dark man gripping its mane. His head turned, and they looked right at each other, until the train left him behind in a cloud of steam and soot.

He did it!

The beast got ahead of him, but Flies Like a Rock kept riding, riding, following the cloud of noise and fire until it stopped. For a long time, it held still, time enough for him to get close enough to touch it if he dared. He stayed back, apart from the white men with horses and wagons who kept watch. From the belly of the beast, pale faces stepped out, alive, all in one piece.

There was a man for each woman the beast had delivered. One woman stood alone after the others had gone in their wagons. She caught sight of Flies Like a Rock, and flinched, and stared harder at him, but he shook his head. Where sky met earth, a wagon came into view. He waited to see the woman meet the man and get into his wagon and ride off into the sky.

Mrs. Blackstone

She would have been better off a spinster. Miss Olivia, the skinny bookworm, the shy un-socialite, had dared to defy her fate, only to become Mrs. Joseph Blackstone--property and servant of a brute.

Even scullery maids didn’t work this hard. Everyone on her grandfather's estate had but one role, for the most part. Out here, she worked every chore. Not just building a fire in the woodstove every morning, but carrying in the wood, killing the chicken or skinning the rabbits, grinding wheat into flour, milking the cow, gathering eggs, and more, all in one room with a dirt floor.

He was not gentle, or patient, or glad to see her, much less romantic. He treated her like a dog, or worse, considering how he kicked the dog. Her father, brothers, uncles, and grandfather, not a one of them, ever, had been harsh with any animal, still less, with any human.

She couldn't complain--only because there was nobody to complain to. Joseph would back-hand her across the face if she even cocked an eyebrow at him.

Not another living soul within sight of them. It was like house arrest. She was imprisoned in her own home, if you could call this home.

She had to find a way to buy passage on that train and go back. An old maid, a nanny, a cook, any job would be better than this. She had sold her soul to the devil.

And the devil was watching. Oh, she was being watched! Olivia couldn’t shake the feeling that from the shadows, someone, or something, was watching her. But she never saw a footprint or any sign of anyone but the man who called her his wife.

End of Part One

I'm enjoying these Five Minute FreeWrites. My one regret is that I've yet to complete a single thought in a mere five minutes. Thank you, @mariannewest, and all who sponsor this writing enterprise!

art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics

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