The Dust Whisperer

The Fire's Heart ~ Part 1

Smoke Signals

The letter arrived on a Tuesday morning with the scent of copper and smoke clinging to its yellowed edges. Eliza stood behind the bar of the Silverado Saloon and wiped it down in the early morning quiet. Mae handed her the envelope with a knowing look.

Strange doings in Copper Canyon. Workers dying. Equipment melting where it shouldn't. Could use someone who understands unnatural things. Heard about what happened at Blackwater. Pay is good if you're the sort who doesn't ask too many questions. —J. Hartwell

She folded the letter and slipped it into her apron pocket, aware of Mae's sharp eyes. The dust motes danced in the morning sunbeams. They whispered of worry and secrets, of metal heated beyond reason and men afraid to speak of their fears.

"Another one asking for the Dust Whisperer's help?" Mae asked.

"Seems so," Eliza said. In the months since she'd made Prosperity her home base, word had spread in the quiet way important information traveled between mining towns and railroad camps. She was now known as the woman who could speak to dust and had freed something powerful from beneath Prosperity.

Mae nodded, understanding. Prosperity had changed since the Blackwater mining ‘incident’. Less a waystation and now a place where people came seeking the Dust Whisperer. Rarely did they possess courage to ask for her help directly.

That evening, Eliza sat in her room above the Silverado, reading the letter again by lamplight. The space was modest but truly hers. Her first home since fleeing Redemption Creek all those years ago. The dust that perpetually cloaked her room stirred restlessly around her fingers.

Mae knocked softly and entered without waiting for permission. She carryied two cups of coffee and the bottle of whiskey she kept for serious conversations. "So," she said, settling into the room's single chair. "Arizona Territory."

"Equipment melting where it shouldn't," Eliza said, accepting the coffee Mae offered. "Workers dying. And whoever wrote this has heard about Blackwater."

Mae poured a measure of whiskey into both cups. "Your reputation's spreading, Earth Touched." Mae winked.

That was what the water spirit had called her when she freed it. The spirit had spoken it with reverence.

"I'm not sure that's a good thing," Eliza said.

"Maybe not," Mae agreed. "But it's the thing that is. And from the sound of that letter, there's folks who need the kind of help only you can give."

Eliza opened her leather traveling pouch and let the familiar contents spill across the quilt: earth from her birthplace, dark and rich between her fingers; clay from the creek where her mother had first taught her to listen; and ash, gray as grief, from the ruins of her family home. Each carried memories, and together they formed the foundation of who she'd become.

The ash stirred without any wind. She knew what it was telling her. Fire. Unnatural fire. Something burning that shouldn't be burning. Or perhaps something that should be burning but was trapped. Contained. Forced into shapes that went against its nature.

"I hear you," she whispered to the ash. To the memory of flames that had taken everything she'd once called home. "I hear you."

The train to Copper Canyon left Prosperity at dawn on Thursday. It belched black smoke into a sky already gray with dust and distance. Mae had seen her off at the station with a firm handshake and a promise that her job would be waiting when she returned. The first time in years anyone had assumed she would return anywhere.

Eliza took a seat in the women's car, her gloved hands folded in her lap. She listened to the conversations of her fellow passengers. Railroad men, mostly, heading to inspect the new spur line being pushed through the mountains toward California. Their talk was of schedules and supplies, of surveying disputes and the constant problems with "savages" disrupting construction crews.

"Lost another mile of track last week," one man complained, his voice carrying the authority of someone used to being listened to. "Rails twisted like pretzels, spikes pulled clean out of the ties. Takes more than Indians to do that kind of damage."

"Could be claim jumpers," suggested another. "Or those half breed centaur raiders the cavalry's been chasing."

The first man snorted. "Centaurs don't leave hoofprints three feet deep in solid rock, Morrison. Whatever's out there, it's got strength beyond the natural."

Eliza kept her expression neutral. The dust in the train car swirled in patterns that spoke of tension and fear barely held in check. The men might not understand what they faced, but they knew enough to be afraid.

As the train climbed into the mountains, the air grew thick with the scent of metal and smoke. Not the clean smell of woodsmoke or even coal. Sharper, more acrid. The dust began to taste of copper and sulfur. Eliza found herself removing her gloves despite the presence of other passengers. Her fingertips tingled where they touched the window glass. Something vast and angry was ahead of them. Something that burned with a heat that had nothing to do with ordinary fire.

Copper Canyon revealed itself as the train rounded a bend in the early afternoon. The town sprawled across the valley floor like an open wound in the earth. It was dominated by the massive complex of the Consolidated Copper Company. Smokestacks rose like the fingers of a dead giant. It poured endless streams of black and gray into the sky. The smelting operation ran day and night. Its furnaces glowing red-orange even in daylight. Hammers on metal rang across the canyon like an industrial heartbeat.

There was a sound, beneath, that made Eliza's teeth ache. It forced her dust companions retreat into the deepest corners of her traveling bags. A note of distress. Pain. It harmonized with the mechanical rhythm, trapped and burning beyond their endurance.

The train station was little more than a platform and a water tower. It served the constant stream of workers and supplies flowing in and out of the canyon. As Eliza stepped down from the car, the heat hit her like a physical blow. Not just the desert heat of Arizona Territory, but deeper and more intense. The very ground beneath her feet was fevered.

A man approached her as she retrieved her bags. Tall, weathered, with the kind of deep tan that came from years of working under an unforgiving sun. "You wouldn't be the woman they call the Dust Whisperer, would you? The one who dealt with Blackwater's troubles?"

"I am." She studied his face, noting the way his eyes didn't quite meet hers and the nervous way he kept glancing toward the smelting operation. "You're not Hartwell."

"Name's Tom Baker. I work—worked—for the company. Hartwell asked me to meet you, said you might be able to help with our... difficulties." He gestured toward her bags. "Let me carry those. Mrs. Patterson runs a boarding house that caters to the smelting workers. Clean beds, decent food, and she asks fewer questions than most."

As they walked through the town's dusty streets, Baker filled her in on the situation. The Consolidated Copper Company had been operating for three years, turning the raw ore pulled from the mountain mines into the copper wire and pipe that fed the nation's growing appetite for modern conveniences. The work was dangerous—smelting always was—but the pay was good enough to draw men from across the territories.

"Started about six months ago," Baker said, his voice low enough that passing workers couldn't overhear. "Equipment beginning to fail in ways that don't make sense. Furnaces running too hot, or not hot enough. Metal melting when it should stay solid, staying solid when it should melt. And the men..."

He trailed off, but Eliza could feel the dust around her stirring with unspoken fears. "How many dead?"

"Fourteen, officially. But there's others who just.... Walked away from steady work and good pay without a word of explanation. Some of the older hands. Men who've worked foundries and smelters all their lives, they say they've never seen anything like what's happening in the heart furnace."

"The heart furnace?"

Baker stopped walking and turned to look at the massive central building of the smelting complex. Even from a distance, Eliza could see the orange glow emanating from its windows, and the air above it shimmered with heat that went beyond anything reasonable for the desert afternoon.

"The big one," he said. "The one that runs hotter than any natural fire should burn. Company says it's a new technique, some kind of improved design that makes the whole operation more efficient. But the men who work near it..." He shook his head. "They don't last long. And those that do, they start talking about things that don't make sense. Voices in the flames. Shapes moving in the heat that look like people, or animals, or things that might have been either once upon a time."

They resumed walking, but Eliza's attention remained fixed on the central building. The dust around her was agitated. Swirling in patterns that spoke of recognition and distress. Whatever was in that furnace, it was something her abilities could sense, something that called to the elemental forces she'd learned to work with.

Mrs. Patterson's boarding house proved to be a two-story wooden building painted white against the desert sun. A wraparound porch provided blessed shade. The proprietress was a woman in her fifties with graying hair and the kind of practical demeanor that came from feeding and housing rough men for a living.

"The Dust Whisperer," she said after Baker made the introductions, and there was something almost like relief in her voice. "I hoped the stories were true. Welcome to Copper Canyon. I pray you can help us—it's not the sort of place that's safe for anyone anymore."

"Why's that?" Eliza asked.

Mrs. Patterson glanced toward the smelting operation, then back to Eliza's face. "The heat," she said simply. "It gets into everything. The food, the water, the air you breathe. And lately..." She lowered her voice. "Lately, it seems like the heat's got a mind of its own."

That evening, Eliza sat on the boarding house porch and watched the glow of the furnaces paint the canyon walls orange and red. The other boarders—mostly smelting workers coming off their shifts—gave her curious looks. Word had already spread about The Dust Whisperer. Some seemed hopeful; others appeared worried what her presence might mean for their jobs. Men who worked dangerous jobs learned quickly that the arrival of someone like the Dust Whisperer usually meant their world was about to change.

The dust that settled around her told stories of exhaustion and fear. Men pushing themselves beyond their limits because they needed the work. Their families depended on the wages they could earn in places like Copper Canyon. Beneath those familiar tales of hardship and perseverance, there was something else. Something that made the dust particles themselves seem reluctant to settle. They were avoiding contact with the ground.

As the night deepened and the furnaces' glow became more pronounced against the darkness, Liza began to understand what she was dealing with. This wasn't like the water spirit she'd freed from Blackwater's reservoir. This was bigger, older, and far more dangerous. Something that had been bound not just to serve human purposes, but to burn continuously. Endlessly. Beyond its natural capacity.

She removed her gloves and let the dust dance between her fingers. The source of the disturbance. It was there, in the heart of the smelting operation. Burning with a fury that spoke of captivity and pain. A fire spirit. Bound and forced to serve. Its essence being used to create heat beyond what any ordinary fuel could provide.

Tomorrow, she would have to figure out how to free it without burning down half of Arizona Territory in the process.

The dust whispered agreement, settling finally into stillness as the canyon fell quiet except for the endless, angry rhythm of the furnaces that never slept.