Excerpt: Boot Hill

Chapter One

It might as well have been endless.

For miles and miles the Splinters stretched, unchallenged. It hadn’t always been like this, or so I had been told: a mass of parched, broken earth, clumps of spindly plants and squatty, rawboned trees enveloped in a dusty film that plagued the countryside. Alternating slabs of white and orange stone lay stacked atop each other, angled toward the surface of the ground like the spread wings of a bird. Between them they created flat gorges, the perfect conditions to lay railroad tracks. All this I observed as the train bustled through the arid landscape. It was foreign and strange. I couldn’t even begin to understand why anyone would desire to live in a place—while admittedly beautiful—so remote and untamed. Daunting. It was nothing at all like the subdued Capital, which I chastised myself on a minute by minute basis for already beginning to yearn.

What I took to be an obstruction on the tracks jounced the coach and my body took the brunt force of the jolt. I looked out the window again as if expecting to see what had caused the hiccup, but saw nothing but the Splinters passing by. Clearing my throat and looking away, I readjusted the barely broken in hat upon my head and sank down in my seat, uncrossing my legs and spreading them out before me.

I had never harbored a particular fondness for trains. Loud, foreboding, unnatural; I preferred none of those things, though the swiftness and ease of such an invention made up for its flaws hundredfold. The wheels churned and the pistons pumped in mind numbing rhythm beneath my seat and the trembling floorboards, propelling the metal mass forward with startling agility that, to be quite honest, made me uncomfortable.

Straightening a newspaper that I had been holding in my hand since the train departed, I propped it open with a gentle rustle. I sniffled and set the bottom corners of the paper across the length of my shin, balancing the flimsy paper horizontally against my grounded leg. The printed page remained unfurled before me and yet I read nothing of the content. My mind was far too preoccupied with the frustration and anxiety of the day to even comprehend the words I skimmed over.

If I at one time had been considered a sensible man, that time had long since passed. Rumors could never be considered the most accurate compass in which for one to steer a life, but it was then that I found myself navigated exclusively by them. They preserved the only remaining shred of sanity I could call my own and reassured me that the illness within me would disappear, that everything could return to the way things had been seven years prior.

And yet I knew that would be impossible.

Not even ten minutes had transpired (for my gaze constantly fell to my watch in the pocket of my vest) and after a shoddy attempt at pursuing the mundane task of reading the local news I cared nothing for, I folded the paper back up and into my closed fist and stared back out into the Splinters, still rushing by. A fellow passenger brushed his shoulder against my arm as he changed positions in his seat. I gave him an indifferent glance of acknowledgment before readjusting myself closer to the window. He was just a boy, straddling the threshold of manhood. Like me, and then again, not at all. His clothes were of cheap materials, a straw hat woven together by threads I could count on one hand. Chestnut hair clung to the sides of his face in a boyish cut. His fingernails were encrusted with dirt, a worker’s hands. Nothing like mine: pale, nimble and soft. A doctor’s hands. No, he wasn't the typical person who frequented the luxury of the railways, that was certain. How the boy had afforded the remarkably high price of a train ticket wasn’t my business, though I tended to ponder such explanations with avid curiosity. He had been sleeping not ten minutes prior, but in that time he had since then awoken and was now alert, eyes fixed on the back on the seat in front of him. He laced and unlaced his fingers in ceaseless fidgeting, though displayed no other outward expression of distress or ill ease.

“First train ride?” I asked, offering a friendly smile to the young man. I still hadn’t learned the etiquette of the Splinters; what was couth and what was punishable by a bullet to the forehead still eluded me, though in time I would come to assimilate myself no matter how hard I fought it.

The boy didn’t look at me but held his attention forward and nodded slowly, so slow that if I hadn’t been watching him intently I would have missed it. I sniffled again—it didn’t require my many years of training as a physician to tell me that I was allergic to the Splinters. The abysmal plethora of pollen and dust, coupled with a consistent, painstakingly hot breeze to carry them did my sinuses no favors. The whole thought of it aggravated me. I had never come across such problems in the western part of Corulin. The air there was fresher and clearer and brisk.

Though I imagined worse things could have befallen me in such a place. I should have counted my blessings that I wasn’t being held at gunpoint.