Liberty's Heirs

Chapter 16

The brown haze was thicker over the town of Grimsby, thick enough to make breathing slightly painful.  You could breathe but not very deeply or there would be a slight pain in the lungs and you couldn't continue.  Who knew what damage the fine particulates and chemical contaminants were causing to his poor pink lungs?  At least in two weeks he'd be home again in Los Angeles where the air was pure and clean and his lungs would have a chance to recover.

This town was much livelier than the previous one. The streets had more people walking on them.  More buildings were occupied.  Smoke bellowed from hundreds of chimneys.  The first building as he entered the town was a blacksmith's shop spewing more than its fair share of smoke.  Clank, clank clank: the sound of metal impacting metal.  There was the blacksmith, visible in the entryway, sweaty and grimy pounding iron on an anvil, perhaps a making a plow.  His arms were thick as tree branches, they'd have to be to pound that giant hammer ten thousand times a day.  He had an assistant, a boy a bit younger than Blion, working bellows to feed oxygen into the flames that heated the metal.  So much work was being done here by humans that humans weren't particularly efficient at doing.  Did humans do the bee's work of pollinating the flowers here too?  Did they do the bat's work of catching flying insects?

The streets were paved with smooth stones closely packed together.  While they wouldn't last nearly as long as a nanoceramic pathway, they would last a good deal longer than concrete and asphalt.  Along side were crudely made little booths where little ladies sat selling wares on rough wood tables.  At one booth a woman in a gray dress matching her long gray hair sat with wool fabrics, she was weaving on a big loom.  Blion stood entranced by her fluid movements, her wizened, spotted hands moving in such intricate patterns over and over again as the thread found its way gradually along.  A Master Choreographer could have done something with this movement, he was sure.

The booth next to that one was selling vegetables.  It looked like dirty potatoes, carrots, and turnips.  They must have been stored somewhere during the long winter.  Blion face reflected the disgust he felt at the unappetizing appearance of the produce and he was ready to look somewhere else when two other women approached the booth.  One was middle-aged, with reddish-brown skin and black hair tied in a tight little bun.  The other was young, maybe a year or two younger than Blion.  Her blonde hair had just a hint of orange and was tied into a long pony tail.  Her skin was porcelain white and flawless aside from a small mole in the left side of her jaw. With rosy cheeks and bright red lips and a comely round, but somehow still delicate, figure Blion was completely entranced.

"Move along boy-o!"  yelled a gruff voice from behind him.

He turned to see a couple of short men with bushy brown mustaches, twin brothers by the looks of it, herding a dozen pigs behind them.  He hadn't seen them coming up and was forced to move out of the way.  Instead of moving to the side of the street away from the attractive girl he moved toward her.  The pigs slowly wandered on by behind him, their little hooves clattering on the pavement.  It couldn't have been pleasant for them.  He wondered for a moment where all the creatures were being taken.

"Pigs coming through!" yelled the gruff voices of the pig-herders.  "Pigs coming through, watch yourselves!"

He pretended to be looking at the insipid produce but instead kept glancing repeatedly at the girl and the woman with her.  A pig brushed his leg pushing him slightly off balance and he inadvertently took another step closer to her and her companion.  The girl was slightly shorter than Blion.  She wore a light blue dress that looked so nice it was out of place in this market.  It wouldn't't have turned heads back home but here it was outstanding.  It was clean with vibrant color and lacy frills that reached nearly down to her ankles, probably practical in the cold weather.  She carried a large wicker basket that looked so heavy she was straining to hold on to it.  The woman, hardly any taller, wore a dark gray-green pants with a maroon blouse that didn't complement her brown-reddish skin color.