The blisters on Jolya Brinn’s thumbs had ruptured twice before midday, coating the rough wooden handle of the mattock in slick, burning misery. Across the sun-scorched loam of Plot Seven, Alistair Groat stood under the meager shade of a blooming pear tree, admiring his own reflection in the polished brass casing of his pocket watch. He wore an embroidered linen tunic—entirely pristine—and dabbed his upper lip with a lace handkerchief. “A bit deeper with the trenching, darling,” Alistair called out, his voice smooth as churned butter. “A man of enterprise cannot be seen hawking runty turnips at the regional market. Remember, our future empire requires an unyielding agrarian base.” Jolya jammed the iron head into the dirt, leaning her forehead against the ash wood. Her ribs ached. Her shins were caked in mud. In her previous life, Alistair Groat had been hailed across Morndell as a legendary merchant prince, a visionary who rode the waves of early industrialization straight to regional supremacy. Nobody had mentioned that in 1979, the glorious visionary was an insufferable parasite who considered soil under his fingernails a personal affront against his destiny. She wiped sweat from her stinging eyes just as a boy from the communal post ran along the irrigation ditch, waving an ink-stained dispatch. “Notice for the auctioneer!” the lad yelled. “Crazy Korsen Dael submitted an off-cycle bid for the rocky crag! Five labor slips for the whole dead cliff!” Jolya looked up sharply. That wretched mound of granite and scruffy weeds at the valley’s northern rim? Why would Korsen buy rock? Then she remembered Tamsya’s dazed, heavy-lidded smile from the morning before. Her sibling wasn't scheming to build a workshop or open a private quarry. Tamsya wanted to sleep where the commune could never find her. A cold, vindictive spark ignited in Jolya’s chest. If Tamsya acquired that land, the tax assessments would take months to process, shielding her from the deep-mountain logging quota until the seasonal freeze. No. Jolya was breaking her spine in the dirt while her useless kin curled up like a fed sow. That was intolerable. “Alistair,” Jolya said through gritted teeth, dropping the mattock. “I must attend the Committee Board on urgent business.” “Bring back cold cider,” he replied without looking up from his pocket watch. “The heat is giving me an unseemly complexion.” *** The Morndell Village Committee Board smelled of stale tobacco, damp wool, and yellowing bureaucratic forms. Behind the scuffed pine dais sat Chief Overseer Varn and Labor Enforcer Borin, both looking thoroughly disgusted by the heat. Tamsya sat on the public bench near the window. Barnaby was sprawled across her feet, his heavy head resting on her shins, acting as an impenetrable anchor of warm, woolly inertia. Beside her, Korsen tapped an iron wrench against his thigh, muttering under his breath about hinge ratios and grease nipples. “The parcel known as the northern crag,” Overseer Varn intoned, tapping his ledger with an ink-stained ruler. “Assessed value is negligible. Five commune labor slips offered by Korsen Dael on behalf of the Dael-Brinn household. Are there counter-claims before we sign the transfer?” “Fifteen slips!” The oak doors slammed against the wall. Jolya marched down the aisle, her hair plastered to her temple with grit, her chin thrust forward with frantic triumph. She slapped a greasy envelope of official credit chits onto the clerk’s table. Borin raised a bristling gray eyebrow. “That much? For a barren rock pile where even the goats starve?” “The Groat-Brinn household exercises its right to claim undeveloped crown-adjacent margins,” Jolya declared, turning to shoot a venomous sneer at her sibling. “Some of us understand the value of private acquisition under the new directives. Can you match that offer? Or will the transaction fall to an actual productive citizen?” Tamsya blinked. The ceiling fan had stopped turning five minutes ago, and the slow drift of dust motes in the sunbeam had nearly lulled her into a glorious stupor. She looked at Jolya’s shaking hands, then down at the papers on the table. It took her several seconds to process the sequence of events. “That many?” Tamsya whispered. Jolya stood taller, crossing her bruised arms. “Pay it or lose it, Tamsya. And without a declared residence by nightfall, Borin sends you straight to the logging camp.” Tamsya felt tension drain straight out of her ankles. She hadn't wanted to sign all those forms anyway. Just watching Varn blot the ink had made her shoulders ache in sympathy. “Oh, thank heavens,” Tamsya sighed, her voice soft and genuinely radiant. She reached into her quilted pinafore pocket and withdrew the thick bundle of emergency script Borin had granted her during the marriage settlement—credits meant to buy her out of trouble for the entire year. She leaned forward, gently patting Jolya’s filthy, calloused hand, and pressed the entire stack into her sibling's grip. “You are so good to me, Jolya,” Tamsya said with complete sincerity. “I was dreading the paperwork. The stamps, the signatures, the walking up and down the hall... my knees were trembling just looking at the inkpot. You bid it up so you could manage the title for us, didn't you? Take them. Take all thirty slips. Just make sure the hammock posts are allowed.” Silence fell over the town hall, thick and sudden as a dropped anvil. Jolya froze, staring at the fat bundle of premium scrip resting in her blistered palm. “What?” Overseer Varn took off his wire-rimmed spectacles and wiped them on his sleeve, his expression slackening into solemn awe. “By the founders... She yielded her entire seasonal reserve without a single argument. Just so her younger kin wouldn't face economic hardship over a land dispute.” “A model of communal grace,” Borin grunted, slapping the desk with his heavy palm. His scowl actually melted. “No greed. No hoarded grain. In thirty years of collective audits, I have never witnessed such absolute absence of malice. Jolya Brinn! You will accept your sister’s generous contribution, complete the deed under the Dael name, and remit the surplus to the village treasury!” “Wait—no!” Jolya’s voice cracked, rising an octave into sheer panic. “That isn't what happened! She's mocking me! She's trying to evade—” “Hold your tongue, girl!” Varn snapped, banging his ruler down. “Your sibling is a saint who honors family solidarity! The deed for Oakhaven Crag is hereby awarded to Korsen Dael! Case closed!” The crowd of village elders murmured in loud, admiring approval. Several women began nodding sympathetically at Tamsya, who merely yawned, rested her chin back on Barnaby’s soft ear, and let her eyelids flutter shut. Jolya stood stranded in the center of the aisle, trembling from head to toe, holding the papers she had bankrupted her afternoon to sabotage, now forced to deliver them to the very person she hated most. *** By dusk, the heat finally broke, replaced by a sharp, thin breeze that whistled across the desolate crest of Oakhaven Crag. The view was magnificent solely because there was not a single human being within two miles. Below them, the valley spread out in tiny, chaotic squares of lamplight and shouting laborers, but up here, there was only pale gray stone, hardy clumps of mountain heather, and two twisted, ancient pine trees standing twenty paces apart. “Perfect,” Tamsya murmured, nestled in a patch of wild moss. Barnaby lay beside her, breathing in slow, rattling snores, his massive bulk keeping the wind off her ribs. Korsen adjusted the grease-stained goggles perched on his forehead and picked up a rusted iron trenching shovel. “According to my calculations, the primary shear stress on the northern trunk requires an auxiliary stabilizing anchor. If I dig a forty-centimeter pit right between these roots, we can sink an iron pivot.” “Just make sure the canvas doesn't sway too quickly,” Tamsya murmured, her cheek pressed against Barnaby’s fur. “Fast swaying makes my ears ring.” “Understood. Stationary inertia is paramount.” Korsen drove the shovel into the crust of moss and dry dirt. *CLANG.* The sound was not the dull thud of topsoil or the sharp snap of granite. It was the ringing, hollow chime of iron striking heavy, cast metal. Korsen paused, his eyes narrowing behind the smudged lenses. He struck again, harder. *TONG.* “Odd,” Korsen whispered, dropping to his knees. “This isn't Morndell shale.” He scraped away the moss with his bare fingers, revealing a flat, rusted iron hatch buried beneath centuries of pine needles. Emblazoned across the center was an embossed seal of crossed gears and a seven-digit serial stamp that predated the collective by at least fifty years. Before Korsen could speak, a sickening groan echoed from beneath the stone. The ground trembled. “Korsen?” Tamsya mumbled, barely lifting her head. “The bed is vibrating.” With a deafening crack, the rotted timber framing beneath the iron hatch sheared in two. The rock floor fractured into a wide, gaping maw, plunging into black, echoing depths. Barnaby didn't even have time to bark. The patch of moss vanished, and the sheepdog slid sideways into the abyss, tumbling down into the pitch-black subterranean void.

A Plot of Dirt and Spite