2. Honey

The sun hammered down on the vast, open face of the plains. Thomas tucked his chin close to his chest, letting the wide brim of his hat shield his eyes as he walked. The arid land offered little in the way of sustenance. The wild berries he’d foraged earlier had only made things worse, sharpening his hunger into a sickly-sweet dagger. Each burp brought a sour taste that clung to his tongue, making him grimace.

He trudged for hours, the laces of his boots catching on the uneven furrows and dried stalks of old crops, each step more exhausting than the last. 

Then, the ground changed. Firmer.

He paused mid-step, looking down. A road stretched out before him, its surface beaten smooth in places by wagon wheels, handcarts, and hooves. Civilization.

Crouching, he ran his hand over the compacted dirt, feeling the weight of the countless journeys it had borne. He tilted his head up, scanning the horizon for any sign of a town. All he could see was the tan scar of the road cutting through the olive green plains, narrowing to the width of a sewing needle as it disappeared into the distance.

He turned the other way. The same.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a coin, its edge worn smooth from years of handling. “Heads, I go right. Tails, I go left,” he said aloud, his voice hoarse from days of silence.

The coin clicked against the nail of his thumb, spun in the air, and landed in his palm with a soft slap. He turned it over, inspecting the result.

“Left it is,” he muttered with a shrug, tucking the coin away and hoisting the trapper’s gifted pack higher on his shoulders. He set off, his boots crunching against the packed dirt, the vast emptiness of the plains both a burden and a promise.

The road stretched long in a tired, careless yawn. For hours, nothing caught his periphery, the monotony of a tannish ground over blue sky, the landscape ceaselessly repeating itself until nothing stood out at all. As if a table were ceaselessly being set for guests that never arrived, each mound of earth bellowed together until it was an unknowable mass. His hat shaded his eyes from the sun, still bearing down on his neck and painting the landscape with sulphuric hues. 

Then the road began to change. 

Gradually at first. It widened slightly, the edges more defined, the grass creeping back as if pushed away by passing wagons. The ruts in the earth grew deeper, and hoofprints overlapped in chaotic patterns. He spotted a broken fencepost in the tall grass, its jagged wood splintered as if kicked loose by a restless horse, a likewise discarded wagon wheel leaning against it.

There was one distinct wagon track, meaning civilization was close. 

The air began to shift, too. It carried more dust and the dry scent of plains. Every so often, when the wind would blow just right, he would get a hint of wood smoke. 

Thomas lifted his head and scanned the horizon, his eyes narrowing against the bright light. No town in sight, but the thin wisp of smoke curling above a distant ridge was unmistakable. 

Soon, the road’s edges became tidier. A weathered wooden signpost jutted out from the earth, too faded for Thomas to read. 

He slowed as he passed a solitary barn, its red paint blistered and peeling under oppressive sun, relentless wind. A single cow stood in the field beside it, her tail swatting lazily at flies that Thomas could hear from the road. Between his steps, he could pick up the distant sound of a dog barking. 

As the road sloped gently upward, the town revealed itself in pieces. A distant spire grasped at the clouds. The faint hum of life reached his ears: the rhythm of a hammer clanking on metal, creaking wagon wheels, murmuring voices. 

Thomas paused at the top of the ridge, his breath hitching as the town came into view. A scattering of sun-bleached buildings hugged the main street, where a few wagons sat idly in the midday light. 

As he passed people, he felt as if he had to peel away their gaze, like he was stepping in tar. A mother, holding her daughter by the hand, crossed the street in a hurry at the sight of him. He tested a nod toward two men sitting on the edge of the boardwalk, but they only stared at him flatly. So, Thomas gave up. He looked at the ground, glancing up through his periphery, guarded by the brim of his hat. 

The smell of hot food was enough to stop him in his tracks. He turned his head toward the scent. A small inlet in a general store had a message painted on the window: Hot Stew, Fresh Daily! Free Roll!

His stomach clenched at the promise of real food. He approached the counter, the coins already warm between his fingers.

The bell jingled as he stepped inside, and the woman behind the counter sang out, “Hello!” without turning around. When she finally faced him, her expression faltered, a mix of concern, pity, and something he didn’t want to name.

“What can I do for you?” she asked, her tone shifting into guarded politeness.

Thomas felt the word stew catch in his throat, looping awkwardly like it always did when the letter s betrayed him. Instead, he held out four cents and pointed to the sign. Her hesitation stretched just long enough to sting, but she extended her hand, palm up, and let him drop the coins in.

For a moment she turned back, ladling a mysterious brown slurry into a small tin bowl, sitting onto the counter and sliding it across instead of handing it to him, lest his filthy hands might touch hers.  

Familiar grooves formed in his forehead, a question he tried to ask without speaking. 

The cook behind the counter retrieved a roll from a tin box beneath the counter, rather than the basket on top of it. She plopped it into the center of the bowl, then turned back to her work. 

Thomas found the only empty table and sat down. First he began slowly, the broth was thick, potatoes mushy and overcooked, meat was tacky and hard, the only thing he could really taste were the onions. But he was so hungry, the spoon was scraping the corners of the bowl before he knew it. So he lifted it to his lips to get the last slivers, then pressed his tongue against the bottom, leaving a trail of soup across his chin. 

He set the bowl down, wiping his mouth on his sleeve, but when he looked up, he froze. 

Every pair of eyes in the diner was fixed on him.

The conversations were silenced, save for the murmurs of women who leaned in close to one another. An older gentleman was fully turned around in a booth, his body in an awkward position so he could stare at Thomas with a sharpened display of disgust. 

At first, Thomas couldn’t move. 

Whether he wanted to or not, he was waiting for someone else to give him permission. It didn’t matter if he resented needing it, his throat cinched around the indecision. 

As the first few patrons lost interest in him, he felt allowed to move. Quickly, he stuffed the stale roll into his pocket and bolted for the door. Now strategically draping his jacket over his wrist, over the branded M, trying to conceal the mark meant to divorce him from the rest of polite society. 

When he staggered into the street, glancing behind him to ensure no one was following, he only felt more eyes judge him. Two men who were leaning on the posts of the same general store chuckled at Thomas while he uprighted himself, broth still dripping from his chin. 

“Where’d you come from?” one of them teased, his words muffled under Thomas’s thrumming heartbeat. 

“A cave, by the looks of it,” the other laughed. 

Thomas blinked, more hurt than angry. His fists balled to his sides, but this wasn’t the yard, and he didn’t have to fight, just because someone challenged him to do so. The words rattled around in his skull, dull and dogged. Again, each set of eyes seemed to reach out and try to lock him into place, twisting around him like the tentacles of an invisible beast, sucking him toward the earth. 

The town around him grew quieter near the edge, a relieving sense of solitude finally greeting him. From his pocket, he withdrew the roll, now squished and crumbling in its age. Still, he held the biggest piece of it in one palm, pressing small chunks of it to the roof of his mouth. All he could really taste was the tinny smell of the canister it came from, but he ate it anyway. 

Without the clamor of the diner around him, Thomas noticed a fresh noise: a long scrape, then a low string of muttered curses. He glanced up. Bent over with a hammer in one hand, an old man struggled to nail a CLOSED sign to his shop door. Nearby, his aging bay mare shifted impatiently at the hitching post. With a tarnished hook instead of a left hand, the old man steadied the sign by bracing it against his elbow, but each time he reared back with the hammer, the sign slipped and the nail clattered to the ground.

Thomas paused, observing the man’s shoulders sag with frustration. An echo of Luc’s kindness flickered in his memory—Luc kneeling in the grass, coaxing him to safety with patience and broken English. Thomas set the roll he’d been carrying on a crate and stepped forward.

The mare nickered softly as he passed. “Need some help?” Thomas asked, voice low.

The old man turned, squinting as though measuring Thomas. After a moment, he nodded. “Sure. Guess I could.”

Thomas took the hammer, gripping it with practiced ease. The old man held the sign in place, and on Thomas’s first swing, the nail sank cleanly into the wood.

“Well, damn,” the old man muttered, sounding impressed.

Thomas shrugged, as if the power in his swing carried a weight he’d rather ignore. He reached for his roll, but the mare’s head darted closer, nostrils flaring in curiosity. “C-can I share?” he asked, lifting the bread.

The old man let out a quiet, wry chuckle. “If you want to.”

The mare stretched her lips forward, exposing broad, square teeth as she plucked the roll from Thomas’s hand. She chewed once, then swallowed.

“Her name’s Honey,” the old man said.

Thomas offered the back of his hand. Honey’s breath tickled his skin as she sniffed, and when he rested his palm on her muzzle, he felt a surprising rush of relief. It was as if she saw him for more than his worn coat, scars, and grime; she looked straight through to his restlessness. Cooped up. Locked in a pen. They felt the same tug on the silver tether that connected them at the center. 

“Have a ni… nice day,” Thomas said, pulling his hat low. But he didn’t immediately leave, couldn’t take his hand away from the warmth of Honey’s kind, wise face. 

Honey leaned in, the silver hairs on her muzzle twitching. To his surprise, she stretched her neck, pressing the weight of her head into his chest, and a soft, rusted laugh escaped him. The first he’d let out in years.

Sizing Thomas up again, the old man’s gaze settled on his battered boots. “Need a horse?”

Thomas glanced down at the boots that had weathered a long trapping season and more than two hundred miles of walking. “Yeah,” he admitted, “but I don’t got much money.”

The old man sighed and patted Honey’s neck, taking a slow step forward. “I can’t ride her anymore. She’s too stubborn for a wagon, and I’m too old for the saddle.” His lips pressed into a flat line, like he was trying to force a smile, but he just couldn’t muster the energy anymore. “She’s restless. Needs someone who’ll make good use of her.”

He tilted his head. “So, what do you got?”

Thomas sucked at his teeth, preemptively wincing toward his chaffer. “Not much.” He pulled a few wrinkled bills and coins from his pocket. “Twenty-three dollars, seventeen cents.” Hesitating, he added, “And this.” From his pack, he produced Seb’s gold tooth, pinched delicately between his fingers.

The old man lifted an eyebrow. “You didn’t…” He paused. “Was it attached when you took it?”

Thomas shook his head quickly. “It’s a long s-s-story,” he said, words tinged with embarrassment.

The old man hefted the tooth thoughtfully, then nodded. “Deal,” he said, extending his intact hand.

“Really?” Thomas glanced around, half-expecting a catch.

“Really.”

Thomas shook the old man’s hand with unsteady gratitude. “Thank you—thank you,” he repeated. “But how will you get back without her?”

The old man chuckled. “I live a few streets over. You’ve got a longer road than me.”

Together, they readied Honey for travel. The saddle horn was smooth as glass from countless years of use. Thomas ran his fingers over the cracked leather, breathing in the tang of sweat and old mildew. The old man helped him lash his trapper’s pack to one side, next to the battered saddlebag.

Untying the mare, the old man patted her neck a final time. “Take care, young man,” he said, his voice quieter now.

“Thank you,” Thomas repeated, his tone weighted with reverence.

Honey didn’t bother waiting for a farewell. She snorted and started a brisk walk toward the town’s outskirts, hooves tapping the packed dirt. Thomas scrambled to grip the reins before she broke into a gallop, and his heart soared the instant she did.

Her ears pinned back, head dipped low, tail flying. They barreled down the open road, the wind stealing Thomas’s breath and bringing a wide, genuine grin to his face. For the first time in ages, he felt truly weightless.

Free.

Honey slowed as the road curved, gracefully adjusting to a careful trot. Thomas straightened, catching his breath, grin softening into something like contentment.

At a fork in the road, he pulled gently on the reins. “Which way, girl?” he asked, voice light as he watched her ears pivot forward.

She didn’t hesitate before angling left, steps measured and confident. Thomas chuckled under his breath, patting her neck. “East it is,” he murmured. Heat from her coat radiated into his palm, and for the first time in days, he felt like he was heading toward something instead of running away.

With each mile they traveled together, the tension in Thomas’s chest began to ease. The revolving wheel of judgmental glances that once dominated his thoughts slowed to occasional flashes, like distant lightning.

In the days that followed, Thomas and Honey found their rhythm. Each morning, she woke him by nudging his shoulder with her muzzle until he groaned and stretched out stiff limbs. By midday, they would trace the stream’s edge. Honey would dip her lips into the water, slurping noisily while her tail flicked at flies, and Thomas would splash his face and neck, the cold jolting him awake, before refilling his canteen.

The first night, he reached for the saddlebag to use as a pillow and realized it was heavier than expected. Curious, he opened it and discovered a neat stash of tools: a hammer, a spool of wire, a tin of nails, a whetstone, and a folding Barlow knife—old but well-maintained, clearly cared for over many years.

A pang of guilt tugged at his chest. These weren’t just leftovers. They were left for him—either a set of gifts or a quiet investment in a future the old man believed Thomas might have. Or perhaps the veteran had simply held onto them until his own hands could no longer heft a hammer or feel a blade’s edge.

Thomas laid each tool out carefully, examining them in the flickering firelight. Honey sniffed at the hammer, brushing the cold iron with her lips before snorting and sending up a puff of dust. Thomas chuckled, giving her neck an affectionate pat.

As days melted into nights, Thomas felt drawn to the notebook Etienne had traded him. Leaning against a tree or rock, he scribbled down anything he could remember. He recalled Luc’s lessons: signs of storms, the faint clues in animal tracks, the shift in wind that could signal change. He observed the roads, noticing how wagon ruts told silent stories of journeys he’d never share. He wrote about Honey, too—how she adored wildflowers but turned up her nose at apples (unless he happened to be eating one himself).

In one corner of a page, he tucked pressed leaves from plants he passed, cutting neat slits in the paper to keep them in place. Beneath each, he scrawled a few words: “Safe,” “Not Safe,” or a half-remembered name if he had one. He also copied down fragments of French phrases Luc had used, savoring the strange new sounds as he practiced them aloud, voice echoing against the quiet night sky.

For the first time in ages, it felt like no moment was wasted. He followed no strict plan, found no pressing destination, yet he took comfort in the routine. Even so, a familiar ache gathered in his chest once the fire burned low and the night stretched on in silence.

Not that silence was unwelcome, but he didn’t know what to do with it. One evening, as he ran the Barlow knife against the whetstone, he said, “Used to be so loud, couldn’t hear myself think. Boy’s homes, or the warehouse with the fellas, or… y’know.” He waved a hand vaguely. A cage. “Now it’s so quiet, I can’t decide if I like it. I can finish a thought, but most of ’em aren’t…good.”

Honey lifted her head at his voice, ears twitching before she snorted and sank back down.

Thomas gave a faint smile. “Yeah,” he murmured, “you’re right. Best not to dwell on it.”

The warmth of summer was just starting to retreat, mornings the shade growing colder with each day. As the sun slipped close to the horizon, Thomas guided Honey with a gentle twist of the reins along a thin, winding trail. Spindly pines and skeletal brush hemmed them in, their branches reaching out like bony fingers. A golden wash of evening light slanted through the trees, making Honey’s chestnut coat glow.

Thomas’s hunger snarled in his belly, a reminder that the last bit of jerky in his saddlebag hardly counted as a meal. He patted his stomach, grimacing as it answered with another hollow ache. Thoughts of how he might stretch that single scrap of dried meat until morning flickered through his mind. He could either push forward toward town, and a decent meal, or he could camp, and chew on slivers of jerky. 

So they pushed on, in a rush, trying to squeeze out the last hours of daylight. 

Suddenly, Honey came to an abrupt halt. Her ears pivoted toward a shape in the distance, and her muscles coiled beneath the leather reins. Alert now, Thomas followed her gaze. Up ahead—at the bottom of a shallow slope—a splintered wagon lay half-buried in the ditch, one wheel canted at a broken angle. A young man waved urgently, his arms cutting arcs in the last of the sun’s light. Next to him crouched a teenage boy, his hands hidden behind the wagon’s frame.

A chill of caution curled around Thomas’s ribs. The whole tableau struck him as too neat—one of Seb’s old ploys. Yet he couldn’t stop picturing Luc, kneeling in the grass and freeing him from that snare. Luc had trusted him for no reason at all, except that it was right to do so.

“Hey there!” the younger man hollered, his voice carrying on the breeze. “Could you help us?”

Thomas didn’t urge Honey forward. Instead, he called back, “What’s the trouble?”

“The wheel’s busted all to blazes,” the stranger said, waving a bit more frantically now. “We could sure use a spare.”

Thomas’s eyes flicked to the teenage boy. His posture was all wrong for a simple wheel repair—he was poised to spring. Thomas let Honey sidestep backward. The motion drew a look of impatience from the stranger on the road.

As Thomas edged Honey back another pace, a crisp click of metal sounded behind him, right on cue. “All right, mister. That’ll do,” another voice snarled. Thomas sensed the muzzle of a rifle settle between his shoulder blades. “Off the horse.”

“I don’t carry much worth takin’,” Thomas said quietly, lifting his empty hands to show he wasn’t hiding anything. The battered coat and threadbare saddlebags spoke for themselves.

“Get down,” the gunman repeated through clenched teeth. He was close to Thomas’s own age, too old for this to be a foolish mistake. Thomas’s heart hammered as he slid off the saddle, boots landing softly on the dusty trail. He kept his hands raised, half-turning to keep Honey in the corner of his vision. He faced the gunmen, hoping his younger cronies wouldn’t have the foresight to kill him while his back was turned. 

Thomas knew the routine: they’d frisk his pockets, yank off his coat, and rummage for coins or a hidden firearm. He also saw in a single glance that neither boy looked well-fed. Their cheeks were hollow, their eyes ringed with desperation. The oldest among them, the gunman, had pinned his entire plan to intimidation, to their victim being too afraid to put up a fight. 

The two younger thieves rushed in with the jerkiness of half-starved dogs. Weighing it all in a heartbeat, Thomas lunged first. He grabbed the skinny thief who reached him by the throat, heaving the boy off his feet, then slammed him into the dirt, the air forced from his lungs as his eyes bulged in shock. The second boy jumped him from behind, a tangle of wiry limbs.

Thomas pitched forward, then snapped his torso straight and sent the boy flying off his back. The kid scrambled up, brandishing a short wooden cudgel. It was a battered thing—almost pitiful—but the boy gripped it like his life depended on it.

Thomas lifted both hands, ready for the club. He had taken beatings from baton-wielding guards in prison, and lashes from a braided whip—this scrawny teenager’s swing felt like a raindrop by comparison. Thomas caught the cudgel against his side, ignoring the sting, and locked his free hand around the scraggy neck meat of his assailant. Then he drove his forehead hard against the thief’s nose.

The cartilage gave with a crack, and the boy dropped to his knees, blood trailing from his nostrils. He clutched at his face, cursing through the wet rush of it.

“Get the horse!” the boy croaked, his voice ragged, fear creeping through his bravado.

Thomas spun, hoping Honey would break free on her own. But the other two had circled her, grabbing at her reins. The gunmen pointed the rifle into the air, the barrel circling recklessly as the younger was bent over, clutching his ribs, trying to help but unable to breathe. Honey tossed her head, eyes rolling white with panic. She hopped twice on her front legs, half-rearing, hooves slashing in the air.

Then came the unearthly scream: a shrill, tearing sound that roiled out of her chest. Her entire body locked as she sought a target. 

The oldest thief, the gunman, lunged for the reins again, thinking she’d calmed.

She hadn’t.

Honey sank her weight onto her front legs, then, balletically, Thomas watched the entirety of that twelve-hundred pound inertia move through each thread of her musculature. As it shuddered backward, her coiled hind legs erupted into a machine of pure motion. Her hooves crashed square into the man’s chest with a hollow, brutal crunch. His body folded like a rag doll before collapsing onto the packed earth. His face turned away, his eyes open, unseeing. 

The other two dropped to his side, shouting his name, slapping at his cheeks, trying to jolt him awake. Panic bled into their voices as they realized he wasn’t responding, wasn’t blinking.

Thomas whistled sharply. “Honey! Over here, girl.”

Shaking off her terror, Honey sidestepped the limp figure and trotted back to Thomas, flanks heaving. Thomas hauled himself into the saddle, pain lancing across his ribs where the club had struck. He gritted his teeth, one hand pressing the bruised flesh beneath his shirt.

Behind them, the two boys begged the oldest to wake up, while he lay inert in the trampled dust. Thomas didn’t dare look back. He pressed his heels into Honey’s sides, and she took off, hooves pounding down the narrow trail until the trees opened up into a wide stretch of evening sky.

By the time they slowed, the air tasted cleaner. Thomas leaned forward, resting a hand gently on Honey’s sweat-damp neck. “Thank you,” he breathed. Both of them trembled—the aftershock of violence still humming in their veins.

He swallowed past the thickness in his throat. It was only his old thief’s instincts that had saved them from the trap. And only Honey’s raw power that had ended the fight for good.

The last orange beams of sun gilded the horizon, and Thomas closed his eyes, letting that warmth settle over him. “You saved me,” he whispered. It came out choked, a half-laugh, half-sob, but Honey’s ear twitched in response.

After a few moments, he straightened, scanning the darkening trail ahead. Fleeing was all he could do, stay, and the memory of that man’s chest caving in would only grow more tangled in his mind.

So he nudged Honey onward, trusting her hooves to find the road beneath the gathering dusk. The echo of that savage kick rang in Thomas’s ears, and though relief washed over him, his ribs ached like an unpaid debt.

Even now, with the night sky settling in, the question gnawed at him: Was this all that survival required, strength and sudden fury? And if so, how much more violence could his heart withstand before it hardened for good?

Thomas let Honey’s steady rhythm carry him through the twilight, counting each hoofbeat until the stars pushed through the purple-black sky. The prairie settled into quiet, but no matter how long he rode, no matter how firm his grip on the reins, he couldn’t keep out the ghosts.

He’d played the other side of today’s ruse more times than he cared to admit.

It began with the very first job Arthur ever gave him. Thomas still remembered the bitter tang of hunger, the way Arthur’s words seemed to drip with promises of more bread, more meat—just more. All he had to do was “look lost,” Arthur said. That was the entire plan.

Thomas stood in a filthy alley mouth, trembling without trying, because trembling was all he knew.

“Just stand there,” Arthur repeated, his mouth curling into something like a smile. “Cry, if you can.”

It turned out Thomas could cry. He was all tears and snot before Arthur even finished speaking. He’d been beaten for shedding tears too many times to count, but now someone—anyone—was telling him it was allowed, telling him to do it.

And so he wailed. Great, heaving sobs rolled out of him until a concerned couple, likely on their way home from the mercantile or the local church, hurried over. The woman knelt first, voice hushed and worried. “Oh, sweet Lord, are you all right?” she asked, her gentle hand on Thomas’s shoulder.

He wanted to tell her to run, that he was sorry, but fear clamped his throat. Then he saw her expression shift. All that warmth, that kindness, vanished in an instant.

Arthur emerged from the shadows, a revolver hovering near his hip. Morris appeared beside him. And Seb stepped in behind the couple. Before the woman could scream, Seb snatched a handful of her hair, jerking her back. Her cry tore right through Thomas’s chest, and he froze.

He watched with a dizzy nausea as Morris and Arthur set on the husband: fists, boots, the dull crunch of bone hitting cobblestone. They rifled his pockets while Seb held the woman by the hair, rummaging through her cloak for coins, earrings, anything valuable. Thomas realized in a sickening flash: she was still looking at him, eyes brimming with betrayal.

Arthur yanked Thomas along by the collar, but Thomas kept glancing over his shoulder at the woman’s face—how it had changed from compassion to raw, animal terror. The memory of that moment stayed in stark black and white, like a lantern slide etched into his mind. Always, always it returned to her silent plea, the question that never found an answer.

He thought, not for the last time, What did they do to women when I wasn’t there?

Honey jerked the reins, snapping him back to the present. He winced as pain flared in his swelling arm, the bruises from that ambush still hot under his sleeve. Above him, nocturnal birds passed their calls, and the stars burned in their distant, silent indifference. Yet guilt bound him here, tethered to the hard-packed roads and the profound loneliness of his wandering.

Maybe that’s what people in the last town had seen when they fixed their terrified eyes on him—a man swallowed by the dead weight of his own regret, grieving losses he couldn’t begin to name. They hadn’t glimpsed filth and scars rightfully earned, only a strange collection of bruises left to fester—physical proof that sometimes surviving meant letting the worst of life stick to your bones.