From Sweat to Sweet

Chapter One

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. However, that night would be different. It would be the night that I escape from that terrible place. Before the sun would rise and the amber dew would glisten on the ground. Before the waking sound of the forge roaring to life, I would flee down that charred road into freedom.

Oh, the atrocities I have encountered since my youth. Born into an unfair situation and simply forced to live with it. As I look back at those days, I can’t even withhold my tears. Long before Mary Macarthur happened upon Cradley Heath, we worked long days for less than nothing. My mother taught me when I was young, well as best as she could teach, about the life given to us. Everyday, we woke up to make hand pounded links for chains in awfully cramped huts. It was so hot that just stepping outside felt like I was born royal. Reality came crashing in around me in those moments of daydreaming. I was anything but royal.

I’m pretty sure that I still don’t have full feeling in my fingers after all of the times I hit them with that blasted hammer. They called us the “Slaves of the Forge” on account of the forced labor. It was all we could do to try and live. I had my eyes set on something more though. Especially after the night my mother died. I’m not sure if it was the heat, being over-worked, or our hygiene but my mother got very sick and was bedridden for quite some time. That simply caused the Chain Masters to be even more cruel. Our hut had to continue with the quota even without my mother’s help.

I was by her side and I still have no words to explain it after all of these years. She was breathing so peacefully and then nothing. I was a child, but I wasn’t so lost in my imagination that I didn’t understand death. Even so, the shock of that lose hit me to my very core. Every time I looked at my reflection, I saw the parts of her in me and the same end waiting for me in that hell. I thought to myself that I had to escape. There was nothing for me there but the pinging of the hammer and the clanging of chains, chains that would be used for God knows what.

I waited around until I could collect some provisions by fasting most days. That surely made the work hard but I was fueled by my dreams. I thought of where I would travel and who I would meet. Would there be a handsome man who sweep me off my feet? Maybe even a family that would consider adopting an orphaned child where I could have my own room, instead of sleeping in these cramped spaces. Now, none of that happened but a girl can dream can’t she?

My chosen day arrived and I dug my sack filled with scraps of food, some tools, and extra clothes out from beneath the floorboards. As soon as the clouds began to dance, I crawled out through the window and off through the town, ducking between the buildings and trying my best to stay within the shadows cast by the moonlight. I found the scorched road and headed down it as fast as I could. I simply ran as fast as my feet would take me.

The beginning of my journey was indeed hard. I was fleeing from death on his pale horse daily. Nothing but hope allowed me to move forward, but even hope could not prepare me for what I would witness. Escape changed my life and now the lives that I have encountered. Death still chases, but I have lived and will continue to live.