The Smell of Burning Sugar

This week I decided to do something a little different. Instead of writing out my innermost thoughts, or exploring a topic, memory or notion - I took a more abstract approach to what I wanted to share with you all. This is a short story based on a character that has recently climbed out of my imagination and onto paper. It is raw, unfinished and as mysterious to me - the creator - as it will likely be to any reader. All I really know, is that it was born from the smell of burning sugarcane.

***

Aelin steps out onto the porch to escape the stagnant air of inside, her hair hanging in tendrils. Beads of sweat are bubbling and breaking on her brow, but she lets them run freely, unbothered. Leaning forward against the railing, she props herself up, the wood warm under her palms.

"So still..." she mumbles, pursing her lips and looking out at the hot air of the horizon. The late afternoon sun is resting languidly on the village, blanketing the houses, baking their bricks and bathing each pane of glass in orange light.

She is vaguely aware of a door slamming somewhere and a dogs bark echoing down the street but her attention is fixed on the sky. The peach tinge to the clouds and the constant drone of cicadas which seems to drown out all the noise of man. Licking the saltiness off her upper lip, she lowers her gaze from the candied cloud to the smoke billowing from the factory on the hill. Sacara Cane. The sugar mill is a bulky, industrial structure - a patchwork of grey and black contrasting with the white softness of the smoke it exhales. It seems out of place here. Its sharp angles and glinting metal clashing with the rolling green and gold of the crop fields.

Out of place in such a small community, where the face brick houses are homely and weathered, where the roads are dirt or gravel and the people themselves are just about as tattered as the flag that hangs weakly in the square - representing whichever ruler is in power. Trehalens don't really care all that much. They are a simple people who keep to themselves, take pride in their gardens, crops, children and not much else. Aelin remembers the day that the first batches of sugar were sold. She was twelve at the time and had spent the previous three years of her adolescence watching wide-eyed and suspicious as the metal was forged, the cement laid, and the structure was put together piece by piece, pipe by pipe, sheet by sheet until finally, with the factory built and the first harvest of sugarcane delivered and processed, the first plumes of alabaster smoke could be seen.

She had run to the nearest grocer and stared in awe from the back of the crowd, at the neat row of brown rectangular parcels that now filled the storefront. No longer afraid of the mechanical monster - how could she be when it produced such perfect little packages - she had smiled manically the whole way home, unable to stop the stretch of her lips for anything but to occasionally mouth the word "sugar". When she finally got her hands on a bag, she had coveted it possessively, not sharing with her siblings, much too in awe of the sparkling little granules of sweetness to actually eat it for the first week. That was ten years ago and it didn't take long for the people of the village to graciously accept the sugar mill as a rare new addition to the list of things that they cared about.

The sky is darkening now, painting the porch in a haematic twilight. Aelin hasn't moved since first resting her hands on the railing, save for the slight swivel of her neck from sky to ground. Consciously, she readjusts her stance, breaking the stillness as her cotton work dress ripples around her stiff frame, glowing red in the light, its jagged tatters of wear licking at her calves like flames. She isn't quite feeling herself. As she stands there, she tries hard to think of nothing, watching the columns of smoke make their way from the belly of the factory towards the sky. Then suddenly she is snatched up by a thought - one that had come in the middle of the night as a nauseating notion not quite grasped, before unfurling in her mind, soaking her skin with restlessness.

"All of this that is mine, all that I can see and all that I have loved, could be taken from me at any moment - and the price paid would be nothing more than having possessed it in the first place."

Clenching her jaw against the fluttering in her stomach Aelin wipes the moisture off her brow angrily , swiping the thought away with it. Change is coming. A movement catches her eye and she glances down at the street below to see her father walking wearily towards the house, his overalls dusty and crumpled, his feet dragging. He raises his hand, seeing her, and she smiles back at him even though she knows he won't be able to see her face in the almost darkness. A hot sweet wind suddenly lifts her hair, caressing her feverish skin - unexpected but not unwelcome. She looks over to the town center and watches as the flag ripples on the breeze lazily.

"The King's sigil should not be on that flag." she mutters, her voice thick and lilted. There had been talk of unrest from the city for some months now. Talk of people fleeing. Talk of violence. "It shouldn't carry a crown - not here. It should carry the emblem of the mills. Our mills...".

Aelin then lets her imagination take control of her, and pictures cylindrical columns spouting thick, white smoke displayed proudly in replacement of the crown. As she does, the flag in the square flies higher and the wind that whips past her before effortlessly supporting its fabric, smells of burning sugar.

***

By Georgia Rae