We looked for a while longer, then Denna got to her feet. “Well, the important thing is that it’s not going to run over and breathe fire down our backs. Let’s go see what’s at the other end of that narrow path. I’m guessing it’s a way out of here.”
We headed down the ladder and made our slow, winding way along the bottom of the tiny crevasse. It twisted and turned for another twenty feet before opening up into a tiny box canyon with steep walls rising away on every side.
There was no way out, but it was obviously being put to some use. The place had been cleared of plants, leaving a packed dirt floor. Two long fire pits had been dug, and resting over the pits on brick platforms were large metal pans. They almost resembled the rendering vats that knackers use for tallow. But these were wide, flat, and shallow, like baking pans for enormous pies.
“It does have a sweet tooth!” Denna laughed. “This fellow was making maple candy here. Or syrup.”
I moved closer to look. There were buckets laying around, of the sort that could carry maple sap so it could be boiled down. I opened the door of a tiny ramshackle shed and saw more buckets, long wooden paddles for stirring the sap, scrapers for getting it out of the pans….
But it didn’t feel right. There were plenty of maple trees in the forest. It didn’t make sense to cultivate them. And why pick such an out-of-the-way place?
Maybe the fellow was simply crazy. Idly, I picked up one of the scrapers and looked at it. The edge was smeared dark, like it had been scraping tar….
“Eech!” Denna said behind me. “Bitter. I think they burned it.”
I turned around and saw Denna standing by one of the firepits. She had pried a large disk of sticky material out of the bottom of one of the pans and taken a bite out of it. It was black, not the deep amber color of maple candy.
I suddenly realized what was really going on here. “Don’t!”
She looked at me, puzzled. “It’s not that bad.” She said, her words muffled through her sticky mouthful. “It’s strange, but not really unpleasant.”
I stepped over to her knocked it out of her hand. Her eyes flashed angrily at me. “Spit it out!” I snapped. “Now! It’s poison!”
Her expression went from angry to terrified in a flash. She opened her mouth and let the wad of dark stuff fall to the ground. Then she spat, her saliva thick and black. I pressed my water bottle into her hands. “Rinse your mouth out,” I said. “Rinse and spit it out.”
She took the bottle, and then I remembered it was empty. We’d finished it during lunch.
I took off running, scrambling through the narrow passage. I darted up the ladder, grabbed the waterskin, then down and back to the small canyon.
Denna was sitting on the canyon floor, looking very pale and wide-eyed. I thrust the waterskin into her hands and she gulped so quickly that she choked, then gagged a bit as she spat it out.
I reached into the fire pit, pushing my hand deep into the ashes until I found the unburned coals underneath. I brought up a handful of unburned charcoal. I shook my hand, scattering most of the ashes away, then thrust the handful of black coals at her. “Eat this,” I said.
She looked at me blankly.
“Do it!” I shook the handful of coals at her. “If you don’t chew this up and swallow it, I’ll knock you out and force it down your throat!” I put some in my own mouth. “Look, it’s fine. Just do it.” My tone softened, became more pleading than commanding. “Denna, trust me.”
She took some coals and put them in her mouth. Face pale and eyes beginning to brim with tears, she gritted up a mouthful and took a drink of water to wash it down, grimacing.
“They’re harvesting Goddamn ophalum here,” I said. “I’m an idiot for not seeing it sooner.”
Denna started to say something, but I cut her off. “Don’t talk. Keep eating. As much as you can stomach.”
She nodded solemnly, her eyes wide. She chewed, choked a little, and swallowed the charcoal with another mouthful of water. She ate a dozen mouthfuls in quick succession, then rinsed her mouth out again.
“What’s ophalum?” she asked softly.
“A drug. Those are denner trees. You just had a whole mouthful of denner resin.” I sat down next to her. My hands were shaking. I lay them flat against my legs to hide it.
She was quiet at that. Everyone knew about denner resin. In Tarbean the knackers had to come for the stiff bodies of sweet-eaters that overdosed in the Dockside alleys and doorways.
“How much did you swallow?” I asked.
“I was just chewing it, like toffee.” Her face went pale again. “There’s still some stuck in my teeth.”
I touched the waterskin. “Keep rinsing.” She swished the water from cheek to cheek before spitting and repeating the process. I tried to guess at how much of the drug she’d gotten into her system, but there were too many variables, I didn’t know how much she had swallowed, how refined this resin was, if the farmers had taken any steps to filter or purify it.
Her mouth worked as her tongue felt around her teeth. “Okay, I’m clean.”
I forced a laugh. “You’re anything but clean,” I said. “Your mouth is all black. You look like a kid that’s been playing in the coal bin.”
“You aren’t much better,” she said. “You look like a chimney sweep.” She reached out to touch my bare shoulder. I must have torn my shirt against the rocks in my rush to get the waterskin. She gave a wan smile that didn’t touch her frightened eyes at all. “Why do I have a belly full of coals?”
“Charcoal is like a chemical sponge,” I said. “It soaks up drugs and poisons.”
She brightened a little. “All of them?”
I considered lying, then thought better of it. “Most. You got it into you pretty quickly. It will soak up a lot of what you swallowed.”
“How much?”
“About six parts in ten,” I said. “Hopefully a little more. How do you feel?”
“Scared,” she said. “Shaky. But other than that, no different.” She shifted nervously where she sat and put her hand on the sticky disk of resin I’d knocked away from her earlier. She flicked it away and wiped her hand nervously on her pants. “How long will it be before we know?”
“I don’t know how much they refined it,” I said. “If it’s still raw, it will take longer to work its way into your system. Which is good, as the effects will be spread out over a longer period of time.”
I felt for her pulse in her neck. It was racing, which didn’t tell me anything. Mine was racing too. “Look up here.” I gestured with my raised hand and watched her eyes. Her pupils were sluggish responding to the light. I lay my hand on her head and under the pretext of lifting her eyelid a little, I pressed my finger against the bruise on her temple, hard. She didn’t flinch or show the least hint that it pained her.
“I thought I was imagining it before,” Denna said, looking up at me. “But your eyes really do change color. Normally they’re bright green with a ring of gold around the inside….”
“I got them from my mother,” I said.