The shift from River Ward to the Salt plateau was an ascent through a heavy-duty deep-rock fault.
They left House 104 through the rear wicket, slipping along a narrow upkeep gulley that climbed the eastern limestone escarpment behind the barge slips. Within sixty paces, the soft, freezing river mud began to thin, replaced by a crunchy, gritty crust of crushed glassy cinders and sharp black coal melted rock waste. That greasy mixture of lime silt and dead cabbage that had coated Len’s boots since morning.
The moisture vanished from the air with brutal, startling rapidity.
They cleared the crest of the river bluff. Then, forty meters above the basin floor, the damp sulfur fog was torn away by a dry, scouring gale blowing hard from the northeast. The wind didn’t smell of river weed or bog peat. It smelled of scorched rock, skin-burning soda ash. The sharp, choking bite of boiled away sodium carbonate that settled like fine chalk dust across Len’s eyelashes, coating the back of his tongue with a bitter, soapy bitter-salt film.
Len pulled his woolen muffler higher over his nose, breathing shallowly through the weave. The bitter salt dust bit into the raw margins of his hand-burn. Every time the wind whipped his coat, fine glassy grit stung the inflamed skin around the horsehair stitches on his left forearm.
