Quicksilver (The Forensic Geology Series, Prequel) by Toni Dwiggins

some kind of groundcover, low-lying ferns. My nose stung. It had not stopped stinging since I’d crashed through the maze. Now I realized I’d found the source of the odd odor. It came from the ferns.
    “That’s the point,” Shelburne said. “The thing about mountain misery is this time of year its leaves are coated with resin. Flammable as hell.”
    I said, “Are you out of your mind?”
    “Far from it. There’s a pond behind you. But it won’t be necessary. If I may?”
    Walter gave a brusque nod.
    “Here’s how it works. You’ve got two boys pretty much brought up in the wild. Daring each other to do the outrageous. You’ve got a father who leaves them alone with dangerous toys. Some dads give their boys boxing gloves to pound out the rivalry. Ours gave us all this. So we made bets. Always a dime.” He paused and made a slow survey of the jungle, of the rim. Then his focus snapped back to us. “Let’s pretend Henry is standing here with me in the misery. We’re facing each other. Use your imagination.”
    I didn’t need to. Henry was parked in my mind.
    “Here’s how it played,” Shelburne said. “We flipped the dime to see who went first. I chose heads. The dime landed heads-up. I went first.” Shelburne lit a match. He watched it burn down. When the flame neared his fingers he blew it out. He snapped the matchstick in half and put it in his pocket. He took another match from the box. “Henry’s turn.” Shelburne lit the second match. “I’m playing Henry here, of course.” Shelburne watched the match burn down. Blew it out. Snapped it, pocketed it.
    I watched, uneasy. If Henry was watching, what was he thinking?
    Shelburne took out a third match. “My turn again.” He lit the match. “Mind you, we went through a lot of matches before we got up the nerve to finish the game. But I’m going to fast forward to the last turn. My turn.” He watched the match burn down. Before the flame could lick his skin he opened his fingers and let the match drop. It fell onto a netting of fern. There was a tiny explosion, and then a tiny flame licked along the adjacent ferns in a delicate dance. Oily black smoke curled up.
    Reflexively, I reached for my water bottle.
    Before I could unscrew the cap, Shelburne stomped out the tiny conflagration.
    When the fire was fully extinguished, I said, “Just to be sure I’ve got this straight—which one of you tried to set the forest on fire?”
    “I did. Henry flinched. Blew out his match.”
    The smell of rotting overcooked ferns turned my stomach. I felt a bit like Alice navigating her inside-out world. Henry Shelburne was supposed to be the mercurial kid, the one who didn’t understand limits, but now Robert Shelburne was demonstrating the reverse.
    Robert Shelburne waded out of the mountain misery. His boots and pant cuffs were streaked with pitchy black resin. “By the way, the game wasn’t playing with fire . It was reclaiming the gold .”
    Walter leaned in. “What do you mean?”
    “Right around here was a remainder of the sluiceway system. Henry and I found it, nearly overgrown with mountain misery. Full of sediment, and the sediment was laced with amalgam.” He glanced at me. “The gold-mercury mix.”
    I remembered. Bonded like brothers.
    “You went after the gold,” Walter said.
    “We went after the gold,” Shelburne agreed. “Bled off the mercury with fire.”
    “ You vaporized the mercury ?”
    “We vaporized the mercury.”
    Walter shook his head.
    I said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
    “We stayed upwind. No harm done.”
    “No harm ? Does your brother not have mercury poisoning?”
    Shelburne shot me a hard look. “No harm that day.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning no harm that day but I put an idea in my brother’s head. He took it from there. He kept on messing around with mercury, on his own. Burning old riffle blocks impregnated with amalgam. Panning slugs of amalgam from the rivers and then cooking them over an open fire