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Red Sugar
People thought Tural dreary, but she wasn't. Tural
seldom smiled, even when she was happy, but her eyes
would twinkle to make up for her mouth's rudeness.
Her face was such an open, pretty one, that old ladies
tut-tutted that she cloaked herself in black and wore
her hair back in a tight braid.
Tural was just very shy, sensitive, and thoughtful,
that's all. She was too shy to smile, for she'd fallen
down a staircase a few months before and had lost her
two front teeth. She was afraid to be laughed at. Her
sensitivity put her all in black. Tural's favorite
kitten, Stubble, had died, and she was still in
mourning. (That was 2 years four months and 13 days
ago, so you can see yourself that she was sensitive!)
Tural was also very thoughtful. She looked at the
Kool-Aid sweating in her palm and thought something
until she decided to say it out loud.
"Pical," she said to her twin brother, for that was
his name, "How do you suppose the red gets into
Kool-Aid?"
"Oh, I don't suppose at all, I know" answered Pical,
for he was full of the knowledge of many things.
"Well?" asked Tural.
"Well." answered Pical, who didn't know what else to
say.
"How does the red get into Kool-Aid?" Tural wasn't
annoyed. She knew with a sharp mind like her brothers,
one often had to dig a little to find anything
worthwhile.
"Oh that." answered Pical "It's so simple I didn't
think you were serious.
Pical was going to take a sip of his own Kool-Aid when
he noticed that Tural's cheeks had gone pinker than
usual.
"I'll tell ya, then. It's red sugar is all."
"Red sugar? who ever heard of such a silly thing?"
Tural was offended and almost left then and there.
"I seen red sugar plenty o' times at the market. It's
in funny little pill bottles, and you can see the
sugar right through it. There's all sorts o' colors,
not just red; blue, yellow, green, purple.
Ask Mom if you don't believe me!"
Tural assured her brother that she believed him. In
fact she remembered having seen the funny pill bottles
herself, only she hadn't known what they were.
"I wonder where does red sugar come from?" Tural asked
as if to no one in particular.
"Oh don't you know anything?" Pical put down his cup,
and stood facing his sister. "Color sugar comes from
the same place as white. Only color's worth more, it
being rare and all.
Far away in the North, where it's nothing but snow all
'round, that where you find sugar mines."
Pical got into his tale then, and looked far past the
yard, as if he could see the snowy mountains that
stood there.
"They started off as caves, see? But when some miner
or other hits a color vein, they take in dynamite and
all sorts of bombs in things, then they blow it all
up. Soon the caves become deep, dark tunnels.
They put train tracks in the tunnels, but they ain't
got no trains, only funny carts that they tote sugar
in. Each miner has two carts, a pick, and a shovel.
The pick's to bang on gray rocks until they get sugar
pouring from it. The shovels are to shovel the piles
of sugar into one cart, and the other cart is to put
and diamonds or rubies or gold nuggets and things they
find."
"And that's how the miners are paid!" interrupted
Tural, clapping her hands at the thought of so many
sparkling things.
Pical looked disgusted. "Of course not, Stupid!
Diamonds and rubies and such are alright, of course.
But they aren't that easy to get rid of unless you can
find a pirate who needs some for his treasure chest or
a princess or something like that.
Everybody needs sugar, though. The miners take half of
what they find home. They never have to buy sugar
again, and they sell the rest."
"And the other half is sent to factories and put into
little pill bottles!" Tural cried, sure she was on to
something at last.
Pical smiled. "Yeah, that's right. I suppose you
aren't too stupid after all."
