CHAPTER 26
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The m is perfe memory, a late-summer day when blue skies foretold the ing autumn crispness. Sped I had awakened o each other in a sea of books, thehe library in those magically empty moments between parents going off to work, or children off to school, and the hour when stores and businesses opeheir doors. By my stone dar, five long and miserable years had passed since our dimiribe took up our new home, and we had grown weary of the dark. Time away from the mine iably brightened Specks mood, and that m, when first I saw her peaceful face, I loo tell her how she made my heart beat. But I never did. In that sehe day seemed like every other, but it would bee a day unto its own.Overhead, a jet trailed a string of smoke, white against the paleness of September. "We matched strides and talked of our books. Shadows ahead appeared briefly betweerees, a slender breeze blew, and a few leaves tumbled from the heights. To me, it looked for an instant as if ahead oh Kivi and Blomma were playing in a patch of sun. The mirage passed too quickly, but the trick of light brought to mind the mystery behind their departure, and I told Spey brief vision of our missing friends. I asked her if she ever wondered whether they really wao be caught.
Speck stopped at the edge of cover before the exposed land that led to the mirahe loose shale at her feet shifted and ched. A pale moon sat in a cloudless sky, and we were wary of the climb, watg the air for a plahat might discover us. She grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around so quickly that I feared immi peril. Her eyes locked on mine.
"You dont uand, Aniday. Kivi and Blomma could not take it another moment. They were desperate for the other side. To be with those who live in the light and upper world, real family, real friends. Dont you ever want to run away, go bato the world as somebodys child? O<tt></tt>r e away with me?"
Her questions poured out like sugar from a split sack. The past had eased its claims on me, and my nightmares of that world had stopped. Not until I sat down to write this book did the memories return, dusted and polished new again. But that m, my life was there. With her. I looked into her eyes, but she seemed far away in thought, as if she could not see me before her but only a distant spad time alive in her imagination. I had fallen in love with her. And that moment, the words came falling, and fession moved to my lips. "Speck, I have something—"
"Wait. Listen."
The noise surrounded us: a low rumble from ihe hill, zigzagging along the ground to where we two stood, vibratih our <big>99lｉｂ?</big>feet, then fanning out into the forest. In the instant, a crad tumble, muffled by the outer surface. The earth collapsed upon itself with a sigh. She squeezed my hand and dragged me, running at top speed, toward the entrance of the mine. A plume of dirt swirled from the fissure like a ey gently smoking on a winters night. Up close, acrid dust thied and choked off breathing. We tried to fight through it but had to wait upwind until the fog dissipated. From inside, a reedy sound escaped from the crack to fade in the air. Before the soot settled, the first person emerged. A single hand gripped the rim of rock, theher, and the head pushed through, the body shouldering into the open. In the wan light, we ran through the cloud to the prostrate body. Speck tur over with her foot: Béka. Onions soon followed, wheezing and panting, and lay down beside him, her arm roped over his chest.
Speck leaned down to ask, "Is he dead?"
"Cave-in," Onions whispered.
"Are there any survivors?"
"I dont know." She brushed back Békas dirty hair, away from his blinking eyes.
We forced ourselves into the mines darkness. Speck felt around for the flint, struck it, and sparked the torches. The firelight reflected particles floating in the air, settling like sediment stirred in a glass. I called out to the others, and my heart beat wildly with hope when a voice replied: "Over here, over here." As if moving through a snowy nightmare, we followed the sound down the main tuurni into the chamber where most of the slept eaight. Luchóg stood at the entranceway, fine silt ging to his hair, skin, and clothes. His eyes shone clear and moist, and on his face tears had left wet trails in the dirt. His fingers, red and raw, shook violently as he waited for us. Ashes floated in the halo created by the torchlight. I could make out the broad baaolach, who was fag a pile of rubble where our sleeping room oood. At a frantic pace, he tossed stoo the side, trying to move the mountain bit by bit. I saw no one else. We sprang to his aid, lifting debris from the mound that ran to the ceiling.
"What happened?" Speck asked.
"Theyre trapped," Luchóg said. "Smaolach thinks he heard voices oher side. The roof came down all at once. Wed be uhere, too, if I hadnt the need for a smoke when I woke up this m."
"Onions and Béka are already out. We saw them outside," I said.
"Are you there?" Speck asked the rock. "Hold on, well get you out."
We dug until there appeared an opening big enough for Smaolach to stick his arm through to the elbow. Energized, we pounced, clawing away stones until Luchóg shihrough the spad disappeared. The three of us stopped and waited for a sound for what seemed like forever. Finally Speck shouted into the void, "Do you see anything, mouse?"
"Dig," he called. "I hear breathing."
Without a word, Speck left abruptly, and Smaolad I tio enlarge the passageway. We could hear Luchóg oher side, scrabbling through the tunnel like a small creature in the walls of a house. Every few minutes, he would murmur reassurao someohen exhort us to keep burrowing, and we desperately worked harder, muscles enflamed, our throats caked with dust. As suddenly as she had disappeared, Speck returned, aor hand to throw more light upon our work. Her face taut with anger, she reached up and tore at the stone. "Béka, that bastard," she said. "Theyve gone. o a himself."
After much digging, we made the hole wide enough for me to crawl through the rubble. I nearly landed on my face, but Luchóg broke my fall. "Down here," he said softly, and we crouched together over the supine figure. Half buried uhe ruins lay Chavisory, still and cold to the touch. Covered by ash, she looked like a ghost and her breath smelled mortally sour.
"Shes alive." Luchóg spoke in a whisper. "But barely, and I think her legs are broken... I t move these heavy ones by myself." He looked stri with fear and fatigue. "Youll have to help me."
Stone by stone, we unburied her. Straining uhe weight of the last debris, I asked him, "Have you seen Ragno and Zanzara? Did they get out okay?"
"Not a trace." He motioned back toward our sleeping quarters, now buried under a ton of earth. The boys must have been sleeping ihe roof collapsed, and I prayed that they had not stirred a from sleep to death as easily as turning over in their bed. But we could not stop to think of them. The possibility of another collapse urged us on. Chavisory moaned when we removed the last rock off her left ankle, a greenstick fracture, the bones and skin raulpy. Her foot flopped at a siing angle when we lifted her, and the blood left a viscous sli our hands. She cried out with every step and lost sciousness as we struggled up to the tunnel, half pulling, half pushihrough. When he saw bbr></abbr>her leg, bone pierg the skin, Smaolach turned and threw up into the er. As we rested there before the final push, Speck asked, "Is anyone else alive?"
"I dont think so," I said.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then issued orders for our quick escape. The most difficult part involved the exit of the miself, and Chavisory awoke and screamed as she ihrough. At that moment, I wished we had all been inside, asleep o one another, all of us buried food and out of our own private miseries. Exhausted, we placed her dowly on the hillside. None of us knew what to do or say or think. Inside another implosion shuddered, and the mine puffed out one last gasp like a dying dragon.
Spent and fused by grief, we waited fhtfall. None of us thought that the collapse might have been heard by the people in town or that it might possibly draw the humans to iigate. Luchóg spotted the dot of light first, a small fire burning down by the treeline. With ation or discussion, the four of us picked up Chavisory, our arms linked in a gurney, and headed toward the light. Although worried that the fire might belong ters, we decided it would be better, in the end, to find help. We moved cautiously over the shale, causing more pain for poor Chavisory, yet hopeful that the fire would give us a place to stay out of the creeping cold for the night, somewhere we might tend her wounds.
The wind creaked through the bones of the treetops and shook the upper branches like clag fingers. The fire had been built by Béka. He offered no apologies or explanations, just grunted like an old bear at our questions before shuffling off to be alone. Onions and Speck crafted a splint for Chavisory s broken ankle, binding it up with Luchóg’s jacket, and they covered her with fallen leaves and lay o her all night to share the warmth from their bodies. Smaolach wandered off aurned much later with a gourd filled with water. We sat and stared at the fire, brushing the caked dirt from our hair and clothing, waiting for the sun to rise. In those quiet hours, we mourhe dead. Ragno and Zanzara were as gone as Kivi and Blomma and Igel.
In place of the prior ms brilliant glow, a gentle rain crawled in aled. Only the occasional whistle from a lonesome bird marked the passing time. Around midday, a fierce yell of pain punctuated the stillness. Chavisory awoke to her o<tt>..t>rdeal and cursed the rock, the mine, Béka, and us all. We could not silence her anguished cries until Speck took her hand and willed her through steadfasto be quiet. The rest of us looked away from her, stealing gla one anothers faces, masks of weariness and sorroere now seven. I had to t twice to believe it.
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