THIS IS HOW it was.
It’s cold and windy. Da’s hand is the only warm thing in the world, and there won’t be that much longer.
The man from the mine is not too impressed; this one’s too skinny, his look says, too bloody hungry. My boys’ll eat him for breakfast. But he clinks some coins in his pocket.
“Five silver pieces.”
Da’s hand tightens. Too much, or too little? It’s hard to tell. What’s five silver pieces worth, anyway?
“He’s worth more than that,” Da says. “He’s a good boy, obedient. He’s a hard worker, aren’t you, Medric?”
Oh, yes. Da’s strong enough to make sure of that. He’s got a hard hand, has Da.
“Say something, why don’t you?”
The man interrupts before Da does more than raise his voice. “Five and a half. That’s it.”
“It’s robbery.” But he takes it.
The man from the mine is called Sami. He’s from the north, with fair hair but brown eyes. Traveler blood in there, somewhere. A middling-size man, running a little to fat. But a man with a hard hand. It’s not difficult to pick them, once you’ve known one.
“Come on,” he says. “I’ll put you in with the pushers. They’ll start you off right.”
He leads the way to a long stone building with a slate roof. It’d be impressive in a town, but stone’s cheap here, after all. All it costs is the labor of getting it out of the ground.
A chill strikes off the stone as he leads the way through the doorway. Inside, the floor is packed dirt. The little windows are so high up that at this time, late evening, there’s almost no light at all. There are wide wooden bunks in rows on both sides of the room. In the closest bunks are boys, two or three to a bed: every age from ten up, and all of them asleep with the sleep of exhaustion. They sprawl uncaring, arms hanging out, legs uncovered by the one blanket. The mine whistle blew an hour ago, as Da hurried up the steep path to the mine, saying, “By all that’s holy, hurry up.”
An hour from leaving the mine to this oblivion.
Da said, “Forget your bloody big words and your bloody airs and graces, boy. You’re here to work, and don’t you forget it.” Good advice. The only good advice Da ever spoke. Maybe not such a good farewell, though.
Sami gestures to a bunk in the far corner where there are only two boys. “Nav and Fursey. Bunk in with them tonight and they’ll show you around tomorrow. You’ll be pushing. Get some supper over at the kitchen.”
He points northward, through the stone wall, then considers. “You’d better give me your duffel. This lot’ll steal anything that’s not nailed down. Don’t worry, I’ll look after it. You can get it back when you leave.”
Right. In seven years, at nineteen. Those clothes are going to be really useful then.
Sami grins. A clip over the ear is clearly his normal way of saying goodbye. It could be worse.
The kitchen is bright with firelight but there’s not much food left. The cook grumbles as he fills a bowl with lentils and scrounges around until he finds a crust to go with it. The food’s not too hot, but it’s good. Solid. Sustaining. After all, you have to feed boys if they’re going to hew out a mountain for you the next day.
Nav and Fursey both grumble about having to train a newcomer, but only Nav means it. Nav’s a city boy from Turvite, mean-eyed and suspicious, sold to pay his “uncle’s” gambling debts. His mother let him go without a word, he says, scared that if she objected his “uncle” would leave her.
“She’m a twitty bitch,” he says, “no shagging good on her own. I’s well off without her.”
Fursey’s an orphan, with nowhere to go and no one to complain about. He’s yellow-haired and blue-eyed, so his folks must have come from the south, but that’s all he knows. He’s been here since he was five; he doesn’t remember before that.
“I was somewhere else,” he says. “I don’t care. Now I’m here.” He smiles, sweetly.
Fursey’s the smallest of the pushers, but the others let him alone.
“Go easy with him,” Nav says quietly. “He looks like he’s a soft one, but if he takes against you he’ll kill you. He don’t never forget nothing; and he don’t never forgive.”
Fursey looks people in the eye, even the hewers. He smiles like a much younger boy, but his stare is too strong for even Sami to bear for long. So Sami doesn’t look at him.
“Get moving,” Sami shouts at all of us. “You think it’s a holiday?”
Fursey leads the way. Pushers don’t really push — they pull the ore-laden carts out of the mine, up the steep, stony ramps. The traces go around the chest, and a long strip of leather rests against the forehead and is attached to the sides of the cart. A trained twelve-year-old boy who leans into the leather headband and puts his whole weight into it can haul a fully laden cart up a mile of mine ramps in twenty-two minutes. That’s how fast Fursey is, but Sami doesn’t know it. Fursey stops halfway up, every time, in the darkest part of the ramp, and just looks around.
The leather strap cuts. The ramp is stony and sharp on bare feet. The mine’s not cold, exactly, not like up above, where the wind cuts through clothing like it was paper. But it’s dark. By the gods, it’s darker than anything. A darkness that settles down, heavy, like thick cloth over your mouth. The pale yellow of the candles at the turning points of the ramps can barely be seen. There is only the great bear of the dark. The roof feels like it’s caving in.
“Look for the gold,” Fursey says urgently. His hand is warm. The boy-smell of him is comforting.
“What?”
“Look for the gold. There’s always sparks of it, even here. That’s why I stop, to see the gold.”
There are sparks. Tiny, flickering at the corner of your eyes. Barely there.
“There’s a reef behind there,” Fursey says, pointing at the wall. “But those fools up top don’t know it. They’ve passed it by.”
“How do you know?”
“I know,” Fursey says, and settles the leather strap onto his brow. “Back to your cart, Medric. Follow me. I’ll go slow.”
With the strap around your forehead you have to look down and the dark doesn’t seem so heavy. But it’s a long, long way to the top of the ramp. To the sunlight. There are four more trips to make before mid-meal.
Well, you get used to anything, they say. Even to unending work, eat, sleep, work again. Not every day is pushing. The mine closes down at the dark of the moon for two days, and the free hewers go downvalley, to their families, those who have them.
“Dead unlucky to be underground at the dark o’ t’moon,” Nav explains to me. “That’s when the delvers come out.”
“Delvers?”
Nav looks quickly over his shoulder, and makes the sign against hexing. “The dark people, the little people, the eaters of rock, the owners of the blackness,” he says, and it’s clear those aren’t his words, that he’s learned them off by heart. But from whom, he won’t say.
Even with the mine closed, the pushers don’t stop working. There’s always work: scything the grass around the barracks, cutting wood, weeding the kitchen garden. That’s not so bad, with the sun warm on your back and the smell of fresh earth; living earth. Different from the dark, dead smell of underground rock.
These two days, Fursey is twitchy as a cat. Snapping at everyone. His wide-eyed stare has become a glare.
“He just hates being out o’ t’mine,” Nav says. “I told you, he’m crazy.”
It’s true. Back in the mine, Fursey sings as he pushes; and stops to look at the gold twice as long.
In bed that night, he talks about it, whispering. “I know none of the others understand, but you do, don’t you, Medric? It’s so beautiful down there, with the gold shining all around me. The gold calls to me, I can hear it, I know where it is underneath the rock. It wants to be taken out, to be melted down and made into beautiful things. It wants to be admired and treasured. It yearns for the pain of the pick cutting through the reef.”
His hand is warm. He is the only warm thing here.
“I don’t really understand. But I suppose . . .”
“You’ll see,” he says with confidence. “You’ll get to love it, too.” He snuggles closer. His hair smells of dust and leather.
In time, pushers become hewers. Hewing is better. Striking hard at the rock face, choosing your spot so the whole slab falls away with just one blow. There is skill in hewing, and responsibility. It’s easy to make a mistake, to bring down a section of wall on your fellows.
That’s how Nav dies, when a new hewer takes out part of a supporting wall and the tunnel collapses. The mine closes for a day. The free hewers walk down the valley to the gods’ altar stone to pray for him and for once the bonded hewers and pushers are allowed to go with them, under Sami’s watchful eye.
“Why don’t they have a proper funeral? Why don’t they dig him out?”
“The delvers will have taken his body,” Fursey says matter-of-factly.
He is right. Expecting the worst, it’s hard to go down into the dark the next day. But Nav’s body is gone and the tunnel floor partly cleared.
“No one knows where the bodies go, but nothing bad could happen. They only eat rock,” Fursey says. “I think gold is like dessert for them.” He pauses. “I’d like to meet them someday.”
“Don’t say that! You might meet them the way Nav has.”
He smiles. In the pale light of his candle his eyes have no irises; they are wholly black, like the dark of the mine halfway up the shaft. The flickering of the candle puts gold into his eyes. Sometimes it is there even in daylight.
“There are worse places to die.”
The bed is bigger and colder without Nav. At home, the night seemed dark. But after the heavy darkness of the mine, even the blackest night is full of light. Fursey’s head shines in it. Now there is some privacy, but Fursey thinks it’s best to wait until the others are asleep.
They know anyway. All the boys who share beds share pleasure as well. What else is there? Where else can warmth be had? But Fursey is like that; secretive, solitary.
“Except with you, Medric. I’d never keep a secret from you.”
When Fursey finally becomes a hewer, months behind the other sixteen-year-olds, it’s a relief to everyone, even Sami. Fursey was like a chained bear, sullen and dangerous, those last two months.
“If Medric can start hewing, I can too,” he argued. “I’ve been here longer than anyone. You know I know the mine like no one else. I can pick a reef better than you can!”
But Sami was firm. No one becomes a hewer until they reach the height mark on the kitchen doorway. Not even Fursey, no matter how he argued and cursed.
His first day, Fursey fairly races down to the rock face, laughing and swinging his pick. He chooses a completely different part of the wall to work on. Ignores the foreman.
“Here, Medric,” he calls. “This is where the reef is thickest.” He talks to the rock. “I can hear you,” he says. “I’m coming to get you out. Fall to my left,” he says. He swings his pick as though he’s been doing it all his life. The pick head hits the rock and a whole section falls off, to his left. The way only the best and most skilled hewers can do, after years of practice.
Underneath there is pure gold. The full seam, shining so bright in the weak candlelight it looks molten, glowing. The hewers gather around silently. Even the bonded ones, who have no choice about being here, even they sigh a little, looking at the gleam of it. Fursey reaches out and touches it, traces the broad river of it down the wall.
“Hello,” he says.
That’s the way it goes. Fursey chooses where we hew. Each time, he talks to the rock, tells it where to fall, how to split. And it does. The mine production triples. Fursey is Sami’s pet. He gets new clothes, the best food. No one minds because, with Fursey telling them where to lay their picks, and talking to the rock face, no one dies. There are no more tunnels collapsing.
At night, he lies staring at the ceiling, smiling.
The other hewers in the barracks whisper to each other of the girls down in the valley, whisper and touch and groan. They talk about what they’ll do when their bond time is up. Where they’ll go. Sandalwood. Carlion. Foreverfroze. Who they’ll shag, and how. Then they touch again.
Fursey talks about gold, and then touches.
“Gold and you, Medric. What else do I need?”
Only three months until the seven years are up. Fursey was sold in for fourteen years. He has another nine months to go.
“I’ll work the nine months with you, Furse. Then we can leave together.” It’s a faint hope. There’s no chance.
“Leave?” he says, not understanding.
“My bond is up in three months. Yours is up in nine. I’ll work the extra six months with you, get a bit of pay in my pocket. Then we can both leave together.”
He stares. “Leave?”
He’s right, of course. It would be crazy for him to go. As soon as his bond is worked out, Sami will hire him back at three times a normal hewer’s pay. He’s worth twice as much again. He could have a house in the valley, live a good life doing what he loves. Why should he leave?
“I never chose to come here, Furse. I’ve got family, somewhere to go.”
“Your own da sold you!”
“Not my da. I wouldn’t spit on him. But I’ve got two sisters. I want to find them. Make sure they’re all right.”
He relaxed. “Well, you can do that and then come back. No need to go for good.”
No need. Except the dark and the cold and the flickering of gold at the edges of vision like madness, waiting.
Except the hard slog of the walk up the mine ramp. Except the ugliness of the barracks and the dirt and the smell. Except having to watch the young pushers heave their hearts out and no way to help.
Except the girls in the valley. And the girls in the world beyond the valley. And the idea of children, someday. Children to be loved. To be cared for. Not hit, not terrorized. Loved. Never, ever, sold.
Nine months can seem longer than years put together. And shorter than a day.
Three days to go, Sami tries a recruiting talk. “You’re a good hewer, Medric. You’ve got a real gift for it.” That’s true. “Why not think about staying? Fursey’s going to have his own house up here, you know. The two of you could have a good life.”
He’s frightened that Fursey might desert the mine. He can’t afford it.
“It’s not such a bad life, when you’re not a bondsman,” he says confidentially, leaning close. “The valley girls like a free hewer.” He winks, then thinks again as he sees Fursey’s face. “Course, there’s no need for you to go anywhere, really. Nice house of your own, good food, good company. There’s many a man in the outside world would cut off his right arm for a life like that.” He chuckles. “Course, he wouldn’t be any use to us then!” His hand descends in what he means to be a friendly pat on the back. But he’s a heavy-handed man, like my da, and it hurts.
“Don’t go,” Fursey says when Sami leaves. It’s the first time he’s said it straight out.
“I can’t take the dark any longer than I have to, Furse. I’m not like you. I’ve never loved it. There’s a whole world out there. Don’t you want to see it?”
He shakes his head. “And the valley girls?” he asks bitterly.
“Oh, gods, Furse, I don’t want them like I want you. But don’t you want a family? A real home?”
He looks up with his eyes full of tears. “You’re my family. You and the gold.”
“Well, you’ll still have the gold. I hope you enjoy it.”
Maybe that wasn’t kind. But he talks always like gold is human. Like it has feelings.
On the last day, he stays at the rock face until after the mine whistle, until the other hewers have gone up the ramp and there is no one else around. No one will come back. They let him make his goodbyes in private.
“Don’t go, Medric,” he says.
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t. You can change your mind and stay here, where you belong. With me.”
His eyes are as black as always, down here, but they are shining gold, too. Strong flickers of gold. Nav’s warning comes back to mind, from the first day. “He don’t never forget nothing; and he don’t never forgive.”
Love is not a word that’s ever used at the mine, and it’s too late to try it now, anyway. But it’s true. Even when he’s acting like a madman.
“I only stayed in the world because of you,” he says. “I never wanted to go up into the light. You know that. I went up there for you.”
“I know, but —”
“I’m not going back again. Not without you. I’m staying down here.” He pulls up the pickaxe, hoisting it casually, as hewers do, and I’m suddenly aware of the muscles in his shoulders and arms, the broad hewer’s chest. The pickaxe can hew rock — it would go straight through blood and bone. Who knows what he’s going to do, but he has to be stopped.
“You won’t be able to help the gold anymore. What will it do without you?” It’s a forlorn, stupid argument, but it makes him frown, considering.
He stands at the tunnel mouth and smiles, fair hair shining in the candlelight, just like gold. The only warm thing in the world.
“The mine will still go on,” he says. “A little slower without me, that’s all. But I’ll be here forever.” Then he walks right up to me and kisses me, the pickaxe held between us so that all I feel is soft lips and rough wood and cold steel against my neck. Then he walks past me, down into the darkest part of the mine.
As he walks, he whispers to the gold, “Show me where they are, the delvers, lead me to them, honeyfall, bright stream, sweet gold, you’re my only love now, lead me to the people of stone . . .” And he disappears into the darkness.
The only warm thing. How could I help but go back?