Chapter 26 CHAPTER 26

The morning is perfect in memory, a late-summer day when blue skies foretold the coming autumn crispness. Speck and I had awakened next to each other in a sea of ​​books, then left the library in those magically empty moments between parents going off to work, or children off to school, and the hour when stores and businesses opened their doors. By my stone calendar, five long and miserable years had passed since our diminished tribe took up our new home, and we had grown weary of the dark. Time away from the mine inevitably brightened Speck's mood, and that morning, when first I saw her peaceful face, I longed to tell her how she made my heart beat. But I never did. In that sense, the day seemed like every other, but it would become 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 between the trees, a slender breeze blew, and a few leaves tumbled from the heights. To me, it looked for an instant as if ahead on the path Kivi and Blomma were playing in a patch of sun. The mirror passed too quickly, but the trick of light brought to mind the mystery behind their departure, and I told Speck of my brief vision of our missing friends. I asked her if she ever wondered whether they really wanted to be caught. Speck stopped at the edge of cover before the exposed land that led to the mines entrance. The loose shale at her feet shifted and crunched. A pale moon sat in a cloudless sky, and we were wary of the climb, watching the air for a plane that might discover us. She grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around so quickly that I feared imminent peril. Her eyes locked on mine.

"You dont understand, 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 back into the world as somebodys child? Or come 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 morning, 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 space and time alive in her imagination. I had fallen in love with her. And that moment, the words came falling, and confession moved to my lips. "Speck, I have something—"

"Wait. Listen." The noise surrounded us: a low rumble from inside the hill, zigzagging along the ground to where we two stood, vibrating beneath our feet, then fanning out into the forest. In the next instant, a crack and 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 chimney gently smoking on a winters night. Up close , acrid dust thickened 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, then the other, 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 turned it over with her foot: Beka. 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 don't know." She brushed back Bekas 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 tunnel, turning left into the chamber where most of the clan slept each night. Luchog stood at the entranceway, fine silt clinging 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 back of Smaolach, who was facing a pile of rubble where our sleeping room once stood. At a frantic pace, he tossed stones to the side, trying to move the mountain bit by bit. I saw no one else. We sprang to hisaid, lifting debris from the mound that ran to the ceiling.

"What happened?" Speck asked. "Theyre trapped," Luchog said. "Smaolach thinks he heard voices on the other side. The roof came down all at once. Wed be under there, too, if I hadnt the need for a smoke when I woke up this morning." "Onions and Beka 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 Luchog shinnied through the space and disappeared. The three of us stopped and waited for a sounded for what se like forever. Finally Speck shouted into the void, "Do you see anything, mouse?"

"Dig," he called. "I can hear breathing." Without a word, Speck left abruptly, and Smaolach and I continued to enlarge the passageway. We could hear Luchog on the other side, scrabbling through the tunnel like a small creature in the walls of a house. Every few minutes, he would murmur reassurance to someone, then 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, another torch in hand to throw more light upon our work. Her face taut with anger, she reached up and tore at the stone. "Beka, that bastard," she said. "They've gone. No help to anyone but themselves."

After much digging, we made the hole wide enough for me to crawl through the rubble. I nearly landed on my face, but Luchog broke my fall. "Down here," he said softly, and we crouched together over the supine figure. Half buried under the 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." Luchog spoke in a whisper. "But barely, and I think her legs are broken. I cant move these heavy ones by myself." He looked stricken with fear and fatigue. "Youll have to help me."

Stone by stone, we unburied her. Straining under the 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 in when the roof collapsed, and I prayed that they had not stirred and went 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 raw and pulpy . Her foot flopped at a sickening angle when we lifted her, and the blood left a viscous slick on our hands. She cried out with every step and lost consciousness as we struggled up to the tunnel, half pulling, half pushing her through. he saw her leg, bone piercing the skin, Smaolach turned and threw up into the corner. As we rested there before the final push, Speck asked, "Is anyone else alive?"

"I don't 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 mine itself, and Chavisory awoke and screamed as she was pinched through. At that moment, I wished we had all been inside , slept next to one another, all of us buried for good and out of our own private miseries. Exhausted, we placed her down gently 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 confused by grief, we waited for nightfall. 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 investigate. Luchog spotted the dot of light first, a small fire burning down by the treeline. With no hesitation 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 to strangers, 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 clacking fingers. The fire had been built by Beka. 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 Luchog's jacket, and they covered her with fallen leaves and lay next to her all night to share the warmth from their bodies. Smaolach wandered off and returned 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 mourned the dead. Ragno and Zanzara were as gone as Kivi and Blomma and Igel. In place of the prior mornings brilliant glow, a gentle rain crawled in and settled. Only the occasional whistle from a lonely bird marked the passing time. Around midday, a fierce yell of pain punctuated the stillness. Chavisory awoke to her ordeal and cursed the rock, the mine, Beka, and us all. We could not silence her anguished cries until Speck took her hand and willed her through steadfastness to be quiet. The rest of us looked away from her, stealing glances at one anothers faces, masks of weariness and sorrow. We were now seven. I had to count twice to believe it.