A Lullaby Beneath Black Snow

We share between us this poor plot of stone,
 An unshod boy by winter winds o'erblown;
 My weary head hath thought no cunning deep-
 "Deceive thine heart, and crows thy bones shall reap."

 - "The Maid of the Neighboring Bench", by The Sable Hue

...

Slag Extraction Camp No. 9 was not a workshop, but a colossal wound gouged deep into the belly of the ash-gray stone mountain.

Here, there was no concept of day or night. Almost the entire space was drowned in perpetual darkness, lit only dimly by sputtering pine-tar torches stuck at intervals into the weeping rock walls.

There was no roar of modern machinery; the sole sound reigning over this abyss was the dry, relentless pounding of thousands of crude iron pickaxes slamming into underground ore veins:

CLANG!... CRACK!... CLANG!...

The metallic clangs against stone slabs echoed back and forth through the fathomless subterranean tiers, blending with the heavy, labored panting of tens of thousands of slaves and the whistling crack of stingray-hide whips from the overseers' hands.

Every hour, a mountain goat horn atop the watchtowers blew a dull, guttural blast, signaling the shift change for the wretches below.

Seventy newly arrived prisoners were dumped into the cavern shed like a cart of slaughtered beasts, left to collapse wherever they fell across the floor mired in coal mud. With the heavy iron portcullis barred from the outside, the overseers didn't even bother chaining them down, between the biting blizzard, the sheer cliffs outside, and the crushing weight of exhaustion, no one had the will or strength to flee.

Months of concentrated urine, sour sweat, scattered watery stool, and the rotting flesh of miners worked to death rose in a thick, suffocating stench, turning every breath into a rusted file scraping the throat.

"..."

Sevran lay in the darkest and dampest corner of the stone shed, where water leaking from the ceiling gathered into a pitch-black puddle of foul sludge.

This rock recess was so narrow, cramped, and thick with the rancid stench of decomposing slag that the other slaves preferred piling on top of one another on the open mud rather than venturing anywhere near it. It had become his own isolated domain, a filthy sanctuary tucked away from prying eyes, where a man could breathe in secret without fear of discovery.

His left hand was swollen purple. The first two knuckles of his index and middle fingers, crushed under an iron-heeled boot at the city gates, had begun oozing cloudy yellow pus. In the damp muck of the dungeon, tiny maggots began burrowing into the open wound.

 The sensation of necrotic tissue being gnawed away was grotesque beyond measure, yet Sevran merely looked down in silence.

He accepted this burrowing as an equitable biological transaction. He provided dead meat; they returned him life.

Once the necrotic tissue had been stripped clean down to the raw, bleeding red meat, Sevran reached out with a trembling hand, scooped a fistful of dry coal slag dust from a fissure in the rock, gritted his teeth, and shoved it directly into the bleeding wound to stem the blood and disinfect it.

HISS... HISS...

The searing burn sent violent spasms rippling through his entire body on the freezing stone floor, sweat drenching him completely. Yet his sunken eyes remained wide open in the dark, absorbing each scorching wave like an obligatory purge.

The flesh is merely a machine that lies; pain is nothing more than a maintenance signal.

Every day, he scavenged moldy bran crumbs fallen into rock crevices and used coal slag to filter trickling seepage from the tunnel walls for water. He persistently maintained the role of a brain-damaged deaf-mute, quietly listening to and absorbing every rough syllable of the language from the guards' clipped exchanges and the prisoners' curses.

...

He met the child on a freezing, late night, the beginning of a brief encounter amidst an earthly hell.

Even at the bottom of this abyss, a ruthless food chain held absolute dominion. Veteran slave cliques preyed upon newcomers to skim their meager rations and steal their ore quotas; the strong devoured the weak, and the desperate stripped the crippled to the bone.

Late that night, as the slaves were herded into a cordoned dirt yard walled with charred pine stakes to wait out the freeze, a child of the Sclerite race, no older than seven or eight, skin as gray as slate, was backed against the palisade by two massive miners reeking of lead-malt brew.

They had spotted a fist-sized lump of raw iron ore concealed in its ragged loincloth, just enough to help them meet tomorrow's quota and spare them thirty barbed lashes from the overseer's whip.

The child neither wept nor begged. The moment the burly miner reached down to seize its shoulder, it lunged forward like a rabid hyena, sinking broken teeth deep into the back of his hand.

"Grugh!"

The miner roared in agony. With his free fist, he drove a vicious blow into the side of the child's skull. A sickening, dry snap echoed through the mud as an iron-plated heel crushed down upon tiny ribs.

Beaten until bloody foam bubbled from its lips, the child still did not utter a single cry. Even as the lump of ore was wrenched away, it lay curled in the muck, teeth grinding together with a harsh screech, its pale ash-gray eyes glaring straight at the dark cavern ceiling - as if searing the faces of its plunderers into the marrow of its bones.

Only after the crowd dispersed did the child scramble upright, clutching broken ribs, dragging a pair of emaciated legs across the muck toward a sheltered corner.

That first night, it trudged toward Sevran's muddy corner. The place where he lay was the filthiest, most rancid patch in the entire dungeon, where mineral seepage mixed with stagnant coal runoff, an area no able-bodied miner would set foot in. But to an injured child, the filthiest place was also the safest.

It crouched three yards away, back pressed against the cold stone, arms wrapped tight around its knees, watching him like a feral cub assessing a hidden trap. Sevran remained motionless, maintaining the shallow, ragged breathing of an invalid, mentally measuring the child: height under one point two meters, severe malnutrition.

By the second night, the distance narrowed to two yards. The child sat as still as a slate carving for hours on end, its skeletal ribcage trembling against the bitter drafts whistling through the rock fissures.

Late that night, when the gnawing ache of starvation caused its hollow stomach to gurgle loudly in the dark, Sevran finally shifted. Reaching a hand into the folds of his tattered rags, he drew out half a rotten turnip he had scavenged while hauling ore carts that afternoon, the only food he had not yet swallowed.

He did not toss it, nor did he offer it directly. He simply placed the mud-caked, rotting turnip upon the cold stone floor, right at the boundary between them.

The child froze. Then, like a starving beast seizing prey, it surged forward, snatched the half-turnip, scrambled back against the wall, and voraciously chewed both dirt and rotten fibers.

When finished, it hurriedly licked every trace of moisture from its blackened fingertips. The predatory caution in its gaze softened, replaced by a tentative, baffled wonder. Pointing a gaunt finger at its own chest, it pushed a single, clipped syllable from its throat in the local tongue:

"...Kau'i-vhur."

Sevran maintained the blank, lifeless stare of a deaf-mute. He did not understand the local tongue, nor did the child comprehend a word of his native language. Between them lay two entirely separate worlds, severed by an absolute language barrier. He merely closed his eyes in silence.

By the third night, Kau'i-vhur dragged her torn mat over, officially sleeping and living in Sevran's damp corner.

Two strangers with no shared tongue, unable to comprehend a single word the other spoke, suddenly became roommates in hell. Kau'i-vhur chattered endlessly throughout the evening in a raspy, clattering dialect like pebbles grinding against one another. She spoke of many things, and though Sevran understood not a word, he listened in silence.

Remarkably, that night was the first time since stepping through the bloody gate that Sevran slept deeply without nightmares of his past. For the first time, he felt a sense of peace: having someone in the same plight, an innocent child smiling at him.

Midnight, he woke with a start. Beside him, Kau'i-vhur was curled tight, whimpering and weeping in her sleep. Her small face was contorted in agony, seemingly trapped in a horrifying nightmare of a painful past.

Sevran looked at the shivering child, reached out with his rough hand, and gently stroked her ragged hair. In the freezing dark, he parted his lips and softly sang a lullaby from the old world, words she would never understand:

"To the world's far edge, walk with me,
Where no head bows, where breath is free.
No honeyed lies, just quiet bread
Run, child, before the dark has spread."

The warm, rustic melody poured into Kau'i-vhur's ears. Though she did not understand a single syllable, the warmth of his hand stroking her head and the peaceful cadence dispelled the nightmare. Her whimpering quieted, and she drifted back to sleep peacefully by his side.

...

The days that followed dragged on under the extreme brutality of the ore pits. Life here ground forward like a mill crushing human flesh. Speech was forbidden during labor, yet between them an unspoken bond took shape.

Sevran's task was hauling stone sledges. With a ruined hand and shoulders laced with open lacerations, he bent his spine to drag ore slabs weighing hundreds of pounds from the deep shafts out to the slag heaps. Every step over the jagged gravel forced blood through the tattered cloth wrapped around his feet.

Kau'i-vhur, small and frail, was driven into the narrowest rock fissures to scrape out flakes of raw iron ore with bare fingers and fill a wicker basket strapped to her back.

On afternoons when Sevran's sledge caught on a trench rim, the child passing by would silently brace her small back against the wooden runner, straining with every ounce of strength to give him momentum before scurrying away.

Other times, when Kau'i-vhur tripped into the jagged rubble, Sevran would deliberately slam his iron sledge against the rocks, creating a loud clatter to draw the guard's fury toward himself, shielding her just long enough to scramble up before the lash fell.

During the noon feed, Sevran used coal dust to filter half a bowl of clean seepage for the child; Kau'i-vhur would slip him a handful of soft, dry moss scavenged from deep fissures to line his torn footwraps.

Not a single word passed between them, for they could not understand each other's speech. Yet that silent bond persisted, stubborn and resilient like two blades of weed clinging to a cliff crack to outlast the winter.

Then, a bitter arctic gale tore through the gorge on the sixth night, coating the ventilation shafts in black snow. Night shifts were suspended; the guards retreated to their brazier-heated watchtowers, abandoning the slaves to fend for themselves in the freezing dark.

Kau'i-vhur shivered violently, burrowing deep into the edge of Sevran's filthy sheepskin. Suddenly, the child lifted her face. In the raspy, guttural tone characteristic of the Sclerite race, she began to sing. It was an ancient, gravelly melody, carrying the cadence of clattering stones and the howl of wind through deep ravines.

Sevran listened intently. He did not understand a word of her song, but watching her soot-smeared face singing with naive focus, he smiled, a rare smile at the bottom of the abyss, and gently stroked her head.

Then, gazing out into the boundless dark, he softly sang back:

"I'll take you where no ceilings rise,
Where the sickle moon cuts open skies.
Stars have no roofs to hide away,
And sleep forgets the crushing day."

The song of a tranquil horizon, far from whips and subterranean gloom, echoed softly. Kau'i-vhur understood not the words, but she rested her forehead against his scarred forearm, smiling in absolute peace.

By the seventh night, Kau'i-vhur arrived at the dark corner with an unusually grave expression.

Without a word, she slipped a crumpled scrap of parchment into Sevran's hand. Drawn upon it in charcoal was a crude map: the layout of an underground drainage conduit leading directly beneath the northern ramparts of the camp.

She mimed breaking a lock with her hands, then pointed toward the pitch-black tunnel mouth outside. Sevran understood immediately, this was the only way out. He folded the scrap and pressed it deep into the rags against his chest.

Looking at the small silhouette standing before him, a suffocating tremor of emotion rose in Sevran's heart:

If only this child would stay by my side for one more night, just one more night...

He had once thought of speaking, of keeping her back, but in the end he remained silent.

Because he knew he could not bind a fragile soul. Ahead of that tunnel mouth lay the high, deep sky of freedom, while living on dreams in this dark hell lasted never for long...

Kau'i-vhur looked at him, her cracked lips parting in the brightest smile she had ever worn. She whispered a few hurried words in the Sclerite tongue, turned, and vanished into the dark. He did not understand what she said, but that gaze felt like an unwritten pact.

Next day, the stone corner two yards away remained empty.

Sevran sat alone, using a salvaged copper wire to reset the dislocated joint of his ring finger. He told himself she had likely been reassigned to a night shift in the deeper galleries. He waited patiently, but Kau'i-vhur never came.

...

...

And then, that fateful ninth morning struck down upon his mind like a hammer.

Exactly nine days since the first night the child had crawled toward his sludge corner clutching her broken ribs. Nine brief days for an encounter in the realm of death.

Early that morning, while being marched to dump coal slag behind the drainage ditch of the roasting kilns, Sevran's eyes suddenly caught on something.

A bundle of ash-gray rags lay face-down in the frozen black mud beside the rock ledge.
Sevran stepped forward, knelt, and turned the body over.

"..."

It was Kau'i-vhur.

Her face was bruised a dark purple, dried black blood caking her nose and lips. Her throat bore the deep, mottled bruises of adult fingers: she had been choked to death. Her right eye was swollen shut; the left was cracked open, its pupil glazed and lifeless.

Her right hand was locked in a rigid fist of rigor mortis.

Sevran pried the frozen fingers open one by one.

From her palm rolled a tiny, crude piece of iron ore, no larger than a thumbnail. A worthless scrap of slag, not worth half a coin, not enough to buy a single mouthful of sour brew. She had been murdered for this piece of garbage, or perhaps simply because some drunken miner needed to vent his rage upon a fragile creature.

A tear fell.

Then two, three...

Sevran's tears streamed down his soot-smeared cheeks, dripping onto the corpse's frozen hand. Yet he did not even realize he was crying. The sub-zero wind froze the moisture upon his eyelashes, leaving a numbing cold.

He placed the scrap of ore back into her palm and closed her cold fingers around it.

Refusing to leave her body in the open mud for scavengers, Sevran stayed low, using the hem of his sheepskin to bundle the feather-light frame. Taking advantage of a sudden billow of blinding coal smoke from the kilns that obscured the guards, he slipped behind a nearby rockfall, a deep natural fissure in the stone wall known only to him.

He had no time to spare. In a matter of seconds, Sevran laid Kau'i-vhur deep into the narrow cleft. With his good hand, he wrenched a heavy slab of slag across the opening, frantically shoving two fistfuls of loose gravel to seal the gap.

A hasty stone grave was completed in the span of a few desperate breaths, hidden well enough that no boots or scavengers would ever reach her.

Without pausing, he turned on his heel, head bowed, and melted back into the shuffling line of slaves beneath the cracking whip, as if nothing had ever happened.

...

That night, Sevran sat alone in the dark corner of the stone shed.

He drew out the parchment map and pressed it hard against his aching chest. The space beside him was now forever cold.

And all was finished; the tale between two strangers in the abyss would never have an ending. No farewell had been spoken that night, but perhaps it did not matter... In this realm of ash, a proper goodbye was an unthinkable luxury.

Behind his sternum, the black coal of ambition and hatred ignited into the fiercest flame. His eyes froze into two razor-sharp blades.

I cannot redeem your fate. I am merely a phantom clawing for a way to live in this realm of death.

Those songs, that half of a rotten turnip, and that hasty grave that, was the last shred of humanity I repay to this world before stepping entirely into the dark.

Sleep quietly in the stone. 

...

In the distance, pickaxes struck the deep rock with rhythmic precision:

CLANG!... CRACK!... CLANG!...

The wind howled through the ventilation shafts, swirling black snow to erase every trace upon the earth. No one knew a child named Kau'i-vhur had ever existed. No one wept for her.

Yet Sevran remembered.

In the absolute silence of his soul beneath the freezing black snow, a final farewell melody echoed from the depths of his chest:

"Closing mine eyes to learn to see, veiling mine ears to hear thy breath,
Standing in stone to learn to run, parting from thee to conquer death;
Holding my breath to learn to live, soothing the wound to bear the pain,
Forgetting ourselves to learn to care, two strangers sheltering in the rain."

...

...

We share once more this quiet plot of stone,
 An unshod maid by bitter winds o'erblown;
 Thy gentle head hath thought no cunning deep-
 "Deceive thine heart, and crows thy bones shall reap."

 - "The Maid of the Neighboring Bench", by The Sable Hue