Descent

Now we're heading inside the mine.

Nail was always against me going in there. Said I could only come when I'm ready. I never knew when that'd be, and I wasn't in a hurry to find out. So he'd leave me outside to do the easy stuff, since the coal out there's softer. Somehow, he'd still come out with a full basket before I could even fill mine.

Guess today's the day I'm ready. Or the day Spike says I am.

The inside is way different than outside. First thing I notice is the lamps. They're hanging every ten or so steps along the walls on rusty hooks, lighting the place up without needing a single sun. Coal's mostly scraped off near the entrance, but the walls get blacker the deeper we go.

The people in here are different too.

Outside, everybody's pretty much like me. Thin, weak, coughing. In here, they're like a whole other kind of people. Their arms are thick as logs, and they swing their pickaxes like it's nothing. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. Steady, like a heartbeat. Nobody's wasting a single swing. They don't even look up when we pass. They just know where to hit, how hard, and how many times.

To think that we eat the same thing. I look at my own arms. Then I stop looking.

"Keep up," Nail says.

He walks like he owns the place. He knows every turn, every dip in the floor, every spot where the ceiling hangs low. He ducks before I even see what he's ducking from. I copy him, and I still bump my head twice.

"Oi! Nail!"

A man comes out of a side tunnel, wiping his face with a rag that's blacker than coal. Somehow, it don't make him any dirtier. He's big, bigger than Nail, with a gray beard that's more soot than hair.

"Thought that was you." He slaps Nail on the shoulder hard enough to knock dust off both of 'em. "Heard you signed up for the deep ones."

"Double pay," Nail says.

"You sure 'bout this?" the man asks, shaking his head. Then he spots me. "This the little brother?"

"Yeah."

The man looks me up and down. I wait for him to laugh like Spike does. He don't. He just squints, like he's trying to figure out if I'll break.

"You know what they say about the deep ones, right?" he asks Nail, quieter now.

"They say a lot of things."

"Sealed since before anybody can remember. Nobody knows who dug 'em. Nobody's ever gone in."

Shut for years, Nail said yesterday. Years. More like forever. I glance at Nail. His jaw's tight. Guess he don't wanna hear that.

The man scratches his beard, and a little dust falls out. "Some say it gets warmer the deeper you go. Others say you can hear things down there. Old Nut swears his uncle went in once and never came back out."

"Old Nut swears his dog can beat a hopper," Nail says.

The man laughs. "Fair. Still." He looks at me again, and the laugh fades. "Just come back up. Both of you."

He disappears back into his tunnel, and the thunk, thunk, thunk starts up again.

I don't say nothing. I don't even know what I'd say.

But Nail looks at me anyway, like he heard it.

"Old miners love scaring the new ones," he says. He claps a hand on my shoulder. "Come on."

He starts walking. Same as always. Chin up, steps steady.

But his hand stayed on my shoulder longer than it needed to. And he's walking a little slower now.

***

The deeper we go, the fewer people we see. The sound of pickaxes gets farther and farther away, till it's just a faint tapping behind us, then nothing at all.

The lamps start getting fewer too. At first there's one every few steps. Then one every dozen. Then there's a long stretch of dark where the next lamp is just a little orange dot way up ahead.

And then the lamps stop.

We're standing in front of a wall of rubble and stone. Or what's left of it. Somebody's dug through it, recently too, 'cause the rocks are piled fresh on both sides and the dust ain't even settled.

We ain't the only ones here. A few other pairs are already waiting. Big men, mostly, with the same log arms as the ones up top. One's praying under his breath. Two of the lord's men stand by the hole with torches, handing out lamps like they're handing out bread.

"Pairs," one of 'em barks. "Stay with your partner. Mark your path. The Order's mages are coming down after you. When, nobody knows. So don't go touching anything strange."

Mages behind us. Guess if anything goes wrong down there, at least they'll help.

He jerks his thumb at the dark. "Go."

One by one, the pairs duck through the hole. Beyond it, there's nothing but black.

Nail takes our lamp and holds it up. The light only reaches a few steps in.

"Stay close," he says. "Step where I step. If I stop, you stop. If I say run, you don't ask questions. Got it?"

"Got it."

He looks at me for a long second, like he's thinking about sending me back up. Then he ducks through the hole.

I follow.

The second I'm through, the noise behind us just... dies. It's quiet down here. Not the quiet of our hut at night. A heavier quiet, like the mountain's stopped breathing.

Not far in, the tunnel splits. Three ways, then four. The other pairs pick their paths, and one by one, their lights get swallowed up by the dark.

Nail holds up our lamp. The flame leans, just a little, toward the left.

"This way," he says.

The tunnel slopes down, slow but steady. Nail tests every step before he puts his weight on it, tapping the floor with the end of his pickaxe. Tap, tap, step. Tap, tap, step. I do the same, even though I don't really know what I'm listening for.

"How deep do we gotta go, Nail?"

"Till we hit something worth digging."

"And how long's that?"

"Don't know. Nobody's been down here, remember?" He taps the floor again. "Could be a hundred steps. Could be a thousand."

"A thousand?"

"You wanted double pay."

I shut my mouth.

Tap, tap, step.

"...Nail?"

"What."

"What if we get lost?"

He holds the lamp up and points at the wall. There's a small scratch on it, fresh, cut with the tip of his pickaxe. I didn't even see him do it.

"Every twenty steps," he says. "We follow 'em back."

Course he thought of that. He always thinks of everything.

After a while, Nail stops.

"Huh."

"What?"

He lifts the lamp closer to the wall. "Look at this."

I look. At first I don't get it. Then I do.

The walls up there, where everybody works, are rough. Chipped and jagged, full of pick marks going every which way. But these walls are smooth. Not perfect, but way smoother than anything up top. The corners are cut clean. Even the floor's flat, like somebody leveled it on purpose.

"Who dug this?"

"Not us." Nail runs his hand along the stone. "Nobody up there cuts like this. Not even the old-timers. You'd need tools we ain't got."

"So somebody else came down here?"

"A lot of somebodies." He holds the lamp toward the ceiling. There's a groove carved along the top, running deeper into the tunnel. "And they came down here a lot. You don't make a path this nice for one trip."

I don't know why, but the back of my neck goes cold.

Smooth walls. Black and smooth.

Where have I seen that before?

"Come on," Nail says. "Let's keep moving."

The deeper we go, the thicker the air gets.

It ain't hard to breathe, not exactly. It's just heavy, like breathing through a wet rag. It's warm too. Warmer than it should be, this far from the suns. Guess that old miner was right.

I wait for the cough to come. It always comes when the air's like this.

It don't.

I breathe in again, slow, just to check. My chest feels fine. Better than fine. It's like my lungs actually like it down here.

That's weird. That's real weird.

Nail's stopped again, watching the lamp. The flame's still leaning, pointing deeper into the tunnel.

"Air's moving," he mutters. "Air don't move unless it's got somewhere to go. Means there's another way in." He looks back the way we came, then forward again. "Or another way out."

"But nobody knows about it?"

"If they did, they wouldn't have needed to dig through that wall." He watches the flame a little longer. "Whoever made this place knew this mountain better than any of us ever will."

The flame keeps leaning, steady and patient, like it's pointing the way.

In my pocket, the stone is warm.

And it's getting warmer.