by Emma Hamm
But now there were no opals. No stones that would keep the people in the City entertained. Hells, no one had even found a quartz stone in weeks. There was nothing but rock and dust for those that ducked their heads into the mines.
“What would you have me do, father?” She whispered.
He would have laughed at her worry and scooped her into a bear hug so that she would relax for a few minutes. “You worry too much, Dandelion,” he used to say to her all the time.
Dandelion was the nickname he had chosen for her. He said of all the flowers he knew of, she was definitely a dandelion. The kind of flower that came from a weed but could grow in almost any kind of environment. She wasn’t so sure whether he was right. There weren’t any dandelions growing in Silnarra.
Luther could not work in the mines. Just the thought of her brother working to the bone as the men did made her flinch. Those that went into that chasm were never the same after. Hard work, grueling conditions, and the never ending wish that something good would come out of it quickly changed a man. Her brother still had a spine of steel that she enjoyed seeing. He needed to focus now more than ever on that University test.
The mine seemed like the only option. It was the only option for everyone here. The Penderghasts didn’t have a man that could work in it anymore. Women were not allowed to work in the mines. She was stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“Hey there boy! Give a man a hand would you?”
She turned to look at the man calling out, realizing that he was speaking to her. “I am no boy, but I’d be pleased to help you. What can I do for you neighbor?”
And it was in that moment that the plan formed in her mind. She was tall for a woman, broad shouldered and strong. If the mines were the only option for her family, then they would be using the mines. Whether they were allowed to or not.
CHAPTER TWO
SHE ITCHED AT her chest. The bindings wrapped around her breasts caught every drop of sweat that slid between them. Her long hair was braided and wrapped at the crown of her head. Jane had refused to cut it even if it did jeopardize the lie. Her brother’s cap would have to hold it.
Luther had not been pleased about this plan. He had argued for hours that this was his job as the man of the house now. It was illegal for women to work in the mines. Terrible things happened to women that were found down there.
However, Jane hadn’t wanted to hear any of it. She was going to do this for their family and he was going to sit down at their table and study for that test. He was their future. She was the means to get to that future.
All she had to do was get through the bird man.
“Next please.”
She cleared her throat, deepening her natural tone. “I heard that yer lookin’ fer workers. I’m a strong man, ain’t never worked in a mine before, got clear lungs.”
The bird man arched an eyebrow, looking over Jane critically. For a moment she thought she was caught, knowing for certain that the man would recognize her eyes or the stubborn set of her jaw that marked her family so clearly.
Eventually he nodded though, looking back down to stamp a seal upon a piece of paper. Clearly bored, he slid the paper underneath his glass safety net and nodded to her right. “Follow the line over there. They’ll get you set up and off to the mines. You’re here for a week; if they like you enough you’ll get another. Next please.”
She almost sagged in relief. Her plan had worked. Now she just had to get into the mines and start working. It felt as though the hard part was over, when in reality it was only just beginning.
The men in front of her were dressed identical to all the others. Browns were the choice colors of everyone here. From their pants, shirts, and skins, all of them were brown. To see someone that wasn’t tanned from the sun here was rare. Jane and her family would have been lily white-skinned if they had been allowed to live in the city. They had the freckles and the light hair to prove it. Instead they were all darkly tanned from long days in the sun and dry heat.
The man in front of her coughed hard. She recognized the sound. That had been the same cough her entire family had heard for the months her mother had hacked in the corner of their tent. It wasn’t a normal cough, both wet and dry at the same time. Too much sand lodged in the lungs would do that to a person. They called it the sand sickness. As far as any of those who lived in Silnarra could figure, people inhaled too much sand and eventually it just stopped them from breathing.
Pulling a small square of fabric out of her pocket, she leaned forward to tap the man on the shoulder. “You could use this, I’m guessing.”
As he nodded at her, she was surprised to find him rather handsome. She couldn’t see much of him underneath the full red beard on his face, but he had kind eyes. Sky blue and framed by crow’s feet, he was the kind of man that looked like he laughed often. “I thank ye. Blasted cough will get the better of me.”
It likely would. Not many lived through the sand sickness. She was about to answer him when he started coughing again, pressing the cloth to his mouth as a few specks of blood were splattered against it. By her count, he didn’t have much time at all.
“First time in the mines?” He asked her once he managed to stop coughing.
She nodded in response, nerves making her shuffle her feet as the line seemed to move far too slow for her liking.
“Ah it’s not so bad.” He turned fully to her, sticking out a hand that now had smudges of blood across it. “Simon.”
The last thing she wanted to do was touch that hand, but she reached out anyways. “Nice to meet you Simon. I’m J-Joseph.” She stuttered the name out.
“Well Joseph, welcome to the team. You stick with me and I’ll get you through yer first day.” They shuffled forward in the line. “Tomorrow yer on yer own.”
They were outfitted with the uniforms of the mines. Hard hats were handed to them, the lights checked to be sure that they would click on when the button on the side was pressed. Pick axes seemed to be the weapon of choice, so Jane picked up one of those instead of the shovel that she would have originally chosen. It was a good choice in the end. She was able to follow Simon to the elevator that would take them down a few levels into the depths of the mines.
The door screeched as metal against metal locked them into the elevator. She had never been in something like this before. Her heart picked up speed, jaw working as she grasped the edge of the elevator to try and ground herself.
“You’ll be alright boy.” Simon said from beside her quietly, a wry grin on his face. “It ain’t never been an elevator to kill one of us yet.”
If she hadn’t already been swallowing when the elevator started moving down, she would have screamed. Her stomach swooped up to the area around her throat and she was certain that this was the end for her. She tried to hold her breath the whole way down.
The heavy clang of the elevator hitting the ground softly had her swallowing once again to keep the bread inside her belly.
“See boy? You made it through.” Simon slapped a heavy hand against her shoulder, rocking her forward.
Each man that walked out in front of her had a slumped shouldered lope that made her question this plan. Clicks echoed around her as each man snapped the switch on his helmet to illuminate the ground in front of them. It was easy to follow what everyone else did, but she still had to take a deep breaths as she stepped into the pitch black of the mines.
There were no lights down here at all, just the few bobbing beams of those with helmets. Cold and damp, the mines were so very different than where she had come from. Jane could hear the slight dripping noise as water slid from the ceiling to the ground. The floor underneath her feet felt slippery but she couldn’t look down to see what she was stepping on. Simon was moving forward and she couldn’t afford to lose sight of him.
The walls glimmered as they walked past, reflecting the light of their helmets.
“It’s not what I thought it would look like,” sh
e said.
Simon glanced over his shoulder at her, pick axe slung over this shoulder. “Oh aye, it never is. People up top seem to think that we’re digging holes down here. These mines were here long before us.”
“Were they?”
“Of course! All the shafts are as smooth as a baby’s bottom. We don’t dig any of the new shafts, we just try to widen ‘em enough until we hit something.”
She swallowed hard. “Hit what?”
“Stones! What else are we looking for down here?” Another coughing fit wracked his frame, making the giant man before her curl into himself. “We want those gemstones that’ll make us rich.”
The tunnels before them seemed to continue longer than she would have ever dreamed. Every now and then one of the men in their group would veer off down a tunnel, each marked carefully with a colored arrow.
“What are the arrows for?” Jane asked quietly.
“Now those ye be wanting to keep track of. They tell us which way to go and which way we went. Ya remember the color of the arrow you choose. You follow the arrows of the same color and ye’ll make it back to the elevator.”
“Right.” She said quietly, making a note in their mind that the arrow they had followed was decidedly purple in tone.
Simon had a confident gait about him, broad shoulders taking them deeper and deeper into the mine. Every now and then they walked past a small trickle of a water. She had never seen anything like it in her life. So much water just running freely and yet they weren’t gathering it to use.
“Is the water poisonous?”
The question seemed important to her. There was no reason for them not to be using the water that was down here. The people in the town could use this. It could be gathered and everyone would save money for food and better shelters.
The grunt from in front of her made her stomach sink.
“The water’s fine. We’re not allowed to touch it, don’t get it in your head.”
“How would they know?” Her voice had raised to its regular pitch for a moment, nearly breaking her cover.
“How would they not? They check all of us when we leave to make sure we ain’t smuggling gemstones to sell ourselves. You think they wouldn’t notice buckets of water? The City officials know everything. Don’t risk it. They’d rather take yer head.”
Finally Simon seemed to be slowing. They rounded a bend where the tunnel became significantly smaller. With the light on her helmet, she could see just enough to notice that there had been chisel marks grinding away at the narrow tunnel.
“So this is where I work. It’ll be nice to have a little help today.” He coughed once more into the handkerchief she had given him, and Jane noticed that more blood was splattered onto the cloth.
“How do I work?”
“What?” He looked at her startled.
“I’ve… never-“
He nodded firmly. “We don’t question things down here. All you got to do is swing that ax and hit rock. The more you knock off the better.”
She looked at the stone dubiously. It couldn’t be that hard to just hit something until it knocked off. The stone must be slightly soft to be able to do that.
“Go on, give it a try.”
She took a deep breath, glanced at Simon, and then lifted the axe over her head. Theoretically it should have been simple. Lift axe, swing hard, hit stone. It didn’t take one of the City government officials to do this job. So that’s precisely what she did. As soon as the pick axe hit the stone, the ringing traveled up her arms and into her jaw.
Pain exploded in her head and neck. Jane was certain that she had knocked her brain around so hard that she would be seeing stars for a week. Swearing profusely, she dropped the axe and started shaking her hands.
The booming sound was not coming from her head. In fact, it was coming from the big man next to her. Simon was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face. He was putting himself into another coughing fit, and yet still he managed to laugh through it.
“That was a terrible trick! How am I supposed to do this then?” Jane was already tired of his prank, her arms still aching from the force she had hit the stone with.
“Ah, lad. Welcome to the club.” He finally propped himself up on the wall and gave her another one of his pats that sent her stumbling. “That ain’t no trick. It’ll make you lose your teeth hitting that hard, but that’s the life of a miner.”
He winked at her before turning and giving the stone a blustering hit of his own. A large chunk of the wall fell underneath his hit, the point of the axe having hit the perfect point that would chip.
“Oh you’re just showing off now.” She grumbled, turning back to the rattling work as the large man’s laughter rang in her ears.
Work in the mines was hard. Every day for a week she went down into that hole with the men. Every night she returned home bone tired and aching. She had thought herself a strong woman. With shoulders and arms like hers, Jane had thought she could keep up with the men. But the longer she was in that pit, the more she realized that that it was no place for a women. It was no place for anyone.
Her back was in so many knots she could hardly tell what was spine and what was muscle. Her arms could hardly lift above her head, and yet every day she had to go back and do that again. Headaches started and ended on the tails of each other from the ringing hits. Whether she would ever get her normal hearing back, she wasn’t certain. What she did know though, was that she was quickly coming to hate the work in the mine just as much as the other men. Her spine was surely curving just like the others.
She had just managed to slide into bed one night when she heard rustling from the mat beside her. Luther was apparently not asleep just yet, though she had hoped that he would be. Jane hated to wake them when she returned. He had enough worries on his shoulders, he didn’t need to add her to it.
“Jane?”
The whisper alerted her that he was looking at her, though she could only make out the slight shadow of his form as he rolled. She traced the line with her eyes.
“I’m home.”
“Are you sure you have to keep doing this?” His voice held more meaning than she wanted to look into. The boy was becoming a man, and Jane hated that. He was just a child to her, always would be even though he was only eight years younger than her.
“I’m making us money Luther. This is the quickest way to do it.”
“I know that, I just-” he paused, and she heard the rustle of him running his fingers through his hair. She watched as his shadow tossed aside the blanket.
“It’s frustrating for you knowing that I’m working so hard, isn’t it?”
“I’m supposed to be the man of the family, Jane.”
So it was as she had thought. Her brother was a proud young man, and he was going to turn into a good one just like their father. To know that a woman was doing a man’s job was killing him.
“Jane, I’m telling you I can work in the mine for a little while. You can finish out this week, and I will take your place.”
“Absolutely not.” She responded instantly. “You are going to keep studying. That test is important Luther, far more important than a few aching muscles.”
“I can’t stand to stay here any more. I’m not doing anything for this family. Father would be disappointed in me.”
Jane knew what their father would have thought. He would have been endlessly proud that his son was doing so much for his family. He would have pushed and prodded until Luther was studying for hours upon hours, only because their father had seen something in him that not many others had.
Luther was smarter than anyone she had ever met before. She could still remember laying out on the sands with him when he was just six years old. He would point out the constellations to her that he had learned from his book. The pictures had always been her favorite part. She had given up on enjoying reading a long time ago. Jane had chosen to experience life first and read a
bout it later. Luther though, he read the books solely for the knowledge.
Luther wanted to learn everything that he could from them though. He had soaked up the stories and mythology until he could recite them as well as the best teachers. She had been so fascinated by him as he grew. The boy had turned into a young man that had only begun to grow more and more intelligent.
Their father had seen something in him. He had never thought for a second that Luther was destined for the mines. He had always known there was a good chance for Luther to take them to a better place.
“Father would have wanted you to keep doing this. You know that.”
Her hand stretched across the space between them, searching for the long fingered hand that matched her own.
“Luther, he always believed in you. He wanted you to do exactly this. Study, learn, take us to a better place.”
“I should be taking care of you and Willow.” The sullen tone in his voice was one she had heard many times before.
“You are. You’re going to save us from this land of sand and sun, Luther. You’re going to bring us to the City where there are lights and floors. To have a roof over our head, not just a strip of leather, was what Father always thought you could do.”
She squeezed his hand hard.
“I am so proud of you, Luther. You are the most incredible young man that I have ever met. You’re going to do great things. Our family name will not always be associated with the mines. That is more important than proving yourself worthy to take care of us.”
She hoped that he understood that. They were all proud of him. If one of their own rose from the camp to the City, that was something that would be talked about for years. The Penderghast family that didn’t have to live in the dirt anymore.
“You really think so?”