Mother Lode

by E. Rose Sabin

  They picked their way past the buckets and continued their search in the area where the boys worked, their efforts marked by rough spots where rocks had been dug out of the wall and the ground. The cave narrowed and curved; the distant circle of light marking the mine entrance was no longer visible.

  “Doesn’t look like she’s in here,” Torby said, his words echoing from the cavern walls.

  “I wonder how far back this cave goes?” Lina said, shining her light on the walls. “Could there be a back way out of it?” She didn’t expect an answer and didn’t get one. If there was another exit other than the cave mouth through which they’d entered, it was possible Melusine had escaped that way. Yet if there were such an outlet, wouldn’t the miners have used it rather than coming out the front? Lina kept them moving on. The ground became rockier, indicating that they’d reached a section not yet mined.

  Suddenly Bryte stopped. “Look!” She shined her light on something up ahead.

  It might have been a bundle of old rags. But Lina was certain, even as she headed toward it, that they’d found the missing girl.

  Bryte reached her first. “Those beasts! They left her here deliberately. She’s tied up. And gagged.” Even as she spoke she was working at the knots that bound the cloth tightly around the girl’s face.

  “Is she alive?” Lina asked, reaching Bryte’s side.

  “I’m not sure. She’s awfully cold. Shine your light on me while I work on this knot.” She struggled with the cloth, finally got her a finger beneath a loop and loosened the knot. She pulled the cloth out of the girl’s mouth. “She’s breathing. Barely. Let’s get her untied and wrap blankets around her.”

  The tight knots in the binding ropes resisted their efforts, but Torby produced a small knife and used it to saw through the strands. When they got her wrists and ankles free, they straightened her and wrapped her in the blankets they’d brought.

  “Can you carry her?” Lina asked Torby.

  “I think so. She can’t weigh much, thin as she is.” He bent and lifted her into his arms. Straightening, he said, “It’s a little awkward. She’s tall, but she isn’t too heavy for me. Let’s get her out of here.”

  A small moan offered assurance that the girl did indeed live. “Let’s see if I can get some water into her,” Lina said, taking from her pack one of the water bottles she’d brought.”

  “Careful. Don’t let her choke.”

  Bryte received a scathing glance from Lina at that caution. Lina poured a few drops of water onto her fingers and ran her wet fingers over Melusine’s lips. The lips parted. Lina let a few drops fall between them. The girl swallowed. “More.” The plea was so weak it could scarcely be heard. But Bryte rejoiced to hear it. Now they just had to get her back to the house and into Doctor Metheny’s care.

  Their pace was quicker as they headed back through the mine. They reached the beginning of the sluice trough. Not too much farther now.

  A huge blast shook the ground. Bryte grabbed for Melusine to keep Torby from dropping her. A sound like thunder rumbled and crashed, pummeling them with echoes. Lina broke into a run. Bryte stayed with Torby, who couldn’t run with Melusine in his arms.

  They hurried along the length of the trough. At its end they should have been able to see light from the cave mouth. The darkness was as intense as ever outside of the range of their handlights.

  “We’re trapped,” Lina announced, anger honing her words. “They’ve set off an explosive to bring down a landslide and block the mine opening. They used the girl as bait to get us in here and seal us in.”

  “They’ll hear that explosion at the house,” Torby said. “They’re bound to come out to investigate what it was. They’ll see the rock fall and dig us out.”

  “Probably,” Lina said. “Bryte, whoever comes, will you hear them talking?”

  “I don’t know,” Bryte replied. “I’ll hear the rocks being moved, but as to voices, well, it depends on how thick the rock fall is.”

  “You need to listen very carefully and hope you hear voices and that we can make them hear us. Because if they come, and they start digging us out, they’ll be doing just what the miners want.”

  Bryte frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t you see? It’s a trap, but we aren’t the main victims. We’re the bait. If they can lure most of the adults out here to dig us out, they can attack the house, retake the orphans, and get away. By the time they dig us out, the miners will be far away in some well-concealed hideout.”

  Still holding Melusine, Torby sank down onto a boulder that had rolled into the cave. “But we need to get out. This poor girl needs care right away.”

  “Yes, she does,” Lina said, “but the only care she’ll get right now is what we can give her. We’ll need to try to keep her warm and make her as comfortable as possible while Bryte listens for any indication of activity on the other side of the rock fall.”

  “Quiet!” Bryte ordered after what seemed hours but can only have been the time it would require to react to the sound of the explosion and rush from the house to the mine. “I hear rocks being moved.”

  “We need to shout to make them hear us,” Lina said. “Tell them to go back and guard the house.”

  “Maybe if we all yell together,” Bryte said. “On the count of three, yell ‘Go back! Guard the house.’ Ready? One. Two. Three.”

  As they yelled, rocks tumbled inward with a loud clatter. The noise of falling rocks drowned their shouts.

  “I don’t think they heard us,” Bryte said. “They aren’t likely to, with all that noise.”

  More rocks fell, forcing them to hurriedly retreat farther back in the cave. Unfortunately, the tumbling rocks left no opening in the blockage. The entrance remained sealed, and the cave remained in darkness.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  FIRE AND RAIN

  Teddy felt cross and unappreciated. His hand hurt. Not the right one, the left—the missing one. He kept trying to flex fingers that he no longer had. He didn’t like having been left here in the house while Master Wilcom, Doctor Metheny, and Officer Sagist went out to discover the source of the loud explosion that had startled them all and frightened the younger children.

  He’d argued that he should go in place of Master Wilcom or Officer Sagist, that at least one adult should remain in the house with the children. But to those adults he was just one of the children, and what did he know? They’d said that since Nia and Petrus were older and could take care of the younger children, and Nia had proved such a good nurse, it would be safe to leave them in charge.

  Nia and Petrus. Not him. He hadn’t proved responsible enough? Not even though he almost got killed saving Lina’s life? Not after all he’d done before that to help rescue the orphans?

  He was tempted to shape-change and follow them in his coyote form. He needed to know whether the coyote would be missing a limb and, if so, whether he could move as fast on three legs as he always had on four. He walked to the back door and stepped outside, ready to shift. Instead, he paused, his attention drawn to a sound that aroused his curiosity. He listened.

  Footsteps. Stealthy. Someone prowling around outside. He knew they shouldn’t have left the house unguarded!

  But the footsteps were receding, moving away from the house. One of the orphans, perhaps? Maybe visiting the latrine? But they’d been told to use the indoor bathroom previously reserved for the Coopers’ use. Besides, the steps were moving in the wrong direction for that purpose. They were fading into the distance. He’d better go back inside and check to be certain all the orphans were accounted for.

  As he turned to reenter the house, he smelled smoke. The odor came from one of the additions where the orphans were housed. Shifting forgotten, he ran toward that addition and saw flames rising from the roof. He dashed back into the house shouting, “Fire! The wards are on fire! Get everyone out.”

  He raced into the girls’ wing “Nia! Gretta! Fire! Get all the girls outside!”

  As he went on t
o the boys’ wing, Petrus came running out, carrying Len and followed by the other boys. “The roof’s on fire,” Petrus yelled.

  Nia was already leading the girls out. As they passed Teddy and headed for the front door, Teddy was relieved to see that all of the girls were on their feet. The ones who’d been under the doctor’s care had apparently recovered enough to be out of bed and able to move quickly in the face of this new threat. Cara trotted beside Nia, one hand clasped in her sister’s, the other holding her beloved doll.

  “Water!” Teddy hollered. “We’ve got to get water on it.”

  “We can’t get water to the roof,” Conlin said, shaking his long, dark hair out of his eyes. “This place’ll burn to the ground.”

  Indeed, when they got outside, flames were visible rising from the roof at the rear of the boys’ wing.

  “If only it would rain,” one of the girls said with a sob.

  “Rain,” Cara echoed, clutching her doll to her chest and looking up at the sky. “Rain,” she called again.

  In answer to the child’s cry, a small dark cloud formed above the building. It grew. Teddy watched in amazement as it spread like an umbrella above them and first sprinkles, then large drops, then sheets of rain poured down from that wondrous cloud.

  Several of the children laughed with relief. “Thank the gods. Thank Arene,” Petrus said, referring to the patron goddess of Wide Sands Province.

  Some others echoed Petrus’s words, but Teddy looked at Cara. He remembered the equally puzzling and unusual rain that had come just after Bryte, Nia, and Cara had emerged from the mine. “Thank you, Cara,” he said.

  The little girl grinned.

  No one but Nia seemed to have heard his words to Cara. Her brow wrinkled in an expression somewhere between puzzled and concerned, but she said nothing, so Teddy saw no need to explain his certainty that the little girl had somehow caused the unusual rainfall.

  He thought about what Lina had told him about being gifted—that there were many different gifts. Not all gifted were shape-changers like him and her. Bryte’s gifts were her exceptional hearing and her ability to glow with a blinding light when something made her angry. Teddy didn’t know anyone else who was gifted, but Lina had said she knew a lot of people who were gifted in many different ways.

  Those thoughts of Lina reminded him that the men had not returned from checking out the source of the loud boom they’d heard. The miners had explosives. Suppose they’d set off an explosion at or in the mine. Lina and Bryte could be trapped—or killed. And Torby. The peacekeeper had gone with them. Suppose all three of them were in the mine, dead or injured or simply trapped.

  The men could be trying to reach them. That could be why they hadn’t returned. He had to know!

  “Petrus, Nia, let’s get everybody back into the house. The fire is out, but we’re all soaked from this rain. Everybody needs to dry off.”

  Petrus nodded, and they herded everyone inside, found towels, and were doing their best to get everyone dry. Teddy didn’t wait to help with the drying off. “I’m going to look for Master Wilcom, Doctor Metheny, and the Peace Officer. I want to see what’s keeping them.”

  Without waiting for a response or objection, Teddy headed back outside and ran toward the mine. As soon as he was sure he was out of sight of the house, he stopped and shifted to his coyote form. As he’d feared, his left front paw was missing, cut off shortly above the heel knob. But he quickly discovered that he could still run. He merely had to adjust to running with three legs rather than four. Three legs were still better than two.

  As he approached the mine, his coyote senses located the men. He continued more cautiously, recalling that Officer Sagist and Master Wilcom were both armed with pistols. He would have shifted back to his human form, but his sharp eyes told him even from a distance what the problem was. The explosion had brought down a rockslide that blocked the mine entrance. The men were trying to dig through it, but each time they removed a rock others fell, hurtling down toward them. The explosion must have been set off above the mine entrance, causing a large portion of the hillside to crumble and fall over the cave opening and out toward the path where the men stood.

  Teddy, always reluctant to reveal his shape-shifting gift, disliked having to reveal it to more people, but neither did he want to be shot while making an attempt to get inside the mine in the only way he saw possible.

  He changed to his human form and walked up to the three men.

  “Teddy, what are you doing?” Doctor Metheny demanded. “Why have you left the house?”

  “We had a fire. The miners set fire to the roofs of the additions ,” Teddy explained. “Don’t worry; the fire is out, but they may try again. You’re needed there.”

  “Are all the children safe?” the doctor asked in alarm.

  “Yes. A hard rain fell and put out the fire.”

  “Rain? It hasn’t rained here,” Officer Sagist said, disbelief written plainly on his face.

  “It rained on the house,” Teddy insisted. “Hard enough to put out the fire. But a couple of you need to go back. Have you heard anything from inside the mine? Do you know if Lina and Bryte and Officer Shuer are trapped in there?”

  Master Wilcom slowly shook his head. “We can’t hear anything through all these rocks.”

  “We thought we heard something one time,” Doctor Metheny said. “We weren’t sure, though, and it wasn’t repeated.”

  “I’ll go back to the house,” Officer Sagist declared, running his hand through his thick shock of black hair. “I want to find out what’s going on there.”

  Doctor Metheny gave him a sharp look. “Maybe I should go with you. Mistress Wilcom and my wife still haven’t returned?”

  “No, but they’ll probably be back soon, so maybe you all don’t have to go back. Maybe just Master Wilcom and Officer Sagist.”

  “And what can just you and I do here, Teddy?” the doctor asked.

  “Well, we might hear something. I’ve got extra sharp hearing, and Lina might find a way to let us know they’re okay.”

  “I guess that’s worth trying,” the doctor said, casting a sharp-eyed glance at Teddy as though he suspected Teddy was planning something that he didn’t want to share with the others.

  “Let’s go then, Herrol,” Officer Sagist said, using what must be Master Wilcom’s given name.

  Doctor Metheny barely waited until the departing two rounded a bend before asking Teddy, “All right, what’s your plan, young man?”

  “I think I may be able to find a way through the rocks,” Teddy said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You’d get killed trying.”

  “Maybe not. A coyote is a lot lighter than a boy and more sure-footed.” With that, Teddy shifted.

  Doctor Metheny shook his head. “I’ll never get used to seeing such a thing,” he declared.

  Teddy-coyote regarded the rocks. His sharp eyes spotted a possible way up onto the fallen rocks. The rock fall was thickest at the bottom where more rocks had landed and spread out. He leaped up, finding paw-holds on stones that seemed steadier. Slowly, carefully he picked his way upward, while the doctor stood well back, watching and calling out encouragement.

  He scrambled up onto rocks that wobbled a bit but seemed to form the top of the outer tier of the fall. He had reached a point well above the doctor’s head. Balancing carefully, he used the stump of his right front leg to nudge the rock just beyond where he stood, sending it and a rock above it hurtling past him and down to the ground. Cautiously he pulled himself up into the gap left by those rocks. A gap that meant there were no rocks to fall in it from above. He wormed his way inward, knocking loose several rocks, some of which tumbled down, taking more with them as they rumbled toward the doctor. But some fell inward, crashing onto the stone floor of the mine. Remaining very still, he waited until no more rocks fell. Then squirming forward on his belly, he moved toward a dark opening between stones less tightly jammed together than those below him.

  He explor
ed that opening with his nose, probing its depth by scent, the smell differing according to the extent of blockage. Sniffing, he learned that this small opening led not to more stones but to an open space. If he could enlarge the opening enough to wriggle through or at least poke his head through, he could look down into the mine.

  He inched forward, pushing his nose against the stones to either side and above, testing their stability. When he pushed against the one above, it teetered, and he withdrew his nose and butted the stone with his head. It rocked. He butted it again, and it toppled forward, carrying with it several other stones and leaving a gap large enough for him to crawl through.

  The rocks beneath his body shifted as he eased himself over them. He made it to the edge and was able to look down. There, in the distance! A light! He wriggled with glee. That was his undoing. The stones on which he rested slipped, slid forward, and fell, taking him with them.

  Bryte didn’t realize, as she sprinted toward the fallen coyote, that her gift-light had burst forth until Lina called, “Bryte, can you dim that glow so we can see what’s happening?”

  She didn’t stop. She couldn’t control the glow, and she’d told Lina that numerous times. Fortunately, while it blinded everyone near her, it had no effect on her own vision. She’d seen the coyote she knew to be Teddy twist as he fell so that he landed on his feet. But her relief at that was short-lived. Stones dislodged by his passage continued to fall, one striking his hindquarters, bringing a yelp of pain. Then a large rock struck his head, and he collapsed.

  Disregarding her own safety, she ran into the midst of the falling rocks, reached the coyote, and dragged him back to safety. As the clatter of the dropping stones diminished, she heard Doctor Metheny call, “Teddy, are you all right?”

  She stood and yelled back as loud as she could, “He’s hurt but he’s alive.”

  She looked down at the coyote. Yes, his breathing was steady. He was bleeding a bit where the rocks had struck but didn’t seem badly hurt.