by Mara Duryea
Zhin and N’Nar looked back. The Antiminar held a red robe out to Ikalkor, who staggered back as if Rilkin offered Cubon on a plate.
“I’m not hurt,” said Ikalkor, “so I not need such stuff.” He fled out of the room, and the air noticeably freshened.
Vijeren and Sibare glanced sideways at one another. The former folded his arms in thought.
“Is he allergic to fresh things?” said Vijeren.
“Looks like it.” Sibare gazed at Miranel, who was crawling under one of the beds. “Is that why he can’t stand Miranel?”
“She hasn’t even done anything to him yet.”
Rilkin’s brows went up. “Yet?” He burst out laughing. A few seconds later, the entire cleaning room vibrated with mirth.
Within an hour, they each had taken a medicine bath, applied new bandages, and donned the baggy white pants and airy red robes. The clothing had come in every size, even small enough for Miranel.
As Vijeren tied the little strings of the robe together, he said, “Now you can tell us why you have a tug, Dad.”
Zhin’s muscles tensed. “Oh…yeah…” He wanted to throw up. “What about breakfast?”
“Tell us during breakfast,” said Sibare.
Zhin noticeably paled. “Okay.” He departed the Cleaning Room like a lost soul.
N’Nar watched the back of his head as he followed him out. He understood more than anyone else what Zhin felt, but he couldn’t suggest that Zhin not tell. The Berivor was determined to do it. He had to. N’Nar had suffered Zhin’s anxiety, and he was anxious to get this over with. Once Zhin explained everything, this awful pain would go away.
“Uh…” N’Nar’s mouth worked, and Zhin looked at him. “I don’t think it’ll be so bad.”
“We’ll see,” said Zhin tonelessly.
Outside, the little family prepared for breakfast. Since the haladon had appeared in the evening, it wouldn’t appear in the day. When fish sizzled over the fire, Zhin knew it was time. The tug clenched, and he rubbed his chest. A pit formed in his stomach. He stared at the dancing flames as he spoke.
“Rilkin, you know part of this, but not all.” He twisted the bottom of his robe. “I’m going to tell all of you what Dad told me after Grandpa and Velevy came. He told me just enough so that I could know, but when I got older, he told me more. I’m going to tell you that one.”
Rezh
1
The Mirilite Mines
Over a metal box full of rough mirilite shards, Rezh chipped at a wall of pallid rock. He wore tinted goggles, for the mirilite mines shined unbearably bright. White dust coated his ragged work clothes. Sweat trickled down his dusty body in dark rivulets.
Mirilite heated when struck, so the mines sweltered. Breaks were allowed only during a faint. Many of the miners didn’t wear shirts because of the heat, but landing on the sizzling floor without protection didn’t appeal to Rezh, as incompetent as the protection was. Some had suggested thicker clothing, but it had killed two of the volunteer test subjects and landed the third in the vozhrith.
To add to the uncomfortable work conditions, they wore boots to protect their feet. New miners found it degrading, but after awhile, degradation was better than third-degree burns.
Rezh cracked a thick slab of mirilite from the wall. He jumped back as it almost landed on his foot. The ground sparked white on impact, and a small flame shot a few inches out before shrinking into nothing. Rezh lifted the heavy slab with gloved hands and dropped it in the box. He then carried the box to a metal cart several feet away, and dumped it in among other mirilite debris. Wood wasn’t allowed in the mines. The tracks conveying the carts were made of burning hot iron.
Since the cart was full, Rezh pushed a red buzzer on the wall, activating the electricity in the tracks. The cart rolled into a hole in the partition. Workers at the other end would cut the mirilite, purify it so it wouldn’t explode, and distribute it into the world. Another cart rolled from another opening and stopped where the previous one had been. The sizzle of electricity shut down.
The Berivor returned to his spot, set the box down, and began chipping at the wall again. Little flames winked beneath each blow. Small shards stung his arms through the white shirt. Buzzers from various parts of the mine went off. Electricity hissed on and off. Clink-clink-clink said the pickaxes and dropping mirilite. Rezh’s head seemed to float away from him. He pressed his hand against the wall to regain his equilibrium.
“Dizzy, Rezh?”
Rezh turned his head. His sakreen stood near, a Berivor man with much the same build as Rezh: tall, streamlined, and sturdy. He also wore the same tattered white clothing, save his head was covered with a white bandana. All sakreens wore these.
Rezh straightened up. “I’m okay.” Nobody admitted they needed help. Sakreens fired people as quick as you would burn a swarm of richids. It was policy to unemploy a man rather than work him to death, or suffer him more breaks. More of those meant less work done. It wasn’t good for the mirilite business. Mirilite was in high demand, and so mirilite companies were extremely competitive. Droves of young, desperate men were in ready supply to take a rundown worker’s place.
“Your cart’s full,” said the sakreen. “Get water.”
Rezh glanced at the empty cart he and six others shared. His companions were working harder than usual. “No, no, I’m fine.”
“Obey me.”
Rezh swallowed. “Okay.” He was fired; he knew it. When a sakreen ordered somebody to take a break, the end was near. Leaning his pick against the wall, Rezh headed for the elevator shaft a short way down the tunnel. The elevator was large enough to carry twenty Kabrilor men.
As much as Rezh hated the mines, he feared to lose his job. Of course, if he could see the sky again, it might be worth it. He hadn’t seen daylight in three years. That was the average time frame for working in the mines anyway. He’d had glorious visions of stretching it to four, but now he realized it was a ludicrous hope.
He stepped into the shaft and it bore him upward, but not to the surface. The doors opened on an extensive domed chamber lit with purified mirilite. This part was made of wood. Being underground meant they could potentially run into an evergrin. The soulless monsters had a harder time cutting through wood, since it wasn’t earth. The train tracks were still made of iron, though. It stretched down a wide subway leading to the mining village, or the “neighborhood,” as they liked to call it.
Pulling his goggles down around his neck, Rezh headed to the small station in a corner. A Veerin woman resided inside. She controlled the train and the water, and led a solitary existence. She looked like a ghost, what with her white hair, deathly pale skin, and black eyes. They said she was a kossie. The miners had dubbed her Conductor. It was tradition to converse with her, but Rezh engaged with her because she was weird.
She fixed her freaky eyes on him. “Ah, what brings you here, Rezh?”
“The sakreen sent me up for water.”
Conductor twirled a strand of feathery hair around a slender finger. “Sakreen Zhayven?”
“Yeah.” Rezh plopped on the bench outside the small station. It was good to be off his feet. “I think he’s going to fire me.”
“Probably.” Conductor vanished. “After what happened yesterday, I’m surprised they didn’t ferry you out already.” A faucet turned on for several seconds, and then squeaked off. She reappeared with a jug of water. “Here.”
“Thanks.” He glugged the water down.
“Need more?”
He handed her the jug. “Yeah.”
She refilled the jug and returned it to him. “If you die on him, they hold him responsible, and then he could lose his job.” Though a Veerin, Conductor had been born in Visseria, and so didn’t possess the lazy Vaylanian accent. She leaned her chin in one hand. “Some of these men can’t handle the heat, or the dark, or the heat, or the heat, or the heat.”
Rezh smiled. “I better get back.” He stood up.
“Oh yeah, Rezh, happy
birthday.”
“What?”
Conductor painted her eyes with her hair. “Happy birthday. Well, tomorrow, happy birthday.”
“Thanks.” Rezh sauntered back to the shaft.
“Rezh,” said Conductor.
He turned back to her. “Yeah?”
“Tell your friend she’s not allowed in the mines unless she wears boots, goggles, and gloves.”
Rezh’s brows knit. “What friend?”
“She doesn’t talk to me, so I don’t know her name.”
Rezh glanced around in confusion. “Uh…okay.”
“She has some tough feet.”
Conductor often waxed strange, so Rezh ignored her. He pulled his goggles back on and returned to the bottom of the shaft. He groaned at sight of Sakreen Zhayven waiting for him.
“Did you get enough water, Rezh?” he said.
“Yeah.” Rezh suddenly realized he might be dismissed here and now. “I’m feeling all right. I was feeling all right when I left. We all just need to rest against the wall a little. Everybody does it.”
“Hmph.” Sakreen Zhayven examined a metal sheet in his hand. Each miner had a mark representing him. Rezh’s mark was a square with two parallel slashes inside it. Next to his mark were several tallies, each grouped into the months indicated at the top of the sheet.
“Four fainting spells last month,” said Zhayven, “and six this month. Tell me, Rezh, what’s that mean? It means one faint a week, plus an extra on the last.” His goggled face lifted to view the Berivor. “And the extra one only yesterday. You had to stay in bed for the rest of the day, I recall.”
Rezh picked at the hem of his frayed shirt, scrambling for something to say in his own defense. “But, but I have to stay. My parents’ knife store is struggling. I need to help them.” His plea sounded weak even to himself.
Sakreen Zhayven bent the metal sheet in irritation. “You’re gone, Rezh.” He thrust a dismissal ticket into the Berivor’s hand. It was a square sheet of metal the color of blood, meaning Rezh’s life was over. His mark was stamped on it. Once he left, a new recruit would receive this mark. “Inform Conductor so the ferry can pick you up in the morning. Aren’t you lucky the day is over, or you wouldn’t have been paid for it.”
As if on cue, the quitting time bell signaled, the buzzers went off, pickaxes leaned against the walls and the corridor filled with exhausted miners. Their voices hummed in Rezh’s ears.
They jostled him back into the elevator. Sakreen Zhayven sauntered in the other direction, as if there weren’t dozens of men flowing against him. There were other industrial elevators to catch potential let-gos in. Rezh leaned against the warm wall. What was he supposed to do now? What would he tell his dad?
The elevator hefted them to Conductor’s station. She waved at them as they piled into the train. The conveyance was a string of metal boxes without their tops. The head of the train resembled a square. Like the carts, it ran on electricity. The train would make five trips before the station emptied. Conductor would remain behind, growing weirder by the day.
Rezh approached her as the first trainload rumbled into the tunnel. “He fired me.”
Conductor held her forearm out to him. “I’ll see you later, Rezh.”
The Berivor knocked forearms with her. He didn’t realize how much he would miss her. “See you.”
“Maybe your dad is better now. You never know.”
Rezh nodded. “Yeah, but I never got a letter that said they were doing better.”
The train returned, and he climbed into the back car. It carried him down the tunnel for the last time. His mom and dad would be happy to see him in the morning. They never cared much about material things, and would rather have died of starvation than see him go.
The train halted in another station. Rezh followed the miners through a twisting hallway and into the “neighborhood.” It consisted of seventeen barracks, each built on a pillar of stone, reachable only by bridges. Some were manmade; others were natural. Rails had been bolted into the natural bridges.
The neighborhood didn’t have much else, except a huge pillar depending from the stone ceiling and into the depths below. Here the miners could drink, eat, fight, and compete against the other barracks if they weren’t too tired. All the bridges radiated from this point. Mirilite speckled everything.
Rezh gazed at the pillar as he crossed the bridge towards the third barracks, remembering the brawls he’d watched and participated in. He’d shaved the fur off of the feet of drunks passed out on the floor, competed in the name of the third barracks, and turned the worst dinners into food fights. Now it was gone.
He entered the third barracks: a large rectangle full of small compartments to the ceiling. Miners climbed up the compartments like ladders to reach their beds on the top. Rezh lived on the fifth row, sixth column, making his address 3-5-6. Climbing up the other compartments, he rolled into his bed. He pulled up the grate that protected him from falling to his death in the middle of the night. It transformed his compartment into a cage.
He stared at the little built-in bookshelf where his parents’ letters, a couple of books, his journal, a small mirilite, and a puzzle sat. A picture of his parents leaned in a corner. Rezh reopened one of the letters his dad had penned.
My son,
I miss you every day, but I am proud of what you have decided to do. I assure you that you will not have to work in the mines for long. When you return to the surface, you will find that your sacrifices have yielded a store of happiness, and we shall live like royalty. Be prepared for wonderful surprises when you return. This I promise you.
Your loving father,
Sizhirin.
2
The Homecoming
Rezh waved to the miners boarding the train. Laughter and loud voices bid him good-bye. In a few minutes, the train had carried them away, leaving the neighborhood in silence. Rezh hefted his small bag over one shoulder and ascended the stairway towards the elevator station behind the neighborhood. He hadn’t gone near this lonely stair in ages. The years seemed to have erased it until now.
He was leaving this underground city for good. Today he would behold the sun, and be free to bask in it. Rezh beamed, his mind whirling with dreams of ease and baskets of surprises. Maybe he could return to school, and become the mapmaker he’d dreamed of being. Mapmakers lived a life of adventure out in the broad world. The deepest they descended below the earth were the bunkers stationed at the roadsides.
This was his birthday. It would be like being born again. His heart thrilled. To be back in his mother and father’s loving presence had been a distant dream. He sped up.
On reaching the station, a small square building big enough for one Kabrilor, he glanced at the neighborhood and its tiny lights for the last time. Three years ago, he had arrived in misery and bemoaning his sunless fate. Now he was free. He hastened up to the station and handed a Rykori man his red ticket.
The Rykori slipped the metal ticket into a slot and the entire wall moved aside, revealing the box elevator that would convey him to the surface. The man handed him a bag of money: five weeks’ wages in the mines.
“Good luck, Berivor,” he said without emotion, and shut the doors on Rezh. The elevator rumbled and ground up the shaft. Rezh shoved the money into his bag. He could almost feel the sun nearing. The elevator halted. Rezh held his breath, and the doors opened. A blast of rainy air kicked his hair. Sunlight peeping through the clouds blinded him. Shading his eyes with one hand, he stepped outside.
The rumble of the river sweeping through the canyon town of Ambrian roared in his ears, as if welcoming his rebirth. The striped formations of the wind-cut canyon twisted around the bend towards the town. A ferry waited at a dock on the sandstone shore. The ferryman, a relaxed Hatrin, lounged on the boat’s edge.
“Come on, Berivor,” said the ferryman, “time to go home.”
Rezh smiled and climbed into the ferry. The Hatrin man steered the little boat into the current, and
they glided through the formations. Rezh breathed in his new freedom. It smelled of the rain, the river, the wind, and even the sun.
“How long have you been down there?” said the Hatrin.
“Three years,” said Rezh.
“Let me give you some advice, Berivor. The miners have a way of life underground that just doesn’t translate into life above ground. You look like some kind of creature out of a Midnight Gate. It’ll take some time adjusting, but don’t worry.”
Rezh grew quiet, letting it sink in. He’d thought he looked normal. He examined his unusually pale skin. Did he look just as creepy as Conductor? At least his hair had stayed dark brown, instead of bleaching white like hers. Maybe it was time she got fired.
“Berivor,” continued the Hatrin, “your boots.”
Rezh started. He’d been underground so long that he’d donned his boots out of habit. Yanking them off, he chucked them in the river. People would accept a soulless monster into their homes before a shod Berivor.
No self respecting Iling wears shoes.
“There you go,” said the Hatrin with a smile.
The ferry rounded the bend, and Ambrian appeared. Walkways crisscrossed the canyon. Stairways and elevators snaked up the walls, in which homes, stores, and markets were burrowed.
Colorful carpets hung out of the entrances like many-colored tongues. Red carpets sold food, blue sold clothes, green sold weapons, and so on. People scurried all over it like ants in a nest.
Sun shined on fluttering flags hanging in the entryways above the carpets. Music, voices, and a plethora of smells smacked Rezh’s senses like relentless hammers. His insides seized up.
The ferryman pulled up to the docks. “Good luck.”
Rezh jumped onto the rough sandstone. People stared at him, but he didn’t care. He hurried home to the other side of the bustling town. He crossed several bridges and ascended countless flights of stairs before he reached the residential district.