The Stolen Child(82)

crispness. Speck and I had awakened next to each other in a sea of books, then left the library in those

magically empty mo-ments between parents going off to work, or children off to school, and the hour

when stores and businesses opened their doors. By my stone calendar, five long and miserable years had

passed since our diminished tribe took up our new home, and we had grown weary of the dark. Time

away from the mine inevitably brightened Speck's mood, and that morning, when first I saw her peaceful

face, I longed to tell her how she made my heart beat. But I never did. In that sense, the day seemed like

every other, but it would become a day unto its own.

Overhead, a jet trailed a string of smoke, white against the paleness of September. "We matched

strides and talked of our books. Shadows ahead ap-peared briefly between the trees, a slender breeze

blew, and a few leaves tum-bled from the heights. To me, it looked for an instant as if ahead on the path

Kivi and Blomma were playing in a patch of sun. The mirage passed too quickly, but the trick of light

brought to mind the mystery behind their de-parture, and I told Speck of my brief vision of our missing

friends. I asked her if she ever wondered whether they really wanted to be caught.

Speck stopped at the edge of cover before the exposed land that led to the mine's entrance. The

loose shale at her feet shifted and crunched. A pale moon sat in a cloudless sky, and we were wary of

the climb, watching the air for a plane that might discover us. She grabbed me by the shoulder and spun

me around so quickly that I feared imminent peril. Her eyes locked on mine.

"You don't understand, Aniday. Kivi and Blomma could not take it another moment. They were

desperate for the other side. To be with those who live in the light and upper world, real family, real

friends. Don't you ever want to run away, go back into the world as somebody's child? Or come away

with me?"

Her questions poured out like sugar from a split sack. The past had eased its claims on me, and my

nightmares of that world had stopped. Not until I sat down to write this book did the memories return,

dusted and polished new again. But that morning, my life was there. With her. I looked into her eyes, but

she seemed far away in thought, as if she could not see me before her but only a distant space and time

alive in her imagination. I had fallen in love with her. And that moment, the words came falling, and

confession moved to my lips. "Speck, I have something—"

"Wait. Listen."

The noise surrounded us: a low rumble from inside the hill, zigzagging along the ground to where we

two stood, vibrating beneath our feet, then fanning out into the forest. In the next instant, a crack and

tumble, muffled by the outer surface. The earth collapsed upon itself with a sigh. She squeezed my hand

and dragged me, running at top speed, toward the entrance of the mine. A plume of dirt swirled from the

fissure like a chimney gently smoking on a winter's night. Up close, acrid dust thickened and choked off

breathing. We tried to fight through it but had to wait upwind until the fog dissipated. From inside, a

reedy sound escaped from the crack to fade in the air. Before the soot settled, the first person emerged.

A single hand gripped the rim of rock, then the other, and the head pushed through, the body shouldering

into the open. In the wan light, we ran through the cloud to the prostrate body. Speck turned it over with

her foot: Béka. Onions soon followed, wheezing and panting, and lay down beside him, her arm roped

over his chest.

Speck leaned down to ask, "Is he dead?"

"Cave-in," Onions whispered.

"Are there any survivors?"

"I don't know." She brushed back Béka's dirty hair, away from his blink-ing eyes.

We forced ourselves into the mine's darkness. Speck felt around for the flint, struck it, and sparked

the torches. The firelight reflected particles floating in the air, settling like sediment stirred in a glass. I

called out to the others, and my heart beat wildly with hope when a voice replied: "Over here, over

here." As if moving through a snowy nightmare, we followed the sound down the main tunnel, turning left

into the chamber where most of the clan slept each night. Luchóg stood at the entranceway, fine silt

clinging to his hair, skin, and clothes. His eyes shone clear and moist, and on his face tears had left wet

trails in the dirt. His fingers, red and raw, shook violently as he waited for us. Ashes floated in the halo

created by the torchlight. I could make out the broad back of Smaolach, who was facing a pile of rubble

where our sleeping room once stood. At a frantic pace, he tossed stones to the side, trying to move the

moun-tain bit by bit. I saw no one else. We sprang to his aid, lifting debris from the mound that ran to the