Treasure of the World by Tara Sullivan (free ebook reader txt) 📕

Mami and reach for a rock. Breaking it open on the ground in front of me, I scan the inside for traces of minerals we can sell: something too small for the miners to bother using the machines to sort. Instead, we do it by hand. I peer carefully at the chunks.

Nothing. Just like the search for Daniel.

I throw the worthless halves over the cliff and reach for another. I smash the rocks against each other, again and again, thinking back to my conversation with Victor when he helped fix the air compressor and wishing I could do something that actually made a difference. Instead, I’m stuck here, bashing leftover rocks against each other hour after hour after hour.

Ten hours later, when it’s too dark to see the colors striping the stones anymore, we stop. My fingers are sore, my nails are ripped, my mind is numbed by the repetition, and my heart is aching from having clocked another day without my brother.

“That was good work you did today, Ana,” Mami says with a smile. “Thank you for your help.”

I try to smile for her, but I’m not sure I manage it.

“Shh,” she says, softly brushing a strand of hair off my chapped face. “Tomorrow will be better, you’ll see.”

But tomorrow won’t be better. Because I know that, for all our work today, we weren’t lucky enough. The little pile of rocks we’ll bring to the smelter tomorrow has only the tiniest hints of metal in it. It’s probably not even enough to buy dinner for a day, let alone repay the cost of Papi’s burial. Which means that tomorrow will not be any better than today. Tomorrow I will have to skip school again to work as a palliri.

I want to scream. Cry. Tear down this entire worthless mountain with my bleeding fingers and cast it into hell where it belongs.

But I don’t say anything out loud.

Instead I follow Mami and Abuelita to our house through the gathering dark. When I look over my shoulder, in the direction of the El Rosario mine, I’m surprised to see someone wearing a miner’s suit walking toward our house. For a split second I want to believe it could be Daniel, but even from this distance I can see that it’s a large man, not a scrawny eleven-year-old boy.

“Who’s that?” I blurt.

Mami squints at the road and Abuelita crosses herself as if she’s seen a ghost. We all hurry into the house. We don’t know who it is and there’s no reason to take chances. He could be drunk or armed. Now that there’s only the three of us and no man in the house, Mami stacks rocks in front of the closed door at night.

We’re all inside when the knock comes.

“Doña Montaño? It’s César Jansasoy.”

We hurry to open it.

“Come in, come in!” says Mami, relief plain in her voice. She pulls over Papi’s old stool and asks him to sit.

César sits stiffly on the stool, glancing around. He pulls off his helmet and sets it on his knees.

“Did you find Daniel?” I ask, echoing my earlier question.

César shakes his head. “Not yet. But, with your permission”—he glances at Mami—“I’ll come by here on my way home after work and update you on the progress every day. That way you won’t have to send Ana to the mine to ask after me.”

I duck my head as Mami and Abuelita’s twin glares settle on me. I know they’ll scold me later for bothering César at work, but for now Mami just thanks him sincerely for his willingness to go out of his way for our family.

“No trouble, no trouble.” César waves off the thanks.

“Ana, go make some tea for our guest,” says Abuelita, and I scurry outside to do so. After all that César has done for me, the least I can offer him is a cup of tea.

As I sit by the pot, waiting for the water to boil, I think about how nice César is. I like that he always answers not yet when I ask about Daniel instead of no, and he always made sure to keep me safe in the mine.

He always made sure to keep me safe. My thoughts stutter to a stop. Is César still working to keep me safe from the miners who might do me harm? Is that why he’s walking three hours out of his way, round-trip, to come talk to us? Do enough of the miners blame me for what happened that it’s not safe for me to go back near El Rosario?

My thoughts drag up questions like an ore bin. And though I sift through the giant slag heap they make in my mind, I can’t find answers anywhere.

Four days.

It’s been four days since my father died and my brother vanished into the Mountain That Eats Men like heat through an open door.

Two nights that César has come by and assured us that every man in the mine has been searching for him, and yet, has found nothing.

Today was my second day with Mami and Abuelita, spending every moment that there is enough light to see breaking rocks to try to earn enough money to cover the costs of Papi’s funeral. Another day I’ve skipped school.

Four days, where without a man’s income, we have slowly run out of food.

Of course we didn’t buy meat, sugar, or any other luxuries. That wasn’t so bad. But this evening, after two days of backbreaking work, we walked down to the base of the mountain and handed over so much of what we’d made to the cemetery man that we couldn’t buy bread, just a few potatoes and some greens. And even that didn’t pay off our debt all the way. After dinner tonight, all we will have left in the house is a big bag of coca leaves. It’s true that chewing coca makes you less hungry, but that’s not the same as being full.

Mami sends me out to the cookstove to