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

me nothing more than a small pool of light to walk in. I run my fingers against both sides of the passageway as I go, to remind myself that they’re not closing in on me. I study the floor carefully and try to slow my breathing. I’m already sweating in my suit from the heat, and the farther I get from the entrance, the more frightened I feel.

It’s a good thing I’m looking down, because suddenly, in the very center of the floor, a great hole gapes in front of me. A rope pulley has been rigged over it: it’s not a random hole. It’s the entrance to zone seven, where Daniel was last seen. I lean over it and tip my forehead, but the depth of the hole swallows my light as if it doesn’t exist. I feel dizzy and lean away again, sitting down heavily.

Is the air harder to breathe here, or is it me? I can’t tell. My light is still burning, so I tell myself I just need to keep going. If the flame can breathe, there’s enough oxygen for you too, I remind myself, and scoot on my behind to the edge of the shaft.

It’s wider than the one linking zones one and five, so I won’t be able to brace myself against the walls. I sit on the edge for a moment, my feet dangling in open space. A torrent of hot air washes up at me from below, causing my headlamp to flicker again.

The breath of the devil.

Shaking off the thought, I reach out and grab the two ropes of the pulley and tug them toward me. I consider them for a moment. They carry buckets of ore up and down day after day. The full-grown men probably use them to steady themselves as they climb down. They should absolutely support my weight. Then again, ropes break all the time.

I take a deep breath and push off from the edge.

For one heart-stopping moment I swing in empty space. Then my back hits the opposite wall of the shaft. I twist around until my boots are scraping the sides and then lower myself down, hand over hand.

I have no idea how deep this shaft is and now I’m really regretting not telling anyone where I was going. If I vanish, I will never have said goodbye to Mami or Abuelita. And even if they guess that I came down here looking for Daniel when they see Papi’s gear missing, no one, not even César, will have any idea where to start looking for me.

This is insane, I decide, and reach up instead of down, set to haul myself to the surface instead of continuing to risk my own death to prove someone else isn’t dead.

I’m just tensing the muscles in my arm to pull myself out of the shaft when the beam from my headlamp swishes past a dark patch on the tunnel wall. I let the spin of the rope pivot me around and stare. There, burned into the side of the tunnel with the flame from an acetylene lamp, is the letter D.

I have no idea whether it’s my Daniel who has graffitied the wall or some other boy with the same initial who did it five, fifty, or four hundred years ago. Though he’s a mischief-maker, I can’t really picture my brother, with his weak arms and bad lungs, hanging from this rope like I’m doing now and deciding to scorch his initial onto a wall. It might not even be a D, come to think of it. It might be a lopsided O, or even a circle that was supposed to be part of a larger drawing. Still, I take it as a sign. I relax my grip again and slide farther down the rope.

When my feet land on the floor of zone seven, I prowl the dips and ridges like a hunter, swinging my light, searching for any clue of what happened to my brother, picking my way over the uneven floor. Climbing over a boulder, I trip in my too-big boots, landing heavily on my hands and knees. I’m about to heave myself onto my feet again when my light catches the edge of something caught in a crack at the base of the wall.

I reach in and, to my amazement, pull out a little mud angel. Fingers trembling, I turn it over in my hands. There’s no doubt. It’s the one I made for Daniel the day before he disappeared—I can still see the swells and dips of my thumbprints where I pinched the wings smooth.

My laugh is as shaky as my fingers. This little mud angel would never have held up in a cave-in. The fact that it’s still in one piece lets me hope that maybe, just maybe, my brother is too. But what on earth is it doing all the way over here? This is nowhere near where cave-in occurred. Nowhere near where they’ve been looking for him.

There’s a part of my brain that says he could have left this here before the disaster, but I shush it. For the first time in days I have real hope, and I can’t wait to take this home and show Mami and Abuelita. At the very least, this should give César a direction to start a new search.

Then, from just beyond the curve of the tunnel up ahead of me, I hear the sound of a voice. Miners! More men who shouldn’t be down here at this hour of the night, doing who-knows-what. And who knows what they’d do to me if they caught me down here alone. A vision of Mariángela’s mangled body jumps into my mind.

Clasping the angel in my hand, I leap to my feet and take a step back toward the exit.

And that’s when I feel the first of the explosions.

This deep in the mountain, it’s not even a sound, it’s a shiver I feel through the soles of my feet. I