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

I shudder, remembering my days stumbling through the bowels of the Cerro Rico. As if on cue, the boy with the flashlight turns it off and the darkness closes over us like a fist. I find my breathing coming faster and try to control my panic, but it’s like I can feel the mountain around me again, the devil’s hot breath at the nape of my neck. A tiny sob escapes me.

Next to me I hear a small rasp. A match whooshes to life in Victor’s fingers. He digs through the pile between us with his other hand and comes out with a filthy stub of a candle. He holds the match to it, then sets the tiny flame on the ground, shaking the match out. I heave a shuddering breath.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

“Not the end of the world to be afraid of the dark,” he says without judgment.

I feel like I owe him a better answer.

“After the funerals, I went into the mountain to see if I could find Daniel,” I say. “The tunnel collapsed. I spent two days trying to find my way out.”

“God, Ana!” He sounds horrified.

My eyes pull to the candle as if drawn by magnets. I realize I’m shaking and curl my hands into fists so he won’t see them. “When I was a baby, I was scared of the dark because I imagined it was full of monsters. But now I’ve lived and almost died in the dark, and I know that it’s not full; it’s empty. Completely empty. And I’m more afraid of it than ever.”

I examine the tiny candle and try to calculate how long the stub will last before it gutters.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

“Not your fault,” I say with a shrug.

“Actually”—Victor’s voice is strained—“it is.”

That’s enough to pull my eyes from the candle to his face. “What? Don’t be ridiculous.”

Victor won’t meet my eyes. He’s staring at the candle flame so intently it’s like the world might end if he blinks. Even in the flickering light I can see stress lines on his face that weren’t there before.

“Victor . . . ?”

For a long moment Victor is quiet. Then, in a voice almost too low to hear, he starts talking.

“I . . . I was there,” Victor starts, “the day of the disaster. I know everyone is calling it a cave-in, but I was working in an old section of zone two, laying dynamite. I was”—he pauses, searching for the right word—“sloppy. I laid them badly.” He shuts his eyes against the pain of the memory. “I only had the fuse partially out of the mine when they started going off.” He lifts his eyes to mine, begging me to understand. “I made it out okay, but then I saw my papi’s body and all the others. It was my fault, Ana. That’s why I can’t go back. The miners that died there that day, Daniel . . . I killed them.” Victor starts to cry. “I’m sorry, Ana. I’m so, so sorry.”

I sit, stunned, struggling to imagine the guilt he’s been carrying. Victor has always had a tender heart, shooing stray dogs away gently when other boys would have hit them with sticks. I can’t imagine how he must feel, thinking he was responsible for the deaths of multiple men. I remember how he wouldn’t meet my eyes the day of the funerals. Now I know why.

“The mines are dangerous,” I say, my voice as soft as I can make it. “Things go wrong there all the time. It’s not easy to lay dynamite right, and even when you do, you risk the mountain coming down on your head because of hundreds of years of people digging tunnels without a plan. It happens. No one would have blamed you. No one does blame you.” My gaze drops to my hands in my lap and I admit the truth that has been eating holes through me like acid rain boring slowly through rock. “They blame me.”

“You?” That startles Victor into looking at me again. “But you weren’t even working there the day of the disaster.”

I shrug. “I’m a girl. They say I should never have gone into the mine. That I called down the anger of the Pachamama . . . or the devil . . . whoever.”

Victor snorts. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. When I went there to ask questions about Daniel, they spat at me and told me to stay away.”

Victor shakes his head. “It’s not your fault. That’s just silly.”

I reach over and take his hand, careful not to press on his split knuckles.

“It’s not your fault either. Those deaths,” I say, and it breaks my heart inside to realize I’ve finally added Daniel to that number, “were accidents.”

Victor looks at our hands and doesn’t say anything. The candle stub flickers between us, throwing our faces into light and then shadow and then light again.

Then my stomach growls loudly, breaking the moment.

“Hungry?” Victor asks, a sideways smile on his face.

“I guess,” I say, embarrassed.

“Well, then, sorry again,” he says. “I lost today, so I didn’t get paid. I don’t have any food on days I don’t win.”

Suddenly I remember the bundle that Carmencita gave me. I had tied my manta into a quick sling and pulled it over my shoulder. Now I rummage through it and find she packed me a few loaves of flat sweet bread and some cheese.

Smiling, I hold up the feast so Victor can see it.

He’s stunned for a moment, then he breaks into a huge grin.

“Anyone who says you’re unlucky is an idiot.”

I laugh and hand him half the food.

And with that, the candle gutters out, leaving us in the dark. This time, though, the darkness doesn’t feel as awful as it did before.

We sit like that for a while, a friendly silence filling the space between us. Then I hear Victor shift, his shirt scraping down the wall. His legs pull away from mine and I realize that he’s lying down to go to sleep. I consider the bare concrete floor beneath us. It won’t be comfortable, but I’ve slept on