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

Gingerly, I lower myself to the ground, keeping the wall behind me. I fold an arm under my head and stare into the blackness, wishing it held the answers we both so desperately need.

14

For the first time since Santiago pulled me from the cave, the devil is waiting for me in my dreams.

I’m walking back and forth in front of the entrance to El Rosario in my dream, the moon high above me, unreachable, the rock lot empty. The whole scene has the flavor of deep night and, other than my footsteps, nothing disturbs the quiet but the sighing of wind over the holes in the rock.

I’m startled to realize I’m wearing a helmet but not my miner’s suit. I can’t figure out why I’m at the mine in the middle of the night. I scan the empty lot in front of me, the barren crags surrounding me. Nothing. But I can’t shake the feeling that there’s a danger I’m not seeing.

Then, finally, I turn and see an unmistakable glow coming from inside the mine. Just like the night I went looking for Daniel, someone is in there when they’re not supposed to be.

And then, in the way of dreams, I’m deep inside the mine, in the choking heat of zone seven, and I come around a corner and find Daniel, wearing his miner’s suit, sitting cross-legged in front of the devil. The glow I had seen was the reflection of his gas flame in the bloodshot light-bulb eyes of the Tío. I run over and shake my brother, but he doesn’t respond. He sits there, staring glassily, not moving.

The devil looks from my brother to me.

“What have you brought me, that I should spare his life?” he asks.

I think frantically, but nothing occurs to me. Like the last time I faced the devil, I haven’t brought anything to offer him. I grab a stick of dynamite from Daniel’s belt and hold it out to him.

“Here,” I say. “Take this.”

The devil doesn’t take it. I see the coca leaves sifting over him, see the burning cigarettes and streams of alcohol dripping out of his mouth. See my own pale face reflected in his painted light-bulb eyes.

“Not good enough,” he snarls. And wetting his fingers with the tobacco-alcohol drool slavering his jaws, he reaches his damp fingers toward my brother. Before I can move, he closes them over the flame on Daniel’s helmet and it goes out. From the light of my own helmet, I see the darkness overtake him. My brother’s body hits the floor.

When I scream, it brings the devil’s attention to me.

He grins.

“And what have you brought me, that I should spare yours?” he asks, reaching his still-dripping fingers toward my head.

Without thinking, I touch the fuse to the flame on my helmet. I hold the stick firmly between us and I have the satisfaction of seeing the devil’s eyes widen slightly in surprise before the dynamite explodes in my hand.

I wake up with a gasp, and a sound stops abruptly.

I lie there in the dark, trying to figure out what the sound was. I focus on it with all my energy, trying to push the nightmare from my head; trying not to imagine the devil hunkering in the darkness, leaning toward me.

Stiff from lying on the concrete, I shift around a little until I find places on my hip and shoulder that aren’t sore yet, and then I lie still. In the pitch blackness, I count my heartbeats and the snores of the boys in the room around me, each an island in a stale black sea. I try to think about happy things. Slowly, my panicked breathing settles and my muscles unclench. But still I can’t figure out what the sound was that woke me.

In the end, it’s not the sound but the smell that gives him away. As he leans over to push the bottle back into the pile of dirty clothes in the corner, I hear no sound of sloshing liquid; no sound of glass clinking against concrete. But my best friend’s breath washes over me, heavy with alcohol, just like the breath of the devil.

Victor’s drinking! I think. And between that and the horrible dream where I watch the devil of the mines kill Daniel, it’s good that growing up with Papi taught me how to cry without making a single sound. It allows me to weep silently without disturbing the boys around me until I fall asleep.

The next time I wake, I can tell it’s no longer night because the light leaking into our windowless room from the hallway allows me to see the space around me. I uncurl stiffly. Some of the boys have already left; some are still asleep. I have no idea what time it is. The ones who are awake are looking at me again with those slightly hungry eyes. I hurry to straighten my clothes and sit up. Victor is passed out beside me, arms thrown out to the side, boneless as a fish in a stall at the market.

I stare at him. When did my caring, sweet friend start trying to lose himself in a bottle? I had always assumed that the Mountain That Eats Men was named for the men who died in its mines. Now I see Victor and realize that the mountain is eating him too, as surely as if he had been killed in the rubble along with the other victims of the cave-in.

To distract myself from my thoughts, I take Daniel’s little clay angel out of my pocket and turn it over in my hands. It hasn’t held up very well to being carted around for so many days on end: its face is worn smooth where it’s been rubbing against the fabric, and its remaining wing is half chipped off. It occurs to me that if the wings crumble off entirely, then it will only