The Goblin Bride (Beneath Sands Book 1) by Emma Hamm (good short books TXT) 📕

  “Now those ye be wanting to keep track of. They tell us which way to go and which way we went. Ya remember the color of the arrow you choose. You follow the arrows of the same color and ye’ll make it back to the elevator.”

  “Right.” She said quietly, making a note in their mind that the arrow they had followed was decidedly purple in tone.

  Simon had a confident gait about him, broad shoulders taking them deeper and deeper into the mine. Every now and then they walked past a small trickle of a water. She had never seen anything like it in her life. So much water just running freely and yet they weren’t gathering it to use.

  “Is the water poisonous?”

  The question seemed important to her. There was no reason for them not to be using the water that was down here. The people in the town could use this. It could be gathered and everyone would save money for food and better shelters.

  The grunt from in front of her made her stomach sink.

  “The water’s fine. We’re not allowed to touch it, don’t get it in your head.”

  “How would they know?” Her voice had raised to its regular pitch for a moment, nearly breaking her cover.

  “How would they not? They check all of us when we leave to make sure we ain’t smuggling gemstones to sell ourselves. You think they wouldn’t notice buckets of water? The City officials know everything. Don’t risk it. They’d rather take yer head.”

  Finally Simon seemed to be slowing. They rounded a bend where the tunnel became significantly smaller. With the light on her helmet, she could see just enough to notice that there had been chisel marks grinding away at the narrow tunnel.

  “So this is where I work. It’ll be nice to have a little help today.” He coughed once more into the handkerchief she had given him, and Jane noticed that more blood was splattered onto the cloth.

  “How do I work?”

  “What?” He looked at her startled.

  “I’ve… never-“

  He nodded firmly. “We don’t question things down here. All you got to do is swing that ax and hit rock. The more you knock off the better.”

  She looked at the stone dubiously. It couldn’t be that hard to just hit something until it knocked off. The stone must be slightly soft to be able to do that.

  “Go on, give it a try.”

  She took a deep breath, glanced at Simon, and then lifted the axe over her head. Theoretically it should have been simple. Lift axe, swing hard, hit stone. It didn’t take one of the City government officials to do this job. So that’s precisely what she did. As soon as the pick axe hit the stone, the ringing traveled up her arms and into her jaw.

  Pain exploded in her head and neck. Jane was certain that she had knocked her brain around so hard that she would be seeing stars for a week. Swearing profusely, she dropped the axe and started shaking her hands.

  The booming sound was not coming from her head. In fact, it was coming from the big man next to her. Simon was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down his face. He was putting himself into another coughing fit, and yet still he managed to laugh through it.

  “That was a terrible trick! How am I supposed to do this then?” Jane was already tired of his prank, her arms still aching from the force she had hit the stone with.

  “Ah, lad. Welcome to the club.” He finally propped himself up on the wall and gave her another one of his pats that sent her stumbling. “That ain’t no trick. It’ll make you lose your teeth hitting that hard, but that’s the life of a miner.”

  He winked at her before turning and giving the stone a blustering hit of his own. A large chunk of the wall fell underneath his hit, the point of the axe having hit the perfect point that would chip.

  “Oh you’re just showing off now.” She grumbled, turning back to the rattling work as the large man’s laughter rang in her ears.

  Work in the mines was hard. Every day for a week she went down into that hole with the men. Every night she returned home bone tired and aching. She had thought herself a strong woman. With shoulders and arms like hers, Jane had thought she could keep up with the men. But the longer she was in that pit, the more she realized that that it was no place for a women. It was no place for anyone.

  Her back was in so many knots she could hardly tell what was spine and what was muscle. Her arms could hardly lift above her head, and yet every day she had to go back and do that again. Headaches started and ended on the tails of each other from the ringing hits. Whether she would ever get her normal hearing back, she wasn’t certain. What she did know though, was that she was quickly coming to hate the work in the mine just as much as the other men. Her spine was surely curving just like the others.

She had just managed to slide into bed one night when she heard rustling from the mat beside her. Luther was apparently not asleep just yet, though she had hoped that he would be. Jane hated to wake them when she returned. He had enough worries on his shoulders, he didn’t need to add her to it.

“Jane?”

The whisper alerted her that he was looking at her, though she could only make out the slight shadow of his form as he rolled. She traced the line with her eyes.

“I’m home.”

“Are you sure you have to keep doing this?” His voice held more meaning than she wanted to look into. The boy was becoming a man, and Jane hated that. He was just a child to her, always would be even though he was only eight years younger than her.

“I’m