Treasure of the World

by Tara Sullivan

  Also by Tara Sullivan

  The Bitter Side of Sweet

  Golden Boy

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  Copyright © 2021 by Tara Sullivan

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  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Sullivan, Tara, author.

  Title: Treasure of the world / Tara Sullivan.

  Description: New York, NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2021. | Summary: After a mining accident kills her father and leaves her brother missing, twelve-year-old Ana puts her dreams on hold and goes into the mine to help her family survive in their impoverished Bolivian silver mining community.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020040827 (print) | LCCN 2020040828 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525516965 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525516972 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Silver mines and mining—Fiction. | Bolivia—Fiction. | Family life—Bolivia—Fiction. | Child labor—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S95373 Tr 2021 (print) | LCC PZ7.S95373 (ebook) | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040827

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020040828

  Ebook ISBN 9780525516972

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Images of railway, rocks, textures, and fabric courtesy of Shutterstock

  Cover design and additional art by Eileen Savage

  pid_prh_5.6.1_c0_r0

  For Dad, who loves Bolivia

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Tara Sullivan

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  A Note on the Use of Italics, Languages, and the Bible

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Even though I hate getting up before dawn to make coca tea for my family, I have to admit that there is nothing so stunning as watching the sun rise at the top of the world.

  Holding a match to the pile of dried dung, I blow on it softly until the flame catches. Once it’s going strong, I put the beaten tin pot on top of it and breathe on my chilled fingers, looking forward to the tea. It will be warm and filling, and because it’s only water, I’ll be allowed to have as much of it as I want. I toss a handful of coca leaves into the pot and stand, hugging my arms around myself as the orange sun shoulders its way out from behind the rough red slope of the Cerro Rico.

  Behind me, I hear the soft shuffle of feet as Abuelita joins me from the house.

  “Look at that, Ana,” she says, tipping her wrinkled face to the sunlight. “Only God has a better view.”

  I smile. “I bet God is warmer.”

  “Probably.” She laughs. “How’s the tea coming?”

  “Almost ready.”

  “Good. Your brother woke up with that cough again. A cup of coca tea would do him good.”

  I frown, worried. It seems like Daniel is always fighting off one chill or another. Although we’re not even a full year apart, it usually feels like I’m much older because I’m always taking care of him. He just gets sick so easily. If the rest of us get a sniffle, his turns into bronchitis; if we get a fever, his turns into pneumonia and he’ll still be fighting to breathe weeks after the rest of us are better. This high in the Andes, there are only two choices for temperature—cold, and colder. Today is the first day of February, right at the end of summer. I chew on my bottom lip. If Daniel is struggling this much now, I hate to think how sick he could get when we get to June and July, the depths of winter.

  I hand a cup to Abuelita and follow her inside, carrying the pot. Papi doesn’t like weak tea, but I don’t want Daniel to have to wait longer than he has to. I put the pot on a folded manta that Mami has placed in the center of the room. We all dip our cups in, sipping until our bellies slosh. The tea will take the chill off the morning and trick us into thinking we’re full for about an hour. Then we’ll start chewing coca leaves to dull the real hunger that comes from working on an empty stomach. Mami helps Papi buckle an acetylene tank to the belt on his miner’s coveralls and hands him his lunch sack as he walks out the door. Abuelita sits off to the side with Daniel, rubbing his back as he coughs between sips of tea. I get dressed for school, sure I’ll be going by myself again, but Daniel surprises me.

  “Mami, can I go to school today?” he asks. “Please?”

  She walks over and smooths his thick black hair away from his forehead. She hides it in a caress, but I notice she lets her hand rest there an extra moment, checking for fever. This time, bronchitis has kept him home from school for over a week.

  “I don’t know, mi hijo,” she says, concern lining her round face, “your cough is still pretty bad.”

  “I feel fine, really,” he protests. “Ana will make sure I’m okay, won’t you, Ana?”

  I shoot him a glare for making me a part of this.

  “If we left now, we could walk slowly,” I say, leaving the decision up to Mami.

  For a moment I’m not sure what it’s going to be, but then Abuelita chimes in and settles the matter.

  “Let the boy go. He’ll never learn anything sitting around the house.”

  And so I find myself starting the long, slow walk to school with Daniel beside me, his thin frame bundled in two sweaters to combat the early-morning cold.

  The Cerro Rico, the mountain we live on, is huge. If you crane your neck upward, you can see past the brick-colored summit to the dry, pale sky beyond. Sometimes the road runs right along a cliff face and you can see down to the city of Potosí at the base of the mountain. If, instead of looking up or down, you stare at your feet, it feels like the red road stretches on forever. What you don’t see, no matter how you tip your head, is any green at all. This region of Bolivia is so high up there’s not a tree or a bush or a blade of grass anywhere. Just red and yellow and gray stripes of rock and the never-ending dust that slowly sifts into your clothes and cakes the inside of your mouth, claiming you, camouflaging you so that, if you stay here long enough, even you can’t tell where the mountain ends and you
begin.

  We go slowly, like I promised Mami, and we stop to rest a bunch of times, sitting on boulders along the side of the path whenever a coughing fit takes Daniel, until he catches his breath and can walk again. The way to school is mostly downhill. Even so, on a normal day, with Daniel walking full speed, it takes more than an hour to get there over the rough, rocky paths scraped across the mountain’s face and chipped out of its sides. Today, it takes longer.

  Turning the last corner, I see our school below us, a tiny dust-colored building surrounded by a cinder-block wall, wedged into a crack between a cliff face and an ever-growing pile of slag from a nearby mine entrance. It crouches there, between the cliff and the cliff’s guts, looking like it might be crushed at any moment.

  I hear the static hiss and scratch of Don Marcelino’s ancient speakers echo off the cliff. We’re going to be late! I dart a glance at Daniel. I know I promised Mami we’d go slowly, but we might make it in time if we run. We’re practically the same age. It’s not like he needs to be babied all the time.

  “Think you can run?” I ask.

  He nods.

  When we get to the front, Daniel bends double trying to catch his breath. I feel a little bad for pushing him. Grabbing a rock from the ground, I tap it against the peeling blue paint of the tall metal gates.

  Doña Inés, one of the helpers, opens the gate. It creaks and groans on its dust-caked hinges. She smiles when she sees Daniel.

  “Welcome back,” she whispers, one hand on her huge belly. Soon it will be another helper who opens the door because Doña Inés will be having her baby. We duck around the door and scamper into the courtyard. Doña Inés shuts the door softly behind us.

  The rest of the school is already lined up by age in the tiny packed-earth courtyard. Don Marcelino stoops at the base of the flagpole, twisting the wires at the back of his battered stereo and muttering. For once, I’m glad the technology is misbehaving. It gives us the chance to sneak in late without anyone noticing.

  Daniel and I both hurry to join the end of the line for twelve-year-olds. Even though I’m older by almost eleven months, they put us in the same class. I try not to let it bother me too much. Daniel steps into place behind me, and I shoot him a grin over my shoulder that we made it. Daniel smiles back, his teeth a flash of white in his skinny face.

  Just then, Don Marcelino wins his battle with the ancient speaker and the opening strains of the national anthem blare at us.

  As we all straighten to attention and sing along, saluting the flag, my eyes wander to the rows on my left. The messy gaggle of four-, five-, and six-year-olds is a huge, unmanageable pack. There are at least thirty or forty of them, still not all facing forward even now that the music is playing. But then, year by year, the rows get shorter. By the row of twelve-year-olds, where we’re standing, there are only six of us. Victor, Juanillo, Emily, Wilma, and Álvaro are standing to my right: they’re the only five students in the whole school who are older than me.

  The music cuts off and Don Marcelino addresses us, like he does every morning, standing tall in his dark slacks and patterned wool sweater. His voice booms and his square-framed glasses make his face look very impressive, but still I ignore him. I don’t need to listen to Don Marcelino because all he ever does is talk about big things: pride, patriotism, work ethic. I don’t come to school to learn about the big things. I know those from home.

  Pride is what makes you not tell people when your papi hits your mami.

  Patriotism is what makes you not curse Bolivia when you get so tired of living on this one mountain that you could scream.

  And work ethic is something a child of six from the Cerro Rico knows more about than Don Marcelino ever will. He comes up here every day in a pickup from the city of Potosí. He’s not a miner.

  I tune him out, letting my eyes lift over the solid walls of the school to the high cliffs stretching beyond them, wondering whether today will be the day when I finally learn something that will lead me off this mountain and toward a future I actually want.

  * * *

  “Thank God that’s over,” mutters Daniel as we get our mugs of thinned-down oatmeal and go sit in a corner together after Don Marcelino’s speech. The younger kids wait in line, impatient for the food. One of the few benefits of being older is eating first.

  I sip at my steaming cup. “Yeah,” I agree.

  Susana, Alejandra, Robertito, and Óscar—the other twelve-year-olds—sit with us, along with a few of the eleven-year-old boys Daniel is friends with. Even though he’s thirteen, Victor joins us too. Victor’s smart and kind, with an easy smile. He’s in the year ahead of us when we line up because of when his birthday falls, but we’ve been friends for as long as I can remember. He never makes Daniel feel bad about being sick, and he has never made me feel like I’m somehow less for being a girl, like Papi and some of the other boys do. Even though I giggle and joke with Susana and Alejandra, Victor is my best friend.

  For a few minutes all of us focus on the food, scooting sideways on the bench until everyone fits. No one gets breakfast at home. Once we’re done, though, everyone starts chattering. Óscar and Daniel are discussing La Verde’s chances in this year’s Copa América since they made it to the quarterfinals last year. Robertito interrupts.

  “Hey, guys, did you hear? They found Mariángela’s body.”

  “Wait—what?” Susana squeaks. “Her body?”

  Mariángela used to go to our school. She was a few years older than us, so we weren’t all that close, but she had been kind and we looked up to her when we were little. She stopped coming to school about two years ago and, just before Christmas last year, took a job as a guarda for one of the big mines on the other side of the Cerro. Then, in mid-January, she vanished.

  When the miners reported for work in the morning, she wasn’t standing by the mine mouth guarding the tools. She wasn’t with the equipment. There was no one watching the pile of high-quality ore. Worse, she hadn’t gone home. For the past two weeks people have been looking for her.

  “Yeah,” says Robertito grimly, “they found her in an abandoned mine mouth on the other side of the Cerro. She’s dead.”

  Being a guarda is lonely, dangerous work. I swallow against a lump in my throat. It’s not hard to imagine a gang of robbers—or even a pack of miners, drunk after leaving work—coming up on Mariángela and her not being able to fight them off.

  Susana and Daniel pepper Robertito with a hundred questions about what he knows, but I try not to listen as they gossip about what must have happened to her.

  With a shudder, I tune them out and turn to Victor, who, I notice, is unusually quiet. Normally Victor would be right in the middle of everything, but today he’s not his typical sunshine self.

  I elbow him gently. It’s not like him to stare into his cereal with a frown tucked between his eyebrows and ignore everyone.

  “Hey, what’s up with you?” I whisper under the buzz of the other kids’ conversation.

  “Nothing.” He pastes on a smile, but it doesn’t crinkle the sides of his eyes. Now I’m actually worried.

  “No, seriously,” I say, putting down my own mug and facing him. “What’s wrong? Are you upset about Mariángela? Did something happen at home?”

  Victor lives alone with his papi ever since his mami died three years ago. Even before his papi paid for all the expensive medicine for Victor’s mami, they weren’t rich, and ever since she died, they never seem to have enough money. Sometimes his papi gets too sad to work and they go awhile without food.

  Victor shrugs.

  “Is your papi okay?”

  “Everything’s fine, Ana.” I can tell from his tone that he doesn’t want to talk about it. I give him what Abuelita calls my “signature glare.” You could save the miners a lot of drilling and blasting, she teases me. Glare at the mountain like that and you’d bore a hole right through to the other
side in no time.

  Sure enough, Victor cracks. He glances away and starts to pick at a loose thread on the rumpled La Verde shirt he always wears.

  “This is my last day of school.” His voice is barely above a whisper, but I hear it anyway.

  “What?”

  Victor winces. I guess my voice was louder than I meant it to be. The rest of the kids break off their conversation and stare at us. Victor flushes. Then he straightens his shoulders.

  “I’m not coming to school anymore. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be joining my papi in the mine.”

  I stare at him. Victor’s face, usually so happy, looks sadder, older. When he sighs, it’s not hard to imagine the ghost rattle of silicosis in his lungs.

  If he becomes a miner, you might not get to see what he’s like when he’s older, a horrible voice hisses in my head. A lot of miners don’t live more than ten years after starting work. I slam down firmly on the thought, not letting it breathe. I refuse to think about that number and my best friend.

  “It’ll be fine, Victor,” I say. “Maybe the price of mineral will go up and your papi will have enough without the extra you’ll bring in.”

  Victor nods, but his face is tight.

  Susana, Alejandra, Daniel, and Robertito all make sympathetic noises. The prices of zinc, tin, and most of the other metals and minerals that come out of the Cerro Rico were good until 2014, but recently they’ve been so low that most mining families are struggling more than usual.

  Óscar grimly finishes his oatmeal. “I’ll be there soon too, probably,” he says, punching Victor lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t clean out the mountain before I join you.”

  Victor forces another smile, but it’s all teeth and no joy.

  None of us asks him when he’ll be back.

  Somehow that makes it worse.

  * * *

  Knowing that Mariángela is dead and that Victor will be leaving school puts me in a sad mood the rest of the day. I struggle to pay attention in class and my cheeks fill with heat when our teacher has to call on me twice before I hear him. Even then I don’t have the answer prepared. Usually, I’m completely focused at school, working hard to be at the top of the class. But today . . . today is awful. Things that feel a lot more important than a math lesson have gone wrong and my brain whirs to try to find a way to fix them.