Treasure of the World

by Tara Sullivan

  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 stop breathing, terrified. They’re blasting. Whoever these unknown men are, they’re using dynamite. I hold my breath, digging my fingers into the rock, trying to feel through the mountain.

  Even though I have no idea how many charges were set, I find myself counting them anyway, out of habit.

  One . . . two . . . Somewhere in the twisted web of tunnels, fire and explosives are ripping holes in the rock that weren’t there before, further weakening the mountain.

  Three . . . Abuelita said they’ve been mining in the Cerro Rico for over four hundred and seventy years. I wonder again how much more mining this one hill can take.

  Four-five-six explode together . . . Whoever those mystery miners are, they’ll be far away from the dynamite and safe.

  Seven . . . My breath is coming in gasps as I panic, and I can feel tears mixing with the sweat dripping off my face onto the ground. Please, I pray to whoever might be listening. Please take these tears instead of my blood. Don’t let me die when I just found proof that Daniel might be alive. Please.

  Eight . . . I shove Daniel’s tiny clay angel into a pocket, push myself to my feet, and make myself jog up the disused tunnel.

  Nine . . . ten . . . Surely they’re getting close to being done. I start to hope that I might not be buried alive today. Other than the irregular shudders, my tunnel is holding up well. If only my luck holds enough for the access tunnels to also be clear.

  Eleven . . . twelve . . . Yes, it’s going to be okay. I take a shaky breath.

  Thirteen. I hear a clattering, caving, rending sound behind me. In a blind panic, I break into a run, as fast as my terror-weakened legs can carry me. My giant boots feel like they weigh a thousand kilograms each, the suit is choking me, and my helmet rattles around on my head, throwing its beam in wild patterns over the jagged tunnel walls as I run.

  The rumbling behind me has stopped, but I can feel from the popping in my ears that something has changed. I scramble over the boulders, heading for the exit shaft, when I trip on a loose rock and go flying. Smashing to the ground, I feel both of my palms split open from the force, and my knee twists beneath me.

  I cry out in pain, but what’s the use of that? There’s no one to help me down here. Sobbing, I heave into a sitting position and clutch my knee, sending shards of pain shooting up and down my leg and leaving bloody handprints on my suit. Like when I first met the devil, I think.

  A cloud of rock dust billows out of the tunnel in my direction. I sit there, sobbing, and let it catch up to me.

  A rolling wave of filthy, scorching air washes over me, stinging my eyes and filling my lungs. For a split second, I whisper a prayer of thanks that it’s only dust, not tons of rock, that’s hitting my face.

  And then my light goes out.

  11

  I am plunged into darkness and a fear so complete that it’s like falling down a mine shaft to the center of the earth. My breath is wheezing in and out, rapid-fire, and I can’t get enough air, but whether that’s from poison gas or my panic, I have no way to know. I claw at the neck of my suit, though I know it’s not the problem, and force myself to scramble onto my feet. I lurch unsteadily, my twisted knee sending bolts of agony up my leg with every step. Somehow, in this complete blackness, I have to find that rope and get myself up it.

  I stumble in what I hope is the correct direction, arms sweeping blindly in wide arcs in front of me. They beat at nothing but dust-filled darkness. I suck in lungfuls of silica-clogged air and cough them back out again violently. Spots dance in front of my eyes. I worry I’m going to pass out.

  I slam into a hard surface and reel away. That should have been open space. If the tunnel bent that sharply, then I’m not where I thought I was. I turn around, disoriented.

  I stumble forward, agony lancing through my knee at each step, until I hit something else. Boulder? Dead end? No matter what it is, it shouldn’t have been there either. I realize I have no idea where I am in relation to the way out anymore.

  A distant part of my brain registers that if this area had filled with poison gas, I’d probably be dead by now, but I’m too afraid to be very happy about it. Thinking about gas does remind me of my lamp, though. I lower myself until I’m sitting with my shoulder blades pressed against the rock and reach up for my helmet.

  Sobbing, my breathing raw and ragged, I turn the valve off and lean my head against the wall behind me. I pull the little lighter out of the band around the helmet. My first instinct is to instantly roll the little wheel under my thumb, but caution makes me pause. I force myself to think. Clearly the explosions, wherever they were, caused an instability here in zone seven. I have no idea whether other parts of the mine have collapsed as well, but I can’t help but remember the overheard miner’s theory that it was Daniel’s open flame, added to a suddenly exposed pocket of gas, that vaporized him.

  Vaporized.

  I tuck the lighter back into the band of the helmet for the moment. I push my fingers gently against my knee, trying to gauge the damage. I gasp. In this murky world the pain is a crisp, bright thing I’m very sure of. But it’s probably not broken. I sigh with relief. It will hurt, but my leg should be able to support me on my climb out.

  I try to retrace my actions in my head; try to figure out which direction has the hole in the ceiling that leads to zone five and the way out. I stand up and take a step in the direction I think may be right when a horrifying thought occurs to me. What if there are openings in the floor of this tunnel too?

  In a heartbeat, I’m on my hands and knees again. If I stumbled into a floor-access tunnel, they’d find my broken body at the bottom of it. I don’t want to die. I scoot along the tunnel floor like a three-legged cat, holding my injured knee out stiffly as I climb over the rubble-strewn surface. I reach out a hand to trace along the wall and find nothing but open space.

  There should be a wall there.

  I’m sweating heavily and the suit sticks to my body, peeling off and slapping against me like terrible, slow applause as I crawl desperately around in the dark.

  I reach up and touch the lighter again.

  I need to know where I am.

  Vaporized.

  I let go and keep crawling.

  * * *

  I don’t know how much later it is when I finally give in to temptation and light the lighter. I bury my face in my knees and hold the lighter high above my head. One, two, three! I tell myself, and hold my breath as I flick the wheel.

  When I’m not instantly exploded into a million pieces, I lift my face.

  I notice two things almost simultaneously.

  First, the flame is a strange, unnatural color, which tells me that, though the air might not have vaporized me, it’s not so great for me to be breathing it and it’s probably not a safe place to have an open flame either.

  Second, the rock formations I can now see around me are completely strange. I’m at an intersection of four tunnels with no rubble on the ground. This isn’t a part of the mountain I’ve ever been in before. There is no hole in the roof as far as the eye can see.

  I let go of the little wheel. The flame snuffs out.

  I drink half my bottle of water, put fresh coca leaves in my mouth, and try not to cry.

  I’m lost.

  * * *

  I stumble in the direction I think I came, risk
ing a flame periodically. When I’m convinced I’ve gone the wrong way, I retrace my steps. But that route dead ends in a wide, sheer chimney with no ladder or rope. Turning again, I find myself crawling up an incline I don’t remember going down.

  My lighter is running low on fluid.

  My bottle is running low on water.

  I’m hungry.

  I’m thirsty.

  I’m tired.

  I’m scared.

  My knee hurts.

  When I can no longer stand being awake, I sleep.

  When I can no longer stand my dreams, I wake.

  How long have I been down here? Has it been a day? More than a day?

  I puff my breath against the tunnel wall and try to lick the moisture off, but all I get is a mouthful of rock dust. I know better than to drink from the stagnant orange puddles, but the sound of my feet splashing through them is the worst of taunts. When I finish my water bottle, I do cry.

  My lips crack and bleed.

  I sleep.

  I wake.

  I wander.

  I do it all again.

  And again.

  Eventually, I give up.

  In my head I say my last goodbye to Daniel, wherever he is, and whisper an apology to Mami, who will now have lost all of us to the Mountain That Eats Men. I apologize to Abuelita that she will never know my story. I lean my head against the rough stone wall of the tunnel and pray to God that death will not be as terrible as living has become.

  “Please,” I whisper through split lips to the glowing stars above me, “please.” I don’t even know what I’m asking for anymore.

  The stars twinkle and I close my eyes, satisfied that it’s time for me to die.

  The stars are so beautiful, I think sleepily.

  Stars?

  My eyes snap open.

  I crane my head backward and stare up again. Sure enough, there, far above me, through a narrow shaft in the rock, is the sky.

  I’ve found a way out of the mine.

  Muscles shaking, I drag my body around until I’m standing, belly pressed to the wall, never letting the stars out of my sight, terrified that they’ll vanish like a hallucination if I close my eyes even for a moment. But they don’t, twinkling on high above me.

  So high above me.

  I reach and grab the rough edge of the steep shaft and start to pull myself toward the stars. It’s hard going. This is a natural vent in the mountain, not a man-made tunnel, and it wasn’t designed to allow people through. At times the shaft narrows so that I’m scraping my shoulders and hips to wedge through; other times it hollows out so I have no way to find purchase between the two walls and have to crawl up like a spider, taking my weight on my fingertips and toes, risking a broken neck if my aching knee or shaking arms give out.

  But for all that, centimeter after painful centimeter, the stars are getting closer. I’m only three or four body lengths away from the opening, close enough to feel the cool waft of fresh air against my face and hear the otherworldly whistling of the wind across the entrance, when I find I can climb no farther. The space opens out around me, into a dome, the sides unscalable, the stars unreachable. I collapse on the floor of the cave under the opening and sob great dry sobs. I’m too dehydrated for real crying.

  Only a few hours ago, when I was wandering in the dark, I would have been content if you told me I could die under the stars instead of in darkness, but hope is a subtle poison. To be so close and not make it out lights a fury in me unlike any I’ve ever known. I shriek at the roof of the cave, shouting every curse word I know, screaming at my own echoes until I’m hoarse. Then, spent, I crumble to my knees. No more water for tears, no more voice for curses. Soon, there will be nothing left of me at all.

  I tip my head and blow my frosty breath at the stars like smoke. Not far from my face, the dry air makes it vanish. That is our lives, I think. One quick breath toward the stars, here only an instant before this mountain sucks it away.

  Since I’m slightly out of my mind, I find this fascinating, and breathe in and out in little puffs to amuse myself until death takes me.

  Which is why when the first pebble hits my head, I ignore it. It’s only after the third and fourth smack into me that I focus on the ceiling instead of my breath, wondering idly if I’ll be killed by a rockslide after all, instead of lack of water.

  “Oh good,” says the boy framed in the opening above me, “I was beginning to think you were dead.”

  * * *

  I stare up at the circle of starlight, struggling for a moment to understand how there is a boy in it. Then I reach toward him, my voice a croak.

  “Help.”

  The boy puts down the handful of pebbles he was using to get my attention.

  “Of course,” he says. “But I have to go get some rope. Don’t worry, I’ll be back.”

  With that, he’s gone; my circle of stars complete again. It all happened so quickly that I seriously wonder if it was something I imagined, but a while later, I hear voices drifting down from above me, and the end of a rope lands on the ground beside me.

  I drag myself to it and loop it under my armpits, tying a clumsy knot at the front of my chest. I tug at it, hoping it will hold me. They must have been waiting for that signal, because suddenly I’m being pulled to my feet, then off them, the movements of the rope jerky. I cling to the rope, resting my cheek against it, holding my breath against the pain of it cutting into the soft skin under my arms. My feet dangle in empty space. I train my eyes on the knot, praying it will hold. Then, hands grab the material of my suit at my shoulders, and after scraping painfully against the lip of the opening, I find myself on the ground outside the mountain.

  Fresh air hits my face, almost achingly cold after the heat of the mines, and the brilliance of a million stars is blinding. I heave with dehydrated sobs.

  “Okay, that’s enough, come on now.” I’m surprised to hear a girl’s voice behind me. Hands replace the rope under my armpits, and I’m lifted up and braced against my rescuers.

  I glance at the hole, a dark crack in the hillside beneath our feet, and see a small boy with a round face and buckteeth, probably about eight or nine, looping the rope around and around his forearm in an efficient, practiced motion.

  “See?” he says to the person behind me. “I told you I found someone.”

  “Help me carry her,” says the girl holding me.

  The boy trots over to us, rope coil slung over his shoulder.

  “Her?”

  He examines me from head to toe with curiosity. I can’t imagine I’m looking very girlish at the moment, and I try not to contemplate what I must smell like after all that time in the mountain, but my braids are loose and long around my face, so I guess it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine me as a her. He makes a noise that might be agreement and comes to my other side, lifting my arm over his shoulders. He’s shorter than me, so I don’t know how much he’s really helping the girl, who’s much taller, but I guess at least he’s taking part of my weight.

  “Water?” I manage to rasp.

  “Sorry,” says the girl. “I didn’t bring any. When Santiago came in saying he found someone trapped in a cave, I just grabbed rope and ran. We’ll get you water when we get home. I’m Yenni, by the way.”

  “Ana,” I croak, and slump against her.

  She nearly drops me.

  “Ana? Oh my God, really? Ana Águilar?” Yenni sounds stunned. “The girl who went to work in that mine? They say you angered the devil and he killed your whole family and only you survived, but then the devil came and stole you away in the night.”

  It’s not how I would have told the story, but there’s no denying I’m that Ana. I shrug.

  “Wow. You’re not dead! I can’t believe you’re not dead. You’ve been missing for two days. What happened to you . . . ? No, actuall
y, don’t try to talk. Come on, let’s get you home.”

  At first Santiago rattles on about how lucky I am that he found me—Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I go for a walk, you know? And then suddenly I hear this noise and I’m like, what’s that? So I go to where there’s this hole in the ground, and I see you! It’s a good thing you were cursing and shouting, or I would have maybe walked right by . . . —but soon the effort of keeping their footing with me slung between them takes all their breath and we scrabble over the mountain in silence.

  I slide in and out of consciousness, so I’m not sure how much later it is when Santiago and Yenni arrive at a small clump of mining houses and lead me into one.

  There’s a sleeping form in one of the beds.

  Santiago drops his voice to a whisper.

  “That’s Papi. We don’t want to wake him.”

  I nod in understanding.

  There’s a comforting similarity between Yenni and Santiago’s house and mine. Same mud brick and rock walls, same earth floor, same jumble of belongings piled in the corner. I see a miner’s suit and helmet laid out by the door. I wonder how long Santiago and Yenni’s father has been in the mines and which mine he works in. It must be some mine other than El Rosario or I probably would have met them before now. I wonder when their door will have no suit in front of it too, or whether it will still be there, but it will be Santiago who belts it on every morning.

  I see no sign of a woman.

  Yenni and Santiago pull me to an overturned bucket. I collapse onto it, beyond grateful to be out of the cold and off my feet. Yenni stands beside me, a hand on my shoulder to keep me from tipping over onto the floor. Santiago vanishes, but a minute later, he’s back.

  “Here you go,” he says, and a tall glass of water is pushed under my face.