“Can you show me a little of that?” he asked me, staring at the sticks now in his hands.
“Sure,” I said, looking up but becoming too nervous to meet his eyes. He even ducked his head a little and angled his face to get in my line of vision, but I looked away. “The movements are pretty basic. You’ll pick it up in no time.”
“Well,” Madison said. “I guess we should have expected you to know how to play with sticks. Are you a dead aim with a rock, too?”
I was picking up my staff when she said it. I looked down at it, imagining how it would feel to strike her with it. Not hard, but enough to make her shut that mean, pouty mouth of hers.
“Stop it, Madison,” Jacob said. “What she just did was awesome. She might be the one to save your skin if we get into trouble.”
The girl mumbled something under her breath and fiddled with her backpack. I noticed she didn’t have a weapon.
“No, Tyler,” Jacob said. I had forgotten there was anyone else around me. “You are not bringing your guitar.”
“I bring my guitar everywhere,” his friend said.
“Dude, no. Unless you plan to swing that thing and hit something over the head, it’s staying in the car.”
“Hit something with it?” Tyler said. “Are you insane? This is a Fender Stratocaster. I’d swing you as a weapon before I’d do that.”
Jacob laughed. “Then find something else.”
Tyler looked around. He stepped over to the building and found a metal bar, about the same size as a crowbar. He hefted it, looked at Jacob, and raised an eyebrow. Jacob nodded.
“Okay, let’s get going,” Mom said, turning toward the mine entrance. She hadn’t even taken a step when another car, this one a dark mid-sized car, pulled up.
“Damn it,” she said. “What now?” Then she saw the car and her face changed completely from irritation to…something. Satisfaction? Relief? I think it was partly both.
The car stopped and a man got out. I recognized him. His face, good-looking for an older guy, showed relief as well, as if he’d thought he might be too late. He had short dark hair, showing some gray in it. He wore hiking pants, a blue tee shirt, and a sweatshirt. When he met eyes with my mother, he smiled, his blue eyes twinkling. “Hey, Allie.” It was Rick Phillips, one of my mom’s friends. He nodded to the others. When he saw me, he smiled widely. “Hey, Dani, what’s up?”
“Rick, what are you doing here?” My mother had put on her stern face, though the relief in her eyes told me she was glad to see him.
“I heard you were planning on going on a picnic and wanted to come. I hope that’s all right. I even brought food”—he lifted a backpack out of the car—“and utensils.” He took out a pair of swords. Samurai swords. “No wine, though. I heard there would be minors here. Maybe miners, too.” He laughed at his distinction between the two words.
Mom huffed. “Oh, come on. Let’s get going before the rest of the town shows up, though that’s what I wanted yesterday. I want to be inside the mine before anyone tries to stop us.”
Rick donned his pack and put the sword scabbards through some kind of belt he had rigged up. At least he didn’t have traditional sashes to hold the swords in place. That would just be weird. He came up to me and fist-bumped me.
“What’s with the swords?” I asked.
“Oh, I got on a kick when I was younger, watching samurai movies and practicing with swords. I got pretty good at killing imaginary opponents. It’s all I could think of to bring.”
“Can I see one?”
“Sure.” He twisted so the hilts pointed toward me. He had the traditional daisho: a long katana and a shorter wakizashi. I pulled the katana free of its scabbard and inspected the blade.
“Sweet,” I said. “These are not cheap aluminum demo swords.”
“Nope. High carbon steel. Razor sharp. Hopefully I will be able to leave them in the scabbards. I’d hate to cut anything other than bundles of reeds for testing the keenness of the blade.”
I slid the sword back into place. “Yeah, me too.” With a sigh, I followed the others toward the mine entrance, butterflies the size of housecats swirling in my belly.
Chapter 9
I followed my mother toward the mine. I figured that of all of us, she would have the best idea where to go. I don’t know why I thought that. She was an office manager. She didn’t work at the mine itself. I didn’t know if she had ever even been there. Everyone else seemed content to follow her, though.
My mother took out another key and put it into a keyhole next to the large gates. When she turned it, the two doors swung outward slowly. The motors controlling the gates whirred like a garage door opener, but it was as loud as five of them.
There were two sets of gates, apparently, because a few dozen feet in from the first one, we came to a twisted metal doorway, smaller than the first one. It looked like someone had driven a vehicle through it. I wondered if whatever lurked in the mines did it or if someone did it trying to escape. I also pondered why the opening was left like this. Was everyone afraid to try to seal it back up again?
“Do you think we’ll run into any of the shadowling?” Rick asked.
“The what?” Mom said.
“Shadowling. That’s what the news started calling whatever is in there this morning. I guess some people saw several shadows moving near where some people went missing. They had to call the things something, I guess.”
“Great,” she said. “Now the mythical monsters have a name. I’m betting we’re going to find a group of bandits or something. Maybe terrorists.”
Sam winked at me, and I rolled my eyes.
As we started going through the doorway, I was the last in line. I looked as each of the others passed the twisted hunk of metal that was supposed to keep people out of the mine. I guess it didn’t do as well keeping things in the mine. The reactions ranged from my mother’s cool recognition of the damage, to the nervous darting eyes of Emily and Zach, to Madison’s grimace and wrinkled nose. Her expression seemed to indicate that the dirt and dust that lay around the area were more important than the wrecked entrance. I looked at Rick and he shrugged.
There were lights strung along the ceiling of the corridor, but they weren’t on. I took my headlamp out as the others paced around the opening. Sam walked over to the wall of the cavern and flipped a switch.
The lights flickered on, a row of dull, glowing bulbs stretching off into the distance. I looked at my friend and she gave me a smile. A nervous one.
Looking into the darkness, even with the lights disappearing as the tunnel sloped downward, I sniffed. “Almost all the copper mines in the state are pit mines. We had to live near one of the few mines that used both shafts and slopes.”
It was fully light out behind us, though I couldn’t see the sun through the clouds. I took a long last look at the cars, the ore processing area around them, and the cloudy sky, and then searched the dimly lit corridor ahead. The others were milling around, waiting for someone to tell them what to do.
They waited.
I stood there until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said, walking past the others and into the mine. I could feel the headlamp strap on my head, a fold pressing against my skin on the left side. It was a comfort, an emergency source of light should the overhead lamps fail. My heart was beating so loudly, I was surprised no one commented on it. The scrape of shoes on the gritty rock floor behind me told me that at least one other person followed me. I was happy to hear several other shoes crunching along as well. We were on our way.
I had never really been claustrophobic, but the darkness…oh, the darkness. It was irrational, my fear of the lack of light. It didn’t make sense. Thinking over it logically, there seemed no good reason why it should bother me. But it did. Oh, God in heaven, it did. I tightened my grip on my staff, clutching it until my forearms started hurting, but I continued to move.
“Relax,” Rick said, right at my shoulder. His
voice made me jump. I hadn’t realized anyone was that close. “Breathe deeply and regularly. You’ll be exhausted in an hour all tensed up like that.”
I nodded, not taking my eyes from the stretch of tunnel ahead of me. I did loosen my grip, though. A little. And I breathed in and out slowly. It seemed to help.
I got a chill, but realized it wasn’t from the temperature. It was a little cooler in the mine than it was outside, but not as cold as I thought it would be. I had brought a jacket with me. Jeans, a tee shirt with “Where are you going to go today?” printed on it, and a rough denim jacket. I was prepared for chilly weather.
“What’s the plan?” Sam asked in a whisper.
It sounded like a shout in the quiet of the cave, making me jump again. Rick was right. If I didn’t calm down, I’d end up with no energy when I needed it.
“I…I don’t know,” I admitted. I hadn’t really thought beyond getting into the mine and searching for Bobby. I mentally kicked myself.
“I have a basic map of the tunnels,” my mom said. Papers rustled and shadows shifted as she stepped up to me. “This main tunnel goes for a ways before we have to make a choice. Right here,” she pointed to a large area off which came four other passageways, “is where the security force was the last time they could track them.”
I turned to look at her. How had she prepared for this? When did she have the time? We’d just figured out late the night before that we were going.
“I did a few things last night after you went to bed,” she said, shrugging. “I called in some favors. No one owed me enough to come with us, though.” I shifted my eyes toward Rick, and then back to the map.
“The mine,” Zach said, “has aspects of a slope mine and a shaft mine. I did a project on it when I was in sixth grade, even made a model of it. If we head off in this direction—” he pointed to one of the corridors on the map “—we’ll get to the shaft elevator. If we take the other passageways, they gradually slant down to other areas.”
“We should probably take the sloping tunnels,” I said. “If we take the elevator, we may go beneath where we need to be and miss finding who we’re looking for completely.” Everyone seemed to agree with me. “Is the map good enough for us to follow?”
“It looks pretty simple,” Tyler said. “We won’t get lost.”
I caught movement as Sam turned to look at Tyler. “What happens if we lose the map or it gets destroyed or something else happens to it? I don’t think relying on only one thing to keep us from getting lost is a good idea.”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “What do you have in mind, Sam? I know you already have a solution.”
She smiled, but turned her eyes downward, embarrassed by the compliment. She reached into her pack and took out a bag of fat sidewalk chalk of different colors. It was the kind I used to use when I was a kid for drawing hopscotch squares on our driveway. Good old Samantha. She was always ten steps ahead of everyone else.
“We can mark which way we went at every intersection,” Sam said. “That way we can retrace our steps.”
Madison laughed. Everyone turned to look at her.
“You think you’re so smart,” the cheerleader said. “What if our headlamps run out of batteries? What then? We won’t be able to see the chalk marks, then. Ha.”
I stared at her. Is this the type of thing we’d have to put up with the entire time we were down in the mine? “Uh, Madison. If we have no light, the map will be worthless, too. Do you have an idea for some kind of glowing marker for total darkness?”
“No.” Her voice was barely a whisper. I think she got my point. I just shook my head at her.
“Most of the mine has lights strung along the ceiling,” Zach said. “Hopefully we won’t have to worry about lighting.”
“We’re losing track of what we should be doing,” I said, starting to get frustrated with the waste of time. “Sam, use your chalk and mark our path at each intersection. Come on, let’s do this. I want to get Bobby and get out of here as soon as possible.” Madison opened her mouth, but I spoke before she did. “And Allison. And anyone else we find.”
I started walking down the passageway, the others following me. It was wide, probably ten feet across or more, with the ceiling at least eight feet above us. It was the original opening, widened after the mine had been in operation for many years, but still decades old. The roughness of the stone meant this part of the tunnel was carved out before all the cool modern drilling machines were invented.
The arched ceiling was lined with a lattice of wood ribs stretching off down the corridor. The lights—thick, elongated glass globes—were attached to the wood and tethered to each other with electrical cabling. The filthy glass made the light dim and threw shadows along the passageway’s surfaces, including the steel tracks down the center of the floor.
The others settled into a slow gait as they followed me. The cavern was wide enough for a few people to walk side-by-side, so we progressed as a loose pack, in ones or twos mainly. My mother came up beside me.
“Are you going to handle directing everyone?” I asked her. “You’re one of only two adults.”
“I think you’re doing fine,” she said, forcing a smile. “You let me know if you want me to take control. Otherwise, it’s fine with me if you lead us.”
“I’m not a leader, Mom. I always kind of do my own thing.”
“Then just keep on doing your own thing. Everyone seems to be following you.” She winked at me, then focused her attention forward, down the tunnel, her expression stern.
I looked back over my shoulder at the others. Half of them were looking at their feet nervously. Sam smiled at me. Jacob gave me a little wave. Rick raised his hand in a thumbs up. Madison glared at me.
Well, three out of four wasn’t bad.
Chapter 10
I was staring down into the endless tunnel, the line of lights disappearing unbroken as the tunnel dipped.
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” I said to myself.
Sam chuckled.
“What was that?” my mom asked.
“Oh, nothing. It’s just something we’ve been reading in school.”
“Are you reading Dante’s Inferno?” Rick asked. He was walking side-by-side with Mom.
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s our current assignment in English class.”
“Pretty appropriate,” he said. “And ironic.”
“Right?” I said. “Have you read it?”
“Yeah. A long time ago.”
“What are you two talking about?” Mom asked.
“There was an Italian author in the Middle Ages named Dante Alighieri. He wrote a trilogy full of allegory. It was about a trip through hell, and he described in detail what he saw there. The first book was called Inferno. There was a sign hanging above the entrance to hell. ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’”
“That’s not very encouraging,” she said.
“Sorry. This just made me think of it. That’s what happens when we have too much homework.” I showed her all my teeth. She slapped my shoulder.
We made our way to the intersection Mom had pointed out on the map. Without breaking stride, we headed off toward where the security force had been when contact was lost. We passed through a widening in the corridor where a few vehicles that looked like tractors were parked. I looked at Zach.
“Diesel-powered,” he said. “Mining isn’t like boring tunnels for roadways. They blast the rock and then break it up and carry it out with these.”
“There’s not enough room for all to ride,” I said, frowning at the machines. “We’ll have to keep walking.”
As we went down the passage, the rock seemed to transform. No, not the rock, but the way the tunnel itself had been made. It widened out until it was nearly the width of the street in front of my house. It also became square, as high as it was wide. The slats on the ceiling were replaced with some type of plates that looked to be bolted directly to the stone.
“Th
is is the newer section of the mine,” Zach said, noticing my inspection of the walls. “Doing the work with the machines requires more space.”
I scanned the area ahead of us, looking for any movement or shapes outside the edge of the dim light from the lamps above. The steady click-click-click of my staff hitting the ground as I walked seemed too loud. There was the scrape of shoes behind me, and someone was breathing hard from our brisk pace, but otherwise, there wasn’t much sound.
I took off my jacket and stuffed it into my backpack. “Isn’t it supposed to be cold down here?” I asked Zach.
“The mine temperature is usually around sixty to seventy degrees,” Sam answered for him. “Depending on how hard the ventilation system is working.”
“Ventilation system?” I said.
“Of course,” Zach said, giving Sam a look like she had taken one of his favorite toys. “With diesel equipment and blasting, they have to move fresh air through the mine. Didn’t you hear the fans when we were closer to the opening?”
Now that he mentioned it, I had heard something, but I’d been too nervous to pay attention. In fact, in the silences between the clipped speech, I still heard a slight whine from somewhere far away.
We continued into the newer section of the mine, the blackness ahead and behind seeming like it was trying to gobble up the glow from the ceiling lights that seemed much too dim.
My hands started shaking and the walls seemed to close in on me, though they were wider than before. I would be trapped here, subject to the whim of anything that came from the depths. Shadowling. That’s what the news had called the things from the darkness. Somehow, putting a name to them made them even more frightening. If something didn’t distract me soon, I’d go insane.
“So, Dani,” a voice said, making me almost drop my staff. I closed my eyes and tried to slow my breathing. I hoped the speaker didn’t notice.
Jacob stepped up beside me. He looked at me quizzically. He had seen me jump, but he didn’t seem like he was going to tease me about it. “Nice staff. How did you get so good with the sticks?” He held them up as if I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Are you as good with that thing as you are with these?”
Myths & Magic: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection Page 307
