.Moments from a miner's life
She found you inside the haystack.
It had rained the previous afternoon and the outside of the haystack had compacted to a dense layer, while the inside was still lofty. You’d carefully removed the matted outside layer, excavated a hollow out of the dry interior, and hidden yourself by replacing the outside plug.
There your mom found you, red-eyed and snuffling from crying. It was now TrueNight outside and the Ice Lady was midway up the night sky. Your mom carried you from the fields, back to the village. Around you the haystacks shimmered in the light from the sky—your one satisfaction over your peers: they would see nothing but humped blackness occluding night stars.
Your hut had sturdy stone walls and a well constructed thatched roof. Containers of clay, gourd, basket, cloth and leather were hung from pegs on the wall, as well as two low chairs. Your sleeping mat of old rags and straw was across the single-roomed hut from your mother's. She sat you down and brought you a cold meal. She seemed less angry, than resigned.
"I know its not easy being the only miner in the village, and you get picked on for your size, but you can’t run. Stick up for yourself. Come to me. You’ll never be as big as them, but you’ll be tougher!"
‘Easy for you to say,’ you thought, ‘but you don’t have 5 of them laughing 'cause they're a head taller, an’ you don’t have 5 year olds looking you in the eye.’
"Yes, ma."
"You know, " she continued, "it will be only a few years, when you hit your breadth, that they’ll be taking you to the mines. So play, enjoy yourself. By the time you're 15 you’ll be working where your father did...before Miner’s Disease took him."
. . .
By the age of thirteen, none of the boys in the village teased you about your height (to your face), especially after you’d flipped Potterson into the fertilizer pit.
Nothing really bugged you now.
You didn’t really have any friends, being the only Miner, but that only gave you more time to excavate in the nearby hill and help your mom make charcoal to sell in the nearby village. You would find peace when you wandered the countryside, alone, unobserved, in the darkness of FalseDay and TrueNight.
Well, one thing bothered you. Bluesew.
She was your age, and, because she was born under a black moon, she never grew much taller than you. And you liked the way she looked at you.
You and she would talk during your free time (after the evening meals and story-telling), and sometimes go walking in the fields behind the village or settle near the river watching the sun of FalseNight set. You even showed her the small cave, it’s ceiling supported by a network of roots from Old Willow, you had burrowed beneath an overhang on the river bank: . In this cave, you showed her your treasures: a bit of carapace shed from a passing drone BoneTalker, a partly sprouted Haltcha nut, a toy wooden pull cart for which your mother traded three lengths of charcoals, and a piece of thin quarts that, would project a rainbow of colors onto the ground, when held to the sunlight.
Sometimes, you would even secrete food away from the evening meal and bring it to your cave, waiting for Bluesew to show and share it together.
. . .
From out of the cave mouth, you could see the sunset of offing FalseDay spill red light across the ground and river, and over mudstained, buckbeast-skin boots.
"Get from the hole, boy. " came the hoarse, whispered voice of Bluesew’s father.
Crawling forth, you saw him standing there in his crudely sewn leather hacton—facial scar from a Overseer’s claw standing in bold relief. His staghorn belt buckle was at eye level.
His foot lifted the air from your diaphragm and tumbled you into the river. Scrabbling and floundering, gut gathering, you couldn’t tell if you were gulping water or gasping at air. You were free of the water, with your jerkin collar crushing you airway, dangling at a greater height than you’d ever stood. Before the ground leapt into you. Dirt was in your face, nose, and eyes. You were being turned round and round by sharp pains in your side, until you were flat on your back staring at Old Willow’s branches, stark black fissures against the reddening evening sky.
The harsh voice whispered, "Stay away from my daughter, freak. She ain’t like you. It’s for your own good."
He left you there as the light slowly bled from the day. It wasn’t until much later that you came silently back to your hut, telling your mom’s questioning glance that you’d falling climbing a Haltcha tree on Bald Mound.
You and Bluesew would pass each other without looking. She, too, had fallen from a Haltcha tree.
. . .
Two years later, you took the train of Miners passing through your village to collect you for the mines. You left with a small sack of belongings and food for three days. Only your mother was there to see you off, though it could have been wishful thinking that made the shadow beneath Old Willow describe another watching shape.