- Mature Themes
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The exuberant Djali became her constant companion during those first days of uncertainty. The talkative boy made the loneliness of her abandonment by Auntie Sweets more bearable, as did the constant company of the other Scraps around her age in their barracks.
Despite the canvas walls that barely counted as walls, Kalara had a tiny space all her own, unlike the crowded bunk beds she’d shared with others at Auntie’s orphanage. A bit of charcoal pinched from the hearth at mealtime and sharpened with a piece of shale helped Kalara customize her own side of the canvas with a ten year old girl’s vision of the sun and moon with haphazard trees on the horizon, a bit of comfort in the deep tunnels where they barely ever got the chance to see the surface.
As Djali had promised, life as a Scrap wasn’t so bad. The children filtered out of their quarters at the sound of a bell in the morning, each one given a path and a task for the day. They carried water and supplies to the workers deep in the Iblan mines, delivered messages along the lines, and, most importantly, crawled into the spaces the adult workers couldn’t. A nimble child could crawl into the space between a cart and a wall and remove a jammed rock from the axle. Tiny bodies could crawl into nooks and crannies to survey new resources that might lie just beyond a crevice they would otherwise have to blast open.
A bell also rang for meals and prayer throughout the day. Another bell rang for lights out. The older Scraps in their teens would oversee the younger children and make sure they knew where to go for their daily tasks. Older workers would stop by sometimes, usually to see their own children who had been sold into service as Scraps, or to spend time with the children they had befriended. Once a week, Overseer Spinel would attend them in the mess hall where he would say his prayers and inform them of any changes in the schedule, for he was a superstitious man from Harborhead. If the stars didn’t favor a dig, he would halt it immediately and re-assign everyone at the drop of a hat.
The most dangerous job for a Scrap, however, was the runner. This child would be tasked with setting the charges of firedust and lighting it before scrambling out from the crevice to safety. If the charge didn’t go off as expected, they would also be the one to check the charges, a potentially fatal task! However, the job came with the greatest perk of being allowed a double portion at dinner and the rest of the day off.
As such, Djali became a master at this task and volunteered for it often, much to Kalara’s surprise. He was a fast runner and his unshakeable confidence in his own immortality seemed to negate his lack of common sense. None could argue with his full belly, come dinnertime, however, nor the extra free time this allowed him to run amok in the marketplace! In no time at all, the bells had chimed away another year of her life, Djali always meeting her after their shifts to share his dinner and stories with her.
One day, Kalara spotted Djali when she didn’t expect to while she was on an errand in the Sunken Bazaar to get soup ingredients for the cook. He was bobbing in and out behind the stalls like a little bird. She spotted his prey soon enough - fresh baked pastries that had been set out to cool on the back of a stall. Kalara watched the inevitable meeting of pastry and boy before she noticed the merchant about to turn around.
“Oh!” She screamed as if stabbed and dropped her groceries to the ground, clutching her stomach. Djali and merchant, both, turned to her in surprise. Kalara flailed arms and legs desperately, suffering from some as yet unthought of illness. “Aaah, gods!” She yelled as if a whole other person were bursting out from inside of her, for she had never done such a fool thing before!
Instead of rushing to her side, the merchant shouted at her. “Girl, have a fit somewhere, else! I’ve got customers here!”
“Gods! So many eyes! So many legs!” Kalara babbled nonsense, ignoring him. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Djali grabbing several pastries before he dodged out the back. “The pies…the pies are cursed!” By the time her crazed rambling had subsided, a monk was crossing his beads over her. She grinned inwardly at her own performance. Once she was sure Djali was at a safe range, she caught her breath, then simply stood up, wiped off her tunic, bowed to the monk, retrieved her groceries, and continued on her way, whistling happily and leaving the monk and the small crowd of passersby perplexed.
She found Djali later when she heard him from around a corner. “Psst! Over here!” He waved her to a small nook in the wall that was safely obscured by shadow.
“You owe me some of those pies!” Kalara quipped at him. “Why are you stealing? You could get into trouble for that!” Even as she chided him, she accepted an offering of pastry. She could never shake her tastes for sweets instilled in her by Auntie. The glorious taste of honey and figs was enough to wash away any regrets for this rare treat. Foul-tempered though he was, the baker’s pies were exquisite!
“Ha, then why are you eating, oh Queen?” Djali laughed, a line of pies and pastries spread across the lap of his woolen breeches. “Besides, he’s a foul man! I’ve seen him beat beggars who get too close, even women and children!” Djali took a vengeful bite, self-assured of the justice of his stolen pie.
“How can you still eat more? You’ll get too fat to be a Scrap!” Kalara poked him in his stomach, remarking the fact he’d had double dinner just last night.
“Psh, I’ll never get fat!” He flexed his muscles. “I’m a growing boy!”
“It all goes to your fat head, I think.” Kalara mused, grinning at him.
The two sat together in the silence of pastry eating for a few long minutes, enjoying the small precious moment of freedom blissfully free of work bells or lingering tasks.
“I think I’ll have to avoid his stall for awhile so he doesn’t recognize me.” Kalara finally broke the silence, still smiling, despite an acknowledgment of caution. “I’ve never done anything like that before!”
“You were amazing!” Djali praised, clapping his hands. “I’d still think you were possessed if you weren’t eating all my pies.”
Kalara took the praise with blushing cheeks. “Hah…someone has to save your head from getting too fat.”
More silence, more pie, until the question leaked out of her from nowhere. “Djali, do you always want to be here?”
“Hmm? Where else would we be?” He looked at her with one eye, suspicious.
“I don’t know I just…want to see the sun.” She sighed, staring into the light of the largest glowstone that hung over the market, a pale imitation of the sun. A network of smaller glowstones branched out from the centerpiece to light each stall. Their light shown bright enough to illuminate the bright silks of the Despot’s sigil draped over the central stalls. Even still, it wasn’t enough for her. This light had no heat, no life. Only light.
“And maybe the moon, too.” She sighed again, her gaze lost in the cloud of moths she could just barely make out flitting around the glowstones far above, their far-off wings catching little wisps of light. “ I just get so tired of one light.”
Djali gave her a sidelong stare, his gaze searching her as he tried to understand her words. Rather than poke fun at her, per usual, he moved next to her, setting his arms on his knees and staring up at the stones as she was doing, trying to see what she was seeing beyond them. They spent as much time as they could there in silence before Kalara had to leave to get the groceries where they needed to be before anyone noticed her tardiness.
* * *
The seasons changed above them on the surface, but only the festivals of the small gods marked them below the surface of Gem. Life wound itself into an unending cycle of work, food, and sleep till the day Kalara was on her way to deliver baskets of food to the east quadrant. She accidentally bumped the arm of a worker who backed into her at the same time as she was passing behind him in a tunnel. The worker’s pickaxe slipped out of his hand and cracked into the ground sending a rock flying up into his face. The sharp edge of it glanced off the side of his skull. She quickly moved to is aid, but his strange face as he slowly turned to her stunned her to silence and she took an involuntary step back from him.
“It’s alright, Lin. I’ll be back before morning. I promise.” The lanky man grinned at Kalara, even as the blood ran down the side of the split skin of his head. His body was covered with the scars of like injuries, countless cuts that pockmarked his dark skin. An odd talisman with symbols Kalara didn’t recognize hung from a worn leather collar around the man’s neck, a charm, she would learn, to ward off possessing spirits. Eventually, another worker on the man’s crew noticed the commotion and ran up alongside them to press a cloth to the bleeding wound.
“Don’t mind him, girl.” The worker sighed and sucked his teeth, shaking his head in annoyance as he pressed a cloth to the scarred slave’s head. “The Dream Eaten don’t feel much.”
“It’s alright, Lin. I’ll be back before morning. I promise?” Came the slave’s reply, a lilt of inquiry in his muttering as he looked to the other worker.
“Dream Eaten?” Kalara gawked in morbid fascination, her eyes wide with childlike wonder and fear, unsure of what he meant.
“This poor fool came in with a cart of them. They think here so deep under Gem, the Realm won’t care if they use them.” The worker spit on the ground in disgust. “The Fey ate their souls so they’re naught more than shells. It’s a living death.” The scarred man held the cloth to his head as the other instructed.
“They say the rabblerousers get sold to them and I believe it!” The worker looked on at her, his chin tucked and the whites of his eyes prominent as he spoke in low cautious tones to her. “Keep your head down, child, and work well!”
Her small face pale with fear, Kalara nodded and swallowed, her eyes wide as she turned away from the hollow smile of the scarred man and the fearful face of the other. She heard the same muttered assurances about his safe return by morning one more time before she was too far away to hear them anymore.
She’d have no sleep that night, her young overactive mind too preoccupied with imagining how exactly a Fey might eat a person’s soul. She’d only heard bits of stories about them from the other slaves and workers. They used to live on the edges of the desert Wyld before Ikerre turned them to crystal with her holy wrath, losing herself in the process. As terrifying as it was, the thought of the prophetess reigning down holy crystal wrath riveted her at the same time. She thought of the Glittering Desert so near to the city, but so far away at the same time. Would she ever see it? One day, she and Djali might be able sneak away and see the crystals for themselves. It would be such a grand adventure!
But there was never time to think of such dreams, for the bells would always ring and there was always work to be done, even for the youngest Scraps of Gem.
Author's Note: I visited a gold mine in Dahlonega, GA. one year where I learned about their operations. For the tour, we descended into the safer parts of the mine where bats still clung to the ceilings and we explored the hollowed out tunnels.
It was on this tour that I learned about the runner who would light the dynamite, who also had to check the fuse if the dynamite failed, and who was given the day off after doing such stressful work.
If I recall correctly, they usually spent that day off at the bar getting wasted. I always wondered if they started to treat it like it wasn't any big deal after awhile if they could fool themselves that fortune would only ever turn badly for someone else but them.
The image of that runner and the dark tunnels of that mine haunted me ever since that tour. I always wanted to use it in a story. I'm excited that I finally got my chance!
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