Chapter VII #2
She chewed the inside of her cheek as the entrance to the mine yawned before them. She could not ignore the fact that she had been found here. Not when the truth danced just out of reach of her fingertips, a figure cloaked in shadow, moving beyond the lace of a church mantilla.
She would find a way.
Carlos stopped them right at the mine’s entrance, where he introduced an azoguero—one of the two amalgamation foremen—called Romero and began to speak with him.
Alba caught none of their conversation. She felt as if her skin were sheathed in ice; she itched beneath its weight.
She shuddered from its cold. Carlos and Romero’s pleasantries skittered past her unheard; instead, she looked up, gaze drawn high by the arching entry of the mine.
It was oval and seemed as tall as the doors of the cathedral in Zacatecas.
“Romero wants to show me a line of ore that was recently discovered,” Carlos said. She jumped at the sound of his voice. “I shall find someone to take you back to the house. Or you could wait here—Romero, you could stay with her while I go have a look.”
Romero’s oily look skimmed her as Carlos spoke; this told her all she wanted or needed to know about him.
He was the type to see little merit in women, to whom women were fixtures of kitchens and nurseries and were not to be seen or heard outside of those realms. She was struck by a powerful bolt of loathing.
“Could I come with you?” she asked Carlos. “I don’t wish to be apart.”
Coolness radiated out toward her. It was not a breeze, but a reaching . As if the darkness made to embrace her, to bring her back down with it. She wanted to recoil. She wanted to run.
Flee . She felt it more than heard it, a vibration through the fragile bones of her ears into her skull.
But the cool fingertips that emanated from within the mine were coy, playful.
Almost flirtatious. Candles were lit, hanging from rough iron sconces in the rocky walls.
They gave the space a warm, welcoming glow, like that of an empty chapel.
There were still sounds of digging and conversations flung back and forth over shoulders echoing off the walls of the tunnel, but it seemed quieter inside. More peaceful.
“Of course,” Carlos said. “Whatever you wish. But for safety’s sake, you must stay close.”
He took her hand; his grip was tight as he led her inside. Her body followed, even as the vibrating voice strengthened within her.
Out, out. Flee .
Candlelight flickered over the rough-hewn walls, catching on moisture and Carlos’s hair as they walked into the mine.
The creak of wood; the regular clop of shod hooves.
Something like the smell of stables melted through the air.
Alba’s eyes adjusted and found a team of mules hitched to a great wooden structure, walking in a circle.
“Those power the pulleys,” Carlos said, “to bring ore up from below.”
They passed the mules. Carlos and Romero began examining one passageway that led off to the right. Alba hesitated, hovering at Carlos’s side. The air tasted different than outside, cold and metallic. It tasted like drinking from a tin cup.
She did not remember taking her hand from Carlos’s, nor did she realize how her steps had drawn her away from his side until she heard him laugh at something Romero said and the sound came from behind her.
She glanced over her shoulder. Carlos was a silhouette against the white mouth of the mine, smaller than she expected.
So long as she could still see the entrance and the shadow of the mules moving in a circle against the bright light, there was no harm in exploring, was there?
Being inside the mountain felt intimate, as if she were crawling into someone’s embrace.
Get out.
Keep going.
Out.
Down.
Two impulses warred in her chest; her feet kept moving. Voices grew distant. The sound of pickaxes distorted them; the echoing made it impossible to know where sounds came from anymore.
A panicked squeaking; a rush of wings. Something brushed past Alba.
She gasped. Dropped the rebozo as she ducked, flinging her arms over her head.
With a volley of high-pitched keening, a flock of bats soared past her.
Wings and claws brushed her forearms and hair; she shuddered, her breathing coming sharp and swift.
All at once, they were gone.
She grabbed her rebozo and stood abruptly, shaking, and whirled around, expecting to see the silhouette of Carlos and other men moving back and forth like shadow puppets.
There were only the walls of the passage she was in, curving around a corner. Some candles had been snuffed out—by the bats, by the rush of wings or the breeze they created. The remaining ones flickered weakly, wax dripping heavily down their sides and pooling in their sconces.
“Carlos?” she called.
Her voice echoed, echoed, and died. The sound of pickaxes was faint. The sound of men’s voices even fainter.
Her heart gathered its skirts and began to race.
Suddenly, the embrace of the mountain had no more romance to it—the ceilings swung low and dripped and seemed to be reaching lower with each quickening beat of her heart.
Soon they would be grazing her hair. Soon, pressing on her skull, on her shoulders, and she would have to hunch to run out of the mine, then crawl—
Get out.
She gave in to the feeling. She had to get out of here.
She sucked in a steadying breath. Curled her hands into hard fists, digging her nails into the heels of her hands.
The pain felt sharp. The pain felt good.
Enough nonsense. All she had to do was retrace her steps and she would know precisely where she was.
She would be able to see Carlos and then they would step into the light.
She would breathe deeply. And they would continue their tour of the property.
Her steps echoed as she placed one determined foot in front of the other.
The passage curved to the right; the ground seemed to rise, but so, too, did the ceiling.
The grip of the mine was loosening around her.
It rose up to relinquish her to the light.
One more turn, and the tightness that held her body in a viselike grip loosened.
There was light. Carlos, Romero, voices. She shook out her shoulders, released her fists, and began to retrace her steps. She would not tell Mamá about this misadventure at the midday meal. She doubted she would tell Carlos either.
She passed a slim passageway opening to her left.
It was narrow enough for only one man to pass at a time.
Ore gleamed black as crow feathers in candlelight.
She paused, admiring the veinlike streaks through stone.
It was as variegated as the flesh of a living creature, graceful as the fracturing of a stream over stones.
A wail lifted from down the passageway.
The hair on Alba’s arms rose on end.
Another wail, and another— that was not the sound of an injured man. That was not the sound of an injured woman either.
It was a child.
The wail caught; began again. The sound of fingernails on glass, or silverware scraping china.
It was an infant. Howling as if it were hungry, as if it were in pain.
Alba turned and stepped into the passageway.
The crying grew sharper, pitched and excruciating.
“I’m coming!” She walked faster down the passageway, one hand lifting her skirts so as not to trip, the other running against the cool wall to keep her balance as the path sloped down. A fork in the path opened before her; she paused, listening.
The right. That was where the crying was coming from.
Or was it the left?
One side was lit, the other dark. She stepped down the lit path—no, that was wrong. The crying was too faint here.
“Where are you?” she called. “Don’t worry, I’m coming!”
The weeping was coming from behind her. Sharp, panicked gasps of it, hitching and drawing out. She could picture the infant’s face: red, twisted, their mouth pink and mewing, their arms flailing for someone to latch on to.
“I’m coming!” she cried and turned around to retrace her steps.
But when she did, it was as if she had never gone down the fork. To the left, darkness. To the right, light. If she had turned right, then by turning around…that meant that the darkness should be ahead of her, or to her right. Not the left.
She would not get lost. She was certainly not lost.
The crying was coming from the darkest passage.
“I’m coming!”
Cold enveloped her as if she were sinking into a pool of water, so sharp it stole her breath. She slowed. Stopped.
The weeping had ceased.
“Where are you?” She meant to call the words, but they came out fainter than she expected. As if the pressure of the darkness strangled them as soon as they left her mouth. “I’m right here. I’ll find you.”
She bent and began feeling the path before her with her hands for a blanket that the infant might be wrapped in. It was almost too dark to see. Her fingertips brushed over stone and dirt and gravel, searching for something soft, searching for something warm, or cloth—
Instead, they found wet.
Wet that was warm to the touch.
She drew her hand back. In the gloom, she could not make out what her fingertips were wet with.
“Hello?” she called.
The mine swallowed the word whole.
She stood sharply. Roughed her shoulder against the side of the passage. Took one shuddering step back, then another.
She was lost. There was nothing down here.
Gravel shifted behind her, stone crunching against stone. She froze. Her heart thrummed in the hollow of her throat. She could not go forward. She dared not step back.
There were walls on either side of her, so close that she could not even extend her arms out to the sides.
She was trapped.
Panic rose like a wave inside her chest.
It was only when something seized her by the shoulders that she began to scream.