Chapter 4 Hakara #2
Hair lifted from the back of my neck, tickling my skin.
Sound intensified, the scrape of the metal ring on my harness against a rock loud as though it were right in my ear.
My heartbeat slowed. This was my domain, my element.
Even before I’d begun to dive for abalone, I’d taken to the water with reckless abandon, worrying my Mimi every time I sat at the bottom of lakes and coves, watching the bright ripples of the surface above.
“She’s a fish,” my Maman had told her, waving a spatula over the cookfire. “She won’t drown.”
But aether was more dangerous than water.
I could hear him below me, scuffing against the stone.
As quick as I could, I lowered myself over the outcropping below.
The man was there – someone new I didn’t recognize.
He was breathing. Not many could hold their breath as long as I could.
He’d be aether-sick after, but if I got him out now, he’d live.
I clung to the underside of the outcropping, my fingers digging into stone and dirt, before I found my footing on the ledge.
He was breathing soft and slow, trying to limit his aether exposure. His eyes were wide, his ankle bloodied, but it was his hand I focused on, pointing over the side and into the depths. Pinpricks of light surrounded us, gems glowing in the subdued light of the sinkhole. I peered down.
I wasn’t sure what I was expecting. Maybe another corestone. Maybe a gem as big as my fist. What I saw instead was yet another man, farther below, halfway inside a tunnel that looked as though it had collapsed during the formation of the sinkhole.
He wasn’t a miner.
The man was lying on his side, his hair brown with dust, blood smeared across his forehead. I couldn’t tell whether he was alive or dead. Head wounds always looked worse than they were.
“Hakara!” Altani called to me from above, her voice muffled through the aerocline. And, to my surprise, there was a hint of fear in her voice. “If there’s anyone else, they’re too far down. Leave them.”
He was just below the second aerocline. What was a man doing down here, where people usually didn’t survive past the amount of time they could hold their breath? There was something on his face, covering his nose and mouth.
Hadn’t intended to go down into the hole.
Hadn’t intended to linger this long. The man who’d appeared below – he was only one man.
I unhitched the rope from my harness and attached it to the injured miner next to me.
I lifted my gaze. There was a gem on the outcropping above us, red and glowing.
A gem. My mind blazed with sudden understanding.
I tugged the line.
A wordless, strangled sound from Altani above as she pulled the rope and saw only the one man attached. But my breath was still taut in my lungs.
I couldn’t explain to her what I was doing next. I pried the red gem loose from the wall and popped it into my mouth.
Who needed Thassir when aether was all around me?
The lump of the gem moved past my tongue as I swallowed.
I sucked in aether, the taste of seawater on the back of my tongue, my belly fizzing as the gem reacted.
I was still new to this, but it felt as though I’d done it a thousand times.
An itching began at my shoulders. God arms sprouted over my own, larger than mine, more powerful, trailing black smoke.
I flexed my new fingers, felt the immeasurable strength flowing through them.
It was like moving through water, my weight now irrelevant. The wall blurred as I descended, the aether still bright in my chest as I kept my breath held. I wasn’t sure how much the god gem could absorb before I started falling ill.
A slight increase of pressure, of weightlessness. A sudden warmth as I passed the second aerocline. By the time I reached him, my lungs were already burning. The world swam around me, and I couldn’t tell if it was the heaviness of the aether down here or the lack of air to my head.
My belly spasmed, my body trying to force me to take in air. I pushed back the need, the certainty, dwelling in that uncomfortable space as I wrapped an arm around the man’s chest, pulling him in close. He was breathing. At least I wasn’t doing this all for a corpse.
A rope fell from above, dangling above me. This time, Altani wasn’t leaving me. I hooked the rope to my harness and tugged.
If only I’d found a green gem too, to give my legs speed, but I dug my feet into the wall and did my best to help Altani pull us up.
If I breathed now, I’d lose the god arms and their strength.
If I lost that, I’d lose the man I was trying to rescue.
I tightened my grip, my chest burning. One foot above the other. A second time. A third. A fourth.
I risked a glance up. I wouldn’t make it. There was no way.
And then someone shouted from above. The rope trembled in my hands and began to move faster. Spots crowded my vision, threatening to overtake it. I could feel my fingers slipping as my mind drifted toward the darkness, my mouth stuffed with cotton.
Hands grabbed at my shoulders, more seized my harness, and then they were dragging me from the hole, the man still locked within my grasp.
I gasped in a breath. A tidal wave of relief washed over me, the god limbs dissolving into black smoke. I rolled away from the man I’d rescued, luxuriating in the feel of air filling my lungs. Knew I had to get up soon, before the sinkhole collapsed, but I had a moment to breathe.
“I hope that was worth it,” Altani huffed as she bent over me, her brows low over her eyes.
I rose to my elbows and turned the man on his back, studied his features.
Didn’t recognize him, but the mask still covered the lower portion of his face.
I touched the cloth, the soft fibers tightly woven and unfamiliar.
He hadn’t fallen into that sinkhole. He’d been down there, below the second aerocline.
He’d survived. And this thing on his face, this was the key.
“Oh, it was more than worth it.”