Even a serpent has grandiose designs, yet must slither in minute increments, struggling for distances a giant or god would scorn. Tongue flicking for the scent, this way and that. Salvation is the succulent fruit at hunt’s end, the sun-warmed bird’s egg, the soft cuddly rat trapped in the jaws.
So searches the serpent, friend to the righteous. So slides the eel through the world’s stirred muck, whiskers a-probing. Soon, one hopes, soon!
Young Harllo was not thinking of justice, nor of righteous freedom, nor was he idly fashioning glittering worlds from the glistening veins of raw iron, or the flecks of gold in the midst of cold, sharp quartzite. He had no time to kneel in some over-grown city garden building tiny forts and reed bridges over run-off tracks left by yesterday’s downpour. No, for Harllo childhood was over. Aged six.
At this moment, then, he was lying on a shelf of hard, black stone, devoured by darkness. He could barely hear the workers far above, although rocks bounced their way down the crevasse every now and then, echoing with harsh barks from the floor far below.
The last time here he had dangled from a rope, and there had been no careless rain of stones — any one of which could crush his skull. And on his descent back then, his outstretched arms had encountered no walls, leading him to believe the crevasse was vast, opening out perhaps into a cavern. This time, of course, there was no rope — Harllo should not even be here and would probably be switched once he was found out.
Bainisk had sent him back to Chuffs at shift’s end. And that was where he ought now to be, hurriedly devouring his bowl of watery soup and husk of black bread, before stumbling off to his cot. Instead, he was climbing down this wall, without light to ensure that he would not be discovered by those working above.
Not a cavern after all. Instead, a pocked, sheer cliff-face — and those gaping holes were all oddly regular, rectangular, although not until Harllo reached this balcony ledge did he comprehend that he was climbing down the face of some buried building. He wanted to slip into one of these windows and explore, but he had promised to deliver
Careful questioning had led him to a definition of “splints”, but he could not find sticks suitable for the purpose of fixing the Miner’s shattered legs. Either too feeble and small, or not straight enough; and besides, all the wood brought to the camp was too well guarded. Instead, he had gone to the tailings heaps, where all manner of garbage was thrown. Eyed suspiciously by the old women who’d sold children and grandchildren to the mine yet found they could not sever their ties — thus dooming themselves to this fringe-world at camp’s edge — Harllo had picked through the rubbish.
Often, and especially from the run-off tunnels pumped through layers of sandstone, miners would find piles of bones from long dead creatures. Bones heavy and solid and almost impossible to break. Skulls and the like were sold to collectors — scholars with squinty eyes and too much coin and time for their own good. The pieces already fractured off, broken up and forming a kind of gravel, went to the herbalists for their gardens and the mock-healers for potions and pastes — or so Bainisk called them,
Out on the heaps he found two that seemed to have been from the same kind of beast. After some examination and comparison, he confirmed that he had a right one and a left one. They were heavy, thick and ridged, and he hoped they would do.
Between shifts at the main tunnel there was a half-bell when no one was under rock, and Harllo, sweating beneath the weight of the bones, hurriedly carried them in; then, finding an abandoned side-passage, he stashed them along with some lengths of rope and leather laces. That had been before his shift, and now here he was, trying to do what he had promised.
Those long leg bones were strapped to his back. His neck and shoulders were raw from the ropes and more than once he had thought the swinging of the heavy bones would tug him away from the wall, but he had held on, this far at least.
And now, lying on this balcony ledge, Harllo rested.
