I found myself staring up into a white expanse.

  Rock, beams, limewash slapped on thick and uneven indiscriminately. Lanternlight swam across it in a dull orange wash. The smell hit next. Stale straw. Manure. Beneath it, faint but unmistakable, sulfur and dead fish.

  Memory followed.

  Running. Laughing. Chasing the wisp like a drunk. The crushing grip. That sickening mixture of sulfur and dead fish.

  I could still smell it.

  Panic surged. I sat bolt upright.

  My ribs ground together wrong. The world pitched sideways and my eyes flooded. Strong, calloused hands pressed me back into the straw.

  I kept my eyes shut, breathing quick and short through the pain. Hooves stamped somewhere close. A tail swished. I clung to that plain sound. Something I understood.

  I knew now that the sulfur smell merely lingered on me and my clothing. Whatever had taken me was not here.

  I blinked my eyes open.

  A feminine silhouette leaned over me, her face shadowed by lanternlight.

  “M-Mother Deborah,” I croaked.

  She stiffened.

  “No. Try to rest.”

  The voice was not Deborah’s.

  I stared up uncomprehendingly. The pain began to ease, dulling with each heartbeat. It pulled me under again and I let it.

  When I next woke a hand rested against my forehead.

  “Who are you,” I rasped.

  “Martha. You aren’t feverish. Good.”

  She helped me sit. Pain flared but did not blind me this time. A tin cup pressed against my lips. Cold water struck me like a kick in the gut. I drank greedily anyhow. My head cleared by degrees.

  “They are gone.” John’s voice.

  I turned. They had gathered around me. John. Ike. Ruth. Esther. Silas. Seamus. I saw them all, bandages here and there on each of them, sitting atop straw beds. Lanternlight and hollow eyes all around.

  I smiled despite myself.

  “I thought I had imagined you,” I said to Silas.

  “No such luck, Tom Hale.” He gave me a thin grin. “We weren’t certain you were coming back. Thought you might be dead under all that filth. Got you in here and rubbed you down with straw like a newborn calf just to see if you would stir. When ya did ya spat out blood.”

  “I did what I could. Your ribs were mangled up.” Ruth looked down at her hands, wringing them. “I was afraid to do more than put them back where they belonged. And I felt something in there that didn’t seem like hurt. It felt cold. I thought it best left alone.”

  I sat with that a moment. Sifting. Then those earlier words struck me.

  “They are gone.”

  “Who?” I asked John, though I already knew by their absence and by the pit in my stomach.

  “David,” John said. “And Mother Deborah.”

  He lifted his eyes to mine.

  Something hollowed out inside me. I tried to picture Deborah’s face and I couldn’t seem to hold it in my mind. David’s quiet competence, his easy grace. Gone.

  It did not fit. It felt like being lied to.

  John looked smaller somehow, pressed down under the weight of it.

  I felt the ice fracture in me. The power moved. The echo of a question.

  Ike spoke softly. “Those things fled when Silas and Seamus came in. Fire and fiddle. Maybe they don’t like it. We called for David and Deborah. There was no answer. Just gone.”

  Silence settled heavy.

  We were in the mule stable. I knew it now. A pit carved out of the rock to house poor dumb beasts that belonged under sky. I looked over at the thick oaken doors banded in iron. That white oak bar fitted firmly across them. I would have taken the bet that they would stop a runaway coal cart under heavy load.

  I thought of the thing that had half crushed me and knew wood would not be enough.

  “Ye have the truth of it Ike, I can’t explain, but when I play it wakes ye up from that mush-brained thing they do ot ye.” Seamus explained in his irish brogue.

  He gave me a wink and stood. He offered his hand to Esther. He bowed, tilting his head up and cocking an eyebrow at her rakishly. Ruth frowned. Esther quietly laughed and shook her head. Seamus and Esther slipped toward the far wall. He drew out his fiddle but left the bow. Instead he plucked the strings softly, a thin thread of sound holding the dark at bay.

  Ruth followed after them with her eyes, hands wringing.

  I was startled, turning sharply. I had heard the most unexpected sound in this dim hell. A child’s laughter. My ribs shot sharp pain through me with that wrench.

  I gazed at a boy smeared black with coal. He sat astride a mule kicking his legs out and in as if he were at a gallop. The animal jerked its head out of the manger and nearly pitched the boy off. The child reflexively squealed with delight.

  “Mato. Come. Here,” Martha bit off each word with that tone that only a mother could muster.

  Hearing his name recalled something to me. Deborah had given their names to Ruth next to Henry’s outside the mine. Martha and little Mato. Mother Deborah. That time when we still had sky over us felt like a year ago now. Had it even been a day? I had already lost track.

  As I sat with that, Mato slid down obediently, then walked over and pressed into his mother’s side. I was glad they had made it. It eased the ache of loss somewhat to see them together. Bittersweet.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I know you love the mules,” she whispered into his hair, “but you must not shout. The charmers might hear.”

  “Charmers?” I repeated.

  Mato looked at me with sudden intensity. “The charmers got uncle Henry. One of them dragged him away.”

  I felt phantom tightening about my ribs.

  “Who calls it that?” I asked.

  Seamus’s voice answered from the far wall. “I do, or I did once. A stupid joke, but now its stuck.”

  He did not stop plucking the strings. The notes hung thin and steady in the air. He gazed into Esther’s eyes as he spoke to me

  “It's just what they do,” he said. “Charms you in like a wee clurichaun. Like its holding a bottle of fine wine just for ye behind its back. What it’s really got is that snake coil that snatches ye up. First time we fought them off, someone said how pretty it was at first. I said oh aye, real charmers they are. It might have been funny if we hadn’t lost three. Ye know how me mouth runs on faster than me mind a’times.’

  His mouth twitched humorlessly.

  “The name stuck.”

  I looked down at Mato. “You saw it?”

  He nodded. “It has a light. And a long arm.”

  An arm.

  The snaking thing.

  John grimaced. He rose and paced some ten feet away, near another familiar face, Jack, who startled when John grew close.

  Jack was the stable boss. He sat propped against a hay pile that stretched from floor to ceiling. He was sipping from a jug and bouncing his knee. With each sip he wiped a dirty sleeve across the white stubble on his chin. I could see the glint of the lantern light in his eyes as they flicked about the room watching each person.

  I followed his gaze. I wondered if I looked better or worse than the clusters of people about the place. Some were bandaged like I was. I wondered how long we would be stuck here and if there would be enough food and water for everyone. Then I thought of the charmers and reconsidered whether food and water would matter much.

  I lingered on one woman near the door. She stared at the door bar without blinking. I saw her lips moving, but could hear nothing of her muttering from where I sat. I was glad of it. She had the miner’s stare.

  I’d seen this before the collapse. Folks would sometimes end their shift hollow-eyed, not just worn out. Emptied. Some have to be lead home by the shoulders. Once it took days for a man to come back. I remember Old Jeb rocking on his porch for hours, repeating the same phrase over and over.

  “Don’t tell it my name.”

  The stable was a fair sized chamber, but it was made to house a few mules. The added strain of a dozen miners could not last. The air was already more stale than I had ever known it to be in here.

  A boot scraped against stone.

  Jack sat atop his three-legged stool stamping and scraping at the floor as if he could clean his boot in mule muck.

  Mato’s gaze dropped.

  “That is an awful big puddle, Mister Jack.”

  Jack froze. His shoulders crept up toward his ears.

  “Plenty of mule piss about, boy.” He forced a laugh.

  “There is no mule over there and it is a whole puddle.” Mato giggled shrilly.

  Every eye shot toward the door.

  “SHUT HIM UP,” Jack roared.

  Too loud. Far louder than the boy.

  John rose slowly. He seemed to fill the room.

  “You say sorry to that boy.”

  “I should never have unbarred that door for you all.” Jack muttered.

  John seized his shirt and hauled him upright.

  “I said.”

  “Fine. I am sorry.”

  “Drunk fool, I can smell that cheap corn liquor on your breath.” John let go. He guided Mato back to Martha.

  The boy’s tears cut pale lines through the coal smudges on his cheeks.

  Jack sat again. Arms crossed. Knee bouncing faster.

  His trousers were dry.

  The puddle gleamed on the floor in front of him. Lanternlight suffused it. It grew slowly, swelling against the shallow dip in the stone.

  Now that I was looking, I could tell the floor sloped gently down from the hay stack.

  Jack stared at me with bloodshot eyes.

  The buzzing began in my skull.

  My hand went to my chest. Somewhere in there, that icy dam pressed harder and harder. I had always fought it. Held it back.

  This time I leaned into it.

  Crack.

  Cold ran through me. My ears rang. My vision sharpened painfully. The ache in my ribs dulled to something manageable.

  I stood.

  I leveled my accusation as I would have my side arm. “You are hiding something behind that hay, Jack.” My words thundered.

  “No, I ain’t.”

  Silas was already rising. His fists clenched white.

  Something flickered around him in the lanternlight. A faint red sheen, as if heat shimmered off his shoulders. It pressed outward, made him seem broader, taller.

  “Move,” he said quietly.

  Jack crossed his arms and stuck out his chin. “No.”

  Silas burst over with unnatural speed. He cleared more than ten feet in two strides. He flung Jack aside without slowing. Jack landed in a mound of straw and dung with a startled cry.

  Silas tore into the hay. Bundles bound with grass string flew aside. Loose clumps scattered. Straw drifted all around in a plume.

  “Stop. You will spoil it,” Jack shouted.

  The hay collapsed inward.

  Silas went still.

  I forced myself forward, ribs grinding.

  Beyond the fallen hay was open cavern.

  In its center, a mound of white.

  Snow.

  Water streamed from it in thin runnels across the stone.

  I followed the falling flakes upward.

  Daylight.

  Some forty fathoms above us.

  Snow spiraled down through that shaft.

  A sturdy windlass hung nearby from an iron hook.

  For one suspended heartbeat hope struck me so hard it hurt worse than my ribs.

  “We are saved,” I breathed.

  Heavy hemp rope twisted across the stone.

  Slack.

  I followed it with my eyes.

  It led toward the melting snow.

  Silas saw it too. His brows knitted. He strode forward and seized the rope. Snow sprayed as he yanked. The last length tore free and snapped back toward him like a striking serpent.

  He caught it.

  The end was neatly severed. No fray, not chewed through.

  Cut.

  Silas threw it down and it hit the cavern floor with a wet slap. He burst through the remnants of hay and back into the stable. Shouting followed him moments later.

  The flood of power pressed the ice dam.

  Something beckoned me from the shadows. Nothing I could name with my five senses.

  I stepped closer.

  Copper coils. Condensers. A rough plank table. Tools of a different craft than my own. A still.

  Moonshine.

  The pain in my ribs surged back as the cold inside me thinned. I staggered toward the stable.

  Silas had Jack lifted by the throat. The red shimmer burned brighter now, thick around his shoulders.

  “Stop,” I rasped.

  Silas turned toward me.

  “Still,” I forced out. “He’s just hiding a still.”

  Silas hesitated, then loosened his grip.

  Jack dropped to his knees, coughing.

  I collapsed onto the three legged stool. John came and steadied me.

  “He did not cut that rope,” I said through clenched teeth. “Why would he damn himself too? He was hiding his still. That is it.”

  “Cut?” Jack croaked. “Cut!?”

  Understanding dawned across his face, slow and terrible. He laid his head down and tears welled.

  “You ruined it,” he whispered.

  Silas stared at me.

  I looked over my shoulder. The rope lay in the snow melt behind me.

  Cleanly cut.

  Someone or something stood forty fathoms above.

  Hacked through that line with purpose.

  Sealed us in.