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“COME ON!” Scottie begged, pulling on Patrick’s shoulder. “Now, boss! The horses’ll pull you back.”

Patrick closed his eyes and shook his head. He spoke while winding the same length of rope around my middle and tying it tightly. “There’s two shafts; sometimes they can withstand a collapse. If we’re lucky, some of the boys will’ve made it back inside the one nearest. We need to crawl to the pulleys, find the cables and bring ’em out. The horses will pull ’em up.”

“How many?”

“Twenty-five, give or take,” he said, and it sounded like a knife was twisting inside his chest. He gave me one last strained look. “Protect yourself.Please.”

I nodded.

Scottie fed in the rope we were tethered to as we ducked beneath the splintered rafters. Patrick hurried ahead of me with his head bowed. The earth slanted violently downward.

The ceiling had crumbled, leaving little room to move in. Within a few feet, Patrick was on his haunches. I felt the groans in the walls, smelt the freshly aerated earth. “I smell gas.”

“If you feel yourself getting dizzy, tell me,” Patrick panted. “I’ll get youout.” His hands felt along the ceiling, the sides, the ground. His headlamp blinked off and on. “We crawl from here.”

“I can widen it,” I said.

“There’s a seam beneath us. It might not be safe.”

“You just watched me stop a hundred thousand tons of earth from flattening your parish, Patrick. I know what I’m doing.”

“One small disturbance, and it all comes down on top of us!” he rasped. “You won’t be able to charm us out if you can’t breathe.”

“We don’t have time to crawl, Patrick!” My breathing felt labored, the gas finding me already. “Move out of the way.”

“If we get this wrong, they die.Youdie.”

“Trust me, Patrick,” I begged, exasperated.

He gave me a look of wild desperation and cursed. “All right,” he panted. He flattened himself against the wall and grabbed my wrist. “All right.” He helped me forward until my shoulder was pressed to his chest, as close to the hole as I could get.

I realized that he was shaking badly, that he was terrified. Beneath his breath, it seemed he was praying. There was no time for reassurances. Somewhere beneath us, ninety fathoms below, men waited in the earth.

I carved away at the walls, pushed the ceiling up, gently, carefully. I listened for the moans of the earth, for any telltale splits. But it all melded away at the bid of my mind, until it was wide enough to walk through at a crouch. Patrick let me lead him down, down, holding the loop of rope at the small of my back. We hurried through, two mice in a maze. Slipping, panting, growing more and more woozy with each small descent.

Finally, Patrick’s headlamp caught the glint of steel—the shaft, mostly barricaded in clay. My mind pulled at it with waning strength, the earth slower to move now. Patrick took to it with his hands, clawing clods of it away with manic determination until the void could be seen, still there, its frame holding. Echoing up from the depths, I thought I heard a soft plea.Help, it said, and evaporated quickly.

Patrick fished the cables hanging from the pulleys. He unwound them from their anchor point, fingers fumbling. “Carry these out to Scottie,” he huffed, his chest heaving. “Be as quick as you can.”

“What of you?”

“The gate jams in a collapse,” he said. “I need to be here to let them out.”

“It should be me who stays,” I panted. It seemed there wasn’t enough oxygen. “If the ceiling falls, I can charm it.”

He shook his head, sweat trickling over his jaw. “If you think I can leave you here—”

“Patrick,” I spat, grabbing his shirt in one fist. “I can do this. I promise I’ll come back.” And perhaps he saw the blaze in my eyes, felt the idium pulsing through me. “There’s no time.Go.”

And though it seemed to tear at every fiber of his being, he swallowed, nodded. He grabbed the cables in his hand. Gripped my neck in the other. And his lips met mine for one fervent moment. And then they were gone. He ripped the strange lighted hat from his head and put it on my own. “I think I’ve fallen in love with you,” he said gruffly. “So you’d better fuckin’ come out, Nina. Promise me.Now.”

I blustered. “I… I promise.”

And then he disappeared into the gloom.

And I crouched in the dark and waited, my heart thrown from one wall to the next.

There was little time to recover. It didn’t take long for the cables to become taut, stretched to capacity. I flattened myself against the outer wall and waited the interminable wait for them to move.