Page 95

“A steak then, if you like. Or a sponge cake.”

“I’dlikenot to be described as something to eat.”

“And yet,” Patrick said, looking back down the tunnel to the shapes that disentangled from the dark. “I bet that boy would take a bite.”

I shook my head. He was jumping to conclusions. “We knew each other well when we were apprentices, but we haven’t known each other since.”

Patrick waited for more.

I sighed and relented. “He broke it off with me before we graduated.”

Patrick’s eyes dipped to my mouth. Suddenly, he felt too close. “And did you love him?”

“Yes.” I shivered.

“And he you?”

“I believed he did.”

“And do you love him still?” He asked it so quietly I strained to hear. His face took on the visage of a ghost, lantern light only settling on the sharpest bones.

Breath weighted my lungs, and my feet sunk another inch. Why did all things become heavier in the dark?

“It isn’t your business to know who I love.” But I said it to the ground, where there was no brilliant blue. Beneath my skin, blood raced.

Silence. Sounds suffocated on the hot air. Patrick waited an interminable moment, until it was impossible not to look at him again. “If it’s all the same to you,” he said, low and exact, “I’m inclined to make it my business.”

I was twelve years old in a courtyard, and a furtive hand slipped vials into my pocket.You’ve got a mind of your own, the boy said.Don’t let those fuckers take it.And then he faded from view.

The work was simple enough. I was to break sideways through ground, Patrick and Otto would collect the loose dirt in the barrow and careen it down the line to Gunner, then Briggs, who would take it up the shaft. There was a secondary tunnel that ran under Kenton and out to pasture, where the earth would be discarded via a pulley mechanism, according to Briggs. Theo would control the water, which seeped through hidden veins, ravenous for empty space. The walls bled with it incessantly, the ceiling a leaking faucet. I was drenched before I could even begin.

Donny began with me at the prow. He had what looked like a doctor’s stethoscope, slightly rusted, its lead mangled. Its earpieces clung to his neck as he crouched beside me, humming some worker’s tune he’d dredged from the recesses of a memory I’d long ago shut away.

“How will I know which way to bend the tunnel?” I asked, my fingers itching to start.

Donny stopped humming. He turned his face in an approximation ofwhere I stood and polished the head of the stethoscope on his shirt. “I’m captain of the ship, darlin’,” he said. I wondered how his squatted knees did not protest. “Just dig where I point, all right?”

I was skeptical. “And, erm…howwill you know which way to go?”

Donny tapped his temple with a boyish grin. “Got a built-in compass,” he said. “I was gifted second sight, when the first was taken from me—”

“He listens for the flow of water and keeps us away from it,” Patrick interjected. “I’ve got the compass.” He held one up. It was edged in rust and clouded. “Stop windin’ her up, Donny, or we’ll tiptoe out and leave you here.”

Donny nodded, unapologetic. “Righto. Onward, milady.”

I felt each one of the men fall still behind me. Someone lifted a lantern to better see. Before me, my own shadow was cast onto the wall.

I lifted my hands. I welcomed the expansion of my mind, as Professor Dumley had once directed me. I felt my awareness of the earth unfurl, tenfold in size, commands rushing from the channels of my nervous system at light speed.

Then I felt the earth as though my fingers were touching it.

And I tore it to pieces.

The dirt took the shape my mind bid it to, large chunks crumbling away, the walls of the tunnel elongating before me, the ceiling climbing to allow room to stand. The wall moved back, back, an invisible pressure pulverizing it, roaring in my ears, a trillion mites burrowing through.

And I was caught in the ecstasy of it.

“Stop!” called a voice. “Fuckin’ hell, STOP HER!”