I have withdrawn from most of my duties now. If you ever consider them duties. Sitting in on gatherings, occasionally voicing an opinion. It’s not what I would call work. When Largan was around, I’d be mucking in with the others, swinging a scythe, milking, whatever needed to be done. I continued for a while after she had gone, but I took a weak turn one day while doing a shift in the mess kitchen. The heads of the families stepped in then, and decided it was time for me to take it easier. They had been waiting for it. Couldn’t wait to retire me. It was the height of summer, I said, the place was a furnace, but they wouldn’t listen. With Largan dead, I had no strength for arguments. We are in constant exchange, Largan and I. Still. I wear her on my face, on the soles of my feet. I am failing her, I think, sitting around waiting for my death. It is the reason I have undertaken to write this story. People must know that Largan is the reason this place exists.

  ***

  The belts were not so broad on the fellows when the man Gracey called me in again. They left the office puffing and shaking their heads like schoolboys unjustly punished. I sat there in my chair, but when I realised that Gracey had not the leaning to help me across the threshold, I took a hold on the smooth wheels of the chair and pushed myself to the door.

  ‘Now, Charlie. Let’s me and you get acquainted,’ he said, as I manipulated the chair through the smoky doorway, careful not to nip my fingers on the edges.

  ‘Yes, Mister,’ I said, shaken awake by the man’s now obvious authority. We prattled on about cats and kittens for a moment before he finally settled to his intention.

  ‘I enjoyed your speech there Charlie. It was-’ He stopped to think of the word, a hand rubbing his belly.

  ‘Did you ever watch a block of ice melt?’ he asked me, finally.

  ‘I have heard tell of it,’ I said.

  ‘Not those tiny ones that come out of those brose ice boxes they have now, I mean the ones they used to hack from the mountain and bring down the river on barges. Big ones. Ones that would fill this room,’ he said, throwing out an arm to show the dimensions. I looked round, indulging him.

  ‘My father was in that game,’ he went on. ‘We scarcely saw the man. We would go to the river every once in a while and wave to him on the barge as he passed. One time, he came home with this monstrous big slab of ice that he himself had carved from Ben Catac. With his own pick, you understand? A thing no longer than my arm.’

  Again the arm came up to demonstrate. I looked, and he waited for my nod before continuing.

  ‘He had dragged it from the river on the end of a rope. I can’t imagine how big it must have been when he had hewn it from the mountain, but it was still as big as our front room by the time he had got it home. He wanted us to know something more about him, you see? This is what I think. He wanted us to know what ice was.’

  I nodded again. A particular look brightens a man’s face when he talks about his father. It was a look that would have worked my nerves only a few weeks previous, but now I appreciated the happiness of others.

  ‘You worked with bordonite, didn’t you? Well, it was like that. A big ledge of a thing, white and silver, humming with the cold. It changed the weather all around it - your breath turned to steam if you went anywhere near it. Even on a mild day like that one.’

  He took a sip from his cup.

  ‘We messed about with it all afternoon, me and my brother. We challenged each other to see who could sit on it the longest time. We made a sled from it and took it down the big hill. All the kids of the quarter came out to have a go – this was up in Port Tray, where I grew up.’

  ‘Yes’ I said, for what else could I say, sitting here in my chair, my strapped legs stretched out in front of me, waiting to be brought back to carkare any moment?

  ‘But of course, only a few hours had passed before it started to thin out. Eventually the thing smashed when Shoon - that’s my brother - took it on one last slide down the hill. We couldn’t believe it at the time. This massive big rock. It looked indestructible. And there it was in shards before us.’

  He looked at the floor, as if he could see the remains before him.

  ‘I’m blethering on here, I know, Charlie, and I hope you’ll forgive that. The thing I want to say is that even strong, impenetrable things have their weakness. A bit of heat in the right place and the ice will melt. Easy.’

  The pink skin on his bald head shone now, reflecting the shimmer of the overhead lamp.

  ‘I have something needs melting, Charlie. I have tried a few things, but I haven’t yet been able to find the right heat.’

  I became aware of my count. I was somewhere in the seventies.

  ‘There is a lady I know. She is involved with the company here. A bulb. A bright one.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, aware that he has spoken for a while without my contribution. My exchanging wasn’t what it used to be.

  ‘I wonder if you’d like to meet her? She is a strong person, a capable person. But she struggles with the searcher’s sickness. She has many advantages but the hardship she suffers tumbles the balance. The thing she wants is an answer. All the answers. The Great Why, do you understand?’

  At this he threw a glance to the ceiling. Then he took a slow breath, as if to give the idea its due deference.

  ‘She has access to plenty of soldies, this lady, but soldies can’t buy everything.’

  He placed a hand on the capesh sheet on the board in front of him.

  ‘You’re an interesting man, Charlie. And still young. You are on the good side of an ordeal. And changed for it too, I think?’

  ‘Yes. I am different.’ I said, putting words to the new feeling for the first time.

  ‘I understand, Charlie. I sense that Sorrel – that is the lady’s name – might benefit from your insight. You mentioned out there that you had seen things? When you were buried under the earth?’

  ‘Yes, I saw my brother.’ I said. I couldn’t wait to say it. I was like a child brought into a courtroom to give a description of a criminal, oblivious to all consequence.

  ‘My brother who is dead, you understand. My brother who I killed. As close as-’ My nerves caught up with my chattiness and I was silent again. I gestured with my hand to indicate that he was as close to me as Gracey is to me now.

  ‘I could embrace him,’ I said, feeling an overflow at my eyes.

  Gracey watched me, a finger and thumb cradling his chin. When it was clear I had nothing further to add, he went on.

  ‘I read about your case. A very sad thing all round. I have a brother too, as I think I told you. Shoon. Still alive too, thankfully. If he were to die through some, some misfortune-‘

  He shook his head gravely.

  ‘I cannot begin to imagine your hardship. And yet. You see, you are moving through, you are moved through. Don’t you think so? You have done something bad, of course, but you and the bad thing are separate things. You are beginning to see that. Surely you are? Sorrel, the poor creature, she stays entangled. It’s as if she has fallen into a clump of briars and does not want to move, fearful of further injury. There might be further scars before she comes out, but she must come out.’

  Later, he took me on a carriage out of the city. In a feat of strength that still astounds me forty years after it happened, Gracey himself, that waif, that elder, lifted me himself from the wheelchair, and placed my mish-mash frame gently into the rear seat. He was used to doing things for himself, this man.

  He drove the vehicle himself. At a certain point, when we were waiting at the Barty junction, my pulse started to throb as I imagined we might be taking the left across the bridge and onto the yielding surfaces of Jurckas. In the end, we went straight, passing the just makeoutable garbage mountains on the other side of the river.

  Soon we were out of the city. Greenery began to elbow its way into the road, trees and grass and bushes. When we arrived at our destination, Gracey once again displayed the power in his arms and shoulders in depositing me back into the rolling chair. We were at a huge grey house, with a loose stone pathway. Gracey pushed me towards the house, carving in the gravel two ugly lines where the wheels wouldn’t turn.

  The house was a sad one, it was immediately clear. A house where no-one bothered to open the curtains, where morning and evening had no meaning. Another massive hallway, but here there was no activity whatsoever. Somewhere there was a creaking of wood, the exhalations of a bored building. There was a closed-in vinegary smell, like clothes stuffed away in a chest. Gracey left me in the hallway, as his steps, twenty-four of them, rang out on the solid wood.

  I sat and looked at the conveniences. I tried to figure the makings. The floor was once a tree, or many of them. The makings of the rug once grew in a field. The empty pot at the doorway was once earth.

  I heard low exchanging upstairs, Gracey’s voice encouraged and pleaded and a feminine voice responded minimally without commitment. I pictured a stone in a stream, unmoving as the water flowed over and around.

  It was enjoyable. Sitting with my legs up while important people took an interest in me, my yellow feet and misshapen toenails protruding through the wrappings. I would soon be back in chains, and I knew this is a bad thing, but the positive feeling still wouldn’t give way to disappointment.

  A door opened above. I heard the gentle kiss of bare feet on the wooden boards. The lady was approaching. Sorrel.

  Now this is a decisive day in my story. Perhaps the most decisive. It is this encounter that freed me from my indentures. It is undoubtedly Sorrel who led me on the path towards renown. Yet most of the details of the day escape me. She was short, perhaps eye-level with my shoulder, and her dark hair, neatly combed, only barely reached her shoulders. I struggle to remember the features of her face, since I only stole fleeting glances. I recall her shining, clean complexion, which always looked as if she had just finished applying a layer of cream. I recall the soft ledge of a chin under a thin pink line of mouth.

  I recall the closeness in the air, the sticky atmosphere. I recall her suggestion that we sit outside. I recall the vast expanse of undisturbed earth, enclosed by a tall wooden fence on all sides. I recall her yellow eyes as she told me that she had every blade of grass, every tree, every shrub removed from the garden. That it no longer was a place of play, a place of life, she said, almost proudly. Rippled lines still cleaving the earth as though the plough had just passed over it that morning. I recall listening and watching. Saying very little. I recall clamping my hands to the rails and lifting myself from the chair, then easing my backside to the floor. I recall perching on the edge of the flagstones then extending my legs as far as I could. I recall asking, gesturing to show her that I wanted to put my feet in the soil. I recall her nodding assent. I recall playfully trying to scoop the earth over my feet, but the hindrances of my bandages not allowing me. I recall the peace and quiet. I recall Sorrell, still in her bare feet, stepping out into the soil, and the stubborn ridges yielding under her oblong feet. I recall her smile as she looked at the meagre dusting of earth on my legs. I recall her saying that perhaps the garden wasn’t totally dead.

  I recall the unwashed smell as she climbed on top of me later that night. The familiarity of it remarkable, even to me who had spent many months working in a cave with barely a lick from the hose one morning in ten. Her stiff garments piled in an impatient bundle. Her stale breath as she clamped her teeth on my ears, on my neck, wherever she could find a vulnerable bit. The peculiar nip of her rough fingertips, like those of a tradesman, on the thin flesh of my behind. My legs so tightly strapped, I could scarcely lie down in comfort. My contributions limited, not knowing where to put myself. She enjoyed my sharp intake of breath when she found a painful spot. I pulled gently on her hair as she gasped in my ear, careful not to match her level of violence. I pressed on the loose flesh of her hips, and wondered at the residue that appeared on my hands. I cupped her round face in my hands and tried to make eye contact, but she closed her eyes and turned her head.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  I had been in prison for two years. I was willing, although she was perhaps two decades my senior. Did I enjoy it? I killed my brother and mother. I spent more than a year scraping a tunnel’s wall, never seeing the light in another’s eyes. Did I have a choice?

  I hit the high point as an instinctive thing, like the way you’d move your hand out of the way if it came into contact with boiling water. The release was welcome. She was frantic, hurried. She would have torn the bandages from my legs if she had found the strength. If not for her age, I might have guessed that I was the first man ever in her bed.

  I woke up alone the following morning, sun spilling into the room through the not quite closed curtains. I hadn’t been alone in years. The first time I had awoken after sunrise in a long time. I still felt the earth scratching pleasantly between my toes. It occurred to me that I had been unwatched since Gracey took me away the previous day. No-one nearby with a cluster of branches to skite across my ass if I didn’t show the requisite respect. Thinking on it all these years later, I am again struck by the power of the enterprising classes of that time. Here I was, a condemned murderer, lower than a worm’s belly, but if someone like Gracey requested to take me away, the orderlies were happy to let him get on with it.

  When I spoke to Gracey later the following day – occasional overnight sighs of foot-pressed timber told me that he too had stayed the night – he was pleased. A small leather case, brown and bulging, sat on the table in front of him. Sorrel thought I was an interesting man, he said, and she wanted to hear more about my experience in the mountain.

  ‘Would you like to stay here for a while?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Where else would I go?

  ‘Good’ he said, tapping the table with restrained enthusiasm. ‘I sensed she would respond to you. There is something about you. Like you have something figured out.’

  I didn’t know how to answer, so I looked at him. People wanted to get a good look at me, since I had been pulled from under the mountain.

  ‘You’re not here, almost,’ he said.

  He pushed the case towards me I have withdrawn from most of my duties now. If you ever consider them duties. Sitting in on gatherings, occasionally voicing an opinion. It’s not what I would call work. When Largan was around, I’d be mucking in with the others, swinging a scythe, milking, whatever needed to be done. I continued for a while after she had gone, but I took a weak turn one day while doing a shift in the mess kitchen. The heads of the families stepped in then, and decided it was time for me to take it easier. They had been waiting for it. Couldn’t wait to retire me. It was the height of summer, I said, the place was a furnace, but they wouldn’t listen. With Largan dead, I had no strength for arguments. We are in constant exchange, Largan and I. Still. I wear her on my face, on the soles of my feet. I am failing her, I think, sitting around waiting for my death. It is the reason I have undertaken to write this story. People must know that Largan is the reason this place exists.

  ***

  The belts were not so broad on the fellows when the man Gracey called me in again. They left the office puffing and shaking their heads like schoolboys unjustly punished. I sat there in my chair, but when I realised that Gracey had not the leaning to help me across the threshold, I took a hold on the smooth wheels of the chair and pushed myself to the door.

  ‘Now, Charlie. Let’s me and you get acquainted,’ he said, as I manipulated the chair through the smoky doorway, careful not to nip my fingers on the edges.

  ‘Yes, Mister,’ I said, shaken awake by the man’s now obvious authority. We prattled on about cats and kittens for a moment before he finally settled to his intention.

  ‘I enjoyed your speech there Charlie. It was-’ He stopped to think of the word, a hand rubbing his belly.

  ‘Did you ever watch a block of ice melt?’ he asked me, finally.

  ‘I have heard tell of it,’ I said.

  ‘Not those tiny ones that come out of those brose ice boxes they have now, I mean the ones they used to hack from the mountain and bring down the river on barges. Big ones. Ones that would fill this room,’ he said, throwing out an arm to show the dimensions. I looked round, indulging him.

  ‘My father was in that game,’ he went on. ‘We scarcely saw the man. We would go to the river every once in a while and wave to him on the barge as he passed. One time, he came home with this monstrous big slab of ice that he himself had carved from Ben Catac. With his own pick, you understand? A thing no longer than my arm.’

  Again the arm came up to demonstrate. I looked, and he waited for my nod before continuing.

  ‘He had dragged it from the river on the end of a rope. I can’t imagine how big it must have been when he had hewn it from the mountain, but it was still as big as our front room by the time he had got it home. He wanted us to know something more about him, you see? This is what I think. He wanted us to know what ice was.’

  I nodded again. A particular look brightens a man’s face when he talks about his father. It was a look that would have worked my nerves only a few weeks previous, but now I appreciated the happiness of others.

  ‘You worked with bordonite, didn’t you? Well, it was like that. A big ledge of a thing, white and silver, humming with the cold. It changed the weather all around it - your breath turned to steam if you went anywhere near it. Even on a mild day like that one.’

  He took a sip from his cup.

  ‘We messed about with it all afternoon, me and my brother. We challenged each other to see who could sit on it the longest time. We made a sled from it and took it down the big hill. All the kids of the quarter came out to have a go – this was up in Port Tray, where I grew up.’

  ‘Yes’ I said, for what else could I say, sitting here in my chair, my strapped legs stretched out in front of me, waiting to be brought back to carkare any moment?

  ‘But of course, only a few hours had passed before it started to thin out. Eventually the thing smashed when Shoon - that’s my brother - took it on one last slide down the hill. We couldn’t believe it at the time. This massive big rock. It looked indestructible. And there it was in shards before us.’

  He looked at the floor, as if he could see the remains before him.

  ‘I’m blethering on here, I know, Charlie, and I hope you’ll forgive that. The thing I want to say is that even strong, impenetrable things have their weakness. A bit of heat in the right place and the ice will melt. Easy.’

  The pink skin on his bald head shone now, reflecting the shimmer of the overhead lamp.

  ‘I have something needs melting, Charlie. I have tried a few things, but I haven’t yet been able to find the right heat.’

  I became aware of my count. I was somewhere in the seventies.

  ‘There is a lady I know. She is involved with the company here. A bulb. A bright one.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, aware that he has spoken for a while without my contribution. My exchanging wasn’t what it used to be.

  ‘I wonder if you’d like to meet her? She is a strong person, a capable person. But she struggles with the searcher’s sickness. She has many advantages but the hardship she suffers tumbles the balance. The thing she wants is an answer. All the answers. The Great Why, do you understand?’

  At this he threw a glance to the ceiling. Then he took a slow breath, as if to give the idea its due deference.

  ‘She has access to plenty of soldies, this lady, but soldies can’t buy everything.’

  He placed a hand on the capesh sheet on the board in front of him.

  ‘You’re an interesting man, Charlie. And still young. You are on the good side of an ordeal. And changed for it too, I think?’

  ‘Yes. I am different.’ I said, putting words to the new feeling for the first time.

  ‘I understand, Charlie. I sense that Sorrel – that is the lady’s name – might benefit from your insight. You mentioned out there that you had seen things? When you were buried under the earth?’

  ‘Yes, I saw my brother.’ I said. I couldn’t wait to say it. I was like a child brought into a courtroom to give a description of a criminal, oblivious to all consequence.

  ‘My brother who is dead, you understand. My brother who I killed. As close as-’ My nerves caught up with my chattiness and I was silent again. I gestured with my hand to indicate that he was as close to me as Gracey is to me now.

  ‘I could embrace him,’ I said, feeling an overflow at my eyes.

  Gracey watched me, a finger and thumb cradling his chin. When it was clear I had nothing further to add, he went on.

  ‘I read about your case. A very sad thing all round. I have a brother too, as I think I told you. Shoon. Still alive too, thankfully. If he were to die through some, some misfortune-‘

  He shook his head gravely.

  ‘I cannot begin to imagine your hardship. And yet. You see, you are moving through, you are moved through. Don’t you think so? You have done something bad, of course, but you and the bad thing are separate things. You are beginning to see that. Surely you are? Sorrel, the poor creature, she stays entangled. It’s as if she has fallen into a clump of briars and does not want to move, fearful of further injury. There might be further scars before she comes out, but she must come out.’

  Later, he took me on a carriage out of the city. In a feat of strength that still astounds me forty years after it happened, Gracey himself, that waif, that elder, lifted me himself from the wheelchair, and placed my mish-mash frame gently into the rear seat. He was used to doing things for himself, this man.

  He drove the vehicle himself. At a certain point, when we were waiting at the Barty junction, my pulse started to throb as I imagined we might be taking the left across the bridge and onto the yielding surfaces of Jurckas. In the end, we went straight, passing the just makeoutable garbage mountains on the other side of the river.

  Soon we were out of the city. Greenery began to elbow its way into the road, trees and grass and bushes. When we arrived at our destination, Gracey once again displayed the power in his arms and shoulders in depositing me back into the rolling chair. We were at a huge grey house, with a loose stone pathway. Gracey pushed me towards the house, carving in the gravel two ugly lines where the wheels wouldn’t turn.

  The house was a sad one, it was immediately clear. A house where no-one bothered to open the curtains, where morning and evening had no meaning. Another massive hallway, but here there was no activity whatsoever. Somewhere there was a creaking of wood, the exhalations of a bored building. There was a closed-in vinegary smell, like clothes stuffed away in a chest. Gracey left me in the hallway, as his steps, twenty-four of them, rang out on the solid wood.

  I sat and looked at the conveniences. I tried to figure the makings. The floor was once a tree, or many of them. The makings of the rug once grew in a field. The empty pot at the doorway was once earth.

  I heard low exchanging upstairs, Gracey’s voice encouraged and pleaded and a feminine voice responded minimally without commitment. I pictured a stone in a stream, unmoving as the water flowed over and around.

  It was enjoyable. Sitting with my legs up while important people took an interest in me, my yellow feet and misshapen toenails protruding through the wrappings. I would soon be back in chains, and I knew this is a bad thing, but the positive feeling still wouldn’t give way to disappointment.

  A door opened above. I heard the gentle kiss of bare feet on the wooden boards. The lady was approaching. Sorrel.

  Now this is a decisive day in my story. Perhaps the most decisive. It is this encounter that freed me from my indentures. It is undoubtedly Sorrel who led me on the path towards renown. Yet most of the details of the day escape me. She was short, perhaps eye-level with my shoulder, and her dark hair, neatly combed, only barely reached her shoulders. I struggle to remember the features of her face, since I only stole fleeting glances. I recall her shining, clean complexion, which always looked as if she had just finished applying a layer of cream. I recall the soft ledge of a chin under a thin pink line of mouth.

  I recall the closeness in the air, the sticky atmosphere. I recall her suggestion that we sit outside. I recall the vast expanse of undisturbed earth, enclosed by a tall wooden fence on all sides. I recall her yellow eyes as she told me that she had every blade of grass, every tree, every shrub removed from the garden. That it no longer was a place of play, a place of life, she said, almost proudly. Rippled lines still cleaving the earth as though the plough had just passed over it that morning. I recall listening and watching. Saying very little. I recall clamping my hands to the rails and lifting myself from the chair, then easing my backside to the floor. I recall perching on the edge of the flagstones then extending my legs as far as I could. I recall asking, gesturing to show her that I wanted to put my feet in the soil. I recall her nodding assent. I recall playfully trying to scoop the earth over my feet, but the hindrances of my bandages not allowing me. I recall the peace and quiet. I recall Sorrell, still in her bare feet, stepping out into the soil, and the stubborn ridges yielding under her oblong feet. I recall her smile as she looked at the meagre dusting of earth on my legs. I recall her saying that perhaps the garden wasn’t totally dead.

  I recall the unwashed smell as she climbed on top of me later that night. The familiarity of it remarkable, even to me who had spent many months working in a cave with barely a lick from the hose one morning in ten. Her stiff garments piled in an impatient bundle. Her stale breath as she clamped her teeth on my ears, on my neck, wherever she could find a vulnerable bit. The peculiar nip of her rough fingertips, like those of a tradesman, on the thin flesh of my behind. My legs so tightly strapped, I could scarcely lie down in comfort. My contributions limited, not knowing where to put myself. She enjoyed my sharp intake of breath when she found a painful spot. I pulled gently on her hair as she gasped in my ear, careful not to match her level of violence. I pressed on the loose flesh of her hips, and wondered at the residue that appeared on my hands. I cupped her round face in my hands and tried to make eye contact, but she closed her eyes and turned her head.

  I had been in prison for two years. I was willing, although she was perhaps two decades my senior. Did I enjoy it? I killed my brother and mother. I spent more than a year scraping a tunnel’s wall, never seeing the light in another’s eyes. Did I have a choice?

  I hit the high point as an instinctive thing, like the way you’d move your hand out of the way if it came into contact with boiling water. The release was welcome. She was frantic, hurried. She would have torn the bandages from my legs if she had found the strength. If not for her age, I might have guessed that I was the first man ever in her bed.

  I woke up alone the following morning, sun spilling into the room through the not quite closed curtains. I hadn’t been alone in years. The first time I had awoken after sunrise in a long time. I still felt the earth scratching pleasantly between my toes. It occurred to me that I had been unwatched since Gracey took me away the previous day. No-one nearby with a cluster of branches to skite across my ass if I didn’t show the requisite respect. Thinking on it all these years later, I am again struck by the power of the enterprising classes of that time. Here I was, a condemned murderer, lower than a worm’s belly, but if someone like Gracey requested to take me away, the orderlies were happy to let him get on with it.

  When I spoke to Gracey later the following day – occasional overnight sighs of foot-pressed timber told me that he too had stayed the night – he was pleased. A small leather case, brown and bulging, sat on the table in front of him. Sorrel thought I was an interesting man, he said, and she wanted to hear more about my experience in the mountain.

  ‘Would you like to stay here for a while?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. Where else would I go?

  ‘Good’ he said, tapping the table with restrained enthusiasm. ‘I sensed she would respond to you. There is something about you. Like you have something figured out.’

  I didn’t know how to answer, so I looked at him. People wanted to get a good look at me, since I had been pulled from under the mountain.

  ‘You’re not here, almost,’ he said.

  He pushed the case towards me after a moment. ‘Here, you can use these. Soap, tooth powder, washcloths. It’s all there, but if you need anything else, please let me know.’ He turned it so that the latch was facing me.

  ‘Just focus on getting well,’ he said. ‘This can be your recuperation.’

  I still use the case today, decades later.

  a moment. ‘Here, you can use these. Soap, tooth powder, washcloths. It’s all there, but if you need anything else, please let me know.’ He turned it so that the latch was facing me.

  ‘Just focus on getting well,’ he said. ‘This can be your recuperation.’

  I still use the case today, decades later.