Defy the Dark

Jackson Pearce Where the Light Is

Underground, it is cold.

The deeper you go, the colder it gets. In elementary school, I learned that if you go far enough, there’s a layer of magma underneath the dirt, and beneath that the earth’s core. It’s hot—billions upon billions of degrees—and solid. Most people think it’s made of iron. My teacher said some people think it’s made of gold.

When I told my father that, he said it wasn’t true—that it’s the core of the miners that’s gold. That they are brothers underground, protecting one another, using drills and shovels like wands and athames to uncover power for the world. A league of magicians working in the depths, in the secret places of the world where no one else has ever been.

I am in the league, but I am not like the other miners, who slap each other on the back and tell dirty jokes gleefully. When we go into the mine, all I can think is this—billions of degrees at the earth’s core, yet it’s cold. I think it’s a sign, like the way people get a chill when they go into a haunted house. The earth is telling us we’re not welcome.

But underground is where the money is, in the fat seams of coal, tall as me and ten times more valuable. We rumble into the mine on the cart, Roth’s salt-and-pepper hair whipping back as he presses harder on the accelerator—he knows the track well enough to speed along with total confidence through the labyrinth. The headlights beam through the coal dust like we’re driving through black snow; we turn our helmet lamps on as the sun vanishes behind us. I’m afraid of the dark in the mines. Afraid to be so, so far away from the world above.

I nod to a group of miners as we pass—most of them went to Middleview High with me. Just four months ago, we sat at graduation together. As the principal talked about bright futures, I entertained the idea that I would go on to something else—anything else. It was a silly fantasy, of course. The only Middleview boys who escape a life in the mines are the Runners, who slink away to colleges or the army, never to be seen till they return for their parents’ funerals. The town doesn’t welcome them back. They’re deserters, traitors.

My father was a foreman, last out in an accident fifteen years ago. The Middleview Mine Catastrophe, the monument calls it. Four died; Dad kept a group of seven others alive, including Roth. My father gave them his lunch. He went hungry as three, four, five days passed until rescuers reached them. He is a local hero; he was a great miner. If I were a Runner, it would destroy my mother. It would destroy my father’s memory.

I could never come back.

Roth drops me off, pats me on the shoulder as I walk away from the cart. Because I’m new, I get the boring jobs; because I don’t talk, I get the solitary ones. Just like yesterday, I’m plastering an airflow wall, scooping white goo out of a bucket with my hand and rubbing it into the cracks of cinder blocks.

I pretend I’m a painter, drawing stick figures in the plaster. I pretend I’m a doctor and getting the plaster into all the cracks saves someone’s life. I pretend that I’ll keep my promise to myself this time around, that once this mine is dead, I’ll consider leaving this town even if it means never returning. I’ll escape, I’ll be free, I’ll be happy. I don’t know how much time passes—it’s hard to tell without the sun. If I check my watch I obsess over each second, so I just try not to look. I’m halfway into pretending I’m an archaeologist, making casts of something ancient, when I hear a sound.

A single knock.

No, not a single—there’s another. And another. Knocks with just enough pattern to be intentional, louder than the grind of machines farther down the path. I lift my head, wipe my forearm across my mouth. Knock, knock, knock; before I know it I’m walking toward the noise. I pass a group of miners who look up at me, eyes of all ages lined with coal that’s thick like a girl’s eyeliner. Don’t they hear it? We stare awkwardly at one another for a moment; I think of saying something—

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

Pause. The others stare blankly.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

I hurry on—they don’t hear it, and I don’t want them to think I’ve lost it by saying something. Down another pathway, through an empty room . . . This is an old, old mine. The company reopened when they discovered the men from the 1800s hadn’t entirely cleared out the coal. It’s full of caverns, corners, tunnels that are easy to get lost in, dug with hand tools. Did someone get turned around, get sealed into an now-unused tunnel? I arrive at the retreat miners’ area—a far corner of the mine, where they use mechanical drills to plant explosives. They’ll take all the coal until the ceiling of earth above us is held up by a few precious pillars. Then they’ll take the pillars and their coal, too, and the room will collapse. They’re preoccupied with the machinery and don’t notice me passing.

Knock, knock, knock, knock.

“Hello?” I call. The knocks answer. I run toward them, around the pillars—the retreaters’ area looks like a big, empty ballroom. I reach the wall—is the knocking getting more desperate, or am I imagining things? I put my hands against the wall. I feel the knocking on the other side, the slight tremble that vibrates into my fingertips.

“Hello? Are you there?” I ask.

The knocking stops.

Silence. Long-drawn-out silence that makes me lean forward, wait for it, wait for it—

The knocking moves.

Along the wall, knock, knock, knock. I follow. The knocker and I move along the wall together to the corner of the ballroom, where he begins to knock swiftly, like he’s keeping time with a song. It moves lower, to the bottom of the wall, to a crevice in the stone.

Voids in the earth aren’t unheard of, but we usually don’t drill this close to them. They’re unpredictable, dangerous. The wall between the ballroom and the void could collapse, start a chain reaction that covers us all up. I glance back. The retreaters aren’t in shouting distance—

A hand shoots out of the crevice, covered in coal dust. I leap back and scream like a girl—a girl. The hand grasps the edge of the crevice with white knuckles. It is not the grizzled, beaten hand of a miner. It’s slender, a tiny wrist, white white white skin dusted with coal that looks like powdered makeup instead of soot.

There is a girl trapped down here.

My eyes widen and I yell for help. I duck down, shine my helmet light into the crevice. “Hang on!”

How did she get down here? I’ve heard about druggies wandering into mines, homeless people hoping for a place to stay, but these mines are so well guarded that I didn’t know it was possible. I reach into the crevice, wait for her to take my hand, Please, grab it, I’ll help you. Is she too strung out to know I’m here, to understand I want to help her? I wonder what she’s on, I wonder how old she is, who she is, how long she’s been here. Take my hand, please.

I hear her breathing; I pull myself farther through the crevice, and my body pitches forward on an incline. I start to slide away from the ballroom and into the void. It’s only a short drop, the length of a child’s slide, but my helmet falls away; the lamp flickers off. My stomach twists.

It is darker than it’s ever been anywhere, ever.

I land on my back and gasp for air like a fish until oxygen rushes to my lungs. I breathe slow, wait for my eyes to adjust, but it’s too dark in here without the lamp—I can’t see anything, literally, not even my hand when I wave it in front of my face.

“Where are you?” I cough—the coal dust in here isn’t blown away by fans, and it coats my throat. For the first time, I wish I wore my respirator.

I clamber to my feet and rub my eyes, then stand, waiting to hear a sound in the darkness. She has to be in here somewhere—does she not want to be rescued? I reach my arms out until my fingertips brush against a wall, then begin to walk, shuffling along the edge of the room.

“You aren’t in trouble,” I whisper, because it seems strange to speak loudly in the dark. “If you sneaked in, it’s okay. Come on, come to me. My name’s Will; I’ll help you. We have to leave—the air here isn’t safe.” And the dark, I want to add. The dark is everywhere.

Nothing. I walk farther. The room curves to the right, back toward the crevice that will lead me out, if I’ve got my bearings correct.

“I can help you. I can’t stay in here, though.” I pause, wait for any sort of response. My hands fall along a ridge—it’s the crevice, it must be. I duck my head and can see into the ballroom and, on the far end, a speck of light from the retreaters. I have to go toward it. I want to help her, but I’ll have to come back with a light, with help.

“Last chance,” I whisper at the cavern.

Nothing.

I turn to climb out; the air from the ballroom is fresher, cleaner, and I welcome it into my lungs. I crawl forward and then, just as I’m about to put both hands on the outside of the cavern, I feel it.

Her hand slides onto my shoulder, so soft and gentle it feels like someone is pooling a silk scarf against my neck. I freeze as she dances her fingertips along my neck, to my jawbone. When she gets close to my lips, I turn my head toward her—no, toward the darkness where I know she is. She withdraws. I sit back on my feet, back in the dusty air of the cavern.

I don’t speak, not this time. Instead I wait, eyes scanning the dark, longing to see. I force myself to stay still as she slides her palms over my cheeks, then down my shoulders, along my arms. She stops at my hands, not holding them, but touching them like she’s a palm reader. I swallow hard.

My words slip out as a whisper. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Her fingers harden on mine, like she’s fighting the urge to run.

Then her voice, the only sound and so much stronger than mine. When I hear it, I understand that she wasn’t afraid of me earlier.

When I hear it, I wonder if I should be afraid of her.

“My name is Ennor. I live here.”

“You can’t live here,” I say, shaking my head. I reach toward her, and she releases me and moves away.

“You don’t understand,” she says.

“You’re right,” I say slowly. “I don’t understand. Tell me how—why—you live here.” She must be crazy, or high, maybe that’s it—no one would live here willingly.

She’s moving, a rustling of fabrics I can’t see. I tense, wondering if she’ll touch me again, where I’ll feel her fingers first, wishing there was light. Her breath is by my ear; strands of her hair tickle my collarbone.

“I’m a Knocker.”

“A Knocker?” I say, and I can hear the doubt on my voice. The word is so silly, so stupid, that I feel the edges of my wonder crackling away into disbelief—I’ve heard the legends, all the miners have. Faeries who live underground, who help miners out or play little tricks. They were part of the bedtime stories my parents told me, the beings my mother promised would keep my father safe at work. I stopped believing when I saw the stretchers with the bodies of the four dead miners carried out of the ground.

“Yes. I called to you.” She sweeps away from me, and I hear her knocking against the stone. The sound is so much louder than skin on stone should be, and it carries through the mine, all around me, passing into my bones until I feel shaken. I’m relieved when she stops, and I reach backward until my hands find the wall. I lean against it, shaking my head.

“Why me?”

She hesitates. Long hair touches my arm. She can see me, I realize—I’m blind here, but she isn’t. She moves too deftly, too easily. “Knockers reward respectful miners. I’ll lead you to a new seam, on the far side of this room.” Something isn’t right about her words, like this is a practiced answer instead of a real one. I’m sure if I could see her eyes, I’d know that for certain.

I chuckle nervously, trying to sound casual, hoping to coax the truth from her. “That’s all? Because if that’s it, you’ve picked the wrong miner then,” I say. “I’m not respectful. My father was the miner; I hate this place—”

She makes a strange noise, one that sounds more catlike than human, one that sounds like she’s hurt herself—I lunge forward, hoping to catch her arm, but there’s nothing. I sit back and wait for her to speak again.

And wait.

And wait.

And realize that the sound of her breathing is gone, as is the rustle of her clothing.

The room suddenly fills with light, blinding me for a moment. It’s from my helmet, lying on the ground nearby. The lamp has flickered on, and its tiny light is like the sun. My eyes adjust and I search the room for her, waiting to see her face, to connect eyes with the voice.

The room has smooth walls and a steep pitch, and the ceiling is high and cathedral-like. Thick seams of coal line it, like striped wallpaper. Behind me, I see the exit into the ballroom. But there’s no other way out, not that I see, and there’s no one else here.

Maybe she only exists in the dark.

She is the only thing I’m thinking of as we head underground the following day. I didn’t mention her to anyone—as strange as she is, she is the only thing about the mines I’ve ever found intriguing. It’s almost like the mine itself has changed—it’s something exciting, something different than just mile after mile of darkness and coal. I don’t want anyone, not even Roth, to take that away. I wonder who she is really—a homeless girl, a runaway? A lunatic? A traveler, a con artist?

A faery girl? I’d ignore the last prospect were it not for her so easily vanishing yesterday. I spent the night thinking about it, trying to imagine what a life in the dark would be like.

I wait till everyone is at work and go back to the ballroom. It’s not easy—the retreaters are buzzing around, looking at pillars. I sneak around them, hold my breath when I see the tiny doorway into the cavern. Did I really plunge into that darkness so readily yesterday? I grit my teeth as I slide inside.

Nothing, no one. Not even the rustle of her clothes. I call her name softly, gently. I rap on the walls; I even resort to begging, but nothing.

Just as desperation is morphing to irritation, just as I’m about to leave, my helmet lamp flickers out.

“Why did you come back?” Her voice slices through the thick black. She sounds curious.

I lick my lips, turn my head to the sound of her voice. “I wanted to see you. Or, well, talk to you, since I can’t see you.”

“Why?”

I offer the simplest answer, the one I don’t think I would give if I could see her eyes on mine. “I’m lonely.”

Ennor waits to reply, but I can feel the words trying to escape the tip of her tongue. “I’m lonely, too.”

We’re both silent a long time. Finally, I sit down, leaning against the wall. Just as I reach the floor, I feel the tips of her fingers press into my palm. Her breath falls on the back of my hand, a thousand times warmer than the cool mine air.

I am afraid of Ennor.

I am afraid that talking to her means I am crazy. I’m afraid she isn’t real, and I’m afraid she is.

And I am not afraid of her at all. She is the magic my father told me about. Talking to her makes me forget I am a miner, gives me a reason to look forward to going underground during the brightest part of the day.

Ennor herself is darkness to me—my helmet lamp flickers out whenever I step into the cavern. I’m left to imagine her face on every woman I see when I surface. I whisper confessions to Ennor, confessions a thousand times more honest than I’ve ever said in church, confessions that get deeper with each passing day. I can admit to anything—like not being able to see her means I also don’t have to see myself.

She tells me about her life. About how she lives underground—I don’t understand, really, but I listen. She tells me how the light would burn her skin, but how badly she wishes she could see things above the ground, like flowers and Ferris wheels. I describe them to her and she’s enchanted, delighted when I explain that carnival rides glow.

When I’m with her, I’m not afraid of the dark.

“Why do you hate the mine?” she asks one day, just as I step into the cavern and my helmet lamp goes out. I balance myself, dizzy from the sudden change in light.

“Because I don’t want to be a miner.”

“But you are.”

I shake my head and reach for the wall for stability, then lower myself to the floor.

“Not because I want to be,” I say. She sits next to me, her knee pressing against mine. She always touches me when we talk—a hand, her arm pressed against mine. It’s not intimate, exactly, though it felt strange at first—now it’s eye contact in the darkness. “It would be easier if I did. If I was like the rest of them and didn’t care that I might spend most of my life underground. If I was more like my father.”

“You don’t like it here?” Ennor asks gently, and I pause, trying to work out if there is hurt in her tone.

“I’m afraid here, sometimes,” I admit. “I’m afraid of suddenly being fifty years old and realizing that I haven’t seen the sun in decades. I’m afraid of not living up to my father’s reputation. And I’m afraid of getting covered up, of being trapped down here, where I don’t even think I’m supposed to be to begin with.”

“A cave-in,” Ennor says. “Like the one that happened when I was young.”

“Yes,” I answer, raising my eyebrows. “My father was caught in it. You know about it?”

“It’s my family’s job,” Ennor answers. “We protect the land and the mines, and if they’re respectful, the miners.”

“Your family’s job?”

“Yes. Some of the miners weren’t respectful like your father. He was a good man, my family says.”

Wait. Does she mean what I think she means? I take a deep breath before speaking. “What happened to the ones who weren’t respectful?”

Ennor sighs. “My family let the earth take them.”

My stomach twists like someone is tightening a bow in it. Yes, she means what I think she means. Roth’s face flashes through my head, my father’s, and finally the four who died, whose faces are memorialized in bronze at the center of town. My family let the earth take them.

I lean away from her and stand up, steady myself on the wall; I’m not sure if it’s the darkness or the knowledge that’s making me dizzy.

“Will?” she says, and my name sounds exotic on her lips.

“Your family caused that cave-in?” I ask. My tongue feels thick.

“Yes. But I didn’t do it,” Ennor says quickly. “I had nothing to do with it. Are you angry?” She sounds almost desperate as I move to duck through the doorway. “Why are you angry?”

I’m trying not to yell, but my voice is loud, bounces off the walls. “Because people died, Ennor! My father could have died.”

“My family protected him—”

“So I’m supposed to think it’s okay? What did the other miners do that was so disrespectful they deserved to die?” My voice is high, almost panicked.

“They killed us!” Ennor says, and she is yelling—her voice echoes up, shoots through the rock the same way her knocking does. “They blew up the mountain, killed a thousand years in seconds. They murdered the earth that had given them so much with explosives and fire. My family had to fight back!”

I freeze. When the mine is dried up and dead, they blow the “overburden”—the mountain itself—so they can excavate the little bit that’s left.

“They killed my father’s brothers and sisters. Four of them. So he took four miners. But it wasn’t me, Will,” Ennor says. I wonder how she looks when she’s sad. “It wasn’t me any more than it was you who killed my people.”

“It was still your kind.”

“And it was still your kind.”

“I’m not like them,” I say, though I feel ashamed as I say it. They’re good people, they’re my father’s people. I should be so lucky, to be like them, to be like my father. “They aren’t evil, Ennor.”

“Maybe we’re more like each other than them.”

I press my lips together, start to agree, but I can’t get over the image of my father walking out of the mine. Five days without food made him look gaunt, he was weak; Roth’s head was covered in dried blood. They were the lucky ones. I think about the cry of relief and sadness and joy from my mother’s lips as she ran to him. All because of the Knockers.

I can’t escape the image just yet. I duck through the doorway and go back to my station.

Ennor is no more responsible for killing miners than I am for killing Knockers. I know that. It takes a few days for my surprise and horror to fade, though, for me to stop wondering what would happen if I made her terribly angry, for me to stop cringing when I see miners spit onto the mine floor—does that count as disrespectful? Is it only a life for a life, or are the Knockers less tolerant now? I feel like a child torn between two parents—the miners, yanking me in one direction, and Ennor, yanking me in the other. I’m not sure if I’m more like either. I’m not sure what I should do.

But I know this much, at least—I don’t want Ennor to be mad at me. Not because she’s a Knocker, not because I’m a miner, but because she’s my friend. I don’t want to stop talking to her over something that happened more than a decade ago. So I buy her flowers.

It is very, very difficult to sneak a bouquet of roses, even a small one, into a coal mine. I shove them down my shirt and wince, wishing I’d purchased the de-thorned variety. I walk with a strange step as I try to keep the water dripping from the stems from running down my pant leg. The sound of the pink-and-white cellophane the grocery store wrapped the flowers in is thankfully masked by the fans in the retreaters’ area. I snake around the pillars and finally duck into our cavern for the first time since we fought.

“I brought you something,” I say as I enter, and am suddenly painfully aware of how ridiculous I sound. I feel like I did in high school, showing up to pick up my prom date: dressed strangely and like my tongue is too heavy for my mouth. I don’t hear her, and my helmet light is still on—I don’t like it; it feels like I’m exposing something sacred. I reach up and turn it off as I speak again. “Ennor? I’m sorry I left.”

Silence. I sigh, look down. Maybe her temper takes longer to settle than mine. Maybe I should even be afraid that I’ve disrespected her, and the mine could close in on me. I’m not, though. I don’t think Ennor would hurt me, any more than I would hurt her. I kneel to place the flowers on the ground, an offering that hopefully she’ll find later—

Her hand slides down my forearm. I slowly rise. She reaches for the bouquet in my hands; the cellophane wrapping crinkles in response.

“Flowers,” she says as if it’s a prayer. “Like you have above.”

“Yes.”

She takes the bouquet, and for a moment, only the quiet crackling of the cellophane tells me where she is.

“They’re exactly like my mother told me about. Before she died.”

“Your mother is gone?” I ask. I hear the delicate sound of her touching the rose petals one by one.

“I barely knew her. She wasn’t like the rest of my family. She was like you.”

“A miner?”

“A human.” Ennor’s voice drops to a whisper. “I think it’s her blood that makes me sometimes wonder about the above.” She says “above” like it’s another world, and I suppose it is, just as much as the mine is another world to me.

There is a long silence.

“I’m sorry your father was trapped,” Ennor says. “I’m sorry people died on both sides.” She sounds tiny, fragile.

I exhale; it feels like someone has lifted something heavy off my chest. “I’m sorry, too. He’s gone now. He died two years ago.”

“How?”

“Black lung.” The name of the sickness always sounded like a pirate ship to me when I was little—back when I imagined the miners as magicians. The magicians and pirates battled over the coal, and in my games, the magicians always won. In real life, the pirates are the coal dust, years of it, building up and taking over until you can’t breathe. An ally turned murderer that spent eleven long years killing my father. I slide down the cavern wall to sit.

The cellophane crinkles; she’s growing closer—yet I still jump a little when she slides down next to me. She sighs, places her hand—wet from the bouquet—in mine. I feel her shifting and suddenly she’s leaning against my shoulder. Her hair spills down; I can just barely feel it through my work clothes. I want to touch it, I want to touch her face and imagine what the curves of her cheeks look like. She’d do it to me—she’s never afraid to touch me.

I wonder if it’s because she can see here, where I’m blind.

For weeks, things are better. Things are wonderful, even. Ennor and I share secrets, but we also play games, we make up stories, we are ridiculous and happy and I miss her when I’m gone. I miss someone I’ve never even seen, and I don’t care that that’s strange. I finish work in record time; I get more done in a day than I used to get done in a week because I want to spend every extra moment with her.

And for the first time, I don’t hate being a miner. Maybe being a miner is a fair price to pay for being with her.

“You seem to be in better spirits lately,” Roth tells me one morning, slapping me on the back as I pull my work clothes out of my locker. Both of us are already covered in a fine layer of coal dust, even though we haven’t been inside yet. It was the same way with my dad—I used to think it hid in his skin, coaxed out only with time, showers, and occasionally Vaseline to get it out of the corners of his eyes.

“I guess,” I say, shrugging and trying not to smile—it’ll only lead to more questions.

“Keep it up, whoever she is,” Roth says, eyes sparkling like diamonds in the middle of his dusty face. “She’s good for you. And she makes you a better miner, like your mama did for your daddy.”

Ah, so that’s why he’s looking at me so closely—like he’s trying to see underneath my skin. Trying to see if somewhere deep under there is the miner and the man my father was. The gold deep at the core. I still don’t think it’s there—in fact, spending time with Ennor has made me more certain than ever that my core is different. I look away, unable to take his eyes on mine any longer.

Roth sighs, then buckles his helmet. “It was a good mine. Took nice care of us. I always get a bit teary, seeing them go,” he says.

“Go?” I ask, freezing with my helmet half latched.

“The retreaters are knocking out the last few pillars today. We start the new mine tomorrow. It’s been on the calendar since the first of the month,” Roth says, eyebrows raised. “Did you not see it?”

“I guess I wasn’t paying attention,” I say, trying to control the panic in my voice. I have to warn Ennor. She could die. I take a step away, and my foot feels heavy, weight suddenly compounds on my shoulders.

If I tell her, she’ll tell her family. And they could bring the mine down on us. On me, on Roth, on the guys I graduated with. My hands shake as I inhale—there’s no weighing the possibilities in my mind, there’s only war, there’s only helplessness. I close my eyes. There’s no one who knows about her, no one who can tell me what to do, no one who can tell me which set of lives is more important.

Dad, I think as I listen to Roth humming an old mining tune. Help. What would you do?

As soon as I ask it, I know—so quickly that I wonder if the answer came from my father or my heart. Maybe it was both.

I grab for Ennor’s hands when I enter the cavern—I know where they’ll be, though I can’t explain how.

“I came to warn you. They’re going to blow the mountain.”

Ennor doesn’t move; I wait for the sound of her breath to quicken in the darkness.

But there is nothing, there’s silence and the sound of her heart beating that I can somehow hear in the still. Or maybe it’s my heart—I can’t tell.

“Ennor? They’re closing the mine. They’re going to blow the mountain to get the rest of the coal. You and your family have to leave.”

“I heard you. We already knew. My family heard other miners talking. I came to warn you. They’re going to let the earth take them.”

Her words are soft, gentle even. She slides her hands from my palms up my forearms. At first I think she’s calm, but then I feel it—a slight, uneven tremble.

“How long do we have to get out?” I whisper.

“Not long.”

I nod, and I mean to turn and run back to Roth. Instead I stand still—this time it isn’t my feet weighing me down, it’s something deeper, something that slinks around my heart and lungs. I inch my arms forward and then wrap them around Ennor, gently at first, then harder, till I realize I’m clutching her and, even more surprising, she’s clutching me.

“Will I see you again?” I finally ask. I feel her chin tilt up and know she’s looking at me, but it doesn’t bother me anymore that I can’t see her eyes.

“I don’t know,” she answers. “I can’t stop being a Knocker, and you can’t stop being a miner.”

“You’re only half a Knocker,” I remind her. “Maybe you can leave.”

“You’re only half a miner,” she answers. “The rest of you belongs somewhere else.”

She steps back and we release each other; I stand staring into the black, knowing she’s watching me, certain that I see her despite the lack of light. “You’ve got to go,” she says, inhaling.

I’ve got to save the other miners, my father’s people. I focus on that, hold an image of my father in my head, think about him saving the others so long ago. I hope I’m like him.

I run out of the cavern, back toward Roth.

I fly through the ballroom—some of the retreaters see me and try to call out, but I ignore them. Roth, I have to find Roth. He and the other miners are almost done removing equipment when I reach them. I don’t know what to say—I don’t know what to think, even. When I reach Roth, I choke on air but force words out despite the burning in my lungs.

“We have to get out,” I hack.

“What?” Roth asks, putting his hands on my shoulders and looking concerned.

“Now. There’s going to be a cave-in—we’ll get covered up.”

“A cave-in? How do you know?” Roth asks, eyes focusing on me carefully, like he’s trying to decide if I’m drunk.

What can I say? That a faery girl in a mine warned me?

“You have to trust me,” I say, and even as I do, I suspect he won’t. He barely knows me. He knew my father. Trust me like you would trust him, please, Roth. I stand up straight, try my best to look like him, try to channel the intensity of my father’s eyes into mine.

“All right,” Roth says; I can tell he thinks I may be crazy, but he reaches for his radio.

In an instant, the mine changes. People abandon jobs, run, jump onto the carts and zip past us, supervisors driving like they’re racing. No one jokes in mines, and no one would doubt Roth’s word for a moment. People are running, running—

A blast, a sound that sends shock waves through the mine. The retreat miners would never do this while there are still miners in here. Words clutter Roth’s radio—accident, explosion, get out.

Rumbling echoes through the walls, ceilings, floors; it’s starting.

I have to be the last to go—if I’m here, maybe Ennor will make her family wait. She won’t let me die, she won’t let me get trapped in the dark, she knows I’m afraid of the dark—

No, I’m not, I argue with myself as I realize something: it’s not the dark I’m afraid of anymore. It’s failing the others. It’s failing my father by not being like him.

I stiffen my knees, like doing so will keep the ground below and the earth above from touching, from crushing me.

“Get on!” Roth shouts at me, shoving my shoulder.

“I want to know everyone’s out!” I shout back, but Roth isn’t really listening—he’s too preoccupied with yelling into the radio, watching carts fly past, counting people. He nods and leaps onto a cart; another miner grabs a passenger seat—everyone is ahead of us now, everyone is on their way out. I jump onto the back of the cart and we take off, speeding like never before.

Dust blinds me, settles in my throat until it feels like I’m breathing in sand. Just as we start to see light ahead, a rock hits the front of the cart; Roth slams the wheel to one side, lifting the wheels off the ground. It’s only for a moment, but it’s enough to throw me off balance—I hit the mine floor. I taste blood.

Rocks tumble down behind me, the tongue of the earth pressing me against the roof of its mouth, waiting to bite, to tear, to swallow me. I scramble to my feet and run toward the brake lights of Roth’s cart; they look like glowing red eyes in the distance. I’m not going to make it. The world is getting smaller and my feet clumsier. Am I running? I can’t tell—everything is hot and everything is getting blacker.

Maybe it’s because it’s getting darker that I feel her.

Her fingers slip over my wrist and for a moment, a fleeting moment, I see Ennor. Not her face, not her form, even, but her hair. It flicks behind her as she runs, over the stones like they’re grass. She pulls me along, weaving around rocks that rain from the ceiling.

She halts; I stumble past her. Her hair spins around her face, obscuring it. I turn to her and she throws both hands out, slams them against my chest with strength like the earth itself. I fly backward, falling, tripping, sailing, until I slam onto my back at the cave’s entrance. The air leaves my lungs, I’m choking, but I feel hands on me, strong hands, men’s hands, the miners tugging me to safety.

The light burns my eyes, forcing me to close them. I feel dizzy, disoriented, I hear my name but don’t understand where it’s coming from or who is asking for me. The only phrase I pick up, a phrase I hold on to like it’s a precious stone, is this:

Everyone’s accounted for. Looks like we’re okay.

They’re out. Everyone is out.

But I feel like half of me is still trapped in the mine.

I am a hero.

They ask me questions: How did you know? Are you psychic? Did you have a gut feeling?

I tell them I can’t explain it, because the truth is, I can’t.

They decide it must be my father. That his spirit warned me, that he filled me, made my body warn the others. They toast him in my hospital room. Once I’m back home, I get cards from the wives and children of the men who would have been covered up if I hadn’t warned them. They tell me my father would be proud. They tell me I’m more like him than I realize. They tell me I’m a miner to the core.

Then they start asking when I’ll come back to work, they start saying I’m their lucky charm, that they need me there in the mine. And I wonder if things would change if I was part of it—if I’d be a miner through and through instead of a hero’s boy pretending.

No. I’m not a miner. And I’ve lived up to my father, I’ve respected his work, I’ve helped his people. And now I’m moving on—maybe forever. But even if I never come back, I’ll be free. I’ll be happy.

I’m not afraid anymore.

When you’re used to the inside of a mine, even the dead of night seems brightly lit—the moon, the stars, they all cast bright blue light on the world. I wonder if this sort of light would hurt Ennor.

The mine entrance is a wall of rock, and there are warning signs everywhere—in front of the entrance, on the rocks, by the guardhouse. I approach the entrance and put my hands on the stone. The dust curls like smoke at my touch.

I don’t know what to say—talking to Ennor in the darkness was one thing. She felt real there. Out here, where everything is lit and my body aches, she seems imaginary again.

But she was not, she couldn’t be, because if she weren’t real, I wouldn’t be certain that I am not a miner. I wouldn’t be certain that I have to leave this place, that I have to stop being a coward about the world outside of Middleview. I wouldn’t feel so certain that someone else knows what it’s like to be trapped.

I ease myself to my knees.

“Ennor,” I say; her name sounds loud in the night. I feel a little like I’m talking to a rock. No, I feel a lot like I’m talking to a rock. I suppose before I was talking to darkness, but I knew she was there. I could sense her, feel her.

And so I close my eyes.

“Ennor?” I say her name, and it feels more familiar on my tongue now that the world is gone.

There’s a long pause, filled with crickets and stars.

“Will.”

I don’t know where her voice is coming from; it feels like it’s from everywhere, like it’s filling, warming my heart and lungs. I grin like a child, extend my hand just like I would have in the cavern, desperate for her to take it.

She doesn’t.

“You’re leaving,” she says, voice low.

I inhale, drop my hand; the grin fades, but the longing for her touch intensifies. “Yes,” I admit. I wait a long time to speak again, and it’s only when the words leave my mouth that I realize how true they are. “I want you to come with me.”

“But I’m a Knocker.”

“Only half.”

“Which half is it?” she asks, toying with the words.

“You’re the only one who knows that,” I answer. I feel her fingers, slight and smooth, brush the tips of mine.

She grows closer, and I squeeze my eyes shut to keep myself from opening them. I feel her breath on my cheeks, I feel her fingers wind around mine, and she presses against me. There are tears on her face, but she’s nodding, nodding slowly. She pulls her face back and rises, pulls me up with her—I wince as I put weight on my bad leg. We’re still, and I know that she’s waiting for me to open my eyes. So I do.

She is perfect where the light is.