Thinking immediately that they might be talking about Davey and his “offer,” he ghosted over to the side of their shaft and strained his ears as hard as he could to hear what they were saying.

“I ain’t never seen anythin’ like it,” said Melak, a little Jarrik’s junior. “I mean, I heerd the stories, but seein’ one—it ain’t right. It was hot-mad and tryin’ and tryin’ t’get in, and every way it got stopped, it just tried a new one. Smart. Things like that got no right to be as smart as a man.”

“Ain’t just that it’s smart, neither,” Jarrik grumbled. “It’s got the luck of a devil. Tyndale shot at it, an’ did nothin’ but miss.”

“It scares me. What’s it want?” There was real fear in Melak’s voice, something Mags was not accustomed to hearing. “Why won’t it go away?”

“It wants somethin’ here, I guess,” Jarrik replied. “Somethin’, or someone. Either way, Pa ain’t letting it on the property. He swears he’s keepin’ it off.”

“But how?” Melak almost wailed the words. “Ye can’t shoot it, ye can’t fence it out, and ye can’t stop it! We don’ know what it wants! What if it wants to get in here and kill one of us?”

“Why would it—” Jarrik stopped.

“You know why,” Melak said flatly. “You know why. It’s more’n half a spirit, too! It could even be—”

“Don’t say it!” Jarrik retorted harshly. “Don’t even think it. Let Pa handle it. Let Pa handle it, and leave well enough alone!”

Standing there in the dark, listening them talk about something they feared so much they wouldn’t even put a name to it, Mags shivered. When had this—monster, or whatever it was—turned up and started besieging the mine? Days ago?

Now a horde of little things began to make sense. The sluices had been left without a Pieters supervising them, and half the older boys were not at the mine for the past couple of days. The girls had scarcely been seen out-of-doors, and had quickly scuttled back to the Big House when they did come out. The cooks had been less attentive at the giving out of the food, and a fair amount of cabbage and scraps had been joining the broth in the bowls rather than being husbanded in the pot.

At least half of the workmen hadn’t been visible over the last three days either.

Maybe that was what had emboldened Davey in the matter of snitching sparklies.

He slipped back to his seam before the brothers noticed that there wasn’t any tapping coming from his. And as he carefully pried stones out of the wall, he shivered and wondered.