The search party had apparently bored through one of the walls of the farthest tunnel. Their claim was that the lost child could be heard sobbing and pleading on the far side of that rugged culm barrier. When their picks and shovels and clawing hands finally pierced through, they found neither boy nor girl, but instead a luminescence. Were they the beams of some strange fallen sun long interred in the Earth’s bowels? The gleam of a green jewel lodged within a great crown? I can only theorize based on the testimonials that have been whispered to me below, for I have never seen the light myself. Nor has Rita. But unlike me, she is convinced of its existence.

My sister loves to brand me as the eternal skeptic, one unwilling to accept that there are things that lurk beyond the reach of our five meagre senses. Honestly, I cannot say that I’m even that, for a true skeptic would be eager to disprove the myth of the emerald light, to expose the folly of those Below. While I will concede that yes, there may well be a greenish glow in the depths of the mines, I suspect that its presence is some natural anomaly, some phosphorescent property in the carbon, or an optical trick that arises when the human eye struggles against absolute darkness.

Still, I am not so convinced of these empirical theories that I am willing to creep down into those far depths to prove or disprove anything.

*

I am only a few hundred yards from the gate to the mine site when I witness the impossible.

At first my brain doesn’t properly register that what comes trundling out of the roadside bracken is a dog. (The sight of something moving in Evendale is now so rare it truly startles me.) I press down hard on the brake pedal and the pouch spits out the tinned foods into the jeep’s foot-well. The creature plods onto the road, pauses to turn its dismal face toward me. I put the jeep in Park and step out, taming my enthusiasm so as not to startle the poor animal.

It is a yellow Lab. I crouch down and coo to her. She comes to me with neither reservation nor love.

That it has been foraging and roaming for some time is obvious. But I am unaware just how badly the poor beast had been faring until I run my hand along its matted coat and feel the fence slats of its ribs pressing against the fur. I race back to the jeep and retrieve the tin of Spam I’d taken from our pantry, along with one of the bottles of water.

The dog is now lying as though the littered asphalt road is her bed. I uncap the bottle, pour some of the water into my cupped hand, hold it out to her. She laps at it with a pale tongue.