Mr. Mosley shakes his head. “No, he’s one of us. Besides, he never saw you. Too dark. All it is, is an unscheduled descent.”

He steps closer, makes as though to touch her, pat her on the shoulder. Then he remembers who she is. She wishes he hadn’t.

“Hold steady now, miss.”

The shaft swallows them. There is no other word for it. It might as well smack its lips. The light falls away, so fast her stomach rises to her throat, the sickness raging in her. Then the darkness becomes total, the sky a lost memory high above. For a timeless moment total stillness reigns as the cage falls cleanly in its shaft. Livia’s fear recedes, pushed aside by something else inhabiting her body, older yet than fear, and at comfort with this blank suspension in the void. Then a screech shakes their bones as the cage touches the guides that line its walls, only to return them to oblivion, a stillness so total it obliterates all thought. An eternity later, they pass a blaze of light. A bricked chamber opens before her, crowded with mine carts. Tied to the wall near the pit shaft, a pale horse stands like a ghost, its dark eyes mirroring her terror. It lasts the blink of an eye.

They keep on falling.

Water starts falling alongside them. Livia hears it before she feels it. First it is a patter against the roofing of the cage. Then it runs freely along the walls of the shaft, is cut up by the protective netting, its spray pinpricks of cold on the skin of her face.

The cage stops. The arrest is so abrupt, she nearly loses her footing, bounces first against Charlie, then against Jake, whose hands, thrown out to steady her, recoil as though bitten no sooner has he touched her. Matches are struck, both he and Mr. Mosley light their lamps. Their dull light shows a bricked room, oblong and narrow, and closed off by a large metal gate. They swing open the cage door. A moment after Livia steps out, the cage is yanked away, upward, like a marionette banished from the stage. Behind them, the hole looms, too dark to offer any sense of depth. It might as well be filled with Soot.

Charlie, pale, eyes torn open in the gloom, lingers longest at its lip.

“How far does it go down?” Livia hears him ask of Jake who is helping Charlie with Thomas.

“All the way? Don’t know. It’s a game we play, counting on the way down. One lad will sing out four, another six minutes forty-five. There’s no man here rich enough to own a watch.”

He spits, pulls Charlie away from the lift shaft, points him inwards, towards the metal gate. “But this level here, we know the measure. Eight hundred and seventy feet. Quiet now, we must hurry. Here, help me with your friend.”

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