The mine was a single shaft straight down into the mountain, and we descended into its utter dark by a series of long wooden ladders. I worked the fifteenth seam down, one of the narrowest and wettest. It was also warm there, deep as it was in the bowels of the earth. I worked wearing only my skirt, lying on my back in the water on the tunnel floor, picking at the firestones in the roof directly above my head. My shoulders and elbows suffered in the confined space, and the fine, black firestone dust filled my eyes and throat. I carried no candle, but worked by touch in the total dark. I had heard explosions caused by candle-flame in the tunnels that seeped gas, and I had seen the people carried out.

One day stands out beyond all other days for me. It was the day I turned sixteen years old. In celebration of my birth, and because an inexplicable joy had taken hold on me, I worked slowly and rested often. It was partly in defiance of the Chosen – a small defiance, true – but sweet just the same. And so I worked hard for a while, lying on my back in the narrow place; then, when my arms ached, I rested, placing the pick across my chest. I felt the dank water seeping through my skirt, and slapping softly against my bare arms and sides. It filtered through the rags I had bound about my long hair, and felt warm and gentle on my scalp.

I listened to the sounds of the other Quelled at work, muffled and faint in the far passages. I heard the dull thudding of their picks on the firestone face, and heard people groan as they hoisted their full baskets onto their backs. Somewhere a child hurt itself and wailed, and I heard the soft voice of a man comforting it.

“Hush, little love,” he said. “There – I’ll tear my shirt for a bandage and stop the blood. You sit here awhile. I’ll fill your basket with stones from mine, and the overseer will never know.”

I heard a woman weeping quietly as she laboured, heavy-laden with her basket of stones, up the long, creaking ladders to the surface.

Sometimes I heard conversations echoing weirdly in the blackness; sometimes I heard tender whisperings and sounds of agony, or joy. And sometimes – some blessed, awesome times – there was a brief space where no sound was. Then I’d hear the soft breathing of the darkness, the throb and hum of the deep earth itself, the power of the firestones all around. Sometimes then it seemed as if my heart beat with the firestone heart, and I felt a oneness with the rock. And then, far in the darkness, a pick would start up again, and the flow of power would be broken. But those silent times, those times when I was one with the mountains, earth, and the black stones that held fire – those times were the strength and joy of my life.