The ground near the pit seemed sturdy now, so she inched close and peered into the hole. Streams of light rose and fell as if something down below inhaled and exhaled radiant energy. With each rhythmic pulse, some of the light disappeared into spots on the wall, sucked in by some kind of mysterious force.
Mara slid her fingers down the side and touched one of the spots. It felt smooth and hard, like a polished stone. While probing the surface, she caught the edge, and the stone shifted. Another stream of light flowed up, weaved between her fingers, and disappeared into the stone. She pried it loose and laid it in her palm. Fitting snugly between the heel of her hand and the base of her fingers, a multifaceted jewel glittered at her, a faint beam of light emanating from one side.
Paili touched it with her fingertip. “Pretty!”
Mara closed her fist. “Yes, but what is it?”
Paili shrugged her shoulders. As Mara rose to her feet, a low moan drifted up from the pit. Both girls jumped back, clutching each other. A new chill ran across Mara’s skin, and she inched farther away.
Paili hung on to her elbow, shivering, while Mara stroked her hair. “I think we’ll look for magnetite somewhere else, okay?”
“Far. . away.”
After several more steps backwards, Mara turned and held Paili’s hand. “If we tell Morgan about the pit and the gem, maybe we won’t have to make quota today.”
“Fig cakes?” Paili asked.
Mara strode forward, peering through the dimness. “Let’s not push it. I’m just hoping we don’t get whipped.”
Mara and Paili slid into the warm spring, each girl finding a place to sit so that the soothing water covered her dirty, scraped shoulders.
With a flickering lantern at her feet, Morgan sat on a rocky ledge next to the pool, holding the gem in her fingers and examining it carefully. “A deep pit, you say? How deep?”
Mara reached for her outer tunic and pulled it into the bath with her. “I couldn’t see the bottom.” She scrubbed her tunic in the bubbling water. “It was strange,” she said, looking up at Morgan. “Light streamed up and down, and some of it got sucked into that gem.”
“Very interesting.” Morgan drew the gem up to her eyes. “Did you notice anything else?”
“I did.” Mara turned to Paili and examined the whip marks on her back. “Oh, Paili! How could Nabal be so cruel to a little girl?” She squeezed water from a sponge, gently sprinkling the wounds as she looked up again at Morgan. “Did you see this?”
Morgan pressed her lips together and nodded. “Nabal will be terminated. We have a new giant ready to replace him actually a third giant we will call Nabal.”
“A third Nabal?”
“I’m afraid so. The first one died the night after he whipped you. But they are identical, so I fear the new one will be just as stupid as the first two. Still, if I show him the remains of his predecessor, perhaps he will not be as cruel.”
“Wow! I didn’t even realize you switched them.” Mara shivered, but it was a comforting shiver. “Anyway, we did notice something else, a horrible moaning sound, like someone down in the pit was terribly sad, like maybe he was lost.”
Morgan clenched the gem so tightly her knuckles turned white, but her voice remained calm. “Did it speak any words you could understand?”
Mara shook her head. “We didn’t stay long. It was pretty scary.”
“I quite understand.” Morgan nodded toward the tunnel that led to their sleeping quarters and held up the corners of two large cloths. “Here’s a sheet for each of you. After you wash out your clothes, hang them in the breezeway and go straight to bed. Naamah will bring dinner to you later.”
Paili clapped her hands. “Fig cakes!”
Morgan knelt by the pool and laid her palm on Mara’s head, her voice so soft it was almost drowned by the bubbling spring. “Take care not to tell Mardon about the pit. I know how important Paili is to you” her eyes turned fiery red “and how important Acacia was to you.”
Raising a lantern to light the way, Mara led Paili back to their hovel, a chest-high dugout in the stone wall. With her free hand clinging to her wrapped sheet, she ducked low and climbed down into their sanctum. Although their little sand-stuffed mats were no thicker than a finger, when Mara tucked herself into her individual cleft in the rock, she always felt cozy, far removed from stupid giants and their stinging whips, glad to forget about mining magnetite in stifling heat, at least for the night.
She lay on her mat and tucked her sheet around her body. “Are you warm, Paili?”
“No,” came the voice from the other cleft. “Hungry.”
“It shouldn’t be long. Morgan promised ”
“Time to eat,” a sweet voice called from the corridor. “I hear someone wanted fig cakes.” Naamah squeezed into the hovel and handed each girl a bread bowl filled with orange mash. A brown fig cake floated on top like a hunk of granite bobbing in a magma river.
“Enjoy the treat,” Naamah sang as she left the hovel.
Mara picked up her cake and let the mash drip from its edge. Naamah had never prepared appetizing meals, but this was better than nothing and more appetizing than a lot of the gunk they had eaten lately.
After several minutes of quiet chewing, Mara pinched the last bite of her bread bowl and threw it toward a fist-sized hole in the wall at the back side of their dugout. “Don’t forget to save a piece for Qatan!” she called.
Paili mumbled through her mouthful of food. “He not hungry.”
“Come on, Paili. Even a mouse needs to eat.”
Paili swallowed and sang out, “Story now!”
Mara drooped her shoulders. “Oh, Paili, I’m so tired tonight, I don’t think I can ” Mara suddenly lifted her head. “Do you hear that humming?”
“Naamah,” Paili said.
“Whew! Her timing is perfect again.”
Their petite mistress crawled down into the dugout with layers of clothes draped over her arm. “They’re dry,” she said, handing each of them their inner and outer garments.
Mara slipped on her inner tunic and folded her outer dress into a pillow.
“Would you girls like a song tonight?” Naamah asked.
“Song!” Paili chirped.
Mara searched Naamah’s eyes. What could be the reason for such a rare treat? “Sure. Why not?”
Naamah patted Mara’s folded dress. “Lie down, and I will sing you to sleep.”
Mara laid her head on her dress and closed her eyes, letting her mind relax. She might as well enjoy the song instead of questioning Naamah’s sincerity. With all the new happenings of the day, she needed something to help her unwind, and she wanted to be well rested for her new job in the morning.
Naamah’s smooth contralto crooned in Mara’s ears.
Alone in caves through darkest nights,
A bitter girl is mining ore,
With pick and bucket gathering rocks,
Confined to chains forevermore.
No life, no love, no mother’s arms,
Forever empty you will yearn.
The friends you love will fade to ash,
And you will see them fall and burn.
These caverns held the judging flow
Where floods awaited God’s command
To spring into the worlds above
And drown the souls who dared to stand.
So now these caves are empty tombs
For hopeless slaves who chisel stones;
Far worse than death as on their knees
These ghosts unearth their sisters’ bones.
Relinquish now all hope for grace,
For grace and mercy spew their scorn
At girls who live and die in caves
And those who dwell as underborns.
Naamah repeated the verses, each one filling Mara with sorrow. She couldn’t protest. Every word was true. There really was no hope, and her only real friend was gone forever. Grace didn’t exist. Mercy and hope were merely words in Mardon’s dictionary, flat and lifeless.