Silver and Secrets

It was like I was staring into the eyes of a mannequin.

Her eyes were dull and glossy, her face a pasty white and beaded with perspiration. Her lips were chapped and her skin was pulled tightly over her thin frame.

‘Water, please, darl,’ Mum croaked, reaching out and placing a bony hand on top of mine. My heart sank. It killed me to see her like that. It killed me to watch her vomit every morning, hunched over the toilet, her frail body heaving out watery vomit flecked with blood.

‘Please let me take you to the hospital. I’ll get the money from working, we’ll be there and back in no time. You won’t have to live like this anymore.’ I passed her a faded mug filled with tap water that always had a strange metallic tang I couldn’t get used to.

‘You know I love you, Celine,’ Mum said, slowly bringing the mug up to her lips. ‘But you know we can’t. We don’t have the money, or resources, or time to leave the town. Once you start working, you’ll understand.’

My heart sank, like every other time she’d shot down the idea. We lived in a small, rural town that survived off money generated trading silver from an old mine that’d been around for generations. We weren’t wealthy, by any means –but every resident had a roof over their head and a guaranteed job from twelve for boys and sixteen for girls –working in the mines until marriage, set at eighteen, with a pre-determined resident, usually decided from birth. Mine was Tobin –a fifteen year old with dusty blond hair that clung to the nape of his neck with sweat, his skin light but always seeming grimy from working in the mines. I wasn’t looking forward to spending my life with him. He had let it get to his head that I was his future partner.

‘We can. I start work tomorrow. I can earn enough money to take you to a hospital. Please. I can’t lose you too.’ Dad had died the previous year from a cancer that would have been treatable if we had caught it early enough. It had broken me –the knowledge that he’d never be there when I got my first job, or got married, or if I decided to switch to teaching after my marriage.

Mum coughed, and flecks of blood dropped into her cup. She frowned and placed it aside.

‘It’s late,’ she declared weakly. ‘You should get some rest. You’ve got to be up early tomorrow.’

My gut knotted, with the feeling that I wasn’t getting the whole story. What was the real reason we couldn’t leave? No one ever left. It was like the town was holding a secret, whispered behind closed doors, but never said aloud.

My alarm clock blared and I hazily pulled myself out of bed, instantly rolling onto a splinter on the floor which sent jolts of agony where a small speck of blood began to bubble. I sighed and pulled on a scratchy jacket and a high-vis vest over the top, grubby and worn from Dad’s use before me. He had a helmet, too, with a large, dark scratch in the paint where it had protected his head in a mine collapse.

It was six-am, before the sun had risen, and freezing cold. Clouds were strewn across the dark, indigo sky, dotted with twinkling stars, but offering no resistance to the day’s heat leaving the atmosphere. A frigid wind tickled my ears. I shivered and folded my arms tightly across my torso.

‘You’re Celine Ashford?’ A man wearing a jacket somehow even grubbier than mine and a helmet with a torch on it grunted at me, glancing down at a clipboard in his hand.

‘Yeah,’ I said, and he nodded in acknowledgement.

‘Come with me. We’ve got someone who has volunteered to show you the ropes, but first you need some proper equipment.’

The mouth of the mine was the only part visible to the rest of the town. As a kid, my friends and I had dared each other to take one, two or three steps into the mine, and were disappointed to only see racks with thick jackets, vests, boots and gloves, all tainted with mud and dust.

‘A pair of whatever you don’t have already. And a head torch for your helmet.’ The man stared at me expectantly. I turned to the racks, realising my options were limited. I grabbed a pair of too-large boots, gloves with holes in the fingers and a torch to be fitted onto my helmet. A few picks and shovels leaned against the wall. I grabbed one and held it awkwardly in my hands.

‘Usual workdays start at six, but it’s your first day, so you can start at six-thirty. Half an hour for lunch at noon. Finish at five-pm. Stay out of all of the mines marked with red signs out the front. We use explosives in those ones. You’ll be able to use them too after a year of doing it manually. If you get injured, we’ve got med kits here, and you’ll be allowed time off to recover. Everything else, your guide will tell you.’ The man gestured with his clipboard to a dark tunnel, lined with tracks for a minecart with dank, yellow lights illuminating down the path. A boy pushing a cart filled with what looked like nothing more than rubble peered over the mound and grinned at me as it screeched to a halt.

‘Celine! Finally, you’re here. Come on –I’ll take you to the mine I’m working on.’ Tobin looked surprisingly gleeful despite being covered head-to-toe in dust, which was gathering in the creases of his smile and beside his eyes. His skin was glazed with sweat and his greasy hair clung together in clumps in front of his face.

‘Uh, great. Thanks, I guess.’ I said hesitantly, still clutching the heavy pick in my hands.

Tobin flicked a glance at it. ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. They all feel heavy at first. You get used to it.’

‘Uh huh.’ I said, following him as he led me down the dark tunnel, dragging the cart behind him until he detoured off onto a branching mine. An older man with an armful of rocks and a face painted with grime dropped an armful of rocks into the cart before trudging back down to whatever mine he had been working in. My ankles slid beneath me on the uneven ground, but Tobin didn’t seem to be affected, tramping over the rocks like they were securely bolted down.

As we trudged deeper into the mine, a strange, radiating warmth began to amplify in the air, like the humidity that hung in the air on the rare thirty-degree day in summer. Beads of sweat perspired on my forehead and my skin was slick with sweat beneath my jumpsuit. We were moving downhill, slowly, and the ceiling was low over our heads, almost so I had to stoop to avoid hitting my head on a low-hanging rock.

‘I can’t believe you’re finally going to work with me! You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.’ Tobin was saying, grinning with his pick slung over his dusty shoulder.

‘Yeah, cool,’ I replied distractedly, wiping the perspiration off my upper lip. The darkness that surrounded us was suffocating, and it was as if I could feel the earth pressing down on us from above. I’d never been so deep underground before.

‘And I get to show you how to do everything! I’ve been working with explosives for a few years, but I’ll go back to manual for a year if it means I get to work with you.’ He smiled modestly, as if expecting praise. I leaned away as a twisted rock jutted out from the side of the tunnel, the uneven walls seeming to press in more the further we went.

‘Good for you,’ I muttered half-heartedly. We were approaching the end of the tunnel. A wall of solid rock was in front of us, the darkness fuzzy in the back of my eyeballs, the wooden structure above our heads long gone. Dread twisted my stomach into a knot but I held the pick between my soft, uncalloused hands, lifted it over my head and swung it down, grunting with the effort.

‘Woah there! Careful. You want to have the pick on a direct path towards the rock, and use a lot of effort, so you don’t accidentally hit me, or something you didn’t mean to. Here, watch me,’ I stepped back as Tobin forcefully swung the pick behind his head and brought it down on a chipped clump of rock in front of him, which instantly crumpled to the ground.

‘See? Now, that was a big chunk, so we have to check for silver. Usually it comes in bigger clumps, so you can just roll it over to see if you can see any. Looks like this one’s all clear.’ Tobin gently poked the clump of rock with his pick, rolling it over, then pushing it to the side of the track.

‘What do we do with all of the excess rock?’ I glanced back down the tunnel, which apart from the odd clump beside the track, was mostly clear.

Tobin shook his head, ‘not our job. Younger boys come and go with wheelbarrows and come and collect it. I did it, too, when I started. But it’s so we don’t have to worry about it or build more tracks for the minecarts.’

I nodded, swinging the pick over my head, and wincing as it clashed against the rock, sending red-hot sparks ricocheting down the tunnel.

‘Oh, nice! That means you’ve found some silver. Now you’ve got to be a bit careful –mine around it. Chip away at it with your pick. Here, I’ll help.’ Tobin shifted his hands until they were so far up the handle he could almost touch the metal tip. He slowly chipped away at the rock, exposing the bright, unmistakable glint of silver reflecting back from the rock face. It was shining, almost liquid in its sheen. It stood out like a beacon of treasure amidst the dark earth.

‘Why’s it so shiny? I thought it was supposed to be, like, darker, or something.’ I asked as Tobin kept chipping away at the rock, revealing the plated structure of the metal, like it had been used to make a massive coin.

‘No, this is how I’ve always found it. It’s in chunks like this, usually there’s more nearby.’ Tobin said, his lips pursed together and brow furrowed in concentration.

‘Guess I’ll keep digging, then,’ I said, swinging my pick at the rock nearby.

By the end of the day, my back ached. My arms felt like spaghetti and my eyes yearned for sunlight –not the dank yellow lights that flickered overhead. Dust tickled my lungs and I was constantly clutching a hand over my mouth and coughing.

‘Good work, your first day,’ Tobin said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow!’ He had taken the courtesy of carrying my pick towards the exit, seeing my arms hanging like concrete by my sides, but for some reason it made me want to spite him for it. We passed a tunnel with black-and-yellow striped tape drooping across the entrance, wooden beams disappearing into a dark abyss inside. I hesitated.

‘What’s in there?’

Tobin frowned. ‘That’s an old tunnel. Collapsed years ago. A couple of workers died. Apparently had a lot of silver, though.’ He said cautiously. ‘Come on. Let’s keep going.’

‘Doesn’t look very collapsed to me,’ I muttered, the light from my headlamp dancing across the dark rock. But Tobin brushed it off.

Tobin led me to the mouth of the mine, where the sun was slowly sinking beneath cotton-candy clouds, shooting blinding golden beams towards us. I squinted and forced a tight smile as Tobin leaned my pick against the wall.

‘I’m going to take my gear off. I got it from here. Most of it’s not mine,’ I admitted sheepishly, and Tobin nodded solemnly.

‘Okay. Do you want me to walk you home?’ He asked as another miner –a man with a ragged beard and tired eyes –stepped out of the mine, shot a glance at the two of us, and then set out into the setting sun.

‘No, no, that’s alright, thanks,’ I said.

‘You sure? It’s no bother.’

‘I’m sure, thanks.’ I repeated forcefully.

‘Okay. See you tomorrow!’ Tobin’s lips peeled back to reveal pearly white teeth –a stark contrast from the grime that had weaved its way into the crevasses of his skin so intricately it was almost a part of him now. I realised I looked like that too –my ponytail had flattened across my forehead from the helmet, the skin on my arms was a musty grey from the dust that had billowed into my face every time I swung the pick.

I should’ve left. I should have kicked off my boots and peeled off the gloves that were so dirty that they billowed clouds of dust when I clapped my hands together and walked home. But there was a voice in the back of my mind –a nagging curiosity, like an itch I couldn’t quite reach. The silver we were finding –why was it in polished plates? Where had it really come from? The answer –in my mind, at least –was in the abandoned mine.

My heart drummed in my ears, sweat beading on the back of my neck. Grunts of effort and the clanging of the metal pick head against rock exuded from various neighbouring mines, but no one was close enough to see me. I ducked under the tape and entered the shaft.

The darkness was suffocating. Wooden beams groaned as I passed under them, as if just my presence was enough to make them collapse. The sounds behind me faded until all I could hear was the thumping of my boots against the rocky floor. Jagged rocks jutted out from the walls, as if reaching out to grab me. To pull me into whatever tragic history they had witnessed. But up ahead, the mine wasn’t collapsed. My headlight danced erratically across a vast cavern, its walls slick with dampness, something massive and looming in the middle, an orb almost, like I had found the core of the earth, and we were excavating it.

The orb was enormous, looming over me like a sleeping titan. Its outer casing was sparkling silver plated, though weathered and tarnished by streaks of grime and rust. Only a fraction of the massive contraption had been unearthed, its intricate structure poked with deep dents and gouges and lodged deeply in the rock, like it was just the tip of the iceberg. The air felt thick and warm, as if the earth itself was holding its breath.

Was this what we had been digging up the entire time?

‘Oh, you’re back! How was your first day?’ I ran into the house panting, my skin flushed a rosy-red beneath the grime, trailing dust with every step.

‘Mum you’ll never believe… Never believe what I just found,’ I gasped, and she sat up in bed.

‘What happened?’ Mum croaked.

‘Massive silver thing in an abandoned mine… Not collapsed. They lied. Oh, God.’ I didn’t know who lied, or what exactly they lied about. But I did know that a mine had been closed off and Tobin had been fed a fake story as to why. ‘We need to leave. We’ll go to the hospital. Pack your things.’

‘No.’ Mum said it in a voice I’d never heard her use before.

‘What?’ My mind scrambled to piece together a plausible explanation. ‘Why not? We’ve been digging up parts of this –this thing for ages, and nobody knows!’

‘We all know, darling.’

‘What?’

‘We all know. It’s part of the town. It’s a generator. It’s been here long before we have. It’s the reason we can’t leave. We’re part of it.’

My head spun. ‘What?’ I repeated. ‘No, you don’t mean that. What are you saying?’

‘You can’t leave. You’ve been in the mines. You’ve been tainted. You can't leave.’ Mum coughed, and her entire frail body shook with the effort.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The generator, it keeps us here. People have tried to leave. And they’ve come back two days later, having aged twenty years, with no memory of it at all. It gives us silver. And it keeps us here.’

My head throbbed. ‘No, no. That can’t be right. What are you saying?’ I hesitated. ‘What do you mean, I’ve been tainted?’

Mum sighed defeatedly. ‘You’ve been there. You’ve dug the silver. You’ve seen the generator. Now you’re stuck, just like the rest of us. How do you think your dad died? He was so sure he could just walk out, the rumours were fake, and he tried it. The next day I found his corpse, only two decades older, already picked clean by animals.’

I felt rage bubbling up inside of me, like a cauldron threatening to overflow.

‘You’re saying I could have left,’ I said, my voice shaking. ‘You knew! How could you let me go down to those mines after you saw what happened to Dad? How could you?!’ I screamed, my throat burning.

‘That’s just the way of the world. My parents, and their parents, and their parents all did the same thing. And it’ll happen to your children, too. You’re just like the rest of us.’ Mum smiled, but it was thin and watery.

I froze. She was right. I had heard stories about this –whispered among schoolchildren, but never fully believed.

It was too late.

Whatever the generator had once been, I was now a part of it. Another cog in the machine.

Another silver plate in the mines.

But maybe my children would escape the way I couldn’t.