“Of course it isn’t safe,” Mica quipped, “it’s a mine. Accidents happen, Ami. They happen all the time.”
The hair brush slid through Mica’s brown curls, its quiet shushing the only thing left to fill the silence. Of course accidents happened, and of course Ami knew that.
Ami stood in the entryway, her milky white eyes practically glowing in the candlelight, her lips downturned in a pout, and her ears poised for Mica’s imminent apology.
At least that’s how Mica imagined the scene behind her. She wouldn’t turn around and look. She wouldn’t do what she normally did: face her twin sister, sigh in defeat, say she didn’t mean it, and promise everything would be fine. That oft-repeated promise died one month and two days ago. Instead her gaze drifted to the wooden dresser in front of her, its drawers open and their contents askew. Everything from their hair band collection to their mother’s prized brooch stared up at her through a thin layer of rock dust.
Candlelight danced on the polished wood, the effect almost mirror-like compared to the rough-hewn stone that comprised almost every other surface in sight. She could still remember their mother’s fond whispers about the dresser, about how their father had single-hoofedly mined his weight in diamonds just to buy her a wedding present fit for ‘the jenny of his dreams,’ and about how she’d nearly convinced him to sell it back to the diamond dogs that’d carried it all this way. They couldn’t afford it, she’d said. What would they do with it, she’d said.
Mica nudged one of the lower drawers closed with her back hoof. Staring at the remains of their family’s prized possessions, those they hadn’t sold for food, was even worse than apologizing for stating the obvious: from here on out, putting food on the table required hard, dangerous work. That was how their parents had lived. That was how everybody else lived.
Still, she had no intention of living in silence.
“Do you want a bow for your hair?”
Ami’s slight voice drifted over from the other side of their cave, most likely from atop their parents' straw bed. Mica couldn’t fathom why she spent so much time there, and didn’t want to ask. “We’re going to have to wear hard hats anyway.”
Mica slid her foreleg along her curls and rolled her eyes. “Yes, but… that’s no excuse for not taking care of yourself. I’m wearing one… and one in my tail, too! A pretty one!”
If I get crushed in a cave-in, at least they’ll know it’s me, she thought.
“You’re just trying to distract the jacks.”
“Am not! And don’t forget we get to carry around big heavy pickaxes and hammers; if some dumb boy can’t keep his eyes on his work, I’ll—”
Ami chuckled. “Yes, yes, everybody knows that. If I had a topaz for every time you threatened somebody’s ability to chew solid foods…”
Mica closed another drawer, this time much harder. “Then we wouldn’t be stuck putting on hard hats.”
Ami’s hooves echoed through the room. A moment later she was by Mica’s side, feeling for and then kneading her shoulder. “When I asked before about it being safe, and about the jacks… I was trying to be funny. I’m sorry.”
Mica tensed for a moment, not even wanting her muscles to be pacified. That moment ended when she looked up at her sister’s warm smile and sightless yet affectionate gaze. “Me too.”
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Ami whispered.
“You can’t know that.”
Ami nodded. “True.”
Mica sniffed as she looked at their reflections in the dresser’s surface: hers all hard lines like their father, Ami’s soft and glowing like their mother. “Then why say it?”
Ami ceased the massage, leaned in, and gave a strand of Mica’s hair a sharp tug with her teeth. “One of these things makes you feel better than the other, don’t you think?”
“I’d still rather have a pickaxe and something to swing it at.”
“We’d better get going, then.”
---
All the typical sounds of life echoed through the cavern as the morning commute trudged on: jacks and jennys of every age emerging from the honeycomb of caves, most on their way to the mines with hard hats and tools or to the market with a sack full of gems to spend.
Mica fell into the second line, albeit with Ami beside her instead of a money pouch. Her hooves scraped against the pathway’s ridged edge, the border between the well-worn path and the cavern’s rougher, expansive nothingness reserved for children at play and adults with somber business. She glared at the circle of knee-height stones in the shadows, the communal meeting spot where they’d gotten the news, where the half-dead souls who’d escaped the cave-in stood solemnly to present their still-breathing, still-breadwinning selves to their families and to allow those who hadn’t been so lucky to be accounted for.
“Are we close to the palace?” Ami whispered.
“Don’t call it that,” Mica replied. “It’s just a big, stone… thing.”
“A big stone thing with arched doorways—”
“Yes.”
“And fifty steep steps just to reach the front gate.”
“Yes.”
“And fourteen living chambers—”
Mica thrust a leg toward the massive edifice approaching on their right, her hoof barely missing Ami’s nose. “Yes! Yes, fine we’re getting close.”
Her eyes traced all the details that Ami only knew by touch: the long line of steps from the cavern floor, the courtyard guarded by pillared arches, the oil lamps burning in every high window, and the time-worn geometric carvings wrapping around every edge from the smallest of steps to the grandest of doorways. Its bright firelight reached the furthest recesses of the cavern and well into Mica and Ami’s own cave. At this time of the morning, the chatter and clatter of the market within the courtyard reached further still. Such was the monster that watched over the cavern, marking day and night with its oil lamps, and holding all commerce in its clutches.
“It’s still not a palace,” Mica murmured. “Our ancestors found it way back at the beginning of time, back when donkeys and diamond dogs joined up to work the deep mines. It was just a big empty building then, and that’s what it still is. Maybe it used to be a palace, but now it’s just where you go to buy vegetables and whatever junk the dogs haul in from the surface.”
“Who knows, maybe a king and queen lived there ages ago and ruled all the caves we call home.”
Mica rolled her eyes. “Don’t get all poetic. You sound like… Mom.”
Choking out the last word took some effort.
“I’ll stop.” Ami whispered.
“No… No, don’t. I’m sorry I’m being so… me. Storytelling sure beats thinking about today.”
Ami nudged her again, this time onto the fork in the path leading to the market. “I won’t say there’s nothing to worry about, but we’ll get by if we stick together. Oh, here comes just the dog we need!”
Mica turned to look and, a moment later, heard Max’s thumping gait and jingling merchandise. The diamond dog paced alongside the market path with a collection of necklaces held high, his voice ringing with a friendly enthusiasm that his giant form could barely contain. He smiled down at the donkeys he passed, waving hello and presenting the necklaces all at once. “See what I’ve brought you! Sweet-smelling rosewood, cedar, and pine! The finest charms made from the finest of woods, fresh from the surface!”
Ami’s hoof went up. “Max! Over here!”
Max’s shadow enveloped them in an instant, and an instant after that the scents of oiled wood and unwashed dog assaulted them. “Amicite! Mica! For you the first smell is free.”
He leaned down and whispered loudly enough for half the cavern to overhear. “I save the very best for the very prettiest, you know.”
Mica sighed as he flicked through the necklace collection, stepping aside so Ami could bear the full brunt of the stench and the ‘prettiest’ title that went along with it. “We’ve got too much jewelry already, Max. We need tools: hard hats, pickaxes, all the usual stuff.”
Max’s smile faltered. “Going in the little gem tunnels?”
Ami nodded and batted away the necklaces with a friendly smile. “Little for diamond dogs, perhaps. Mica and I… we’ll manage.”
“Not you too, Ami. How will you—”
Mica stamped her hoof. “We need to work for a living, same as everybody else.”
Ami shot her a look, brief but piercing. “We appreciate your concern, but please just sell us the tools, Max.”
Seconds passed while Max’s necklaces swayed in his grasp and Mica seethed in spite of her own better judgement. She couldn’t keep doing this, raging at anybody who dared bring up the obvious: parents or no, they needed to eat. Neighborhood charity kept them afloat for a while, as did selling off a few creature comforts and mementos. Now came their first day of adulthood, a few years earlier than planned and all the more crucial.
In her nicest voice, which wasn’t that different, she joined Ami’s plea. “We know the usual arrangement: a third of all the gems we mine are yours until our tools are paid off. Please help us earn a living. We’ll even… we’ll even save up and buy a necklace or two.”
A couple necklaces would be cheaper than making their start with a less reputable dog with worse loan terms.
At last Max nodded. “My pack brother sells tools. Good ones. I’ll just go and… here, these come with the deal.”
He dropped two necklaces on the ground and bounded off before they could protest.
Mica watched him take the stairs to the market two at a time, sorely tempted to shout after him but unsure of what to say that even bordered on friendly. They didn’t need fancy necklaces, and chances were they’d just get in the way. “Come on, we’d better follow him and return these.”
Ami ran each necklace along her cheek and gave it a deep sniff. “Mmm. I suppose we must.”
“You can be a jewelry snob when we’re not poor. Come on.”
The sounds of the market grew louder as they ascended the stairs, building and building from the cavern’s daily background noise to a near cacophony by the time they entered into the courtyard. Merchandise-laden carpets formed a series of aisles, each one brimming with customers, and each one guarded by a dog or donkey shopkeeper preemptively haggling with anybody who made eye contact.
Darkness peeked over shoulder-height walls on three sides of the courtyard, simultaneously setting it apart from the world and adding to the already imposing nature of the gateway on the fourth side: the cavern wall, this section chiseled smooth and covered in triangular patterns, gave way to a rectangular hall that stretched into the distance but not into darkness. Lit torches lined its smooth walls, the brightest sight Mica had ever glimpsed, and also the most garish. Why did the rich ones need all that light? Just because they took home the biggest chunk of all the market’s profits didn’t mean they were too good for darkness. Too good for the mines, perhaps, but not for something so basic as the absence of light. If Ami had to go a lifetime without light, they could stand to douse those expensive fires once in a while.
“Come on, Mica. Don’t bother the well-to-dos.”
Mica rolled her eyes and followed Ami down one of the less busy aisles. “How’d you know?”
Ami swished her tail just enough to tickle Mica’s nose. “The same way I can find my way to Max’s place: familiarity.”
“Hey, I’m the one who did the shopping with Dad, how come you know the market so well?”
“Who do you think bought the bows you’re wearing? I went with Mom all the time.”
“Oh.”
“I wasn’t about to sit in our cave all day, while the rest of you had all the—“
A chorus of “Hi Ami” broke through the general din, and Ami waved a foreleg at all present. “Hello.”
Mica lowered her head and sped up. “Hmph.”
“Indeed.”
Merchants drifted by on either side, largely unnoticed by Mica unless they accosted Ami to buy something. They’d left the food sellers behind minutes ago, and with them the market she knew. Now as they passed chairs, knives, jewelry, pots, and everything else non-edible, the only way left to keep her bearings involved sidelong glances at the walls and other visible landmarks. She didn’t like feeling lost. No prospective miner did. “How much further?”
Max’s unmistakable voice answered her from the very corner of the market on the left. “Aww, you didn’t have to come all the way up here. I’ve got almost all your stuff ready. I just need… hmm, let’s see.”
Mica stepped around Ami and took in the spread of tools laid out on the stone floor. It wasn’t as impressive as Mom and Dad’s old gear, but all the basic necessities to turn back-breaking labor into a few shiny gems seemed to be accounted for.
She slid her hoof along a pickaxe’s long handle. “One third of our haul until it’s all paid off, right?”
Max turned from his rummaging in a crate and nodded with a big smile. “It’ll all be yours in no time.”
“Oh yeah?” a much deeper voice replied. A second, larger dog came out of the shadows, his diamond-encrusted collar glinting in the torchlight. The collar alone put him a far step above Max and the tattered red scarf tied around his neck. At least that’s what Mica knew of about diamond dog social structure, that the first and most important mark of success was a jeweled collar. She’d never thought to ask more.
Max scratched at his scarf and slid to the wall, his ears folding back, his tail ducking down, and his smile growing thin. “They’re good for it, Pogo! They’ll work hard!”
Pogo leaned down and matched Mica’s stern gaze, nose to nose. “They’re scrawny.”
“Like he said,” Mica replied with all the coolness she could muster, “we’ll work hard. Either we bring back gems or we starve.”
“Starving’s cheap. Tools ain’t.”
Ami cleared her throat. “We are rather small, Mr. Pogo, but that just means we can fit in tighter spaces than most. We can work parts of the mines that others can’t, parts that aren’t as picked over.”
Pogo flicked an ear towards Ami, but that was all. “A third of your haul… but you’re only getting one headlamp. That’s all you need anyway.”
Ami shouted “Deal,” before Mica could shout something else.