Page 86 of The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
I launch my boot through the front wall of the dollhouse again and again, and when it caves in on itself, I jump on the roof.
The canary flaps in front of my face.Satisfied?
“As much as I can be,” I reply. “Until I can torch the real one.” I look at the skeletal canary. “You aren’t coming with me, are you?”
I can’t.
“Is it really that bad?” I ask very quietly.
Not bad and not good.It is what it is.
A gap darker than the coal splits the wall just level with my head,a strange purple glow emanating from within. I’ll have to crawl on my hands and knees.
“Will you just lurk around the mines forever?” I ask the canary.
I’m already dead, kid, where else can I go?
I nod tersely and push my lantern into the tunnel.
“Good luck, then,” I say, and I clamber inside.
The canary chirps, and it’s almost like a laugh.I ran out of luck long ago.Then he’s gone.
I crawl forward, laboriously shoving the lantern ahead. The roof scrapes against my back and the sensation of being touched at every angle makes me twitch. It becomes even tighter. There’s blood on my palms. My knees and shins are the same. I fight to keep my breathing steady. I crawl like an insect, flat to the rock. My fingers dig into the coal and tear as I yank myself along, scuffing my boots for purchase.
Eventually, I can’t even lift my head.
But the light is there, and if it keeps on shining, then I’m not crawling toward a suffocating dead end. I will, however, become stuck if it gets any tighter. Frantic panic shoots through my body, and my struggling becomes even more desperate.
I shove the lantern one last time. It falls from a ledge and shatters, and I scramble out after it.
I take a gasping breath, free from the constricting rock. I sit in the broken glass, rubbing my bruised head.
A large cavern surrounds me, as tall as a church and domed twice as severely. The coal walls shine with moisture, water drips from the chamber ceiling like a small rainstorm, and, in the very center, as if it has been dropped there by a giant’s hand, sits my house.
27
mamau a merched
(MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS)
Jagged bricks jut from its edges, where it’s been torn away from the terraces on either side. The house is a piece of coral, broken off from the reef. It’s atilt—the front step sticking up from the ground. Cave water drips down the dirty stone. The curtains are drawn, just as I left them. The wide cavern cradles the house like a womb, and the chimney butts up against a pale stalactite.
I rise to my feet in wonder and terror, and I stand quietly where the street should be.
A light comes to life in the sitting room. Moments later, another begins to burn in the kitchen. The lights turn on upstairs in both windows.
I’m not alone.
The lights slowly grow until they’re bright as the very sun, and I shield my face. Just as fast, they dim to the faint glow of a fire at the end of a long winter’s day.
Come home, they say.
Who am I to say no?
I pick my way over the uneven ground, but before I take the step, the door creaks open.
I clamber awkwardly over the upturned stairs. Inside my house, the floors are level and smooth. The tiny entryway feeds into tight stairs that creep up to the landing. Pots and pans clink from the doorway of the shadowed kitchen, mingling with a murmured voice.
