Yellow Cat's the Same as Canary
The scent of tangerine. Dark grit eyebrows and the sweat on the smell of his cheeks; he makes a cough. Chuff chuff. Down here — the tunnel lit every twenty five paces if the rock allows, the chuff goes dry and ghastly — a powder instead of a moisture. He wiped his mouth. This is Bogrit — people who read his name call him Bog-writ; people who hear him say it shorten it to Bo. The grit isn't like the stuff in his hair or the stuff, the emotional stuff that keeps him upright — its grit like greet, like they'd say in the Vale or the other Old Countries.
Bo's thinking about a cat though, as he swung the torch back and forth in the dust of the tunnel — not names. The maniacal din of picks — king ting ting king ting ting king ting tang king tang ting ksh — is old ambience, though to our ears it’s new. It's old to Bo because the tunnel is twenty three rolls of rail stock long — almost an hour fifteen of hard hand-pumping to get back to fresh air, meaning Bo's been at it for almost three years now. Not a speck of virgin earhole left uncalloused. Doesn't even rub the pain away at week break anymore. Why bother.
Bo's not concerned about his ears or the chapping work of his fellow miners. He thought he saw cat a second ago but it was a cat a really small cat, so it's hard to find, if it's even real. For a second he stared up the dizzying geometry of this week’s tunneling. The set torches called all rock angles to attention so the stretch poked in like the trail of a furred gem, and Bo put his palms on his waist, curled his fingers and blew some snot, spit, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and turned back towards his tool — that crude bit on a stick leaning against the wall he'd left just in sight.
Those cats died, Bogrit, he said in his head. Mamas have to feed and massage babies for weeks Ezul said and Ezul said she was back begging at camp way too early for that to happen. They didn't make it.
His head only slumped faintly.
•
Ezul settled his tin mug down between rocks and some of the sound of his coffee swirling made Bo think he'd spilled, so he looked over from his own lunch. They didn't have to say much. Every miner in the Looch First Company had been tunneling together without staff change since they'd set the first charges under Birdrock and Northrock. They could tell by who was grunting behind them and how their breath was coming how many more swings they had left in their arms, and so, how many to take themselves, whether to shift rock, take water or what. That's how well they knew each other, how long they'd been at this. That's why Bo didn't say I thought you spilled when he looked up, or why Ezul didn't have to ask what’s up?
But it was also why Bo looked up at all — mostly he kept his bushes down, mouth close to his meal to keep dust intake down.
Ezul never spilled anything.
He was the most delicate man Bo had ever met. His pickwork was graceful, he knew how stone was, where one met another, even before they were into a wall too far. He knew positions. He was never hurt, always an exact measurement of what was needed. Not the strongest, but he knew that. The others responded when he called out, not like Eddel who huffed out too fast, or Pink. Bo tried to be like Ezul — Ezul was going to leave the tunnel as right as he could, where many of the others would be bent. That's the truth. Many stopped caring; Ezul still rubbed his ears like clockwork, still worked his hands with the ply balls the Company gave out.
He answered Bo's question.
—I saw something, he said.
Bo looked up.
—Thought I saw a cat, said Ezul, voice muffled through the cotton in Bo's ears.
Bo stood, which was hard.
—Cart. Back-left.
The big curl-handed man walked slow-like around the pump cart — and sure enough, a tiny cat, a kitten, was sidling along the black wheels cautiously.
—It's real, said Bo, and something split in him, some little internal clementine inside burst its skin as he and the kitten looked at each other, and then it hurried around and under the cart.
He watched it from as many angles as he could as it forgot about him and continued finding food scrap, and when Ezul circled the other side of the rubble carts, they agreed that it was one of the brood they'd thought abandoned and lost.
—My heart, said Bo, and Ezul nodded.
Then they heard a cry.
They jogged, grabbing picks out of habit, lunches abandoned, cat bolting. Men don't cry for nothing after three years in a tunnel.
It was Pink's pick had gone through.
—Gone through?
—Yeah straight through — it's been granite and slate and pied for for months Ezul, you know that, so we're either through — Pink had wild red-rimmed eyes — or it's something else.
They'd heard stories from other companies. They'd been at it long enough to've seen men get crushed by chain reactions, seams of trapped gas. They called it Old Death.
— We need a cat, said Pink.
Eddel groaned.
— It's not even second lunch. We pump out for a cat... he muttered off because the alternatives were obvious.
Bo blinked for a second. He kept seeing that kitten dart up into the handcart, kept seeing its tiny perfect eyes. Kept smelling something.
— You smell that, he said towards Ezul, and half the miners bolted their face coverings and backed up
Ezul shook his head.
Bo got closer and closer to the embedded pick-axe until he was right up near the cold stone.
—No, he said. It smells fresh.
He sniffed.
— Fresh, he said again, and stepped back and set with wild knowing grace, swung his own pick at the point the stones met and the wall opened, dumping gallons of Vale Barrier fog down, flooding the tunnel in waves of milky white.
When the Looch Company’s First Miners wandered out of the tunnel days later, none of them remembered even their names.
•
•
•
This short is part of a longstanding effort that’s been collected in two books which we’ll publish this next year. The Vale Barrier will be the third of those books. It’s the northern boundary of the country of Ballea — an enormous and impermeable mass that separates the Elemental Vale, an Old World, from this country, a country of trains, contraptions, & steam.
None have passed through the Barrier and remember. Some have passed through and not come back. It’s nice to have a thing like that, a boundary that you can’t explain and can’t pass into.
Like space, right?
I guess someone will have to build a ship someday.
Not today though. Not the Looch Brothers.