The morning is perfect in memory, a late-summer day when blue skies foretold the coming autumn crispness. Speck and I had awakened next to each other in a sea of books, then left the library in those magically empty moments between parents going off to work, or children off to school, and the hour when stores and businesses opened their doors. By my stone calendar, five long and miserable years had passed since our diminished tribe took up our new home, and we had grown weary of the dark. Time away from the mine inevitably brightened Speck's mood, and that morning, when first I saw her peaceful face, I longed to tell her how she made my heart beat. But I never did. In that sense, the day seemed like every other, but it would become a day unto its own.
　　Overhead, a jet trailed a string of smoke, white against the paleness of September. "We matched strides and talked of our books. Shadows ahead appeared briefly between the trees, a slender breeze blew, and a few leaves tumbled from the heights. To me, it looked for an instant as if ahead on the path Kivi and Blomma were playing in a patch of sun. The mirage passed too quickly, but the trick of light brought to mind the mystery behind their departure, and I told Speck of my brief vision of our missing friends. I asked her if she ever wondered whether they really wanted to be caught.
　　Speck stopped at the edge of cover before the exposed land that led to the mine's entrance. The loose shale at her feet shifted and crunched. A pale moon sat in a cloudless sky, and we were wary of the climb, watching the air for a plane that might discover us. She grabbed me by the shoulder and spun me around so quickly that I feared imminent peril. Her eyes locked on mine.
　　"You don't understand, Aniday. Kivi and Blomma could not take it another moment. They were desperate for the other side. To be with those who live in the light and upper world, real family, real friends. Don't you ever want to run away, go back into the world as somebody's child? Or come away with me?"
　　Her questions poured out like sugar from a split sack. The past had eased its claims on me, and my nightmares of that world had stopped. Not until I sat down to write this book did the memories return, dusted and polished new again. But that morning, my life was there. With her. I looked into her eyes, but she seemed far away in thought, as if she could not see me before her but only a distant space and time alive in her imagination. I had fallen in love with her. And that moment, the words came falling, and confession moved to my lips. "Speck, I have something—"
　　"Wait. Listen."
　　The noise surrounded us: a low rumble from inside the hill, zigzagging along the ground to where we two stood, vibrating beneath our feet, then fanning out into the forest. In the next instant, a crack and tumble, muffled by the outer surface. The earth collapsed upon itself with a sigh. She squeezed my hand and dragged me, running at top speed, toward the entrance of the mine. A plume of dirt swirled from the fissure like a chimney gently smoking on a winter's night. Up close, acrid dust thickened and choked off breathing. We tried to fight through it but had to wait upwind until the fog dissipated. From inside, a reedy sound escaped from the crack to fade in the air. Before the soot settled, the first person emerged. A single hand gripped the rim of rock, then the other, and the head pushed through, the body shouldering into the open. In the wan light, we ran through the cloud to the prostrate body. Speck turned it over with her foot: Béka. Onions soon followed, wheezing and panting, and lay down beside him, her arm roped over his chest.
　　Speck leaned down to ask, "Is he dead?"
　　"Cave-in," Onions whispered.
　　"Are there any survivors?"
　　"I don't know." She brushed back Béka's dirty hair, away from his blinking eyes.
　　We forced ourselves into the mine's darkness. Speck felt around for the flint, struck it, and sparked the torches. The firelight reflected particles floating in the air, settling like sediment stirred in a glass. I called out to the others, and my heart beat wildly with hope when a voice replied: "Over here, over here." As if moving through a snowy nightmare, we followed the sound down the main tunnel, turning left into the chamber where most of the clan slept each night. Luchóg stood at the entranceway, fine silt clinging to his hair, skin, and clothes. His eyes shone clear and moist, and on his face tears had left wet trails in the dirt. His fingers, red and raw, shook violently as he waited for us. Ashes floated in the halo created by the torchlight. I could make out the broad back of Smaolach, who was facing a pile of rubble where our sleeping room once stood. At a frantic pace, he tossed stones to the side, trying to move the mountain bit by bit. I saw no one else. We sprang to his aid, lifting debris from the mound that ran to the ceiling.
　　"What happened?" Speck asked.
　　"They're trapped," Luchóg said. "Smaolach thinks he heard voices on the other side. The roof came down all at once. We'd be under there, too, if I hadn't the need for a smoke when I woke up this morning."
　　"Onions and Béka are already out. We saw them outside," I said.
　　"Are you there?" Speck asked the rock. "H............