Sunny lived off the Alley in a nameless lane, in a tall humpy made from odd bits of junk, surface signs and mismatching pieces of wood. Thick orange pillars and spears of stone crammed against the shack. Elsa sidestepped past the empty canary cart and approached the door, which was a giant red road sign written with Wrong Way, Go Back! in bold white letters.

She knocked.

The door swung open.

“Well, hello, Chicken.” Sunny leant against the frame, her hair haloed in light. “This is certainly a surprise.”

“Can I come in?”

The canary seller glanced back up the lane, then she pivoted to one side. Elsa squeezed past.

Sunny’s home was not what Elsa expected. Birds fluttered and chirped. Insects buzzed. The room smelt of gum leaves, wood and the sharp scent of ammonia. Dozens of handmade cages, fashioned from bent wire, woven cloth and old biscuit tins, hung just above head height. An assortment of traps and snares dangled from bolts near the door and netting lay in a tangled pile on the floor.

In an odd touch, Sunny had built a window into one wall. It had a neat white frame and bright yellow curtains. Behind the glass pane, Sunny had stuck a glossy image of a green country field. Stranger still, the shack’s walls were covered in drawings of birds. They flew across the white paper or danced together in great tumbling flocks. Sunny had papered one wall with sketches of other birds in cages. They perched behind thin bars, feeding from small dishes of seed.

A table against the far wall held blank sheets of paper, lead pencils and sharpened pieces of charcoal. A lone cage rested in the middle of this mess. Within a black bird the size of Elsa’s palm hopped around its tray. She picked up a half-finished picture.

“Did you draw these?”

Sunny took the sketch from her. “It passes the time.” She placed the image in a small folder holding others of its kind and snapped it shut.

“So, Elsa, I’ve been hearing lots of disturbing rumours about you and your uncle. I’m not going to lie, having you here makes me very, very nervous.”

“Why did you let me in then?”

Sunny gave a shrug. “I have an inquisitive nature.”

“What have you heard?”

The bird catcher placed the sketchbook on the table and picked up the small cage.

“The most popular rumour circulating is that you’ve got yourself on the wrong side of the Black Guardsmen. They say your uncle is the most recent member of the Bad Seed club and he’s escaped to the surface leaving you behind.”

“It’s true,” Elsa said.

The bird catcher carried the cage over to a large fish tank containing branches of surface foliage, rotting logs and dirt. Sunny slid the lid back and dipped her hand into the glass box. She pulled out a tiny brown cricket, whose long antennae brushed against her fingers. With a lazy flick of her wrist, she tossed the insect into the cage. The black bird glanced sideways for a second and swooped.

“What is it you want from me?” Sunny held the cage before her eyes and watched as the bird opened its yellow beak wide and devoured the cricket, fat squishy body first, long stick legs last.

“I’m going after my uncle. I need you to tell me how to get to the surface.”

Sunny lowered the cage. “You take the surface road, with the Keeper’s permission of course.”

“I can’t go that way, you know that. The guards would never let me pass. I want your way, the one you use when you go bird trapping.”

A stepladder leant against the glass tank. Sunny pulled it out and climbed up the rungs to hang the cage amongst the others. She descended. “Say I had a secret way. Why would I share it with you?”

“Because, as you said before, we’re friends.”

Sunny laughed. “I say a lot of things I don’t mean.”

Elsa shifted her feet. “Okay, we’re people who do favours for each other then.”

“Ah.” Sunny moved to a small cabinet. She brought out a jar of spirits and two mismatching shot glasses. “Then we’re allies, not friends. Our relationship is mutually beneficial.”

Sunny pushed the papers and pencils aside, clearing a space for the glasses.

“Or at least it was. You and your uncle are not what you were. Can you see my problem?”

Elsa gave a reluctant nod.

Sunny sat. “You’re dangerous,” she said. “Talking to you is a risk. Helping you is a death sentence for a Bad Seed like me.”

She gestured to the seat across from her and invited Elsa to sit.

“So, what now?” Elsa took the second chair. “I want this information.”

“And I don’t want to die. Which means you need to make it worth my while. What are you prepared to give?”

“What is it you want?”

Sunny tsked. “You’re a smart woman. Or at least I thought you were. What is it you think I want?”

“How would I know that?”

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“Look at me. Look around my home. For the first time in your life, ask yourself: who am I? What motivates and drives me? Find that out and offer it to me. If you’re correct, I’ll give you the information you want.”

Elsa sat back in her chair and studied the woman in front of her. Sunny was right, Elsa had known the bird catcher for almost a decade, but she’d never really looked at Sunny before, never wondered about her or thought of her beyond their brief encounters.

“Overwhelmed?” Sunny said, enjoying the game. “Here, I’ll help if you ask the right questions. Start with what you know.”

“Well, you’re Bad Seed, and proud of it.”

Sunny placed her wrist on the table, so Elsa could see the tattoo inscribed with the number thirty-three.

“One of the first, too,” Elsa said, “judging by your low number.”

Sunny traced the image. “My disgrace, if you can call it that, preceded yours by about five years. My parents died in an accident during a routine maintenance job on Haven’s sun. Kingston Melville, the old head of the Engineering Guild, decided an orphan was too great a burden on his precious hall and so I ended up in the Darkzone, one of Haven’s many discarded children from that period.”

“You were on your own?”

“There was no guardian uncle to look out for me.” Sunny said. “I attached myself to anyone who’d help keep me alive and I used them until I had no more need of their aid. I’ve done it all, tip-rat, smuggler, hostess…”

Elsa cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”

The bird catcher shrugged. “Whatever it takes, right?”

Sunny opened the lid on the spirit jar and poured the clear liquid into each shot glass.

“Have you guessed what I want then?”

“No,” Elsa looked around the room with a critical eye. The house was practical and basic, except for the drawings and the odd window.

“Why do you have a picture of the surface?”

“I like it. It’s pretty.”

“It’s more than that. You have it behind a windowpane, you look out into it, as if it’s real.”

Sunny played with the rim of her shot glass.

“Tell me something,” Elsa said. “You don’t fear the surface as most people here do. So why haven’t you stayed there?”

Sunny smiled. “Well, it’s not like the pictures in the magazines. There’s some security in living underground.”

“You value your independence too. You like that you’re different to the others living in the Darkzone. In fact, it’s a point of pride you haven’t ended up like them, working in a pit or plantation.” Her eyes fell on the drawings. “But, you don’t like what you do.”

Sunny tilted her head. “What makes you say that?”

“Your chair, it faces towards the window.”

“So?”

“So, all the drawings of free birds are along the window wall, where you see them the most. The sad ones, you keep behind you.”

Sunny twisted in her chair and studied her drawings. She huffed. “Okay, you have enough information. Tell me, what do I want?”

Elsa closed her eyes. She could do this, she just needed to think of it as a puzzle. She went through her facts. Sunny was someone who dreamed of the surface, but she did not want to live there. She was brave and resourceful, thriving where others would crumble. She valued her independence, but she hated her current method of achieving it. She… Elsa opened her eyes.

“You want my job.”

Sunny lifted her glass and winked. “You let me into your world, then I’ll let you into mine.” She downed the shot in one go and pointed to Elsa. “Drink up.”

Elsa clasped the glass, but didn’t lift it.

Sunny frowned. “Come now, Elsa, you didn’t think it was going to be an easy choice, did you?” The bird catcher poured herself another drink. “So, this is what I propose. You give me the key to your junk cavern and all its goodies, let me set up a stall on Market Day, and I’ll tell you the way to the surface.”

“What if I come back?”

Sunny shrugged. “An unlikely scenario, however, if you do manage to bring your uncle back and smooth things over with the guards, then I’ll step aside. But, your uncle must take me on as his second apprentice in that case. Have we got a deal?”

On the one hand, Elsa hated the thought of someone rummaging through her uncle’s things. On the other hand, she needed to get to the surface and Sunny was right, that was very little chance that Elsa would return to the underground.

“I’ll write a letter to Rama,” Elsa said. “She has the key.”

“Well alright, then.” Sunny smiled and raised her class. “Bottom’s up.”

Elsa mirrored the action and drank the shot in one go, coughing when the liquid burned her throat. Sunny gave an approving nod.

“Let’s get started.” She dragged out a piece of paper and a pencil. “You won’t have any trouble in the beginning,” she said. “The first few passages are marked.”

Sunny drew the route to the surface, a gruelling path from its beginning at the mining pit, all the way to the large waterfall at the secret cave mouth. She made Elsa memorise every narrow tunnel, tiny gap and deep pool, and tested her several times to make sure she had it all.

“You’ll need to be fearless,” Sunny said, using a candle to burn the map. “There are no carefully maintained roads where you’re going, nothing but dust and darkness until you reach the entrance. The tunnels are small and difficult, but the path is possible, and for someone your size there is enough room. You must remember to keep calm. If you panic, you’ll get stuck. Do you understand?”

“I’ve got it. How do I get to the beginning of the path?”

Sunny went back to her cupboard and pulled out another jar of spirits. “You give this to Ernie the lift driver. He’s in charge of the deepest pit in front of the tavern. You ask him politely and he’ll winch you down without complaint.”

“And how long should it take?”

Sunny tapped her finger on her lips. “I can do it in two days in a hurry. If you’re there longer than four, you’ve taken a wrong turn and you’re very much in trouble.”

The bird catcher read her worried face. “You’ll be fine. And, when you get to the crystal caves, you know you’re halfway there.”

***

Despite the removal of the Darkzone curfew, most Smokers seemed reluctant to venture outside their dwellings. Feeling exposed, Elsa kept to the shadows of Quarry Lane. A few tip rats played together in the dirt, but the passage was otherwise empty.

She reached the pit and located the lift driver where he dozed against one of his patchy grey mules. The animal sensed her first, lifted its large head and twitched one long ear. Its cloudy eyes stared beyond her. Up this close, she could see the raw marks from the dig of its harness.

The donkey stirred and knocked the lift driver, so he woke with a start. He shook his head and regarded her with eyes as dull as his animal’s.

“Ernie?”

“Yeah, what do you want?”

“I need to get to the bottom of the mineshaft. I can pay.”

Elsa removed the spirits from her jacket. Ernie took the jar and inspected it in the light. He placed it next to his other supplies for the day. “Get on, quick.”

Elsa pulled the head torch’s elastic band over her scarf and mounted the swaying platform.

“Stay in the middle,” he said. “A hundred counts and you’re there.”

Elsa nodded.

“Oh, and one thing,” he said, stepping behind the lever to release the coiled rope. “When you reach the bottom, don’t turn on your light.”

Ernie tugged the lever. The platform descended into darkness. Elsa watched the bright hole above get smaller and smaller. The air turned even stuffier. Pickaxes clinked against the stone deep below her. She used the rhythm and counted under her breath. Elsa hadn’t quite reached one hundred when the lift jolted to a stop.

She stood frozen in the centre of the platform, her mind filled with doubt. What if he’d halted too soon? What if she stepped off the platform and there was nothing there?

Elsa listened.

There was scrapping and groaning, but the darkness and stone distorted the sounds. Her fear got the better of her. Elsa flicked on her torch and gasped.