"Hey - are you deaf?"

Startled from his daydream about using dynamite to get into Tsarek’s dwelling, Corvan looked around to find the crew boss standing in the tunnel behind him.

"There's a phone call for you up at the site office,” the man said. “It’s the police. They need to talk to you." He turned on his heel and disappeared around the corner.

Corvan leaned his pickax against the wall and ran to catch up with him. "Did they say what it's about?"

The man shook his head as he strode into the main corridor.

Corvan had to jog to follow him to the metal lift cage. The crew boss slammed the gate shut, and the platform began its slow journey back to the surface. Corvan leaned back against the metal bars. Had something happened to his mother? To Kate?

The rock walls slid slowly past until the cage shuddered to a stop in the large room at the top of the shaft. The doors of the building were standing open, and a brilliant light filled the sky, blinding him as a loud blast shattered the night air.

Corvan shielded his eyes. "What's going on?"

The crew boss snorted. "Haven't you ever seen fireworks? It's Halloween and the kids are out celebrating." He slapped Corvan on the back. "You should join them. You're about the right size. Bring us back some treats." He pointed toward the site office. "Hopefully they didn't get tired of waiting and hang up."

Corvan headed toward the small building, too worried about his mom and Kate to take offense at yet another joke about his height. Inside, the night shift supervisor nodded at the phone hanging on the wall. "You've got to talk loud. It's not working very well."

Corvan lifted the earpiece and leaned over the speaking horn. "Hello, this is Corvan." All he heard was the static on the line. He tried again and a tinny voice crackled in his ear.

"Corvan? I'm glad I got a hold of you. This is Sam Green. Listen, there's been some trouble out at your place."

A series of firework blasts rattled the windows and Corvan pushed the earpiece tighter against his head. "What kind of trouble?"

"Your mother asked us to keep an eye on things and check in on Kate, especially tonight with all the pranks. We drove out past your place, but it was too late. Someone has broken in and the back window is smashed."

"What about Kate?" Corvan asked anxiously.

"There wasn't anyone around, but we found a trail of blood in the kitchen. Most likely from the people who broke in and got cut on the window glass. We did see a few large boot prints in the snow near the front door but everything else was wiped out by the blizzard."

"I'll come home right away," Corvan said.

"Can you let your mother know?"

"Sure." The word slipped out even as a plan formed in Corvan's mind. He'd thumb a ride home and check out the house before he called his mother. Otherwise she might try to drive home in this weather.

"Tell her not to worry," Sam said. "We boarded up the window to keep the snow out."

Corvan hung up the phone without saying good-bye. Who would want to break into their house? And where was Kate? She had mentioned a few times in the past weeks about possibly going to live in the city, but Corvan’s mother had always talked her out of it. Maybe that was what she meant when she said goodbye earlier.

"Is everything okay?" The supervisor leaned over his desk.

"Looks like I need to go home for the weekend," Corvan said, buttoning up his jacket. He was glad that he had brought Jake’s packets along with him. If Kate had left for the city and with all the fireworks exploding in the sky, this would be the perfect time to test the dynamite in the passage under his home. This had worked out perfectly for his purposes.

The man nodded. "No problem. You're due for some shifts off. I'll be in trouble with the union if you were injured down there."

"I should be back soon. I've just got to go check on our house and the girl that's staying with us."

The man smiled. "Uh-huh. The girl."

Corvan shrugged. He didn't care what the man thought. Besides, now he actually was worried about Kate.

"Bob Shepherd will be going past your place soon. You can catch a ride home with him. He's over by the tipple greasing one of the conveyor motors. I'll ring over and tell him to wait for you."

Corvan always avoided the tipple. The noise and dust in the five-story building bothered him. He hated having to spend an entire shift picking rocks out of the crushed coal as the large chunks thundered along on the huge conveyor belts and dropped into the waiting rail cars.

Corvan made his way down the lane that led up to the massive structure. Its long wooden arms hung out over the jumble of railway tracks and loading docks like the tentacles of the water creature down in the Cor. At least tonight the tipple was quiet but when coal was being moved out in steady black streams, the building shook so violently that he wondered whether the whole thing would collapse and swallow him up inside.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

A burst of light made him look back. More fireworks.

"Good thing we have enough snow this year to make sure those idiots don't set the hills on fire again."

Corvan turned to find Bob Shepherd standing amidst the huge support timbers that held up the tipple. The man shook his head.

"Last year one of those kids got his hand on a stick of dynamite and blew my outhouse to kingdom come. Real funny."

Corvan resisted running a hand over the packets Jake had given him.

"They called and said you needed a ride,” Bob said. “I'll bring the truck over to the washhouse, but you'd better be quick about it."

Corvan nodded and jogged toward the high-peaked roof ringed with smoke from the coal-fired boilers. The hot air from the water heaters would be keeping his regular day clothes warm in a metal basket tied up high in the rafters.

Stripping down, Corvan rinsed off in the shower, glad he was alone instead of with a full shift of grown men. Out in the change room, he lowered his basket, took his day clothes out and replaced them with his work clothes. Pulling the basket into the air, he hooked the chain on a well-worn nail below a metal plate stamped with the number 17: his dad's tag number. Corvan caressed the tarnished surface and nodded to himself. With the dynamite, at least now he had a hope of getting back to the Cor and searching for his father. Although he was concerned about Kate and where she might have gone, this might be his best chance to blast a hole through to Tsarek's dwelling under the castle rocks.

He was pulling his coat back when a horn honked outside. Running out the door, he jumped into Bob's old pickup.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" The man pointed to a small building next to the washhouse. "Or do you want everyone out searching the mine for you again?"

Corvan's ears burned as he jumped out of the truck and sprinted over to the lamp house. Each miner picked up a numbered brass tag on his way into the mine and hung it back up on the assigned peg on his way out. If a man's tag was missing at the end of the shift, everyone would be called out to look for him. Corvan made that mistake once and it looked like they would never let him forget it.

Back in the truck, he hunched down against the door and let the warmth from the heater at his feet wash up over his body. The curtain of snow swirling toward them in the glow of the headlights was blinding. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the cold window.

The next thing he knew his head thumped on the glass as the truck went over two bumps. The railroad crossing near Barron's store slide past the window. He must have been more tired than he thought; he'd slept the entire way home.

The truck pulled up to the open gate at the end of the lane to Corvan's house. "Hope things work out. Have a good night." Corvan pushed the door open and tugged his coat close around his neck as he stepped out into the snowy night.

"Thanks, Mr. Shepherd."

The man smiled. "You can call me Bob now that you’re one of us."

Corvan nodded and shut the door. The truck pulled away, leaving him behind in a swirl of snow.

Snow drifts had crept like long fingers across the lane up to the house, but the vehicles that had recently come and gone had left a few ruts to walk in. A gust of wind blew up the legs of his trousers. Wherever Kate had gone he hoped she’d dressed warmly. A person could freeze to death on a night like this.

The front door was locked. Corvan felt around the top of the door frame until he found the spare key. Inside, the house was almost as cold as it was outside. "Kate?" He called her name, but even as he did, he was pretty sure she wasn't in the house. Sprinting up the stairs, he checked her bedroom. Empty, and her clothes that were usually neatly folded on top of his grandfather's wooden chest were gone. Corvan sat on the bed and looked out the ice crusted window. The fresh snow made the ring of stones at the top of the castle look like huge marshmallows on a satin tablecloth.

Crossing to the oak chest, he lifted the lid. Nothing had been moved inside and the secret compartment was still fastened tight. When Gavyn's fake hammer hadn't worked on the Cor entry, he had considered breaking the lid of the chest to retrieve the book, but he couldn't bring himself to ruin his grandfather's masterpiece. Not much point since he couldn't open the book without the hammer nor read its strange writing.

Retreating to the kitchen he heard the screen door creaked out on the back deck. Flakes of snow blew through the crack below the kitchen door. A piece of paper fluttered in the miniature snowdrift forming on the floor. Picking it up, he recognized Kate's tidy script. Most of the words were a blur of blue ink but two lines were clear.

"I am going to the city to find a job. Thank you for your kindness and please tell Corvan good-bye from me."

Kate had decided to take the bus to the city, but at least she had left before the house was broken into. He pushed aside the thought that he would miss having her around and consoled himself by deciding he would look her up after his father was safely back home.

Corvan examined the boards nailed up over the kitchen window. Why would anyone bother to break in? Everyone in town knew they didn't have anything worth stealing.

Pieces of glass were scattered across the floor and drops of dried blood traced a path back to the dumbwaiter. Corvan raised the small door to find that lift had fallen down along with the rope. That could only mean that someone had used it to break into the workshop.

Running out the back door, he pushed through the drifts that had gathered against the house. His heart sank at the sight of the open cellar doors, and the mess inside stopped him cold. Most of the metal pieces from the shelves had been thrown to the floor and everything was gone from the workbench. The table in the center of the room had been toppled and the box of things for his trip to the Cor was gone.

Crossing the room, he found the dumbwaiter doors askew: the rope in a tangled heap on top of its broken shell. Climbing inside he used a broken board to dig about in the sand. The medallion was gone, but how could anyone know where he had tossed it in the first place? Was Billy spying on him through the cellar doors when he had thrown it into the dumbwaiter? He was definitely very interested in it when he saw it on the Castle Rock.

Corvan skirted the overturned table and felt under the shelf to release the catch for the hidden shelving door. A wash of blue light cascaded through the opening and he entered to find the lumien seed he had planted earlier was now the size of a grapefruit. Leafy tendrils were winding their way over the rock and three smaller globes were playing peek-a-boo through the expanding mass of vines.

This had to be a mother plant if it could reproduce itself so quickly. Corvan gently touched one of the small globes and it brightened to the color of the full moon. His stomach rumbled at the thought of the tangy juice.

He pulled the lumien closer and caressed its fuzzy skin. His heart skipped a beat.

Surely if the plant was reproducing that quickly, it would be okay to eat one of the little fruits.