Jasper Mountain (28 page)

Jack’s feet hit rock. He pushed off and slipped down farther. Chanted in his head.
Mouse is alive.
Swept aside everything else for those words.

Mouse is alive.

He let them fill him, become him. Mouse is alive.

Suddenly, he swung into the dark, no wall beneath his feet. A tunnel.

“Ho!” Jack yelled. The rope stretched taut. He bounced and started swinging like a pendulum. It took him a moment before he faced the right way, the candle from his hardboil illuminating the mouth of the tunnel. Empty. And mouth it was. An infinite, dark gullet, yawning wide, hungry for a sacrifice.

“Not Mouse. Mouse is alive,” Jack muttered. “Ho! Ho!” he hollered. A damned inefficient way of communication; a problem preplanning might solve. Yep, he’d add that to his stupid proposal. How to communicate, dangling above certain death, while searching for a deaf child. Jesus, what a place.

His feet found rock, and he pushed off, slipping down to the next tunnel. He gauged the drop to the next opening fairly accurately and didn’t swing so helplessly, his spin controlled.

“Ho!”

He hung, peering into the black. Nothing. His heart sank. This was about as far a fall as Mouse could have survived. A slight breeze came from the tunnel, thankfully, not enough to blow his candle out.

“Ho! Ho!” he boomed, like some insane incarnation of Saint Nick. Along with the gentle caress of wind from the tunnel rode a scent. Lilac, meshed with a chill.

He began dropping and pushed out. The lip of this tunnel jutted a few inches. He realized the last time he’d smelled a lilac scent. Her perfume. Jo’s.

“Ho!” he screamed. He stopped, his eyes level with the tunnel floor. Grabbing the rock, he pulled himself up and hooked a leg over the lip. He crawled in a few feet and sat back on his knees, feeling a tinge of relief he wasn’t dangling over the seemingly bottomless drop.

A figure loomed in the dark. He squinted. Someone was just at the point past where he could see. No, nothing. Wait. Yes. A figure.

“Jo?” he asked, and was about to kick himself again for being an idiot. Or was he so desperate, he imagined such a thing? No, he definitely saw something. He dropped his gaze and almost saw her on the edge of his vision.

Every muscle in his body tightened.

Dear God in heaven, it looked like her outline, but when he looked straight at whatever it was, nothing was there. He glanced back to the side and the figure again formed on the edge of his vision. He thought he saw a flash of eyes, looking at him. Green. Piercing.

He held perfectly still, afraid whatever was there might dissipate into nothing. He kept his vision locked on the rock on the ground right in front of her, if it was her and not a figment of his insane imagination.

“Jo?” Jack asked again. She faded. His eyes bored into the space where she’d stood. Nothing. “No! Jo!” he called. The rope behind him began to drop into the tunnel. He leaned back and called up the shaft “Ho!” then gave a yank, the signal that he was going to get out of the rope harness. He coiled the line at the mouth of the tunnel and rose to take a few steps forward. Of course, nothing. She’d probably never been there.

Another Jack Buchanan flight of fancy? Yes, a logical explanation, but it didn’t feel right in his heart. He was sure he’d seen her.

“Nothing here.”

It must be Milena and all her talk of Jo standing beside him. The Gypsy tricked him, entertained him with her stories of twin spirits. She merely did what Isabella paid her to do: entertain gentlemen callers.

He took a few more steps in. Mouse’s life depended on him, and here he was, seeing ghosts. Jack kicked at dust, angry at the substance coating the tunnels, him, the rope, his clothes, gritting in his eyes, his lungs. He kicked again. A haze puffed up. Fury bit through him, and he kicked again. Another puff rose. And again, again, until a fog of rock dust floated in the air.

The dark stone, marking the place where Jo had been, moved.

Jack stopped, focused on the dusky form, and rushed forward. He dropped to his knees. The rock unrolled, loosened and transformed, not a rock at all. A boy. The candle on Jack’s hardboil illuminated enough for him to see Mouse’s pale face, a tiny moon in the dusty dark. The child panted, his body shuddering.

Gently, Jack laid a hand on the boy’s chest. “Hold steady, kid.

I’m going to get you out.”

Mouse’s eyes were open and glazed, as if he didn’t see Jack, or anything at all.

“Hold on, little man,” Jack said, gathering Mouse in his arms. “Just hold on. That’s all you have to do. I’ll take care of everything else.”

Milena slept for hours, waking to complete dark. Although wrapped in the intimate black of a cavern, she knew sunlight reigned outside. Beyond, the world of men pushed on in daylight, fast and mean and hard. Unforgiving.

Within the safety of the mountain, constant rustling overhead reminded her she was not alone. The comings and goings of her companions indicated the cycles of the sun and moon. She decided she wanted to stay here forever.

She’d found a cove where she could stretch out at the other end from where the bats nested. Although the nook was cold and hard, she’d slept soundly. For the first time in a long while, she felt completely safe.

Yawning, she lit her lantern. Light skimmed along the floor, and mountain gems glittered. The lantern illuminated enough of her surroundings to reveal not just a cavern, but a sacred cathedral. No structure built by man would ever rival the beauty of this place. Towers speared up, and others dripped down, fluid caught by time and hardened into rock. Centuries of painstaking artistry. Every so often the light caught a reflection of imbedded crystals and flung a sparkle through the dark. The cave’s ceiling vaulted up into endless black.

Curiosity to explore farther and deeper pulled at her, but something else as well. Since the night of the
MoortYak,
she’d never felt safe, or that she belonged anywhere. Until this moment. She was meant to be here. The pull from the mountain folded around her, calling, beckoning. She was almost to her destination.

Holding the lantern before her, she ventured farther inside. The tunnel’s ceiling lowered until she dropped to her hands and knees, pushing the lantern ahead. Although she wandered through the tunnels for hours, she was perfectly content. Some stretches allowed her to walk, many forced her to crawl. Rivulets of water dripped, adding to the sounds of life filling the mountain. The sound of bats rustling fell off, diminishing to a whisper.

She came upon a pool, black as obsidian and still as night. Her reflection regarded her from the underground lake, and she smiled to think how the proprietress would disapprove of her wild hair, disheveled velvet dress, and smudge of glittery dust on her face. She wished for her own comfortable clothing, but wishes were useless and she needed to push on. She left the pool behind as the mountain called to her with more intensity than ever before. Her own excitement built, sparkling through her. She was almost there.

She crawled through a low channel and the mountain opened, its walls soaring up. Milena sat back on her heels at the threshold, and although she had anticipated wonder, she paused in shock with what she saw before her.

Light flashed off crystals crusting the walls of the cave. Translucent rock seemed to drip down from the ceiling. Light and color danced through and off facets. The entire chamber swirled with brilliance.

“The Chamber of Jewels,” Milena whispered. Such places were spoken of among her people with hushed voices; these caves were rare and their magic, strong.

This was the heart of Jasper Mountain.

Centuries-old spirits whirled in the dance of lights, and their song whispered in the air. Their presence permeated the cavern, and rising above them, holding them close inside its heart, the magnificent and ancient spirit of the mountain. It hummed with wisdom in the deepest and eldest of voices.

Magic of the Ancients and the secrets of mystics whirled. She closed her eyes, stretching herself out to touch them, to connect. The spirits danced around her, fizzled through her like bubbles in champagne, and they tickled over her skin. Every part of her awakened to them. The curtain to the Otherworld swept aside.

When the anthem began, it did not startle her. It rose, a mixture of the rush and whistle of air. Strands of a deep and ageless voice wound through, with spirit song sparkling in harmony. The anthem skimmed along an undercurrent of sacred and ancient chant.

The Song of the Mountain, sung for countless centuries.

She closed her eyes, humbled to hear such sacred music.

For the first time in her life, Beth truly felt like a whore. She wasn’t used to the stares of men, certainly not these unabashed leers, accompanied with hoots and whistles. She almost wished she’d stayed hidden in the small grove of pines, but she’d waited for hours and watched the miners come from their shift.

The second she recognized the slim figure of Digger, her heart lifted for the first time in hours. She loved him so much. And what she had to tell him would destroy his hopes and dreams. Maybe even him.

He stopped short when he saw her, just stared, like he didn’t quite understand that she stood in front of him.

“Bethie?”

The sweet familiarity started her tears again. She didn’t know how to tell him. He approached her, the catcalls of his friends growing louder.

He did nothing to stop them.

“What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

She’d never seen him so filthy. Or tired. She swiped away tears. She wanted to lighten the news and tried to smile but only managed a pathetic grimace.

“Miss Isabella. She found out about us, Digger.”

His face went slack with shock. Disbelief, and finally distress. “Oh, God.”

“I’m ruined,” she managed to get out before a sob broke through, and she gasped it back. She put her head in her hands. Waited to feel his arms around her. Nothing. She cried for a bit, and looked back up.

He stood there, shoulders caved inward, eyes miserable, staring at the ground as though an answer might spring up through it.

She shook her head. “I can’t think. You have to tell me what to do.”

He grabbed her arm and pulled her back into the trees. “How? How did she find out? What did you do?” He gritted his teeth and spit the words. “What … did … you … do?”

She tried to pull her arm from his grip, but his fingers bit into her flesh. “I didn’t do anything! Luke must have seen us down by the cribs. Nothing else makes any sense.”

Digger flung her arm away from him. “Unless the Gypsy whore told her.”

Beth gasped. “Milena did no such thing. We can trust her, Digger.”

“She didn’t like me no how, no way. I saw it in her eyes. I knew it was a mistake to ask her for help the minute I saw her.”

He looked at Beth, his eyes burning with anger. “It was a stupid thing to do, trust her.”

“Why are we fighting over this? What difference does it make how Miss Isabella found out? She did. That’s all.”

Digger scuffed his boot toe in the dirt.

“What will we do?” Beth asked, afraid to hear his answer.

He shook his head. “Bethie, I got nothing to give you. Nothing. I don’t even got a place where you can stay.”

“Do we have any money left at all?” She didn’t have the strength or energy to spare his feelings. She needed to know what their situation was; they both needed to face it. “You’ve lost all my money at the tables, haven’t you?”

He didn’t answer. The look on his face, even through dirt, was enough.

“I have nowhere to go,” she added.

“You can’t stay with me.”

As if to back up Digger’s proclamation, a passing miner hollered, “Drop yer pants and do it, boy. She din’t come to talk!” Laughter, mean and harsh, followed.

For the first time in her life, anger surged up at him. “All our money! How could you?”

“How could you let Miz Isabella find out about us? This is a disaster, right sure.”

“You don’t need to tell me. I’m the one who got thrown out, remember?”

He shook his head. “Can you go to the church? Reverend McShane might help.”

“Last I knew, he was running an orphanage, not a home for wayward whores.”