Treasure of the World by Tara Sullivan (best romantic books to read txt) 📗

that blast and search every tunnel leading away from the site. We miners take care of our own, Ana. And your brother, even though he had just started, was one of us. Okay? Will you tell your mother that?”

“Okay,” I say shakily. “Thank you, Don César.”

César gets to his feet.

“My condolences to your family,” he says, and heads out of the toolshed and back into the mine with tired steps. Even though he spent the night helping clean up the disaster instead of sleeping, he’s not taking any time off.

For a minute I sit there, not wanting to leave the place where I still have to believe they’ll bring Daniel out at any minute, but eventually thoughts of Mami and Don Marcelino’s message get me to my feet.

I try not to listen to the voices of the miners as I walk across the entry lot, but my ears hear them anyway.

Well, it can’t have been a dynamite problem, can it? Everyone here knows you have to announce a fuse setting and then count off the detonations once you’re outside.

It must have been a gas explosion. Someone must have burst through the rock to a pocket of gas. When that gas hit his flame, the whole thing would have exploded.

I bet it was that missing kid. If it was his flame that touched off the gas, he would have been vaporized. There wouldn’t be much of him left to find, would there?

I want to cover my ears with my hands and run, but I settle for taking longer steps. I’ve almost made it when the man I spoke to earlier calls out to me.

“Hey, aren’t you that girl who came into the mine? The one that caused all of this?”

That stops me in my tracks.

“Excuse me?”

“Yeah,” says another miner with him. With a sinking heart I recognize Guillermo, my main tormentor during my time working at El Rosario. “That’s her all right.” He spits on the ground between us. “I said you should never have come here, girl. See what you’ve done?”

And with that my courage breaks, and I press my palms to my ears and run as fast as I can away from the mine toward home.

9

When I get home, neither Mami nor Abuelita have moved from where I left them this morning. They’re both still sitting near my father’s bed, hunched over, staring at him. The mugs of tea I left are cold and untouched beside them.

Abuelita glances up when I come in.

“Our people have been mining this mountain for over four hundred and seventy years,” she says dully. “And in all that time, the price of metal has always been blood.”

“Abuelita—” I start, but she cuts me off.

“Overwork killed the men in the mines. Mercury poisoning killed those working in the refineries. And in the Casa de la Moneda, where they turned the silver into coins? They died there too.” For a moment I think she’s done, but then Abuelita goes on. “They had mules, at first, four of them, that would walk in a circle their whole lives, chained to the giant turnstile, creating the power that pressed the metal into coins and bars. But the mules died too quickly—they didn’t last more than four months each. It was too expensive to keep getting new mules. So they replaced the four mules with twenty African slaves. The Spanish crown sent thirty thousand of them here, to Potosí, to work in the mint. But they died too, every one of them. And so the work came back to rest on our people, the Inca, because we could survive hell the longest.” She meets my eyes. “Do you remember I told you they could have built a bridge from here to Spain with the silver they took from this mountain?”

“Yes, Abuelita,” I mumble.

“They could have built a bridge twice as long with the bones of those they killed to get it. Do you know how many have died here, on this mountain, Ana? More than eight million people. Eight. Million.” She reaches out and smooths Papi’s suit across his chest. “So many people. One more shouldn’t feel like such a big difference. But he was my son.”

I give Abuelita a small hug, but I have nothing to say that will make it better, so after a second of holding her, I let go and walk over to Mami.

“Mami, come on, we have to go into town and get things arranged for tomorrow.” I pull on her arm until she stands.

“Tomorrow?” she murmurs.

“Yes, tomorrow. Don Marcelino is coming with his truck to take Papi to the cemetery, but we have to get things set up today.”

Mami blinks as if she can’t quite place where she is. Then her eyes clear and she nods.

“Yes, the cemetery,” she says.

I breathe a sigh of relief. Though Mami never challenged Papi directly, she was always working around him, making things happen: she protected the majority of his pay from waste, she planned carefully for what we needed, and she managed our lives with quiet ability, always looking out for us. It’s been scary having her be so blank, to have to be the one to plan and look out for her.

Mami grabs her shawl and kneels beside the bed. I think she’s going to pray some more, but instead she pushes her hand under the mattress. The corpse on the bed lurches a little as she fishes around for something, as if it’s about to sit up, then it settles again when she pulls her hand out. I fight the bile climbing up my throat and focus on my mother.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Money,” she says simply, and tucks it into the deep pockets of her many-layered skirts. My mother, like most of the women on the mountain, dresses like a traditional cholita: blouse, cardigan, eight or ten colorful woolen knee-length skirts, one layered over the other, braids, and, when she wants to