Snow

"Well then, best try harder," the foreman said and squeezed one last time, hard enough for Alec to feel his arm pop, the shoulder slide back and out of place. His first day back the foreman had come and found him as he was waiting for the cart down with everyone else, called him aside with a grin of utter hatred marking his face and said, "So you decided working here with…what was it you said? Oh yes, an imbecilic idiot of a foreman. Decided that wouldn't be so bad, have you?" He'd grinned when Alec mumbled something and said, "So how's the arm?" motioning for someone to hold him down while he'd twisted it out of place. When he was done he'd pulled him up by it, yanking so hard Alec saw black yellow spots everywhere, and then slapped him once, twice, hard enough for the spots to bleed away and for the mine to blur back into view. "Too bad your arm didn't have a chance to heal up proper while you were gone," the foreman had said.

"Guess we'll put you on half pay till you heal up again." Then he'd sent him down.

"Oh," the foreman said now, tongue clicking against his teeth, a sound Alec dreaded and hated.

"I almost forgot. How's your bit of stuff?"

He swung his pick again. Bright hot pain all down his arm. He pictured the foreman's head splitting open.

"Not as nice as what had you before, I hear," the foreman said, and cuffed him on the back of the head.

When Alec didn't reply he did it again. His head hit the rock and it finally split wide open. There was a vein inside, a bold bright purple.

"Well now," the foreman said. "There's progress. I guess you just have to use your head." He laughed and walked away. Alec gritted his teeth and pushed himself up, sang out "Heigh ho!" to signal that the foreman was moving on. His voice sounded fine.

***

Alec would only talk about leaving the mines late at night, when it was too dark for David to see his face. During the day he never said anything and if David mentioned them Alec would just shrug and turn away, fall silent like there was nothing to say. It didn't matter. David heard dreams in Alec's voice at night and always thought about when he first met him, about what Alec had said about where he'd been. About singing, about trying, about what people saw when they looked at him.

"I'd love to never see another rock again," Alec would sometimes say and then he'd always laugh and add, "but then I haven't done very well at getting away from them so far." Sometimes when David reached for him Alec would sigh, shift into his arms. But usually he'd say, "One day, maybe," and pull back slightly, talk about going far away.

He never mentioned taking David with him, never seemed to weave him into his dreams.

"I'd like to see that," David said one night, Alec's hand tight in his. Alec's voice had been softer than usual when he talked of leaving, of wandering across a desert where a sea used to be to unknown lands past that, not sad but just quiet, and when David had reached for him he'd kissed him gently, whispered his name.

"Maybe you will," Alec said. "But not with me."

"Why not? We could--"

"No. This won't last. Everything you think you feel--it won't last."

"Why?"

"It just doesn't," Alec said, and even though he was still holding him David knew he was somewhere else, somewhere he'd never be. "It never does."

***

Alec helped carry Thomas out at the end of the day. He was talking a little as they reached the outside, a few slurred words full of pain. Alec fanned his face with one hand while Bash poured cold water on him and muttered a prayer. It didn't do any good. "Got three little ones at home,"

Bash said a few moments later and Alec nodded, closed Thomas's eyes. Bash put him in a bag.

As they were taking him down the hill Bash got his shoulder caught by a messenger horse, moved too slowly taking Thomas to the side of the path for the rider. "King's business," the rider said, "get that trash out of the way," and then the horse's hooves were flashing and Bash was underneath, the foreman saying he was sorry and was there anything His Majesty's servant wanted, needed?

"You know," he said after the rider had passed, turning around to grin at Alec as he and Bash struggled with Thomas, Bash's arm hanging awkwardly and his face ghost white with pain, "He came out once after you left. Wanted to look at a perfect blue we'd found. Never asked about you, not one word. Just like you were nothing to him."

When they reached the city and Thomas's body had been taken to the burning house Bash looked at him and said, "If there was ever a day for forgetting."

Alec nodded. And later, when Bash looked at him with dark swimming eyes dripping brown-red tears as he sang a laughing lament for his arm, he said, "Share?" and surrounded himself with burning smoke, swallowed it down till the world dissolved around him, till he couldn't think about anything or anyone.

***