Corvus (Stars and Sails, Book 1)

Three

Aiden threw a shovel full of dirt over his head. His muscles tensed up and pain pulsated through his joints.

"Agh, 'Snails!" Haworth cursed. "Listen, the dirt goes in here," he said. Pointing at his wheelbarrow. Aiden couldn't see much. He was standing at the entrance of what would soon be a fresh tunnel, a good seven feet under the ground. Haworth furiously dusted off his chest. Aiden turned away, shrugging the smallest bit. Richard Haworth was older than Aiden by sixteen years, but Haworth wasn't nearly as clever. Sweat dripped off his forehead and trickled down his bare chest; it shined in his red hair and scraggly beard.

Aiden took up another shovel full of dirt and placed it in the wheelbarrow precisely, so that this time, Haworth couldn't complain about it.

"You were quieter than a mute barn mouse last night."

"Why a barn mouse?"

"Cause they're quiet, that's why. You could have a whole barn full of mice and you wouldn't know it."

"Then why's he gotta be mute, too?" Aiden stabbed at the packed sand with his shovel and sunk it deeper into the ground with his foot.

"Listen, Aiden, you overthink everything." He shook his head.

Aiden looked up at Haworth and then back at the shovel. Sand puffed up like smoke as he withdrew the shovel, a small grunt following. "I wasn't really at the festival."

"Oh don't play old Haworth here. I saw you getting friendly with the Wagner girl."

"I wasn't--"

"Oh I didn't do nothing, I'm just a good kid, yap, yap, yap. Sheesh, just fill up the wheelbarrow." Haworth wiped off his forehead with his hand and flicked the sweat off to the side. Aiden got a big old shovelful of sand. It shined a little bit in the light--pyrite or gold.

Aiden descended deeper into the shaft. It was only a few degrees cooler underground, but holy gold, it was a relief. He had dug only seven feet below ground when the sand turned into dirt. He looked for gold when he was digging because he always wanted to find a great big nugget the size of a lung, but it was fruitless. In the desert sand, everything looked gold. The ground was golden, and the eyes of those wicked and strange people were all a little golden, the sky was golden, and her voice--that Amelia Rose's voice was oddly golden. Some days Aiden woke up and swore that his once pale skin was turning the color of a golden gossamer star. It was all he could do but to stare into a mirror and tug at his dirty blonde hair and make sure he was looking at himself and not someone else. When he took his shoes off at the end of a long day, he saw his pale white feet. Sickly, sickly pale feet, and legs, and a chest that was translucent and full of purple and blue veins, all pretending to be some glorious star. All of his mismatched skin reminded him that he was still the boy who left the North. He was still a little boy who was scared that one day he would wake up and realize that he belonged nowhere but with himself.

Aiden heard a voice echoing through the shaft. Tanner's skeleton of a face peered over. Brown hair stuck against his sunken cheekbones. He leaned forward and the whole of him came into the light.

"Have I hit anything?" Aiden asked.

"You've dug three feet into the ground! Where the Sam Hill you come off thinking you've hit a vein of gold?" he scratched his head.

"If I meant you disrespect by it, I certainly would have made it known." Aiden looked into the darkness of the shaft. He narrowed his eyes. "Three feet, sir?"

"It's dinnertime, Payne. Get out of that there shaft," Tanner said. Aiden jumped up and pulled himself out of the hole.

Haworth set the half-full wheelbarrow down. "Ey, speaking of beans, how you bean doing?"