Chapter 2

On the third day after I left the cursed land, the seed in my chest seemed to have a mind of its own, urging me to head south.

I don't know where it's going.

I traveled south for seven days, passing through the demons ' tax checkpoints. The guards glanced at me, noticing my tattered burlap clothes and bare feet, and waved me through. They didn't stop the poor, because there was nothing to squeeze out of them.

I walked through the village, which had been ransacked by the grain requisition team. Three corpses lay by the well at the village entrance, all elderly people, who had died of starvation or exhaustion. No one buried them. The living couldn't even take care of themselves; how could they have the strength to dig a grave?

On the eighth day, I arrived in Rust Town.

The town was built on an iron mine, since the demon's palace needed iron, the demon army's armor needed iron, and the decorations of the demon nobles needed iron even more. So the miners of Rust Town worked eighteen hours a day, digging iron from the ground and giving it to people who had never seen them before.

When I first saw the mine entrance, I thought I had seen the entrance to hell.

The black entrance to the mine resembled a gaping maw, spewing out air that reeked of rust and blood. Miners were chained to the entrance, the other end of the chain to wooden stakes. Men, women, and children—the youngest probably seven or eight years old, the oldest with completely white hair—crawled into the mine, their backs hunched over, carrying sacks of ore heavier than themselves. The tunnels were too narrow for adults to straighten, so children were responsible for the deepest sections. Seven or eight-year-old children. Their spines, not yet fully developed, could bend at incredible angles.

The foreman stood at the entrance of the mine, a leather whip in his hand. He wasn't a demon; he was human. Demons were clever; they put humans under human control, so the miners wouldn't direct their hatred towards the demons , but rather towards the human foreman with the whip. The foreman's name was Blake, thirty-five years old, with a scar running from his forehead to his chin. He frowned when he saw me: "You're here looking for work?"

I said yes.

He looked me up and down, his gaze lingering on my bare feet. "You can't even afford shoes?"

I said I couldn't afford it.

He laughed, revealing a set of yellow teeth. "Then you've come to the right place. Rust Town doesn't need shoes. The gravel in the mine tunnels will wear calluses on your feet, tougher than shoes." He pointed to the mine entrance. "Go in. Live in the shack on the west side. Eighteen hours a day, you can only eat after you've dug two bags of ore. Not enough? Then you'll go hungry."

I settled into a miner's shack. The shack was made of scrap wood and slag; the roof was drafty, and the floor was covered in a layer of black powder. I asked the man next to me what it was, and he said it was slag. "It's a little warmer sleeping up there than on the ground," he said. Then he coughed, bending over with urgency, and the phlegm he coughed up was black.

The man who taught me how to work in the mine was an old miner named Cole. He was sixty-two, with completely white hair, and his back was hunched like a bow. His three sons had all died in the mine. The eldest was buried in a collapse, the second died from toxic fumes, and the youngest broke his spine while carrying ore. The foreman said he couldn't work anymore and dragged him out onto the slag heap. "The next day when I came to work, he was still lying there, eyes open," Cole said calmly, as if remarking on the nice weather. He didn't cry. The miners of Rust Town didn't cry. Their tear ducts were clogged with dust.

Cole taught me how to climb through the mine tunnels, how to carry ore in the most energy-efficient way, and how to tell which tunnels were about to collapse. "Listen," he pressed his ear against the tunnel wall, "do you hear that cracking sound? That's the wooden supports breaking. If you hear that sound, it means this tunnel won't last three days."

I asked him why he didn't tell the foreman.

He laughed. "What's the point of telling him? He'll just say, 'Then dig faster, finish all the ore in this mine within three days.' And then people will die in there. Someone's always going to die anyway."

On the tenth day, the western mine tunnel indeed collapsed. Three miners were buried inside, one of whom was someone Cole knew named Tom, twenty-three years old, with a pregnant wife. The overseer stood at the entrance of the collapsed tunnel, glanced inside, and then turned and walked away.

"Seal the entrance."

"A new mine tunnel will open tomorrow."

No one dug them out. They'd just be corpses anyway, so it was better to save the effort. Tom's wife knelt at the sealed entrance of the mine and cried all night. The next morning, she stopped crying. She stood up, went into another mine tunnel, and began carrying ore. Her belly was already very large, but she kept carrying. Because if she didn't carry ore, there would be no food. If there was no food, her child would starve to death.

That night, my heart was pounding fiercely. Thump, thump, thump. It felt like someone was hitting my sternum with a hammer.

I pressed my hand to my chest and felt something growing roots extending from my chest cavity into my blood vessels—tiny, hair-like roots that swam in my blood.

It seemed to be weeping for something. Was it Tom's wife's tears, Cole's calm voice, or the bent spines of the chained children?

It bears witness. It bears witness to the people of this land ravaged by demons.

On the twentieth day, I taught Cole a new method for supporting mine tunnels. By mixing waste slag with resin scraped from shed roofs and applying it to the wooden supports, it became three times stronger than plain wood once dried. Cole tried it once, then stared at me wide-eyed. "This...this really works?"

I said it could work.

He was silent for a long time, then suddenly hugged me, his shoulders trembling, but he didn't cry. Because miners in Rust Town don't cry. He just whispered in my ear, "Thank you, young man. Thank you."

For the next month, I taught this method to all the miners who were willing to learn. After the new support method was used in the West Mine, there were no more collapses. The foreman, Blake, noticed and asked who taught me. I said I came up with it myself. He stared at me for a long time, then said, "You're very clever. But clever people don't live long in Rust Belt."

I didn't answer. Because I didn't plan to live in Rust Town for long. The seed was still growing, still urging me to keep going south.

It was the sixty-third day since I left Rust Country. Cole walked me to the edge of town and handed me a piece of black bread. It was his ration for the day; he broke it in half, wrapped the other half in a rag, and stuffed it into my hand. "Take it, lad. You taught us how to keep the mines running, saving us from many deaths. This half-bread is nothing."

As I took the bread, I touched his hand. It was rough like tree bark, his fingernails were all blackened and deformed, and three fingers were even nailless, just bare flesh. He smiled and patted my shoulder: "Go. Don't come back. This isn't a place for you."

I turned and walked south. After a dozen or so steps, I looked back. Cole was still standing at the town entrance, waving one hand. Then he turned and walked back into the mine, his back resembling a bow bent by the wind.

That night I spent the night in the wilderness, holding the half-loaf of bread Cole had given me to my chest. I could feel the heartbeat of the seed, beating in unison with mine.

Thump, thump, thump.

Its roots extend into my arm, and I can see the veins on my wrist emitting a faint golden light.

I closed my eyes and remembered Tom's wife kneeling and weeping at the sealed entrance to the mine, Cole's calm tone when he said, "Someone will die anyway," and the children who were chained up and crawled into the mine.

The miners of Rust Town don't cry.

But the seed will remember.

It will remember every tear that never fell, every bent spine, and every name buried in the mine.

Then one day, it will make this land green again.