The Runes of Norien

A Farmer’s life is hardship,

  a constant, grueling fight,

  but better than a Miner’s

  who lives in endless night.

  This nursery rhyme, which she had taught Yonfi years ago, was going around Yenka’s mind like a trapped bee while she prepared her family’s scant supper.

  In fact, it had first resurfaced around the same time the plague that would be known as the Shy Death had reared its invisible head – and ever since, stubbornly like a prayer, she kept repeating the words to herself, finding in them a modicum of solace.

  For Yenka Grindloss had been born to a family of Miners, and so she knew the truth contained in the frivolously arrogant rhyme.

  Looking back, her childhood seemed indeed to have gone by in uninterrupted darkness, under the thick shadows cast by Mount Copper, Mount Iron, Mount Silver and Mount Gold. By the time she was Yonfi’s age, she had lost both grandfathers and three of her six elder brothers to the mines, their bodies never recovered to be given a proper burial. And even those who survived the beastliness of toiling away at the mountains’ innards, were worn down so young and suffered such painful, bedridden deaths, it didn’t really seem preferable to perishing swiftly in a caved-in tunnel.

  Yenka, for instance, couldn’t remember her father’s face, nor his voice – all she could picture of him were two grey, weary slits in a mask of coal dust, and the horrible sounds he made in the back yard, bringing up thick gobs of the black phlegm that, slowly yet surely like poison, was draining the life from his battered body.

  As for the women, even though they didn’t live and breathe the ore that would be made into weapons and coins for the King, they also ended up looking grey and bitter like the men they tended to. And even that shred of hope they harboured as girls – that, by some incredible stroke of luck, they would be courted by, and wed to, a dweller of the Castle (no matter how poor and ordinary) – were soon drowned in the cloud of soot that hovered in their homes, ineradicable like despair. At fifteen, Yenka’s sisters were indistinguishable from their ageing mother.

  However, despite the gloom of their lives, Miners held Farmers in extreme contempt, calling them names like rose trimmers or chicken fondlers, which implied at the same time that their work wasn’t manly enough and that they lay with their animals, which accounted for their women’s legendary promiscuity and the shamefully few children they bore – though of course, even when she was a little girl, it was obvious to Yenka that Miners bred like rabbits because so many of their offspring were killed, and that life amidst meek beasts, fragrant flowers and an abundancy of good food (since Farmers kept their prime eggs, meat and produce for the Castle, leaving the wives and daughters of Miners to root through carts of half-rotten vegetables and barely edible meat) would exceed her best and most tantalizing dreams.

  That was why, when she first saw Yern Kobold hawking his shiny red apples and cloth-covered pails of sweet-smelling cream – for he was one of the few Farmers who, in spite of the Miners’ rancour, did his best to offer them a fair deal on decent goods – Yenka had vowed to become his wife, even though her father had already been approached by suitors hankering after his resplendent youngest daughter.

  For days and nights on end she couldn’t stop pining for the young Farmer’s fair hair, rosy face and dark blue eyes, his bright ringing voice (untouched by the vileness of metal or coal) and the very essence of happiness – like moonglow that hasn’t known the oppression of towering mountains – that his presence exuded.

  And then one blissful dreamlike day the Farmer reciprocated the feelings that fluttered so madly in her heart, by kneeling in front of her, holding out a magnificent yellow flower that looked like a black moon set on fire, and saying that never in his life had he set eyes on such a beauteous maiden, and that she shone in the murk like a pearl. (And then of course he had to explain to her what a pearl was, for Miners led a frightfully ignorant life, and also to paint her an image of the sea, which Yenka wouldn’t see till the eve of Yodren’s twelfth birthday, when they would take their son to the Scriptorium.)

  And even though Yenka feared her family’s response to Yern’s proposal – a fear confirmed by the reaction of her mother and sisters, who had taken the news with wordless austerity, as if they’d been told that a stray dog had pissed on their door – Father Grindloss, upon hearing from his prospective son-in-law that not only was he relieved from coughing up a dowry but was to receive, as a gesture of gratitude for allowing the marriage, a monthly supply of suckling pig and beer, was so overjoyed, he nearly threw his own wife into the bargain.

  Thus Yern and Yenka were married – he in his finest black outfit and she with her long blond hair adorned like a Noblewoman’s by a string of pearls that Yern had bought in exchange for two dozen sheep and an entire crop of barley – and lived in love and happiness that swelled with the birth of each of their beloved children.

  And look at us now, Yenka thought, fighting back her tears that so terrified little Yonfi, the last and brightest pearl to have emerged from the endless sea of her love, and which still lit up, despite all the adversities – Yern’s defeated look,Yofana’s obstinate fasting and Yodren’s absence, its pain undiminished by the years – the dark, turbulent waters of her soul.

  The smell of the corn bread was mouthwatering, but Yenka swore she wouldn’t touch a piece of broken crust until her babies were stuffed – even if it meant raising their clothes to make sure their pale, hollow bellies were bloated.