A Kobold, Summer 1899

A Kobold, Summer 1899

Ahead, he could see the mouth of the mine, a dark and forbidding void incised into a moon-whitened wall of rock. Now that he was here, he found he was afraid to enter into its daunting maw, though not from concern for what creatures - fox, wolf, bear, or mountain lion - might be lurking inside. As he had climbed the narrow path from the town below he had persuaded himself that the smell of the men who had been working there that day would keep such predatory animals away. Nor was it a childish dread of the dark that halted him momentarily; of the unnameable demons darkness could conceal. During his climb, with the accompanying echo of every step, the possibility of being followed each of those echoes had contained, he had gradually come to lose the certainty of his enterprise. He still did not know if it was a good thing or bad, where it might lead.

He felt pride, certainly, that in some small way he was making a contribution, helping his family survive, and that in doing so would be taking another step along the path from dependent childhood to being a man. Alongside such pride however, he felt shame at the way this contribution, this personal transition - if that was what it was - had been attained, the covert way it had been made. That he could not proclaim it, announce to all this proof of his approaching manhood, seemed to rob the gesture of any transformative power it might otherwise have contained.

Pushing away his uncertainty he entered the mouth of the mine.

Passing from the moonlit world into darkness, he felt like a kobold, the secretive beings his maternal grandfather had told him about in so many night-time stories back in Germany when he was a child. Kobolds dwelled deep in the mines, the old man had told him, and were of two contrary natures. Some helped the miners in their labours, protected them from dangers, and led them to whatever they sought. Others were disruptive, malevolent. They concealed the gold, or silver or tin that was being dug for, or made tools break, caused timbers to shear, roofs to fall, poisonous gas and flooding waters to leak, or they led the miners off into dark, meandering passageways from which they would never return.

He took a match from his pocket and struck it on the rock and lit the waxed taper he had been carrying. The world span and fluttered briefly as the broken shadows of the hewn rock faces danced into life around him. As it flared, its soft roar echoing from the surrounding walls, the sound of the burning taper momentarily drowned out the other, subterranean sounds - the scurry of small creatures, the drip and sputter of falling water, the ticking of the rock, settling and breaking; of small stones, freed from their million-year-old resting places, tumbling to the ground.

Once the flame had settled and he had re-orientated himself he could make out the worked rock-face a few paces ahead. There were tools there - picks and shovels, a crowbar, oil-lamps, shoring timbers, ropes, and two pairs of yoked wooden buckets - each throwing their own fluid shadow onto the stone where the men had last worked.

At the work-face he pushed the end of the taper into a fissure in the rock, then reached into his pocket again and took out a small leather pouch tied at the neck with a leather cord. He loosened the cord and poured its contents into his opened palm. The pool of golden grains flowed gently across his skin in response to the trembling of his hand, glimmering dully in the dancing light.

Was this really what the men here had travelled so many thousands of miles to discover? Did they really believe this could be the source of their happiness - not love, not health, or honour or friendship: that this was the ultimate goal of their lives?

The grains felt heavy in his hand, though they looked so insubstantial. The first time he had held it, he had been surprised how heavy it was, this thing that men sacrificed their lives, the lives of their loved ones to attain; how its weight belied its grainy, dust-like nature. Was that its attraction: the impression of substance beyond its slight nature? Or was its value to be found only in the fact it was so scarce - like love, like happiness; that it was so hard to find?

He shook his head, his juvenile mind not yet able to grasp such adult motivations, and turned his hand slowly over. The fine grains fell from his palm, catching the inconstant light, the cascading warmth of their reflected glow lightening his thoughts as they fell. He paused to consider what he had done, the price he had paid, the probable consequences, then began to scuff around in the ground with the side of his boot until the gold was lost in the heap of loosened soil and stones - the last gleanings from the rock work-face - amongst the discarded tools on the cavern floor.

The deed was done. Whether for good or bad, or of no consequence, it was irretrievable now. A fact, not a myth or an old man’s distracting fairy tale.

He hoped the traces would soon be found.