Frewyn Fables: The Diamond Child

 

Labourers are rarely ever repaid their daily trials, and a miner’s sufferance is never one to want to emulate, but once, in the small mining town of Galae, situated in an old river valley, nestled between the fields and furrows, where ploughs of plenty had carved out the landscape, lived a miner and his wife, a young couple of meager means and little fortune, whose affection had held up the foundations of their house, and whose high spirits and easy manners recommended them to everything that was good and right in the world. They lived in a small way near a mining camp, and contracted as their income was when the veins and estuaries ran dry, they were happy people, blessed in their neighbours, pleased with their garden yield, and never wanting for anything beyond what joys a child might bring.
Their having children, though a spiriting notion, would have to wait: the wife was taking in the summer harvest in the neighbouring fields, and the husband was away on a dig, each doing whatever possible to increase their fortune before they should try for a child. Children were got from a place in town, purchased with farming receipts and land tithes, and if the couple wanted one, they would be labouring away until winter at least. Making a child of their own required children seeds and fertile ground, and as the sheep trees and cat beds were taking up the window plot, they had not soil rich enough to make a full-grown child. The husband decided to mine his fortune, and hoping to surprise his wife with an excellent haul, he took a pail of pasties and his tools to the mine and promised himself not to come back until he had something worthy to show her.

The husband kissed his wife and went off, marching through their river valley with a song on his lips. He liked singing and dancing, but seldom did either, fearing that he might incur a few laughs and embarrass his wife. The mine, deep and ominous, its many caverns not yet fully explored, sat dormant under the summer sun, awaiting the pickaxe and pike, wondering whether someone would come along who deserved its treasures. The husband marched up to the entrance of the mine, put down his pasties and tools, and after a good supper and the sacrifice of a crust to the knockers, he took his lantern, slung his pickaxe over his shoulder, and went into the mine, determined not to come out until he had found his weight in gold. He mined all evening, chipping and chimbling away at the walls, panning for flecks in the internal streams, marking out all the cracks and creases where a few good veins might be. The veins were the key to finding the heart, and after two whole days of clacking his pickaxe against the stone, the husband chipped away a large piece of stone to reveal a diamond embedded in a deep crag. This was a gold mine, the husband thought—how could there be a diamond here? It was the largest diamond he had ever seen—it was also the only diamond he had ever seen so close, and while he thought he knew what diamonds looked like, he did not think they should be breathing. This diamond pulsated and resonated, thrumming with a beating warmth, and with a chisel and a hand axe, the miner carefully pried the diamond loose from its stone bed. He held it in both of his hands, gaping at it in wonder, its iridescence and pulses casting a glamour over him. He set it down atop his pack, promised he should bring it home tomorrow, and drifted off, the threat of fatigue hanging over him, the miner unable to move until he had slept a few hours at least.

Dreams plagued him all night—flashes of light and colour assailed his unconscious mind, the intimation of a tune played, there was mirth and exultation—and after a cracking sound had shaken him from sleep, he roused himself and glanced at the diamond to find the figure of a boy in its place. The outline hummed and glowed, its incanescent casing slowing sloughing off, dissipating into a pool of diamond dust. The miner crept quietly over to the figure and marveled at its likeness, thinking how lifelike it looked—when suddenly, a small ruby within the child’s chest began to glow, burning bright with immediate life, and the diamond child sprang up from his bed, gazing at the miner with opalescent eyes. The child seemed about five years old, if diamond children could be given an age, and the miner, unable to believe what he saw, reached out and touched the child’s crystalline hair. On the surface, the child felt cool, but beneath the precious surface was a warmth and exuberance to rival any other child of his apparent age. A child had hatched overnight from a diamond—the miner must take the child home to his wife, and with the promise of a pasty and a song by the way, the husband led the diamond boy home, through the river valley, under the curtain of a dark early morning.

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