Free Dusk by Tim Lebbon Page A

proposition.
    Back on the main street a puppet master was performing for a group of children. Trey knew Lufero, an old miner who had lost both legs in a cave-in decades ago, as did all of the children in the home-cave. His puppet shows were a constant on the main street when the fires were lit, and his clumsy magic tricks—wide sleeves and deep pockets shouting the truth—made him a popular entertainment. And later, when children grew up, they saw fresh truths in his shows, serious statements hidden away behind childish displays. His metal puppets, most of them made from parts of small machines he had cannibalized from the mines, always played themselves, great thundering things that ruled over his long bony finger puppets. Through the slapstick and humor and laughs for the children, every play ended on a melancholic note with the machines grinding to a halt. Lufero would sit still for a while, his finger puppets staring at the dead machines as if willing them to move again, and the children would leave, thinking that the play was over. But Lufero would remain there, his face sad, his eyes confused. And sometimes it took a long time for this part of his play to end.
    “Lufero,” Trey said. The old man looked up and nodded, smiled. Then he returned quickly to the show, not wishing to disappoint the group of children sitting on the dust floor of the street. No machine-puppets today. That was unusual for Lufero. Instead he held one hand of long finger puppets, and his other hand was hidden down below the cloth-covered table.
    “They dug and they dug,” the puppet master said, each of his long fingers taking on a life of their own. His yellow eyes glanced up at the children, and his smile touched them. “They brought out the fledge in great bundles, rolling them up and setting them aside for the riser to take them topside for trade. And Petra, the young miner who thought he knew so much more than his more-experienced friends, kept digging and digging and digging, even after the others had stopped and sat down for their food break.” Lufero’s fingers laid down and relaxed, but his thumb kept on working at the rock he’d lifted onto the table. “He scraped and he picked and he prised, and soon he found a narrow crevasse, just wide enough to take his small body. He willowed in, as all miners do, using his long feet and big hands to steer the way, and all the while he was thinking, ‘I’ll get the best, I’ll get the biggest, I’ll find what the Beast was looking for the day it died.’”
    “I’m frightened!” a little girl said.
    Lufero glanced up. “Good,” he said. “You should be. Because Petra should have been frightened too, instead of stupid. He didn’t listen to what he was told, you see, by those who knew better. He didn’t realize that behind every comment given by his elders was a whole host of knowledge, a history of reasons and a wealth of caution. ‘Don’t dig past your time,’ he’d been told, and the miners who told him that knew only too well of the dangers.”
    Trey knew what was coming because he’d seen this play several times before. First when he was a child, and it had given him nightmares. Again when he was a teenager, when it had made him ask questions. And a couple of years ago, as a young miner back from his first shift. After the stories he had heard during that long first day, nothing could have scared him more.
    The puppet master started working his puppets again, keeping the other hand ready behind his back.
    “But Petra didn’t listen. He thought he knew better. He wasn’t a bad boy, and there’s the tragedy. But he did think that he could change things, when we all know that change is something gradual that none of us can steer. We miners change—we grow taller, our limbs longer—but it’s something that the land controls and gives us, even after magic has been taken away. We’re all part of the language of the land. Petra did not believe this.” Lufero grew quiet