A miner loses his brother in a dungeon.
Think on the son of a miner who has an uncanny ability to lead to a new vein — a quiet boy, introspective, but he claims he can hear it sing to him.
One of his brothers thinks that this might be better exploited, brings his brother along on an outing.
If he can hear the song of ore through stone, surely he’ll hear the song of gold coins and treasure in a dungeon — and he does, leading his brother and his friends deeper in, until their satchels are heavy and bulging with it.
They keep track of their way out, and when they can carry no more, they ready themselves to retrace their steps — but the younger brother stops in the middle of a dark corridor, head tilted.
“Come,” his elder brother says. “Let’s go home.”
“Can’t you hear her?”
“Her?” the elder brother repeats, but his blood runs cold — they’re so deep in the labyrinthine tunnels that some of the brick-built halls are giving way to tunneled rock. There’s no one alive down here, not who might mean them well. “No, but — we have to go.”
“Such a beautiful song,” his brother says softly, dreamy, near hypnotised in a way they’ve never seen him, and the elder brother grabs for his arm just a second too late — he’s disappeared into the darkness, and is out of sight, and out of reach.
They search for a time — not just that night, but for a week after, returning to the dungeon and calling for him, tracking him. The elder brother is beside himself — no amount of treasure in the world is worth his brother’s life.
When he finally returns to work in the mine, his blood runs cool a second time — at the end of his shift, when he’s the last of the men to trail back up toward the shaft entrance, he swears he hears his brother’s voice.
Singing, softly, alongside a woman’s song.
The sound comes from deep, deep within the mine, down old, long unused shafts that the elder brother doesn’t know or trust — he leaves in a hurry, but he knows, he knows.
He won’t be able to resist that song forever. He misses his brother, after all.
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