Chapter 38 Jinmei Interlude 2/3

Jinmei carried the wounded spiritbeast after cleaning and feeding it, taking down to one of the exhausted tunnels. She had to light and carry her own lamp as she crossed through the mines. She crouched to move through one of the tiny tunnels the younger miners made, following a path she knew was here.

Light from above flooded this little section where the faulty engineering and dig direction had led to a collapse in the ceiling. A pile of dirt and stone laid on the floor.

“You’ll be safe here.” Jinmei said, setting the water-deer down. “Hmmmm… we need a better name for you. You’re blue… Water Blossom? Or just Blossom.”

Jinmei stared into the deer’s eyes, lifting it above her head. It let out a soft cry. She took it as a sign of approval. She nodded to herself, pulling out the rag from her pocket and rolling it out as bedding before setting the water-deer down.

Jinmei fidgeted.

“I’ve never taken care of an injured person.” She admitted to the water-deer. “How do you do this? I should run and get you bedding.”

Jinmei stood. Then sat. Blossom blinked repeatedly.

“Maybe… I’ll tell you a story? People do that, right?” Jinmei asked. Then she continued.

She told the Blossom about her first few years mining, being only nine and unable to swing a pickaxe, how she had pushed wheelbarrows back and forth or otherwise missed lunch and dinner. She told Blossom about the mine bosses; cultivators, all, she could tell. When she first told them she could sense qi, none of them believed her. She was lucky in that.

The last thing she wanted was to become a cultivator like them, who didn’t even recognize her existence.

She told Blossom about the two work sites before this one, also spread across the Gold River Valley. Half way through, she noticed Blossom was asleep. She nodded to herself. Sunset was coming; she could see it getting darker and chillier.

She left the little lighted clearing, then up to the tunnel for children to climb through. But before she left, she rolled one of the roundish chunks of broken stone in the way. Now only the smallest creatures and Blossom herself could come and go at will.

Then she ran back to camp, grabbing blankets from the supply warehouse, a thrown together wooden structure. They were the cheapest, scratchy linens that the mining company could afford, often even carrying stains. But they would be better than nothing for blossom.

She pushed the rock out of the way and found blossom still there and still asleep, so she piled one of the blankets on her and headed back out before resealing the tunnel.

It was time to find where Bao’s celebration was.

She found another one of the young miners standing around the massive outdoor firepit where the miners were fed during the summer months, who gave her directions to another, separate, abandoned mining area.

Bao was throwing a party in a stripped down quarry only a half an a hour walk away.

There was an entire wagon of looted supplies and freshly hunted food cooking on an open fire pit. Instruments — handcrafted or probably stolen — filled the air with a discordant song.

That made Jinmei wonder where Bao had gotten the food. But she slipped down the stairs to the quarry and found a seat at the make shift quarries. Bao danced, clearly drunk. Jinmei frowned. How much had they stolen for this?

They received barely any pay, and some of it was deducted for the food and clothes and blankets and tents. Which left less than nothing. Half of them were in debt, according to the adults.

The tables had been dusted and cleaned. This had clearly been planned days in advance. Jinmei wondered where Bao had found the time to clean while meeting his daily mining quota. Or maybe he just didn’t meet his daily mining quota.

Jinmei started eating. Then she kept eating. There was fresh meat sealed in wax paper that maintained it. Jinmei ate until she could eat no more, and then she greedily hoarded the square cuts of meat in a pile in front of her.

Children dragged logs and rotting wood to add to the pile of fire. Sparks filled the air. Bao slipped out of the crowd, talking to everyone he met, exchanging hugs and words of congratulations.

Then he sat down at the table across from me.

“Meimei!” He said. His face was red. He was drunk.

“Don’t call me that. I told you.” Jinmei said.

Bao’s face fell. Then lit back up.

“When I become immortal, I’ll come back and and buy the entire mining company! And we will eat meat for dinner every night!” Bao smiled. One of his teeth was missing on the side from a fight he got in before he came here. Bao’s smiled turned to a frown. “You look exactly like my little sister looked, you know.”

Jinmei frowned. Bao had never mentioned his little sister. He had lost his family to a spirit-beast horde too. Most of the children here had.

“Okay. Come back and buy us all better food and I’ll let you call me Meimei.”

Bao smiled again. It looked pained. Then he stood up on her table.

Jinmei gasped in offense, leaning back as Bao called attention to himself.

“Thank you all for being here! When I become an immortal, I will repay you all for all you’ve done for me!”

The crowd of children cheered. Adults had slowly filtered in when they heard about the food. But none of the mines supervisor’s. Bao started to give a long winded speech about the people he was thankful for. Jinmei grabbed as much food as she could carry and slipped away.

She had to grab her lantern; the sun had fallen completely. The smell of ash stuck to her clothes. She found Blossom asleep in the cave and piled her store of rations there.

She didn’t know that she would end up needing them.

The next day a caravan came and took Bao away. Jinmei watched from a distance as they exchanged a pouch of silver coins for the boy. Then he left without another word.

Wherever they had accumulated the supplies for the party from, no one was any the wiser.

Jinmei checked Bao’s tent. Someone else had looted everything that remained in it before she got there. There were just ratty cheap clothes provided by the mining company remaining. She tsked and continued on her day.

Every day, she mined her quota. She saved some of her food, adding more stolen rations of meat to it and sharing it with Blossom. After a few days, she walked into the cave she kept it in to find it stumbling around the room.

“You want to go for a walk?” She asked.

Blossom loved the river and devoured the plants growing at its side. She noticed its qi grew stronger when it did. It led her down branching paths of river where it plucked strange plants from where they were buried in the rocks. She helped it pull roots free.

A few days later, another caravan dropped off another group of kids. Somewhere, a town had fallen to ruin.

Life went on for Jinmei.

Then, more than a month after Bao had left, there was a commotion that woke her up.

“Jinmei! Jinmei!” A teenage girl whispered into her tent, waking her up. “Jinmei! The supervisors are calling everyone together!”

Jinmei threw herself out of bed. More than a hundred laborers gathered in the cold of early morning. At the edge of the compound of tents and temporary structures, outside the thrown together wooden warehouse. A cultivator sat in the wooden desk under a half built shed. He threw his feet up on the desk, scuffing it. The crowd milled about, waiting.

The mine supervisor stood behind him, visibly sweating.

“Listen up. I do not wish to repeat myself.” The cultivator said, removing his feet from the desk and leaning forward. The qi in the air shifted. But not by a lot.

The cultivators qi felt weakener than the supervisor’s. So why was the supervisor afraid?

“I am Fenglin Bo, of the Feng Family. And this camp is missing supplies. Starting immediately, food rations and clothing are being restricted until the camp earns back double the missing lot. I don’t know which of you thought you could get away with stealing and selling from the Feng Clan, but you have another thing coming.”

Jinmei didn’t like how similar his name was to Bao. But Bao didn’t return.

Jinmei ran out of meat rations. But Blossom got bigger. She dug up more of her own food. Jinmei had to stretch soup rations. She barely had any to share. On the days she had enough energy to double her quota, she got a second meal, which she normally shared with Blossom.

Jinmei laid in the cave that she kept Blossom in, stomach rumbling, as she fell asleep.

When she woke up, she found a pile of roots and tubers on the same rag she had once given Blossom for bedding. After two months, Blossom had grown far too large for it. She laid on the grass that was regrowing on the pile of dirt that fell through the hole in the ceiling.

Jinmei rubbed her eyes. Blossom nudged her with her nose.

“These are for me?” She asked.

Blossom made a soft noise and licked her face. Jinmei laughed. Then she wiped the dirt off of one of the tubular plants.

She frowned. The plants were wet from spit. Blossom must have carried them in her mouth, one at a time. The sun was setting outside.

“I still need to make quota today.” Jinmei complained. She felt weak. She wiped the plants off with another rag from her overalls. Then she bit into the tuber.

To her surprise, it tasted delicious — rich, and earthy, and full of energy that swelled within her. She chewed slowly, considering it. Then she kept eating.

Life went on.

Until one day, Jinmei returned to find Blossom missing. The rock that blocked the tunnel was cast aside. The tiny pack of supplies and roots she had there were strewn about or looted.

“Blossom?” Jinmei asked, standing at the end of the hall. Her heart raced. Had whatever wounded her returned for her?

She whipped around, stepping out of the tunnel. Immediately, one of the mining company’s guards grabbed her wrist.

“The supervisor needs to talk to you about your stolen goods.” He said, bored.

Jinmei struggled, trying to get out of his grip.

“Let go of me!” She shouted.

“No.” The guard said. He sighed.

Jinmei wailed on him, punching and kicking and failing to separate them as the guard dragged her to the camp’s supervisor. He was once again standing behind the cultivator who had visited them.

Blossom was standing next to the desk in shackles. The animal didn’t make a noise of pain or alarm. She stared at Jinmei sadly.

The supervisor lifted the scraps of paper from the stolen rations from Bao’s party.

“So, you’ve been stealing food to feed a spirit-beast?” The cultivator asked, interrupting the supervisor before he could talk.

Jinmei ripped her hand out of the grip of the guard, rubbing her wrist.

She looked around.

“No. I got those from the other miners.” And it wasn’t a lie. She had taken from Bao. Bao was the one who stole them.

“There’s no point in lying.” The cultivator said. But he was smiling. “We were considering extending the debt period to pay back for the meals by another month… but I think I’ve decided that this deer you’ve raised for me will be plenty.”

Fenglin Bo petted blossom, who turned to look at him. He frowned and pulled his hand back, aware of her tusks.

“You can’t do that! Untie Blossom.” Jinmei shouted.

Fenglin Bo smiled.

“Your name is Blossom, huh? The Second Young Master from the main family is coming down tonight. She will make an excellent dinner.”