The arm that followed the small hand was thin, pale as birch bark, and clad in a ragged sleeve of unbleached wool.
Noll Vey watched through the limestone lintel as the stone parted around the child like cool grease. There was no sound of tearing cloth, no scraping of flesh against grit. The girl came forward on her knees, tumbling out onto the warm flagstone with a soft, gasping heave.
She was eleven winters old. Her dark hair was cut blunt across her brow, tied behind her neck with a length of hemp twine. Her skin was clean, dusted only with the faint white bloom of limestone powder, and her wide hazel eyes blinked rapidly in the yellow lantern light. In her left hand she held a carved wooden knitting spool; her right hand was gripped tightly around the wrist of a smaller child who scrambled out immediately behind her.
“Hold on, Pim,” the girl whispered, her voice rough from long disuse. “Keep your feet under you.”
The second child was six. She wore a patched brown smock that fell nearly to her ankles, and her short, round legs were bare, covered in goosebumps from the underground chill. On the second knuckle of her right thumb was the tiny, distinct wart that Prit had described forty winters ago.
