Manaam's voice was trembling with amusement. "Close all the mines? To let people work on useful things instead? On housing and childcare, rather than mere diamonds?"

He chuckled as he shook his head in wonder. "Your friend is quite something, I gather." Manaam's eyes danced as he glanced at Cahuan. "But he is right. I agree, on a basic level. That would be a radical approach to the whole problem."

A crooked smile lingered on in the corner of Manaam's mouth, unwilling to let go.

* * *

Pale morning light filled the Snuggery. A few children had decided not to get up today and stayed huddled into a sleepy heap back in one corner. But most had gone to follow one of their passions.

Lasa patted Enim's vest inquisitively, running her hand over the many bulges that suggested hidden treasures inside. "Nice one," she mumbled approvingly. Having thus distracted Enim into a snort, she pulled a flask from the back of his belt. "What's that? Powerful potions?" She held it up against the light, squinting at the green liquid with an appraising eye.

Enim took it back. "Not for you to drink. This is only for crystals to bathe in while they are being enchanted."

"The most magical tub in the world," Lasa commented. She pulled Enim's cap off his head while his hands were busy at his belt. In an instant she had sensed the paper within the double layers and gotten it out. "Really, you are a wonderful teacher. You make me so curious! 'Find the mystery in my secret pockets!'" She giggled.

"Well, I am happy to please," Enim said, taking his cap back. "Even though it's not exactly a secret pocket. It is just practical, having things tucked into your clothes. Usually they don't get lost that way either. Except when people can't keep their hands off me."

Lasa was engrossed in a sheet full of intricate lines. "So this is how you build a traption?" Her brow furrowed in concentration. After a long silence, she wordlessly pushed the paper back into Enim's hand and ran away in order to listen in on another conversation.

Full of anticipation, Lasa crouched beside the staircase that led from the tailors' shop down into the courtyard. Or from the courtyard up into the tailors' shop, if one were to look at it that way.

And the tailor in the door was looking at it that way. "I am sorry," he told Som, his tone decisive, "but we cannot have this. No attracting wrollics into this courtyard. Having our tailor's world turned upside down by a small creature who finds everything fascinating and wants to know how buttons tumble and what scissors can do—no. No way. I am sorry. It simply is not an option."

However, giving up on the wrollic altogether was also not an option. At least not for Som. So negotiations continued.

A wrollic might come into the tailor shop anyway, Som pointed out. Just as he had come into Enim's room, all by himself. Wrollic disorder was just one of the general risks of life, to be contended with. The slight increase in likelihood that her wooing of the wrollic might bring—well. Som acknowledged that.

The tailor patiently kept talking. Eventually, he even invited Som in to have dinner with the family, so all the tailors could have a say.

Som came back to Cahuan with shining eyes. "Excellent!" she exclaimed, highly satisfied with the first great diplomatic mission of her life.

She began counting off the best points on her fingers. "For one, I will help clean the tailor shop from now on. So I know where everything is and can help tidying up. In the event, you know. Two, maybe we can also help the tailors save time even now, by bringing in their lunch together with ours, or by having the baby here with us more often." Som looked up at Cahuan. "I said I would have to check with you first, though. And with other children, to see if enough people would join in. I mean, actually bring lunch, feed the baby and so on."

Som proudly presented her third finger. "And finally, I will draw up a Wrollic Protection Scheme for the tailor shop. We could hide the scissors at night, perhaps. Or put bells on all the drawers, so there is a big noise when a wrollic pulls them open. I'll work something out."

Som danced a few steps, circling Cahuan in a swirl of colorful ribbons. "Isn't that great? Whether or not the wrollic comes back to us, I believe we have already befriended the tailors a bit more." She giggled. "In their loose, open, freedom-loving sort of way."

* * *

The tunnel was dark, dimly illuminated by lights tied to the brows of the miners. Dusty clouds billowed between them, a thick fog that made their vision blurred, the shapes of their fellows mere ghosts in a sickly yellowish haze.

Quinetopu coughed.

An empty wagon rolled up before him, like a gaping mouth, an unspoken command. Quinetopu obediently lifted his bucket and emptied a load of debris into the cart, sending up another wave of dust.

Quinetopu's face was covered in sweat. He did not see the blood his cough had left on his sleeve. His thin frame was shaking, his gait tottery as he stepped back from the rails. In rhythm with his gang, Quinetopu picked up the next bucket, his arms straining under the weight, his heart pounding against his ribs like a bird in a cage. His head was reeling. The bucket slipped from his hands. Quinetopu gripped the edge of the wagon, skeletal fingers holding on to life, to the world with all their might. But the world dissolved. Quinetopu sank down into darkness.

"He is breathing."

A woman had caught Quinetopu just in time, before his head hit the rocks. She laid him down gently, turning questioning eyes to the man who had come to crouch down beside them. "Do you know where we should take him?"

Quinetopu's limp form seemed to melt into the rocks, a thin ghost the color of dust.

The miner took hold of his hand. "All his family are dead. He's got two small boys, that's all who's left."

"Two boys. Old enough to take care of him?"

The man wagged his head. "No." His face bore a sorrowful frown. "Young enough to need care."

* * *

Yoor was confident. Closing the mines was a good idea.

Enim could see the rightness of it. In principle. But...

Yoor twirled around once or twice before sitting down by Enim's side again. "We just need to make sure that people freed from the mines really still do get food."

"But how?"

"Ah." Yoor shrugged with a visible lack of concern. "Any old way that will work. One way to organize it would be to still give people coin, just like now. Only it would be to work on housing and children, not diamonds."

"And where would that coin come from?"

Yoor made a circular motion with his hand. "Well, mostly, coin is going round and round. The baker gives it to the one who builds her home, and he gives it to his kid's snuggery, who spend it on bread, and so on. Coin does not get used up. Many folks can use it, one after the other."

He half-turned toward Enim. "But it depends on what we give the coin for. Take me, for example. I used to buy jewelry until now. I can still give that same coin I would have spent anyway. And it still goes to Shebbetin, to the very same people. Only now they get it for working with children, instead of just diamonds."

Yoor raised a finger. "This is not about some small amount. Not a tiny bit of coin for happy childhoods, and all the rest for jewels. No. The whole amount that has come to Shebbetin for diamonds still needs to flow. Everything I have spent on trinkets in the past will go to well-being now. And still to Shebbetin."

Yoor raised his arms and pushed a huge invisible burden from left to right. "If we use all of the coin differently, all of the structure will be different too." He nodded contentedly. "The entire situation will change."

He rested his hands on his hips.

"And all it takes is: We have to actually do it!"