The Nine Tellings of the Ninth Finger

a squat little book bound in undyed leather, swollen with damp and dried out again more than once; the flyleaf reads: 'Set down by Hodda Vek, digger, who heard three of these from folk who heard them from Kalder himself, and the rest from folk no worse'

A delver's chapbook collecting all nine of Kalder Nine-Fingers' lies about how he lost the finger — one per chapter, each told as gospel — together with the delver's liturgy he left behind: tell the fire where you're going down, chalk your string-marks tail-home, and leave the ninth swallow in the jug. The book every delve crew owns and no two crews agree about.

First, so you know what you are holding: Kalder Nine-Fingers lost one finger, once, and lied about it his whole life, differently every time, on purpose. This was not modesty. A man who goes into the dark places learns that some questions are doors, and a door does not have to open just because somebody knocks. Asked about the finger, Kalder answered with a tale — always a good one, never the same one — until the lie WAS the answer, and the asking became a game the whole Vale got to play. I have gathered the nine tellings that are told oftenest. They are all true, in the way that matters, which is: they are all exactly the kind of thing that happens down there.

THE FIRST TELLING has the trap-jaw in the barrow lintel, and Kalder counting his hand after, out loud, in front of his crew, and saying only: 'Well. The door's paid.' This is the telling masons favor.

THE SECOND is the bet with the Stoneborn over the live coal, which Kalder won, if you count it winning. Stoneborn tell this one and laugh until they have to sit down.

THE THIRD is the tomb-adder, which bit the finger and died of it, and Kalder apologized — to the adder — and buried it with honors. Herb-folk swear by this one because of what it implies about his blood.

THE FOURTH is the door that wanted a small toll. This is the one told quietest, the night before a deep job, and the teller will move their mug in a small circle, sunwise, when it is done, and you will not ask why, and neither will I write it.

THE FIFTH through EIGHTH I give in the book proper: the fishing telling, the wedding telling, the telling with the Vyr lamp that is certainly not true and is everyone's favorite, and the telling where he simply misplaces it and finds it a year later in a coat, which he told, they say, entirely to make a Writ clerk stop writing.

THE NINTH TELLING is the frostbite. An ordinary cold morning, an ordinary carelessness, no door, no adder, no wager. Every fireside in the Vale rejects the ninth telling as too dull to be Kalder's — and every delver past their third season will tell you, with relish, that this is exactly why it is the true one. The dark does not always charge a story for what it takes. Mostly it charges a finger for a finger. Kalder knew that better than anyone, and I believe he built eight better tellings over the dull true one the way we build a cairn over a plain man: not to hide him. To mark him.

Now the liturgy, which is the real reason to own this book, because the tales are for the fire but these are for your life:

TELL THE FIRE. Before you go down, you say at a fire — any fire, an inn's or a camp's — where you are going, which door, and when to worry. You are not asking permission. You are making sure that if the dark keeps you, somebody sits at a fire and tells it well, and somebody else knows which door to chalk CLOSED.

STRING-MARKS TAIL-HOME. Chalk your marks Kalder-fashion, the tail of every stroke pointing back the way you came. Any fool can mark a wall. The mark that saves you is the one you can read at a dead run, in bad light, bleeding.

THE NINTH SWALLOW. The night before a deep door, pour the round and leave one swallow in the jug. For the Ninth Finger — for the share of every delver the dark kept, Kalder deepest and first among them. It is not worship. Korl count him an ancestor by craft and they may be right, but the swallow is plainer than that. It says: one of us is not at this fire, and we go down anyway, and we mean to come back up.

He went down a last time, old and past counsel, and the dark kept him — no body, no lamp, no string-end, and the strands never agree where, so do not go looking; better than you have. What came back up instead is in your hands. Go afraid. Go anyway. Tell the fire.

— H.V.