Day 737: Back to the ravine

Day 737:

My digging has brought me back to the ravine, and for some reason the skeletons zombies are still congregating there. I even saw a “kid” zombie with a shovel! If he had been on my side of the ravine, I’d have an extra shovel.

I’m not likely to find diamonds sticking straight out of the ground, here, so I’ve given myself permission to get past it as fast as I can. Unfortunately that still means clearing a lot of stone and rubble going down.

It’s tempting to use that rubble to fill up the ravine, but then when I get down there I’ll have to dig through my own rubble to check for diamonds, and that’s annoying.

Day 736: Rubble

Day 736:

I exhausted the vein of granite and discovered I was between floors I’d already built…. so I cleared out a whole lot of rubble.

It turns out rubble clearing is enough to finally make me sleepy. So then I slept a really long time, and the world looks a little sunnier now.

Sometimes sleep is the best cure.

Well, for mind troubles, anyway. I’ve never seen it cure a splinter. And I have a doozy of a splinter in that tiny bit of webbing between two of my fingers right now…

Anyway, I’m moving back down to the level where I started tomorrow to get back to looking for diamonds, and hoping that maybe we’ll have less drama from here on out. Splinters are enough for me right now.

Day 735: still up

Day 735:

I’m still digging up.

I’m also still awake after I don’t know how many hours straight.

Sleep isn’t working right now, which I guess isn’t a surprise. Traumatic event, weird biorhythms, stress, etc.

But I was kind of hoping I was doing enough digging to convince my body it needed a repair cycle.

Either I’m in such good shape that I don’t need the sleep yet, or I’m in such bad shape that my body can no longer tell when I need sleep.

I’m hoping it’s the first one, and I’m chasing this vein of granite toward the sky.

Obviously if I hit the outside world I’ll have to go take a nap — or at least leave the mine until I can block it off — because the monsters run thick on the grass layer at night.

But for now, I dig and worry, worry and dig.

Day 734: cover up

Day 734:

I went back down into the mine today because diamonds are not going to dig themselves.

At first it was hard, but then I got to swinging my pickaxe and clearing the rubble and laying floor and the monotony of it took my mind off what happened a few days ago.

I mean, not totally, the nightmares were still clawing at the back of my mind’s eye, but the monotony helped. The fact that I’ve done probably thousands of hours digging here helped. The exploding giraffe corgi that tried to blow me through the roof, strangely, helped.

So the ravine is now covered by floor and nothing can climb into the current cavern and fall a gazillion meters to its death anymore.

And I found a vein of granite that goes up, so I’m digging up again… which I really should stop doing, because those diamonds aren’t going to mine themselves.

Maya and the Rising Dark by Rena Barron

I’m hooked.

A twelve year old Black girl goes from normal Chicago South Side pre-teen to staff-wielding “godling” when she discovers that her father is an Orisha, a god, and that he’s been captured by another god and taken to The Dark.

That’s a heck of a way to start summer vacation.

Maya and the other child characters in Maya and the Rising Dark by Rena Barron are solidly twelve, sometimes afraid and willing to go to adults for help, and sometimes stubbornly unwilling to admit when something is probably out of their reach. The characters are majority minority, and South Side is represented as what it is — a place where there are risks above and beyond losing a bicycle. Maya’s not facing down the standard risks of Chicago, though. She’s facing down a god from millennia ago who is nursing a grudge against her father and planning to destroy all of Earth and its humanity to exact his revenge.

Maya is also anemic, which, well, it’s important for kids to see that even if they are half-god, they can get anemia…. and that even if they have anemia, they can save the world.

I, on the other hand, am a 44 year old white woman from rural Pennsylvania where the likes of David Eddings and other “traditional white high fantasy” authors made up the bulk of my library. I’ve been raised so far from the African mythology in the book that I have to keep checking the spelling of Orisha to ensure that I haven’t messed it up. These gods and goddesses were definitely not available for me at age 12, and I am thrilled to see that they’re available now.

A bunch of elves and the like marching around to save the world, the ones that I was raised on? It’s been done to death.

A bunch of Chicago kids who were attacked by the forces of evil first, and who have to discover the magic that lies within them if they’re going to save their families and prevent a war? Kids and adults that regret death every time it occurs? The possibility that the Darkbringers on the other side of the veil are no different from the Humans on this side, when it comes to raising families and doing some farming and trying to live their lives? Not something we normally see.

Even the character most associated with pure evil has strong motivation for his revenge. Not enough for us to root for him, but enough for us as readers to recognize that there have been wrongs on both sides of the veil.

This is a wonderful addition to the middle-grade science fiction / fantasy canon, and I look forward to the next one in the series.