Snippet: Sonho Cinzenta

 Here's another snippet that's surprisingly not on this blog yet. Another attempt during the Great Writer's Block of the early 2010s, this time trying to invent a story of some kind out of Brazilian lore. I knew next to nothing about Brazilian mythology or some way to put a spin on a Brazilian setting (I assume, like all of my writing, this was going to be a fantasy story), so it fizzled pretty quickly. But the writing, as usual, is fun to read, and I especially like the first couple of paragraphs.

Sonho Cinzenta

T

here was nothing exceptionally poetic about the way the night fell that autumn evening. The sky wasn’t blanketed by a starry velvet shroud, nor was the western sea seared by a glorious sunset. The sun simply finished disappearing into the clouds near the horizon, and soon the already-dark streets of Sonho Cinzenta became easier to get mugged in.

            Actually, the coastal merchant village of Sonho Cinzenta didn’t really have anything at all poetic about it. It was a tiny establishment, half of its brick-and-cement buildings piled on top of each other on the side of a steep hill, the other half scattered on the coastline and the bases of the hill where putrid marshes burbled. The residents of the village never complained about the terrible smell that hung around the entire dale.  You could tell who lived there and who was just making a day’s transaction watching for who would hold their nose when a gentle breeze blew from any direction. As if the swamps from the north and south weren’t bad enough, the sea stank, too, of rotting fish guts in the shallows that fishermen often discarded. No one really took care of the natural aspect of Sonho Cinzenta, which was why no one bothered to write a poem about it. Indeed, the only thing that was vaguely pretty about the village was its name. Sonho Cinzenta—“Gray Dream.”

            Walking through the village, one might wonder(in fact, a great deal more than one often did) who on earth would be so stupid as to establish an organized township in such an inconvenient, dangerous, and downright smelly place. The answer, known to but the eldest of the village whose sense of smell had long decided to abandon them, was simple: Bad luck.

            The center of the city held the key to the town’s unfortunate origin of establishment. It was a door in the midpoint of the hill’s populated side. Large, with two enormous support beams. These beams had once had names carved into them, but out of sheer embarrassment had been sanded smooth. This was the entrance to the widely-known Mina Cinzenta, the Gray Mine; widely known for its reliable supply of coal, and its lack of supply of silver.

The unfortunate—and now nameless—founders of Sonho Cinzenta had stumbled across some seemingly deep veins of silver while passing through the swamps here decades ago, and had taken the initiative to invest all of their money in opening a mine in the hill to extract the silver and become rich. It was only after a single year, when hundreds had come to the malodorous dale for work, that the hill had expired of silver and had begun to yield only coal. Common, worthless coal. They all continued hopefully, for another year or so, and then the miners were mournfully paid their promised wages out of the investors’ pockets. The cheerless founders had—or so the legend went—sailed with sagging heads to the west, never to be seen again, while the unemployed miners used their wages up to give the silverless serra one more chance. The hill had, of course, made up its mind. So they had stayed, and mined coal for generations afterwards.

That was ninety years past, more than two generations ago, and the people were starting to forget about just how laborious and uncomfortable their town was. Among these satisfied townsfolk was a strong-backed boy named Bruno. Bruno lived with his family in a house that was much too small, but it wasn’t any bigger than anyone else’s, and he lived happily in it. He ate a plate of beans and rice most afternoons, though some days the family of five had to share two eggs for the day’s meal. Every once in a great while, sometimes on somebody’s birthday, his father brought home a piece of meat that he cut into pieces and mixed in with the beans. He always made sure everyone got a piece, but the flavor the meat gave to the beans was good enough in Bruno’s opinion.

Bruno knew all about the Mina Cinzenta. His older brothers Tiago and Agusto had both been working in the mine for two years now, and of course his father had always worked there. He was counting down the months for the day when he would turn sixteen and be able to join them. The prefect of Sonho Cinzenta had decreed children younger than sixteen were too young to mine, and were left to harvesting tar and pitch out of the swamps to caulk boats with, or to make torches.

Bruno always admired the way the men came home, covered in smudges, coal dust and clay mixing with their sweat. They always came home tired, and that impressed him. He could always tell that his family was a hard-working one. Most of all, Bruno admired their muscles. He always wondered exactly what they did. Anything had to be better than scraping foul black sludge from trees in the marsh, with gnats and pernilongos buzzing in his ears. He imagined Tiago, with his curly hair, holding a pickaxe and twisting his body to hammer it into the cave wall, and coal spilling out from it like coins from a stone purse. He could almost see Agusto, or his father, holding a merrily-glowing lantern to the walls, searching for signs of minerals poking out. How deep was the mine? Did it go kilometers below the ground? Was there one immense tunnel? Or an anthill of tunnels branching into a labyrinth of passageways? Bruno had never thought to ask any of these questions to his brothers, or even his father, whom he trusted dearly. It was only a couple more short months. The fact was, Bruno wanted to wait to see it for himself.

____

As a note, here is an outline I found of what the conflict of this story would include:

"Bruno wants to work in the coal mines with his father + Several months till his birthday + Father gets antracose disease and gets sick + Needs medicine = How will he work with his father if he’s sick? Will he find a way to heal his father?"