Buried Alive

Oddborg should probably be worried. The air in the box (a refrigerator box, it could not rightly be called a coffin) was getting stuffy and it seemed she was getting more thoroughly buried by the second, with steady shovelfuls of dirt falling onto her and no manifesting ability to get herself out of her predicament. It just didn’t bother her to be underground. Underground was a safe place. It always had been, even when the world up above was freezing, or burning, or being bombed.

Perhaps it was her fault, she considered. Perhaps she couldn’t free herself because she didn’t truly wish to. Psychokinetic abilities usually manifested in times of stress and she just wasn’t bothered. It would be a bit rude of her to botch Mallory’s experiment through sheer lack of trying- even if perhaps it was a foolish experiment and she should have said no.

The encompassing dirt was friendly enough. It was soft and sandy, which was how Mallory with her slim, weak human arms had been able to dig a dwarf-sized hole. (She likely could not have buried a fellow human. Nor was Oddborg anything like six feet deep.) There was nothing interesting hidden in the soil anywhere close by, apart from a small piece of metal embedded in the dirt somewhere near her left shoulder- probably a lost wire or bolt.

Oddborg noticed she was getting short of breath.

Mallory was speaking up above but her voice was muffled and the words were lost. ‘Send the earth your thoughts,’ she’d suggested earlier.

May I get out? Oddborg thought vaguely in the direction of the dirt. Her powers had always been passive and she’d never heard of a dwarf suddenly developing new and striking abilities after living well into adulthood- but Mallory had been so excited about her experiment.

Oddborg considered telling the dirt to ‘go away’ or something like that, but that would be so rude. And she didn’t mind all this, really. Perhaps she would just go to sleep…

She was jolted awake by a cry of frustration up above. Then someone was digging, and then a shovel blade broke through the sagging top of the refrigerator box.

“Now, hold on!” Mallory’s voice was clear now. “You’ll stab her!”

The shovel disappeared with an angry grunt and Oddborg heard it land in the grass. The cardboard above her tore in two, as stubby gray fingers appeared through it, and then she was being hauled aboveground by soft but strong hands. Golden eyes met her own. It had to be Dust. There were no other golden-eyed orcs for miles. No people for miles except for the three of them.

“Are you all right?” Dust demanded.

“Oh, of course,” Oddborg gasped.

Dust’s hands tightened on her shoulders, as if she was sorely tempted to give Oddborg a bit of a shake. “Why did you go along with her?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Oddborg said.

Dust let go and stepped back. “A good idea?”

“Well, not exactly,” said Oddborg, “but I didn’t think I should say no…” Her voice faltered.

“You should,” said Dust. “You should always tell her no.” She turned and glared over her shoulder at Mallory, who was standing a few paces back, wringing her hands.

“Why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t breathe?” Mallory asked. “I didn’t know. You could have died.”

“But I didn’t die,” said Oddborg. “I didn’t want to be any trouble…”

Dust shook her head and rounded on Mallory. “What are you trying to pull?”

“Nothing! She’s a Melancholic and I thought she could get out.”

“How many times has she told you her powers don’t work that way?”

“She told me she never tested them!”

“There are better ways to test something!”

“Well, your way takes too long,” Mallory snapped.

Oddborg began to carefully brush the top layer of dirt off of herself- although the difference would have been imperceptible to anyone not watching closely. She’d been covered in dirt long before Mallory had decided to bury her.

For the umpteenth time she reflected on how glad she was that she was a geological surveyer, and not a research wizard, and also on how glad she was that she would be leaving this project after her term was up. She planned to keep in contact with both Mallory and Dust afterwards, but never to invite them both to be in the same room together.

“Your own powers don’t even work that way,” Dust scoffed.

Mallory’s mouth grew tight. Oddborg had never seen her use her powers, but she knew Mallory was what dwarves nicknamed a ‘flint-striker’. The technical term wasn’t coming to mind at the moment.

“Don’t purse your lips at me,” said Dust, “you almost killed someone tonight!”

“I- I thought she could get out. I would be able to get out of that.”

“You would not.”

“I would. Here, I’ll prove it.”

A wicked gleam came into Dust’s eyes and she picked up the shovel without a moment’s hesitation. Dust was only a gray orc, meaning she was narrower than Oddborg and came up to Mallory’s shoulder, but she was still an orc and should be well able to handle digging a human-sized hole. She certainly did not have Mallory’s gawky, fragile look.

She jabbed the blade of the shovel into the dirt.

“Excuse me,” said Oddborg, stepping forward. “I think we’ve established that burying someone alive is dangerous… and I’m the kind of person that’s supposed to be underground. So perhaps you shouldn’t…”

“She says she can get out of it,” said Dust, still digging.

Mallory watched grimly, with her hands clasped behind her back and her spine axe-handle straight. She had a sharp face, and when she was in this kind of mood- even in modern clothing and with not even a hint of a beard- she reminded Oddborg of old picture-book illustrations of tall, stern human wizards from medieval times, the kind that worked with knights in shining armor and called their psychic abilities ‘magic’.

At most other times Mallory was more like a half-trained and eager-to-please German Shepherd.

Since Dust’s hole had been half-dug for her already she soon finished, and backed away with a grin that showed her fangs stark white under the light of the moon. “Entrez-vous, mademoiselle.”

Oddborg stepped forward, but Mallory had already whisked herself into the hole and Dust was burying her with dwarf-like speed. Oddborg had never been quick to react in a crisis and now she stood, staring, and thought she should do something, but was not sure what. (She had forgotten, as she often did, that there was any such thing in the world as a cell phone, let alone that one was in her pocket, let alone that these devices could call emergency services. If she had remembered, she would still be out in the woods an hour from the nearest hospital or police station.)

Dust backed away from the buried wizard, taking Oddborg by the elbow. “Let’s get a little farther from what’s about to happen.”

“This is dangerous,” said Oddborg.

“It is.”

“You could have killed her.”

“Humans can survive up to five minutes without air.”

She was pulling Oddborg farther and farther away.

“Is anything going to happen?” Oddborg asked.

“If it does, it will be hot!”

The ground shook, and something happened- Oddborg’s vision turned white and then orange. There was dry, angry heat blowing on the side of her face. She was slow to recognize the sound of an explosive blast and also slow to recognize the shrinking pillar of fire.

The fire faded from view, and Mallory stood there, unburied, brushing ash from her leggings. Oddborg was sitting on the ground. She didn’t know when she’d fallen over.

Mallory bit her lip and glanced at the other two women. “You know, you’re right. This was a pretty dumb idea. Let’s keep this between us- please?”

Even Dust looked unsettled. She’d known the human since childhood, if Oddborg remembered correctly. “I’ll lose the unsafe-use-of-powers report form.”

“Right. Er, thanks. I’ll owe you,” said Mallory.

Oddborg stared at the charred marks on the ground. “I can’t do that,” she said faintly.