The first morning I began digging, I understood why my father had never allowed anyone to rush him.
I had spent the night imagining how quickly I might reach the well.
A little progress each day.
Several paces in a week.
Forty paces before the snow.
It sounded manageable while I was sitting at the kitchen table.
Then I began removing the earth.
The work was far slower than I had expected.
I used a short shovel because there was not enough room for the long one.
I worked on my knees.
At first, the opening in the floor was barely large enough for me to move comfortably.
I had to take out soil, fill a bucket, and lift it away before I could dig again.
Every bucket felt heavier than the last.
By midday, my back ached.
My shoulders burned.
I had made only a small space beneath the kitchen.
I looked at the distance I had left.
Forty paces.
I almost could not believe what I had started.
But I had already opened the floor.
The earth was there.
And I knew what would happen if I stopped before giving the plan a real chance.
I would spend another winter watching that well through the window.
I would still have to open the door whenever I needed water.
I would still remember my father.
So I kept working.
I set up a pulley to help lift the buckets of soil.
The rope ran through my hands until the skin became sore.
I carried the dirt behind the house and emptied it there.
Then I went inside.
Down into the opening.
Another shovel.
Another bucket.
Another trip.
There was no clever way to avoid the work.
My father had often said that the most important parts of digging were usually the parts nobody admired.
People noticed water when it came.
They noticed a finished stone wall.
They did not notice every careful measurement, every support, every moment spent checking ground that looked perfectly safe.
I understood him better now.
Each time I advanced, I had to think about the roof above my head.
I could not simply remove earth and hope it would remain in place.
The wooden supports had to be fitted properly.
I measured.
I cut.
I checked the contact between timber and soil.
Sometimes I discovered a mistake before setting the frame.
Sometimes I had to remove something I had already placed.
That was frustrating.
But I remembered my father telling me that correcting a small error above ground was easier than surviving it below.
I tried not to hurry.
The first few days settled into a routine.
I woke early.
I ate what I could spare.
I checked the tools.
Then I went beneath the floor.
Most of the day passed in the tunnel.
When I came out, there was still work waiting inside the house.
The kitchen needed cleaning.
The fire needed tending.
The water still had to be fetched from outside.
That last task was the cruelest reminder.
I was digging a passage so I would not have to make those forty paces.
But until I finished, I had to walk them anyway.
Some evenings, I could barely lift the buckets.
I stood beside the well and looked down into the darkness.
I wondered what my father would say if he saw me.
Would he be proud?
Would he tell me I had chosen a dangerous answer to a simple problem?
I did not know.
I knew he would examine the supports before saying anything.
That thought made me smile once.
Only once.
Then I carried the water home.
The tunnel became longer.
A little at a time, the kitchen opening led farther beneath the yard.
I marked my progress carefully.
I needed to know where I was going.
I could not see the well from underground.
I had to trust my measurements.
At twelve paces, something changed.
I was kneeling ahead of the last support when I noticed the lantern.
The flame had grown smaller.
At first, I thought the lantern needed attention.
I checked it.
The flame still burned weakly.
Then I realized I was breathing harder than the work required.
My head felt strange.
I stopped digging.
For a moment, I considered finishing the bucket of soil in front of me.
That thought still troubles me.
I was tired of losing time.
I wanted to reach the well.
I wanted to prove that I could do what I had promised myself.
But I remembered something my father had taught me.
A tunnel could become dangerous even when its walls were solid.
Air mattered as much as timber.
He had warned me about places where a flame struggled to burn.
I looked at the lantern again.
Then I left the bucket where it was.
I crawled toward the kitchen.
The passage seemed longer on the way back.
My arms felt heavy.
I kept moving until I reached the opening in the floor.
When I climbed out, I sat beside it and tried to breathe normally.
Fresh air came through the room.
Slowly, the dizziness eased.
I knew what had happened.
The tunnel was not receiving enough air.
If I had ignored the lantern, I might not have made it back.
I stayed on the floor for a long time.
I thought about my father.
He had known this danger.
He had warned me.
And still I had nearly convinced myself that finishing one more bucket mattered more than getting out safely.
That frightened me.
Not the tunnel itself.
My own impatience.
I had been trying to do the work carefully.
But I had also been counting the days.
Watching the weather.
Thinking about winter.
I was beginning to treat every delay as something I could not afford.
That was a mistake.
The next morning, I did not continue digging toward the well.
I worked on ventilation instead.
I made a narrow opening that would allow fresh air to reach the passage.
It was slow work.
It did not bring me closer to the well.
At least, that was how I thought about it at first.
But I knew I could not safely continue without it.
When I returned underground, I watched the lantern carefully.
The flame stood stronger.
I could breathe without the same heaviness in my chest.
Only then did I pick up the shovel again.
I had learned my first hard lesson alone.
The tunnel would not forgive me because I was young.
It would not forgive me because my father had died.
It would not forgive me because winter was coming.
If I wanted to finish, I had to work according to what the earth allowed.
Not according to what I wished.
Outside, the pile of soil behind our house kept growing.
I had been so busy working that I barely noticed how large it had become.
Anyone walking uphill could see it.
People began asking questions.
At first, I gave short answers.
I said I was working beneath the kitchen.
That usually produced a puzzled look.
Then someone asked what I hoped to accomplish.
I explained that I intended to reach the well underground.
The person stared at me.
I could almost see the question forming.
Why would anyone do that?
I told them the reason.
During a winter storm, I would be able to reach the water without going outside.
I had thought the explanation was simple.
It seemed simple to me.
But I soon discovered that explaining a plan was not the same as making people believe in it.
One day, when I went to the village store, the conversation changed as soon as I entered.
People looked at my clothes.
There was dirt on my sleeves.
My hands were rough.
I had been working since sunrise.
Someone asked whether I was still digging beneath the house.
I said yes.
He asked whether I expected to walk all the way to the well like an animal in a burrow.
A few people laughed.
I tried to explain the supports.
I mentioned the opening I was making.
I said the water would remain accessible when snow covered the yard.
But the laughter continued.
I stopped explaining.
I bought what I needed and left.
A few days later, children began making digging movements with their hands when I passed.
Some scratched at the air.
Others laughed and called me a mole.
I tried to ignore them.
They were children.
They repeated what they heard.
But I knew where the name had come from.
Men at the tavern had been discussing my tunnel.
Some thought it would collapse before winter.
Others believed I would give up once the work became too difficult.
I learned that people were even making wagers about it.
Whether the tunnel would fail.
Whether I would be hurt.
Whether I would finally abandon the whole idea.
I remember standing outside the store after hearing that.
I wanted to go back inside.
I wanted to ask whether my father's death had been amusing to them, too.
But I knew most of them would deny that was what they meant.
They would say they were only being practical.
They would say they were concerned.
Perhaps some were.
But none of those arguments helped move a single bucket of soil.
Nobody who laughed at my work had crawled through the tunnel to inspect it.
Nobody had checked the supports.
They knew only that a girl was digging underground.
That was enough for them.
Don Baltazar did not join the laughter.
At first, I thought that meant he might understand.
I was wrong.
He told people I was behaving recklessly.
He said I was too young to understand what I was risking.
He spoke about the danger of the house collapsing.
He suggested that someone should intervene before I caused a disaster.
I knew what that meant.
He wanted the land.
And every day I continued digging made it clearer that I was not preparing to leave.
I began to understand why he watched my work so closely.
He had offered to buy the property because he believed I could not keep it.
Now I was attempting something that might allow me to remain there through the winter.
If I succeeded, his prediction would be wrong.
If I failed, he could claim he had warned everyone.
Either way, he made sure people heard his opinion.
I could do very little about that.
I had tools to mend.
Timber to measure.
Earth to move.
And winter approaching.
Still, the words followed me home.
I heard them when I struggled to pull another bucket through the opening.
I heard them when my hands split.
I heard them when I lay awake wondering whether I had advanced far enough.
Perhaps I was foolish.
Perhaps the tunnel was too ambitious for one person.
Perhaps my father would have chosen another answer.
I could not be certain.
But every morning, I looked toward the fence.
The place where I found him was still there.
I could remember his position exactly.
Eleven paces from the door.
That memory did not tell me whether my tunnel would succeed.
It told me why I had begun.
One evening, after a particularly difficult day, I sat beside the opening in the kitchen.
My clothes were dirty.
The lantern was nearly spent.
The shovel rested against the wall.
I was too tired to carry the last bucket outside.
I looked at the passage beneath me.
It was dark.
Narrow.
Unfinished.
No one in the village would have found much to admire.
But it existed.
Twelve paces had already taught me more than I expected.
I knew where the ground held firm.
I knew how the air changed underground.
I knew that I had to keep measuring and supporting each new section.
The people laughing outside did not know any of those things.
They could see only the mound of earth.
They had no idea how much care was hidden beneath it.
For the first time, I realized I had been wasting strength trying to imagine what they thought of me.
Their opinions would not strengthen the timber.
Their laughter would not move the shovel.
I had to decide whether I trusted the lessons my father had given me.
I looked at the tools beside the kitchen opening.
Then I set the bucket where I could reach it in the morning.
I was still afraid of failing.
But I was no longer willing to let the villagers decide what failure meant before I had finished trying.
