Hylian shield, sword and roses flash

Up on Bryn Street lived old Nan Halloran, widow of a shotfirer, and she kept a tin tray nailed above her mantel. Her husband had beaten it into a shield years back, and her daughter painted it purple with three gold lamps set in a triangle, and two red roses in the top corners because she could not abide a bare thing. That morning Nan pushed it into Tomos's arms with a drill steel wrapped in blue fair ribbon. Take this, she said. Don't argue with a woman who has buried three men.

Below, the gallery filled with water and then with stone. Tomos heard the first fall rolling down the tunnel like a goods train and got the tray over his head just as the slabs came. It rang like a struck pan. When the dust settled he was sitting in a pocket of air, the drill steel jammed into a crack and holding the roof up like a prop, arms shaking. Men were knocking on the far side of the rubble. He kept the steel where it was and tapped back.

They dug him out at dawn with his hands raw and the tray dented to the shape of a cathedral. Nan was waiting at the head of the lane. She took back the steel, turned the blue ribbon over in her fingers, and said it had come home a bit bent, which was how she liked it. Then she hung the shield back on its nail between the roses, went next door, and came back with the Pugh boy by the ear.