Homegoing

Effia had been called the Beauty her whole life, and so Quey was accustomed to beauty. Cobbe’s family feasted off Effia’s burgeoning womanhood. Once in the underground city, they traveled three, five, seven miles to the coal face where they were to work that day. Not by the fear he’d felt throughout the day, when the woman who was no more than a stranger to him had dragged him farther and farther from home, but by the fullness of love and protection he’d felt later, when his family had finally found him.