CHAPTER VI
Persistence and acceptance were my only charges. To live as my luxurious birthright invited would be a simple task. I would never struggle, nor want for something soft or warm. At their most dire, my sufferings would be petty fixations.
While those who suffered, struggled, and died in my stead down in those mines—for their fathers were not benefactors of good fortune—destroyed beneath the fixed game of destiny, I contemplated why it was this way. What figure fixed the dice? What god of matter and science constructed such a mean and spiteful reality?
But I looked across Platavilla, her earth chewed and churned, and the men that labored in her wicked name. Never given enough to live. Never enough certainty to push away from the trap built by the man who arrived first.
My father came to this place before the others. With a lick of good fortune, he unearthed the silver vein, but before he did that, he killed the Natives for the land. Many hired hands under his employ died as he hunted for the first lode. Again and again he sinned in the name of his pursuit. Until, success. With his claim staked, Heinrich Keyes brought law to this place, and he called it Platavilla. He forgave himself of the necessary sacrifices in achieving good fortune, as if it were a thing one might forge with a hot enough fire.