Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 11 of 150

They walked back up the pines to think. Ben sat on a fallen log with the full box under his coat. Justin held the barking animal by a rope. Anita spread the map on her knee and stared at the tooth mark. "Tears in a jar," Justin said. "Who cries on command?" "Not me," Anita said. "Not for a stranger with a porch." Ben tried. He thought of the shrine, the beast on the ridge, the box splitting in the water. His eyes stayed dry. He had spent too long counting boxes to cry over any of it. "Onions," Justin said. "Smoke. A slap." "She said real ones," Ben said. "She'd know." The barking animal pulled the rope taut. It had caught something in the brush. Justin let out slack. A small shape stumbled into the clearing and sat down on the pine needles. It was a pup, or something shaped like one. Pale fur, one ear bent, ribs showing. It looked at Ben with eyes too big for its face and did not move. Its mouth pulled down at the corners the way the carved face over Barb's door pulled down. "Leave it," Anita said. Ben crouched. The creature watched him. It did not flinch, did not beg. It only sat and looked, and something in Ben's chest bent the wrong way. He thought of the four relics still out there. He thought of the one he was afraid to find. His eyes stung before he understood why. A tear cut down his cheek. Then another. "Anita," he said. "The empty vial in your kit." She dug it out and passed it over without a word. Ben held it under his jaw and let the tears run into the glass. He kept his eyes on the small creature. It sat through all of it. When he had a finger's worth in the vial, he capped it. Justin stared. "How." "Don't ask," Ben said. His voice came out rough. They went back down to the gully. Barb was on the porch again, pouring from another vial into another jar. Ben set the vial on the rail beside her. She picked it up. She held it to the light. She uncapped it and touched a drop to her tongue. Her one visible eye came back to Ben. "Those count," she said. She went inside and came out with a small wooden box. A sad face carved on the lid. She set it in his hand. "One jar, one box," she said. "You wanted two." "I did." "Then come back with another jar." She sat down on the step and picked up her work. "And don't bring that animal with you next time. It'll take the sad right out of the air." Ben put the new box in his coat beside the full one. Two boxes now. One relic left to find after the tooth. And one more jar of tears he did not know how to fill twice.