Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 16 of 150

They pushed east until the reeds thinned and the ground rose into a slope of loose stone. Ben's coat knocked with three boxes. The map in Anita's hand showed a cup and a tooth, both drawn small, both without a road. Every hour they guessed was an hour the creature closed. Ben stopped on the ridge and admitted it out loud. "I don't know where the cup is," he said. "The picture is a cup. That's all." Justin sat on a flat rock and put his hands over his ears, listening past them. "I don't hear a hum. Not from any direction." "Then we're guessing," Anita said. "And guessing kills us." Ben studied the map. The cup mark sat near a jagged shape drawn heavier than the rest, inked twice, almost a scar on the paper. He turned in place. To the north the slope broke into a field of boulders. One boulder stood taller than the others, banded in red and blue-green stripes like an old pot fired wrong. He had walked past a hundred stones today. He had not seen one striped. "There," he said. They climbed. The striped boulder was bigger up close, twice Ben's height, split down one face. He set his hand on it. The stone was warm. The stone moved. Ben stepped back. A seam opened along the split. Two eyes came open above it, orange, low and steady. Arms unfolded from what he had thought were roots. A stone body pulled itself upright, moss in its joints, a head like a chipped skull. It was taller than any of them. It looked at Ben the way a dog looks at a stranger at its gate. Justin swore and did not move. Anita raised the knife and did not move either. The stone thing spoke. Its voice sounded like two rocks dragged together. "You carry three sad boxes." "I do," Ben said. "One is new. You cut it yourself." "I did." The thing considered him. Then it lifted one heavy arm and pointed down the far side of the slope, toward a dark cleft in the hills. "The cup is under the hearthstone in the low house. Take the left path at the burnt tree. Do not sing. Do not run. The blue one hears running." Ben's mouth was dry. "Why tell me." "I guarded the tooth once. I lost it. I owe the set an answer." The stone thing lowered its arm. "Go before I change." They went. Ben did not look back until the ridge hid the striped shape behind them. Then he looked at the map, at the cup mark, and drew a line with his thumbnail toward the cleft. He had a direction. He had until the burnt tree to think of a plan.