Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 18 of 150

They came down off the low house slope with the cup in a new box and the rock creature still pressed against Ben's coat. Three boxes hummed under stone. One relic left on the map, marked by a tooth Ben could not read. He did not know if it meant a shape in the land, a carving on a door, or a real tooth pulled from a real mouth. Guess wrong and they walked days in the wrong direction while the blue-scaled thing closed on them. "We need someone who has seen the tooth mark before," Anita said. She spread the map on a flat rock. The tooth sat in the corner like a chip of bone. No arrow. No basket. Nothing under it. "The striped one on the slope said he guarded the tooth," Ben said. "He gave us the cup instead. He owed one answer, not two." Justin pointed down the draw. A thin thread of smoke rose from a shattered building at the bottom. Half a roof. Stone arches with their tops broken off. Timbers hanging like ribs. They went to it because they had nothing else. Inside the broken hall a man sat on a fallen beam, sorting painted pieces of pottery on his knee. Old jacket. Rust stains. Gray hair going every direction. He did not look up when they came in. "You the collector," the man said. Not a question. "Word gets around. I'm Al. Al Beback. I used to run this route before my knee went." Ben crouched by the beam. The painted pieces were curved, patterned, the edges jagged. Part of something round, once. "You know the tooth mark on our map." Al turned a shard in his fingers. "I know it. Saw it carved on a lintel north of here, forty years back. Meant the place where the tooth relic sat." He set the shard down. "Place is gone. Slide took it the winter after I saw it. Relic went with the hill." Ben's chest went tight. "Gone where." "Down." Al pointed at the pieces on his knee. "I dug for a season. Found this. Painted lid off the box it sat in. Never found the tooth." He looked up at last. His eyes were tired and honest. "I came back every spring for ten years. That's why they call me what they call me. I quit last year." Anita picked up a shard and turned it. The paint matched a curl on the map's tooth corner. Ben sat down on the beam beside Al. Four relics left in the world. Three in his coat. The fourth under a hill no one could dig. "Show me where the slide came down," Ben said. Al nodded once. He gathered the painted pieces into a cloth and tied it. "Two days walk. I'll take you. But you should know before we go. I never found a way in."