Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 6 of 150

By midday they had left the trade road and cut into a stand of low pines. The yapping animal strained on Justin's rope, blue-scaled hide flashing between the trunks. It had not stopped barking since they bought it. Ben's sealed box thumped against his ribs, steady, quiet under the noise. But steady would not be enough at the next shrine. He would have to open the box, lift the mask out, and place it into a fresh one of Justin's. If that new box did not silence the hum, the creature would be on them inside an hour. Ben stopped walking. "We test one. Now. Before the shrine." Justin looked up from the leash. "Test how? We don't have a spare relic." "We have the one I'm carrying." Ben tapped the reinforced box. "We move the mask into one of your grandmother's boxes. If it goes quiet, we know. If it doesn't, we know that too, and I'm not walking into the next shrine blind." Anita set her pack down. "Do it here. Trees cover us. The animal covers the sound if it slips." Justin dug in his pack and brought out one of the two remaining boxes. It was smaller than the reinforced one, plain wood, the sad face cut shallow but clean. He set it on a flat stone. Ben knelt across from him. Anita stood between them and the road, watching. Ben unclasped the copper bands. The waxed linen peeled back. The moment he lifted the lid, the hum poured out — low, wrong, a sound that pressed on his teeth. The yapping animal stopped barking. Its ears flattened. It stared at the mask in Ben's hands. "Fast," Anita said. Ben dropped the mask into Justin's box and shoved the lid down. The hum cut off. For a second no one moved. Then the animal shook itself and started barking again, louder, at a squirrel. Justin let out a breath that shook. "It works," he said. "They work." Ben pressed his hand flat on the lid. The wood was warm. No thump, no tremor. Just a box. Anita was already looking north through the trees. "How long did the hum spill? Ten seconds?" "Less," Justin said. "Enough for something close." She picked up her pack. "We move." Ben rewrapped the smaller box in the waxed linen from the old one and tucked it against his ribs. The reinforced box, empty now, he left on the stone. It had done its work. Justin still had one box in reserve. Two shrines, maybe, before they ran out. He stood. The next shrine was a day's walk. He knew the boxes would hold. He also knew the ten seconds of hum had gone somewhere, into some ear, and that ear was closer than it had been this morning.