Ben Dover's Arc

Chapter 9 of 150

They moved off the ridge before the shouting stopped. Ben carried the carved box under his coat. Justin carried the barking animal under one arm, its jaws clamped around a rag. Anita walked with her map open in both hands. Three marks on it were clear. Three were not. "We're close to one," Anita said. "But I can't tell which slope. The last three are just circles. No words." Ben stopped on the path. He looked over her shoulder. The three unmarked circles sat in a rough line, each with a tiny scratch beside it. The scratches were not letters. They were shapes. A comb. A cup. A tooth. "Those aren't words," Ben said. "They're pictures of things nearby." "Pictures of what?" "Whatever the person who drew this saw at each spot." Justin looked up from the animal. "Then we walk past the first one and hope we see a comb sticking out of a rock?" "We won't see it if we don't stop," Ben said. They came down through low pine. The path bent around a stand of dead grass. A lean creature stood in the grass, ribs showing under a brown coat, ears up. It watched them without moving. Its jaw hung open. A tongue moved behind long teeth. Justin froze. The animal under his arm went still. "Don't run," Anita said. The lean creature did not charge. It sniffed the air, took two steps sideways, and stopped again. It was staring past them, at something on the ground. Ben followed its eyes. In the grass sat a woven basket, tipped on its side. The weave was split along the belly. A face was worked into the front, mouth open wide, eyes round. Someone had painted the mouth to look hungry. Old crumbs sat inside it. The creature wanted what was in the basket, or had been. Ben looked back at the map. He pointed at the first unmarked circle. The scratch beside it was a small open mouth. "The basket," he said. "That's the mark. This is the spot." Anita crouched by the basket. She turned it over. Under the crumbs, pressed into the base, was a shallow carving of an arrow. It pointed down the slope, toward a split rock at the tree line. "The relic's there," she said. "Not in the basket. Past it." The lean creature lowered its head and stepped toward the basket. Ben backed away slow. Justin followed. Anita rolled the map and tucked it in her coat. "Two more circles after this," Ben said. "A cup and a tooth. We know how to read it now." "Then we move," Anita said. "Before the one on the ridge finds our trail." They went down toward the split rock. Behind them, the lean creature pushed its nose into the empty basket and found nothing.