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‘Oh brother! Nobody gets that stuff from such kid pictures, Steinleser,’ Robert Derby moaned.

‘Ah well, that’s the end of the spiral picture. And a Kiowa spiral pictograph ends with either an in-sweep or an out-sweep line. This ends with an out-sweep, which means —’

‘“Continued on next rock,” that’s what it means,’ Terrence cried roughly.

‘You won’t find the next rocks,’ Magdalen said. ‘They’re hidden, and most of the time they’re not there yet, but they will go on and on. But for all that, you’ll read it in the rocks tomorrow morning. I want it to be over with. Oh, I don’t know what I want!’

‘I believe I know what you want tonight, Magdalen,’ Robert Derby said.

But he didn’t.

The talk trailed off, the fire burned down, they went to their sleeping sacks.

Then it was long jagged night, and the morning of the fourth day. But wait! In Nahuat-Tanoan legend, the world ends on the fourth morning. All the lives we lived or thought we lived had been but dreams of third night. The loincloth that the sun wore on the fourth day’s journey was not so valuable as one has made out. It was worn for no more than an hour or so.

And, in fact, there was something terminal about fourth morning. Anteros had disappeared. Magdalen had disappeared. The chimney rock looked greatly diminished in its bulk (something had gone out of it) and much crazier in its broken height. The sun had come up a garish grey-orange colour through fog. The signature-glyph of the first stone dominated the ambient. It was as if something were coming down from the chimney, a horrifying smoke; but it was only noisome morning fog.

No it wasn’t. There was something else coming down from the chimney, or from the hidden sky: pebbles, stones, indescribable bits of foul oozings, the less fastidious pieces of the sky; a light nightmare rain had begun to fall there; the chimney was apparently beginning to crumble.

‘It’s the damndest thing I ever heard about,’ Robert Derby growled. ‘Do you think that Magdalen really went off with Anteros?’ Derby was bitter and fumatory this morning and his face was badly clawed.

‘Who is Magdalen? Who is Anteros?’ Ethyl Burdock asked.

Terrence Burdock was hooting from high on the mound. ‘All come up,’ he called. ‘Here is a find that will make it all worthwhile. We’ll have to photo and sketch and measure and record and witness. It’s the finest basalt head I’ve ever seen, man-sized, and I suspect that there’s a man-sized body attached to it. We’ll soon clean it and clear it. Gah! What a weird fellow he was!’

But Howard Steinleser was studying a brightly coloured something that he held in his two hands.

‘What is it, Howard? What are you doing?’ Derby demanded.

‘Ah, I believe this is the next stone in sequence. The writing is alphabetical but deformed, there is an element missing. I believe it is in modern English, and I will solve the deformity and see it true in a minute. The text of it seems to be —’

Rocks and stones were coming down from the chimney, and fog, amnesic and wit-stealing fog.

‘Steinleser, are you all right?’ Robert Derby asked with compassion. ‘That isn’t a stone that you hold in your hand.’

‘It isn’t a stone. I thought it was. What is it then?’

‘It is the fruit of the Osage orange tree, the American Meraceous. It isn’t a stone, Howard.’ And the thing was a tough, woody, wrinkled mock-orange, as big as a small melon.

‘You have to admit that the wrinkles look a little bit like writing, Robert.’

‘Yes, they look a little like writing, Howard. Let us go up where Terrence is bawling for us. You’ve read too many stones. And it isn’t safe here.’

‘Why go up, Howard? The other thing is coming down.’

It was the bristled-boar earth reaching up with a rumble. It was a lightning bolt struck upward out of the earth, and it got its prey. There was explosion and roar. The dark capping rock was jerked from the top of the chimney and slammed with terrible force to the earth, shattering with a great shock. And something else that had been on that capping rock. And the whole chimney collapsed about them.

She was broken by the encounter. She was shattered in every bone and member of her. And she was dead.

‘Who – who is she?’ Howard Steinleser stuttered.

‘Oh God! Magdalen, of course!’ Robert Derby cried.

‘I remember her a little bit. Didn’t understand her. She put out like an evoking moth but she wouldn’t be had. Near clawed the face off me the other night when I misunderstood the signals. She believed there was a sky-bridge. It’s in a lot of the mythologies. But there isn’t one, you know. Oh well.’

‘The girl is dead! Damnation! What are you doing grubbing in those stones?’

‘Maybe she isn’t dead in them yet, Robert. I’m going to read what’s here before something happens to them. This capping rock that fell and broke, it’s impossible, of course. It’s a stratum that hasn’t been laid down yet. I always did want to read the future and I may never get another chance.’

‘You fool! The girl’s dead! Does nobody care? Terrence, stop bellowing about your find. Come down. The girl’s dead.’

‘Come up, Robert and Howard,’ Terrence insisted. ‘Leave that broken stuff down there. It’s worthless. But nobody ever saw anything like this.’

‘Do come up, men,’ Ethyl sang. ‘Oh, it’s a wonderful piece! I never saw anything like it in my life.’

‘Ethyl, is the whole morning mad?’ Robert Derby demanded as he came up to her. ‘She’s dead. Don’t you really remember her? Don’t you remember Magdalen?’

‘I’m not sure. Is she the girl down there? Isn’t she the same girl who’s been hanging around here a couple days? She shouldn’t have been playing on that high rock. I’m sorry she’s dead. But just look what we’re uncovering here!’

‘Terrence. Don’t you remember Magdalen?’

‘The girl down there? She’s a little bit like the girl that clawed the hell out of me the other night. Next time someone goes to town they might mention to the sheriff that there’s a dead girl here. Robert, did you ever see a face like this one? And it digs away to reveal the shoulders. I believe there’s a whole man-sized figure here. Wonderful, wonderful!’

‘Terrence, you’re off your head. Well, do you remember Anteros?’

‘Certainly, the twin of Eros, but nobody ever made much of the symbol of unsuccessful love. Thunder! That’s the name for him! It fits him perfectly. We’ll call him Anteros.’

Well, it was Anteros, lifelike in basalt stone. His face was contorted. He was sobbing soundlessly and frozenly and his shoulders were hunched with emotion. The carving was fascinating in its miserable passion, his stony love unrequited. Perhaps he was more impressive now than he would be when he was cleaned. He was earth, he was earth itself. Whatever period the carving belonged to, it was outstanding in its power.

‘The live Anteros, Terrence. Don’t you remember our digging man, Anteros Manypenny?’

‘Sure. He didn’t show up for work this morning, did he? Tell him he’s fired.’

‘Magdalen is dead! She was one of us! Dammit, she was the main one of us!’ Robert Derby cried. Terrence and Ethyl Burdock were earless to his outburst. They were busy uncovering the rest of the carving.

And down below, Howard Steinleser was studying dark broken rocks before they would disappear, studying a stratum that hadn’t been laid down yet, reading a foggy future.

The neon lights of Fuzzy Lipschits’ Tit City Topless Taco Parlor and Ye Olde Donut Shoppe blinked expensively and seductively through the smog. A neon girl’s breasts became donuts, then tacos, then donuts again, as Harley Mode tooled his 74 dress bike smoothly into the parking lot, pleasantly aware of the soft pressure of his wife, Amaryllis, on the seat behind him. He found a space and cut the engine, set the stand and turned to her. “Honey, we’re here.”