Морин Макхью - Wastelands - The New Apocalypse

I waited for a ghost to come out of it and devour the salt from my bones. Devour means eat every last bit, like Mama tells me to do with my dinner. But no ghosts did. There was just a skull, or the little pieces left from one. I pocketed a tooth for remembrance, which means asking the Chooser to be nice to the dead. I left the rest of the skull-pieces to the Waste.

Every little knows about the bones in the earth. People bones and plastic bones and metal bones of Before-stuff long long dead and extinct, which means not just your regular dead but all your kind dead forever. Bones and stories are all we have left of the mystery people Before and their Before-magic, their metal crab-shells and bird-wings and broken dead weapons, also extinct. These things are called FOSSILS, which means bones and relics that are older than anything.

I knew all this stuff since forever. Mama taught me, Jamie’s dad taught me, the Sunrise songkeeper and the Grayfall songkeeper taught every little in their towns. But apart from the Sunrise giants this was my first time seeing any whole unbroken fossil close enough to touch. Usually it was just little pieces, and the songkeepers kept them in special hands-off boxes and only brought them out for stories.

The dirt shook off of the fossil-head no problem. Underneath it was shiny and black and empty inside, with a kind of little almost-black window on the front that looked like something part plastic, part glass. The window-thing was broken on one side, and that’s where the digging-stick had gotten stuck, in that hole. The bottom edge of the head wasn’t smooth, there were all these in-and-out pieces that made it look like it was supposed to lock onto something else, the way some of Mama’s work tools went together to make a whole new more complicated thing. Those were priceless Before-relics, given to Mama by the Grayfall king from his own treasure-room. The Before-magic ran through them and made them still work, as long as Mama made sure to set them out in the sunshine when she was done with them. I wasn’t allowed to touch them ever. Not even when they were just sitting there in the sun waiting for the magic to come back.

I thought about that while I wiggled the stick out of the little window on the head. Easy now that I could see how it was stuck. I wiped the shiny head on my sleeve and put it on my head like a hat, waiting for the Before-magic to go smashing through me like a storm.

The fossil-head was too big for me. It probably could have fit the SUPERVISOR, or Mama, or maybe even Jamie. On me it wasn’t any kind of hat at all, it went down over my whole face and head and neck and sat perched on my shoulders. It was like what the Grayfall kingsguard wear on their heads to protect them from raiders and bears and whatever, except way way better, because it covered my whole head and not just the top of it.

For a five-count I held my breath, waiting to see what it would do to me. Would the Before-magic of it get into me like an infection? Would it turn me into a Before-person, part metal and part meat? Would it mistake me for one of them and kill me dead extinct? I pictured it squeezing tighter and tighter, popping my head like a grape.

But nothing happened. It was a cold dead fossil and couldn’t hurt me, only help. I knew what would happen if I gave this thing I found to the SUPERVISOR. This was my top-shelf ruin-treasure, a Before-people mystery fossil, and there wouldn’t be any more hitting after I gave it to him. It would keep me safe. At least for a little while. Long enough to—

Suddenly I heard a weird little surprised noise behind me. I turned and there was Nina. Her mouth was open and she was making huge eyes at the fossil-head.

She looked like she was about to start yelling so I took it off real quick so she would know it was just me underneath. At the same time I took a step back. Nina even being here was messing up my whole plan. She was bigger than me and probably stronger. What if she took the head back to the SUPERVISOR instead of me and got credit for my find? Then I’d get hit and she’d get sent into the ruin-caves tomorrow instead of me.

“It’s mine,” I whispered, keeping my voice quiet so nobody outside the ruin-cave would hear. “I found it.”

I didn’t know if Nina heard me either. She was still staring, not saying anything. She looked like she forgot how to talk. Like a secret-keeper after a long day with Mama and her work bag.

“Promise you won’t tell,” I demanded, as fierce as I could while still whispering.

Nina blinked and stared at me. It was the first time she was looking at me and not the head. She was giving me a look like you give a little who keeps eating rainstealer flowers, forgetting that something so pretty can still make you so sick.

“Tell?” she whispered back at me, and her voice matched her face. It was a Don’t Be Stupid, Little voice, and it made my hands curl into fists before I could stop them, because for one thing she wasn’t THAT much bigger than me, and for another thing, what belonged in this ruin-cave was Finder of Before-Treasure Aneko FOUR and her Before-treasure find and not Nina THREE Finder of Nothing.

“Relax,” she was saying. “Telling that slag-brain is the last thing we’re going to do.”

“Then what—”

“We’re going to find the rest of it.”

That filled my whole head with questions. What was Nina talking about? What was I going to give the SUPERVISOR if I didn’t give him this fossil? What if we had to come out and the storms blew ash over the ruin-cave and we couldn’t find it again? What would the SUPERVISOR do to us if he heard Nina calling him a slag-brain?

And—wait. The rest of what?

“It’s mine,” I said again instead, because all those questions got stuck in my head and couldn’t all squeeze out my mouth together. I wanted to take another step back but there wasn’t any room.

“You don’t even know what it is,” Nina hissed at me.

“It’s a fossil,” I hissed back. “It’s Before-people bones from the earth and it’s MINE.”

Nina gave me a sigh like You Really Are A Very Stupid Little Aren’t You. Then she turned back to the tunnel out. I was scared she was going out there to tell on me, but she just shouted, “There’s something here. I’m helping FOUR dig it out. Don’t send anybody else in, the ceiling is shaking and I think it might come down.”

I looked at the ceiling when she said that. Then I realized she was lying and wanted to kick myself for falling for it. Then I wanted to kick myself even harder for not thinking of the lie by myself before the SUPERVISOR sent Nina in after me.

But Nina didn’t notice. She’d already gone over to the hole I’d made in the Waste and started digging.

“Back in my town my dad was songkeeper,” Nina told me all in a rush while she dug. Her voice was clear and soft like Mama’s used to get when I had to Shut Up And Listen Right Now, so I put away my mad mood and listened. “You know what that means? Songkeeper?”

Songkeeper means Person Who Tells The Important Stories. Every little knows that from walking. So I nodded.

“My dad had a relic like this,” Nina said. “But not a head. An arm. Made out of this same shiny black Before-stuff. Help me dig.”

Just like that, my mad mood was back. Like she was going to boss me into helping her do something I didn’t even want HER to do in the first place. “I told you. It’s mine.”

“Ragpicker take you. Listen. This is important. The arm-thing? My dad said there was a whole person-shape of it,” Nina said. “Not just the one arm but a whole body. But the arm was the only thing he had enough to trade for. He said somebody used to wear the whole person-shape thing, back in the wars. And whoever wore it, it would protect them.”