the small group of buildings situated at the end of the promenade. They pass by the metalworks shop, where tools and arrowheads are fired and hammered, a potter’s shack with its rough stone kiln, and across a thin gravel lot they come to an open door—thick wood beams frame the entrance, aligned perfectly with the village’s centerline. From this doorway it is a straight shot down the middle of the promenade to the bonfire and courtyard at the other end. They look down the way and see a few parents and elders making their way back from the dining hall, turning in for the night. There is a quick shriek from the murkiness behind a row of cabins and Jeneth walks sullenly onto the promenade to join the dead pile.
Lia pulls Jack to the edge of the door. Usually this building is boarded and locked, but on special nights like this it is kept open, so the villagers can roam here and be reminded. Inside it is gloomy with sconcelight. Jack takes up one of the torches mounted outside and they cross the threshold.
It is a museum of sorts, a shrine to lost days, with a large gallery containing artifacts uncovered from under and around the village, and a more intimate room in back that houses the reliquary. Lia huddles close to Jack’s side, he can feel her trembling. He flashes the torch along an array of small mementos mounted on thick boards, smoothed and polished. Many coins, pendants missing their chains, bits and pieces left from the inner workings of machines long since decayed. Their faces are graven as they walk slowly and look with reverence upon each object, the profound antiquity spellbinding the two.
There is a colossal metal gear, half as tall as Jack, with teeth that are flecking off, its surface peeling, various shards of all shapes and sizes, a rectangular case, small enough to be held in hand, made of some strange composite, with its face gone revealing a corroded jumble inside, its purpose unknown—more coins, and a collection of small statues, some of worn stone, some of metal. Jack and Lia scan the menagerie of objects looking for one in particular, an artifact they found together just outside the village only last year when they were scavenging and playing in the forest.
“There it is.”
She plucks it off the shelf and turns it gingerly in her hands. A small gold-plated statue of a tree, growing up out of a heavy base, with raised lettering along the bottom that reads Big Sur. More writing underneath, scratched and indecipherable. They guessed it must have been the name of some very special tree. She remembers their excitement when the loose dirt fell away and they knew they had found something more than a simple rock. They washed the muck off in a shallow crick and ran back to the village to show their parents, screaming madly. She sets it delicately back on the ledge and twirls off into the gloom.
“You were good Fire tonight, Jack.”
“Thanks. Your dance was perfect.”
She smiles.
Jack moves down the wall, casting the torch’s glow on a display of metal plates, scoured clean of their markings by the passage of ruthless years. Only one bears writing, tight block script indented on the surface. Part No. 837503. He stares intently at the inscription, as if some deeper hidden meaning will manifest itself.
“What do you think happened to them?” Lia asks.
“Who?”
“The fallen.”
“They burned.”
“But what made them burn?”
Jack is silent for a long moment, brooding. “I don’t know.”
They have heard stories about how things used to be, but not much. They have been told that men had mastered the skies with metal wings, and that everywhere there were lights shining down from tall glass buildings even more enormous than the giant redwoods surrounding their village. They have been told that people starved in such droves that the numbers become abstract and surpass the limits of their understanding, and that the world burned fiercely and sickness scourged the land. It is impossible to know how much of this is true, or if it is just the stuff of myth and legend.
The next exhibition is Jack’s favorite. Since an early age he has gone on the village’s hunting expeditions, learning the craft, though he has yet to score a kill. His eyes gleam as he inspects the old worn tool before him, the wooden stock rotted and fallen away, but the barrel, trigger and bolt handle still intact, though sallow with