The trunk’s surface was scorched, split into charcoal scales. The fire had stripped the tree’s height, but not it’s width—the three of us, holding hands, couldn’t have encircled it. At its base, the sides didn’t meet—there was a gap, just a few feet wide and almost as tall. The trunk was a cloak falling open at the front, revealing the hollow within. Once, this would have provided a cave-like shelter, big enough for two people to lie in, if they curled close to each other. Now everything from six feet up was gone, and the tree’s cave was roofless, a ringed space open to the snow.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“They tortured my husband, Cass, and killed him. They drowned all my children, and killed Nina.” She gave a shrug and a small shake of her head. “There’s nothing a burned-down tree can do to hurt me.”
Zoe dropped to all fours and peered through the gap in the tree. She crawled inside and took several minutes there, craning around to survey the whole space. “If Joe left anything in the tree itself, it’s not here now, thanks to your stunt with the fire,” she called. She backed out and stood, dusting her knees. “If he’d left something on the shelf, it’s gone now. No sign of the shelf at all. The whole trunk’s charred, inside and out.”
“So we dig,” I said. I dropped to my knees. I could use only my left arm. The snow and the top layer of dirt shifted easily, but within an inch or two my fingernails were snagging on frozen ground.
Elsa sighed as she knelt next to me. “If it’s any consolation, Joe was too lazy to bury anything properly. If there’s anything here, at least it won’t be buried deep.”
Zoe came to my other side, and the three of us dug together. The gap was too narrow, and we got in one another’s way, and the icy soil was tightly packed. After the first few minutes my left hand was so chilled that I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore. It took us nearly an hour to clear a hole a foot deep, and about as wide.
My chilled fingertips didn’t feel the trunk when at last we reached it, but I heard the different sound that our scraping made. The shriek of our nails on rusted tin.
When we finally dug it free, it took all three of us to maneuver the trunk out of the hole. It was big—at least three feet wide and two feet deep—and so heavy that I feared the contents must be totally waterlogged. The metal had lost any polished smoothness that it might once have had—it was furred with rust, an ochre and green patina that rasped beneath our fingers when we brushed the last twigs and dirt from the top. There was no lock, but rust had sealed the lid closed. It took Zoe a few minutes of levering with a knife, and one well-aimed kick, before the lid sprung open an inch.
I rocked back on my heels, and pulled Zoe back with me.
“Let Elsa look first,” I said.
“Don’t worry,” Elsa said. “I’m not expecting any love letters. I know my Joe—this’ll be a stash of contraband, and nothing to do with me.”
The top of the trunk was clear of soil now, but she brushed it once again, more slowly this time. Then she lifted back the lid, which grated all the way, a husky sigh.
The trunk was crammed full of papers. The stacks of loose pages had merged together with mildew and age. I wondered if that was why I hadn’t sensed the trunk beneath us, while we were digging—whether the mildew, rust, and water had consumed it so completely that it felt indistinguishable from the earth around it.
Elsa peeled off a page from the top. Damp had thickened it so that it crackled when it bent.
She read out loud, speaking haltingly as she navigated the unfamiliar words: “Year 1, Oct 23. Memorandum (14b) for the Ark Interim Government: Security Protocols.”
“Hell on earth,” said Zoe. “We need to get a cart out here, and take this stuff back to Piper. Now.”
chapter 25
We sent one of the guards back to the town for a cart. It was dark by the time we’d hauled the chest back to New Hobart and unloaded it at the tithe collector’s office. Concealing our find from the Ringmaster wasn’t an option—his soldiers were among the troops with us in