Wit shot up, then froze. “...can’t be.” Her knees locked.

“There you are,” Old Tin whispered. He regarded the skeleton as it rose up. “But it is.” He glanced over at Wit. “They really should have made the ceiling higher. Who wants to walk with their head lowered all the time? Hurts my neck just seeing it?”

“That’s your problem right now, old man!” Wit found her power again and shoved hands into holsters. Right and left came back out, each holding a curved metal contraption ending in a short barrel. The right hand one had a metallic seashell spiral on its left, the left hand one the same, but on the right side. She held both up at the skeleton, gasping at its tremendous height, ten heads above hers if not twenty. “Traded big for these things so they’d better work.”

“Might piss it off more than anything. Hey! All of you! Get over the bridge. It goes up to a cliff’s edge. Better we fight there than here.” Old Tin sounded concerned now. And already short on breath.

Waaptukiyi skeleton had its own display of light, a miasma of spectral ash, a tinge of sunset orange. Many of its finger bones remained on the ground, so it arose as a fragment of a shell of a living thing. Hanging ribs dropped off to bang and echo. Animals scattered for new domains. Rust stalactites shattered and pulverized into an acrid smoke bomb as things with wings and four little legs took off. The giant turned its skull down and to the side, sockets smoking, a limp jaw full of cancerous, well worn iron fangs agitated up and down. The sound from the motion like nails on a board, but louder, echoing.

The young warriors got over the bridge in a hurry. Old Tin motivated fast as he might, but was out of breath half way across.

The giant monster got to the foot of the bridge, only to be struck in the cranium by a potent bang, a spherical stone shattering on impact. It was enough to make it pause and look over at the raised ledge.

Wit, firing a shot from one of her weapons. She let off another, hitting the thing in the neckbones, then clamped the weapons together, turned them to reset the spirals for another round.

“Move Old Tin!”

“Trying! Never should have gained so much weight!” he said, calmly. He fought to move on, troubled by that abnormal sensation of being cold while perspiring.

Wit let off two more rounds, striking the skeleton and chipping off a tooth.

“Aameeh, Wit! Keep it occupied!” Pumo had been on his knees this entire time on the ledge. Watching. Timing. Prepping. He had a folded strap of iron. In a wrist flick it unfolded. He stretched a cord at either end, a move that made the iron curve, the cord tighten. Then he chose a hollow iron shaft, and attached a copper canister to it. He tapped torchfire to one end. It gave of a white hot sizzle. Pumo stood tall, iron bow in hand, this strange arrow pulled back, aimed for the monster.

“Go back to sleep.” He let it fly.

The arrow flew, an incendiary whistling dove. The skeleton saw this obvious weapon coming its way and reared back. But its right arm was in the path.

The arrow struck it. Springy nodes at the fore push in on impact. The arrow detonated. The forearm ruptured into metal shards, a catastrophic explosion that reverberated across the vast, dark ossuary.

The skeleton tumbled backward, almost on its backside. It caught itself by leaning onto the remains of one of its deceased kin. Stalactites fell down, great stakes impaling unarmored earth.

“Go!” Old Tin saw they had time now. He shooed the warriors on.

Wit looked about in a hurry. “Where? It’s so dark and–”

“Up!” Old Tin pointed straight up after he crossed the bridge.

“There’s nothing up there, old man!”

“Simmon! Time to break free!”

Simmon became quite grim. Or, moreso than he had been. “Old Tin, this is a bad idea.”

Pumo huffed. “Yeah? Tired of standing around while we fight, Simmon?”

Old Tin yelled, “No time for bickering! Simmon, it’s time. We have–”

“Get down!” Wit screamed, just in time. She leaped to her left as a massive black object flew at the ledge. It struck the lip then bounced up, knocking Pumo aside and just missing Wit. The bone slammed against the sheer gray wall behind them, craacking its brittle surface. Gray tumbled into black.

Moist, clumpy, simmering black ore, revealed by the weapon. An unbelievable body part.

The giant had removed its jaw and found a new way for it to bite.

“Pimmowees?” said Wit, coughing, covering her mouth with her cloak from black soot kicked up in the attack. “It’s all here.” But she noticed more broke than the ore. Wait. Pumo!”

“He’s fine!” Simmon yelled back from no longer next to her.

Wit was on the move over the mounds of the fatty ore to get to her ally, then, she stopped dead. She saw the grim Simmon up in the air. Hovering, his body supported by two incredulous black wings with white tips.

“You!” Her mind held an assortment of curses and lectures, but none materialized on her tongue.

“I hear his heart beating. He’s fine.”

She could only let her jaw hang open. “Take him up like Old Tin said. I’ll fill the bags.”

Simmon dropped down, landing catlike with a final wing flap. He picked up the muscular, loaded down man in one hand. No problem. In the other he snapped fingers and a rushing Meetwee was scooped up.

Wit was looking up in vain and then scurrying across the ground, shoving pimowees into her satchels. “We’ll discuss you later. Get him out. Come back for us.”

He nodded once, raised his head, and in one mighty flap, propelled up into the darkness.

Old Tin fumbled up the broken ledge. “Wit, are you hurt?”

“No! Confused and feeling left out? Yes.”

“Oh. Well, good that you’re not hurt.”

“There’s enough of the right ore here for the next three generations.”

“Yeah. Now we just,” he looked back. The skeleton was back on its feet. Jawless, but mobile. “Just need someone to come down here and keep getting it, huh?”

She gave him a foul glare. Sealed the bags. Reclicked her weapons for another firing. “What is that thing and why isn’t it dead? And why do I think you know?”

Old Tin smoked. He watched the skeleton amble ever so awkward towards them. He noted Wit from the periphery. They locked eyes. “Mm-hmm. Something beyond old, the kind of thing that finds death more like slumber. Sometimes it sees fit to wake up.”

Wit got to her feet, burdened by the heavy satchels. “Then it doesn’t concern us. We got what we came for. People need this. It’s why we’re here. I won’t leave them without.”

“Good, little bunny. It’s good to care.”

She slid down the dilapidated ledge and grabbed him by the arm. “Tin, did you, did you know this would happen?”

A great slap struck behind Wit, scaring her senseless. Simmon. In a drop and a snatch he had her and whisked her up, and off. Old Tin heard her scream of protest die off.

For a half minute, the vast cavern quieted. Old Tin, stationary. The monster, slowed to a grotesque statue. Just two old souls, studying each others’ motivations.

“That’s a good kid,” he said, to the Waaptukiyi. “You never had any good ones, did you?”

The skeleton responded by moving again. It managed to cross the bridge. It stood a few meters from the crumbling ledge, pimowees and age old dirt falling into the crystalline stream. The head rose just over the ledge.

Old Tin. Waaptukiyi. The staring contest.

“Been a long time. Knew you’d sense me eventually. Came down here a lot, trying to get your attention. But you slept. Shame. Then I thought, maybe it’s me. You might want someone else. Kids got your attention, huh?”

The ominous glow about the eye sockets filtered into a sunset blood orange.

“Oh yeah, they got you good. Now you’re up, I’m up. But I gotta go soon, far away. Can’t risk you waking up without me around to do something about it. No. We already had to flee one world. This one’s nice. Cozy. People are telling great stories about it, right now, up there.”

The skeleton raised up its one arm, stalactite swordblade fingers.

“They should be able to discover this hollow, Old Foe.”

The skeletal arm swung, slow. Creaking.

Old Tin’s body began to illuminate a smoky white. Two plumes rose over his wearisome head. “The old days are over, monster, Father of Fright. People died just seeing you back then. But me? I don’t find you funny, not anymore.”

The death fingers came too close. Old Tin’s body exploded into a burst of white and persimmon radiance, a fire lacking heat.

“Your reign is OVER!” Tin floated off the ledge, a million particulates as well. The empyrean assault raveged thick iron as if it was dead grass against a lightning fire. The skeleton blew back from the force, smoldering, hissing, its glow fading. Fading. Extinguished.

The cavern collapsed.

Wit was a wreck held together by determination and labors. Campfire lit. Pumo propped up, drinking water. Simmon, off in a tree, one beyond Wit’s reach, Meetwee’s head laid on his chest. She had felt the world tremble after that winged ingrate brought her up to the surface. Back into the forest she loved, a magnificent meadow to her left of fragrant purple flowers, sweetgrass blowing in the breeze making soft shush sounds.

Then hours passed. Simmon circled the black hole leading down into the Copper Nothing on and off. He singnaled a head shake in the negative. Nothing.

At the setting of the Bands, when those spectacular colors around all the worlds drift down and the sky turns salmon, Wit leaned on a sassafras tree, chewing on one of its tender shoots, and considered her place in things with the knowledge she now had.

“Bunny hungry?”

“Oh! Tin!” Wit slapped the old man hard on the chest. Blackened dirt flew off him. Then he fell back. Belched. A bone cracked.

“You’re hurt? I…didn’t mean…” she knelt beside him.

Old Tin’s eyes were huge. Dark. Face swollen. “No, no, you’re fine. You can be mad. Everybody gets mad at how I do things, even when they work out. Whew! That was one crazy ride. Have you seen my pipe?”

“What? No! I don’t understand. How did you get out by yourself? Did you know another way?”

He smiled goofy at her. “This guy is the other way, bunny. Hey, help me up, would you?”

She did so, realizing he was a very heavy elder.

“Now, you know where to find the right kind of the good ore. Life will be fine. Better, even. Sure, I wasn’t completely honest, but we had fun, eh?”

Wit felt, well, too exasperated to argue. “I suppose so. My hunch tells me you knew that monster. I know it sounds incredible, but, I feel like you were waiting for it to return to life. Or animate its death. Or…” She gave up.

Old Tin looked around. “She’s good, this one.” He grinned, big teeth showing. “So this means you’ll want nothing to do with the Concealment, the Copper Nothing, or any of its other names, huh?”

She thought it over. A strong urge to agree arose but out of her mouth came, “The forest is my life. I breathe freely here, despite its dangers. But, down there is an entire world. Not just a resource, a history, a lore, living things. Things we could use. Or learn from.”

He grew concerned. “You’re not thinking of going back?”

“Maybe? An expedition. Or two? With the right people.” She beheld the chewed up sassafras, thought of how it comforted her since childhood. As a child she wanted to know everything about everywhere. Adult her had grown less ambitious.

Wit grew surprised when Old Tin gave her a warm, approving hug. “I knew you had the right amount of curiosity under the shell, Witwisachqwa.” He let go, walking away while she stood there, in the sassafras, dazed.

Wit took but a second to get her thoughts together. She whisked around, “Hey Old Tin, what other? Tinmukskin?”

But no one was around. Wit saw no person, only an abnormally large and smoky rabbit disappearing into the brush.

E N D

Wit shot up, then froze. “...can’t be.” Her knees locked.

“There you are,” Old Tin whispered. He regarded the skeleton as it rose up. “But it is.” He glanced over at Wit. “They really should have made the ceiling higher. Who wants to walk with their head lowered all the time? Hurts my neck just seeing it?”

“That’s your problem right now, old man!” Wit found her power again and shoved hands into holsters. Right and left came back out, each holding a curved metal contraption ending in a short barrel. The right hand one had a metallic seashell spiral on its left, the left hand one the same, but on the right side. She held both up at the skeleton, gasping at its tremendous height, ten heads above hers if not twenty. “Traded big for these things so they’d better work.”

“Might piss it off more than anything. Hey! All of you! Get over the bridge. It goes up to a cliff’s edge. Better we fight there than here.” Old Tin sounded concerned now. And already short on breath.

Waaptukiyi skeleton had its own display of light, a miasma of spectral ash, a tinge of sunset orange. Many of its finger bones remained on the ground, so it arose as a fragment of a shell of a living thing. Hanging ribs dropped off to bang and echo. Animals scattered for new domains. Rust stalactites shattered and pulverized into an acrid smoke bomb as things with wings and four little legs took off. The giant turned its skull down and to the side, sockets smoking, a limp jaw full of cancerous, well worn iron fangs agitated up and down. The sound from the motion like nails on a board, but louder, echoing.

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The young warriors got over the bridge in a hurry. Old Tin motivated fast as he might, but was out of breath half way across.

The giant monster got to the foot of the bridge, only to be struck in the cranium by a potent bang, a spherical stone shattering on impact. It was enough to make it pause and look over at the raised ledge.

Wit, firing a shot from one of her weapons. She let off another, hitting the thing in the neckbones, then clamped the weapons together, turned them to reset the spirals for another round.

“Move Old Tin!”

“Trying! Never should have gained so much weight!” he said, calmly. He fought to move on, troubled by that abnormal sensation of being cold while perspiring.

Wit let off two more rounds, striking the skeleton and chipping off a tooth.

“Aameeh, Wit! Keep it occupied!” Pumo had been on his knees this entire time on the ledge. Watching. Timing. Prepping. He had a folded strap of iron. In a wrist flick it unfolded. He stretched a cord at either end, a move that made the iron curve, the cord tighten. Then he chose a hollow iron shaft, and attached a copper canister to it. He tapped torchfire to one end. It gave of a white hot sizzle. Pumo stood tall, iron bow in hand, this strange arrow pulled back, aimed for the monster.

“Go back to sleep.” He let it fly.

The arrow flew, an incendiary whistling dove. The skeleton saw this obvious weapon coming its way and reared back. But its right arm was in the path.

The arrow struck it. Springy nodes at the fore push in on impact. The arrow detonated. The forearm ruptured into metal shards, a catastrophic explosion that reverberated across the vast, dark ossuary.

The skeleton tumbled backward, almost on its backside. It caught itself by leaning onto the remains of one of its deceased kin. Stalactites fell down, great stakes impaling unarmored earth.

“Go!” Old Tin saw they had time now. He shooed the warriors on.

Wit looked about in a hurry. “Where? It’s so dark and–”

“Up!” Old Tin pointed straight up after he crossed the bridge.

“There’s nothing up there, old man!”

“Simmon! Time to break free!”

Simmon became quite grim. Or, moreso than he had been. “Old Tin, this is a bad idea.”

Pumo huffed. “Yeah? Tired of standing around while we fight, Simmon?”

Old Tin yelled, “No time for bickering! Simmon, it’s time. We have–”

“Get down!” Wit screamed, just in time. She leaped to her left as a massive black object flew at the ledge. It struck the lip then bounced up, knocking Pumo aside and just missing Wit. The bone slammed against the sheer gray wall behind them, craacking its brittle surface. Gray tumbled into black.

Moist, clumpy, simmering black ore, revealed by the weapon. An unbelievable body part.

The giant had removed its jaw and found a new way for it to bite.

“Pimmowees?” said Wit, coughing, covering her mouth with her cloak from black soot kicked up in the attack. “It’s all here.” But she noticed more broke than the ore. Wait. Pumo!”

“He’s fine!” Simmon yelled back from no longer next to her.

Wit was on the move over the mounds of the fatty ore to get to her ally, then, she stopped dead. She saw the grim Simmon up in the air. Hovering, his body supported by two incredulous black wings with white tips.

“You!” Her mind held an assortment of curses and lectures, but none materialized on her tongue.

“I hear his heart beating. He’s fine.”

She could only let her jaw hang open. “Take him up like Old Tin said. I’ll fill the bags.”

Simmon dropped down, landing catlike with a final wing flap. He picked up the muscular, loaded down man in one hand. No problem. In the other he snapped fingers and a rushing Meetwee was scooped up.

Wit was looking up in vain and then scurrying across the ground, shoving pimowees into her satchels. “We’ll discuss you later. Get him out. Come back for us.”

He nodded once, raised his head, and in one mighty flap, propelled up into the darkness.

Old Tin fumbled up the broken ledge. “Wit, are you hurt?”

“No! Confused and feeling left out? Yes.”

“Oh. Well, good that you’re not hurt.”

“There’s enough of the right ore here for the next three generations.”

“Yeah. Now we just,” he looked back. The skeleton was back on its feet. Jawless, but mobile. “Just need someone to come down here and keep getting it, huh?”

She gave him a foul glare. Sealed the bags. Clicked her weapons for another firing. “What is that thing and why isn’t it dead? And why do I think you know?”

Old Tin smoked. He watched the skeleton amble ever so awkward towards them. He noted Wit from the periphery. They locked eyes. “Mm-hmm. Something beyond old, the kind of thing that finds death more like slumber. Sometimes it sees fit to wake up.”

Wit got to her feet, burdened by the heavy satchels. “Then it doesn’t concern us. We got what we came for. People need this. It’s why we’re here. I won’t leave them without.”

“Good, little bunny. It’s good to care.”

She slid down the dilapidated ledge and grabbed him by the arm. “Tin, did you, did you know this would happen?”

A great slap struck behind Wit, scaring her senseless. Simmon. In a drop and a snatch he had her and whisked her up, and off. Old Tin heard her scream of protest die off.

For a half minute, the vast cavern quieted. Old Tin, stationary. The monster, slowed to a grotesque statue. Just two old souls, studying each others’ motivations.

“That’s a good kid,” he said, to the Waaptukiyi. “You never had any good ones, did you?”

The skeleton responded by moving again. It managed to cross the bridge. It stood a few meters from the crumbling ledge, pimowees and age old dirt falling into the crystalline stream. The head rose just over the ledge.

Old Tin. Waaptukiyi. The staring contest.

“Been a long time. Knew you’d sense me eventually. Came down here a lot, trying to get your attention. But you slept. Shame. Then I thought, maybe it’s me. You might want someone else. Kids got your attention, huh?”

The ominous glow about the eye sockets filtered into a sunset blood orange.

“Oh yeah, they got you good. Now you’re up, I’m up. But I gotta go soon, far away. Can’t risk you waking up without me around to do something about it. No. We already had to flee one world. This one’s nice. Cozy. People are telling great stories about it, right now, up there.”

The skeleton raised up its one arm, stalactite swordblade fingers.

“They should be able to discover this hollow, Old Foe.”

The skeletal arm swung, slow. Creaking.

Old Tin’s body began to illuminate a smoky white. Two plumes rose over his wearisome head. “The old days are over, monster, Father of Fright. People died just seeing you back then. But me? I don’t find you funny, not anymore.”

The death fingers came too close. Old Tin’s body exploded into a burst of white and persimmon radiance, a fire lacking heat.

“Your reign is OVER!” Tin floated off the ledge, a million particulates as well. The empyrean assault raveged thick iron as if it was dead grass against a lightning fire. The skeleton blew back from the force, smoldering, hissing, its glow fading. Fading. Extinguished.

The cavern collapsed.

Wit was a wreck held together by determination and labors. Campfire lit. Pumo propped up, drinking water. Simmon, off in a tree, one beyond Wit’s reach, Meetwee’s head laid on his chest. She had felt the world tremble after that winged ingrate brought her up to the surface. Back into the forest she loved, a magnificent meadow to her left of fragrant purple flowers, sweetgrass blowing in the breeze making soft shush sounds.

Then hours passed. Simmon circled the black hole leading down into the Copper Nothing on and off. He singnaled a head shake in the negative. Nothing.

At the setting of the Bands, when those spectacular colors around all the worlds drift down and the sky turns salmon, Wit leaned on a sassafras tree, chewing on one of its tender shoots, and considered her place in things with the knowledge she now had.

“Bunny hungry?”

“Oh! Tin!” Wit slapped the old man hard on the chest. Blackened dirt flew off him. Then he fell back. Belched. A bone cracked.

“You’re hurt? I…didn’t mean…” she knelt beside him.

Old Tin’s eyes were huge. Dark. Face swollen. “No, no, you’re fine. You can be mad. Everybody gets mad at how I do things, even when they work out. Whew! That was one crazy ride. Have you seen my pipe?”

“What? No! I don’t understand. How did you get out by yourself? Did you know another way?”

He smiled goofy at her. “This guy is the other way, bunny. Hey, help me up, would you?”

She did so, realizing he was a very heavy elder.

“Now, you know where to find the right kind of the good ore. Life will be fine. Better, even. Sure, I wasn’t completely honest, but we had fun, eh?”

Wit felt, well, too exasperated to argue. “I suppose so. My hunch tells me you knew that monster. I know it sounds incredible, but, I feel like you were waiting for it to return to life. Or animate its death. Or…” She gave up.

Old Tin looked around. “She’s good, this one.” He grinned, big teeth showing. “So this means you’ll want nothing to do with the Concealment, the Copper Nothing, or any of its other names, huh?”

She thought it over. A strong urge to agree arose but out of her mouth came, “The forest is my life. I breathe freely here, despite its dangers. But, down there is an entire world. Not just a resource, a history, a lore, living things. Things we could use. Or learn from.”

He grew concerned. “You’re not thinking of going back?”

“Maybe? An expedition. Or two? With the right people.” She beheld the chewed up sassafras, thought of how it comforted her since childhood. As a child she wanted to know everything about everywhere. Adult her had grown less ambitious.

Wit grew surprised when Old Tin gave her a warm, approving hug. “I knew you had the right amount of curiosity under the shell, Witwisachqwa.” He let go, walking away while she stood there, in the sassafras, dazed.

Wit took but a second to get her thoughts together. She whisked around, “Hey Old Tin, what other? Tinmukskin?”

But no one was around. Wit saw no person, only an abnormally large and smoky rabbit disappearing into the brush.