“We came here on the back of Mowass, the Great Vulture who burned to push back the Sun, to this drifting land of great secrets. Our ancestors had never dug into the skin of a world before. Who did such a thing here, few can say. I only know that this Mother has hollow bones, and her echoing belly is full of precious, treacherous things.”

                                                                                         -Wannatah, a hundred generations ago

          A single shaft of miracle light slayed the darkness down in the cavernous world, reflected off tinny green copper molding around the entrance to a cave carved out by cryptic souls. Dense, saturated coils of moss hung down, drenching the bottom in icy water. A single cord made from dogbane cast a serpentine shadow upon the interior world. Great hunks of iron ore gathered the dust of long dead beings. At the farthest end, rusted phalanges of a deceased giant rotted away, woebegone home to blackened scale birds and glass mice.

          Surrounded by enigmas, Old Tin looked up at Mettoon Quischash, the Mouth of Fear, and yawned. He had seen this terror over and over back when his hair still held enough ego to remain black and shaven, one knot tied up in a roach of vulture feathers and cordage. Now gray, hanging free, and supposedly in possession of great expertise, he waited for those who were to benefit from this gift to finally show up. They saw themselves as warriors, hunters. Down the cord. Eventually. 

          He called them something else.

          “Are you cold yet, little bunnies?” he yelled, hands cupped around the mouth. He certainly was, even in the padded leathers and under a great cat stole. “Because I am. That why you haven’t come down here?”

          “I thought elders were supposed to be more patient?” a woman’s voice answered back, filling the cavern with a powerful resonance.

          Old Tin moaned. His left knee ached. “Only when it’s warm.”

          Zip! The woman slid down the rope with full confidence. Showing off. She let go the rope, most of her face and body hidden within a hooded bear hide cloak. Yellow lines painted on highlighted, resilient, mahogany eyes. Black hair fell down all over her face. The woman tugged the rope, removed a kindled cob pipe from her mouth. She blow smoke upward. “Hey, Pumo! Inhale my bravery and hurry up! Old Tin is freezing.”

          Pumo, much bigger than the other two, and burdened with sacks and weaponry, made the rope sway rather like a serpent in its death throes as he descended with care. A wolf’s head on each brawny shoulder jiggled up and down. The woman laughed. Old Tin, irritated, hustled over and took the pipe from her and applied it to his mouth.

          “There we are! Something with heat!”

          “Hey!” 

          “What, Wit, I thought you wanted to share your bravery? Don’t be a mean bunny.” Tin smirked and walked off.

          “It’s Witwisachqwa, not Wit.”

          He smiled. Puffed on the pipe. “And I’m Tinmukskin. But as long as I’m ‘Old Tin,’ you’re ‘Wit’. I don’t make the rules.”

          Pumo landed on his backside with a mighty ‘Oof!’ as Wit gave up the pipe for rollicking laughter. “Yeah, he just, abuses them. Like this stupid hole in the ground.”

          He got up fast, rubbed his behind, and checked to make sure nothing was harmed in the bump. Huge tummehek. Fine. Two iron long knives. Copper breastplate, the iron round shield draped in buffalo hide on his back. Not a single dent. Animal hide pouches for days. He had enough equipment for all of them.

          Tin groaned in the darkness while enjoying the scintillating lightness in the head from the tobacco. “If you’re both up for the feat, we can begin now. Welcome to the Mouth. The third one, that is, and the last one to let in the light from the Bands. From here on, we get acquainted with torches and darkness. Outworlders call this Bone’s Concealment, though I can’t imagine why.”

          Wit studied the gigantic foot bones. “Aptly named, if you ask me.”

          “I could take him,” Pumo noted.

          Wit grimaced. “Take who, dummy?”

          “Whoever Bone is.”

          Wit thought hard on Why did I bother? But kept it in her head.

          “If you’ll both remember what we’re here for and follow me, we’ve a lot of underground to cover and this place is far from safe. The town needs Pure Ore, pimowees before winter. No one wanted to come. Like always. You were voted in.”

          “Yes, we were there when it happened,” Wit snapped back, “but I doubt this is any worse than the valley of Oak Dogs, or the forest with the Yakwahe herds. And, wait a minute, where’s your right hand at. Hiding?”

          Old Tin held in smoke, considered her retort. He laughed aloud and waited for its echo across the metallic cavern to finally die down. “We’re in the belly of Waaptukiyinok, White Tree People, the old giants. They only left their bodies, but trust an old explorer, their spirits linger on. Move. Act. Scheme. Just like their brain matter that lives on its own. As for my right, well. Simmon, say something, would you? Welp, time is short and my toes are numb. Hurry up!”

          “Hey,” a figure in the shadows said, grim, perhaps playful.

          Wit jumped against Pumo’s chest. “Great Manito! Warn somebody before you jump out like that!”

          Simmon had always been there, in the dark. It called to him in childhood, they answered and never looked back. They were thin, with black hair hanging all over and down to his knees. If it wasn’t for the very well kept deerhide clothing, dyed black, they might appear disheveled. “Dangerous down here. No place for cowards.” He followed Old Tin.

          The two young ones watched them vanish into the abyss, two torch lights bobbing up and down.

          “Is he serious?” Wit doubted elders. They played too many games.

          But Pumo had no sense of humor, only a lust for combat, and a heart of dread. He moved away from the giant corpse. “We’re gonna die down here. Oh. Wait.” He looked up at the Mouth and blew a hearty whistle.

          “You are not bringing that thing down here with us, are you?” Wit crossed her arms over beaver skin holsters.

          “Never leave a good friend behind.”

          Something hopped down into with ease on to the corpse’s ferrous leg bone, a ghastly canine. Its back end, lean for racing. The forebody kept the bulk, massive shoulders, long pointed ears like crescent blades. Brilliant green scales coated the whole beast, doing everything to protect it, but nothing to disguise the ugly, drooling maw of fangs or those bulging, amphibious titian eyes.

          “Meetwee! Good boy!” Pumo welcomed it with a bear hug.

          Wit groaned. “Now we’re gonna die.”

          Silence is golden, even crucial during times of danger. Until someone has a question, that is.

          “Are these rooms?” Wit whispered. “These huge doors, evenly spaced out. A lot of them are broken, but, this looks like it could have been–”

          “A village,” Pumo cut in, tummehek held up, just in case.

          “Questions during quiet time,” Old Tin retorted. “Bunnies usually run silent in the dark.”

          “Hey, old man, you wanted us to come down here. I don’t remember us getting knocked back to childhood.”

          “Mmm, the village voted for you, I seem to recall. But call it how you see it. Care for a story while you ransack these rooms?” he asked, smiling as they continued ahead, focused on the shattered remains of a grand oaken door and what might lie beyond its splintery confines.

          No one responded. They roved on without him, beyond the broken door.

          He watched the torches fade into the room, cobwebs blowing. “You know elderly Ababco who gives us a good sweat after a long walk? Well, when he was a boy he was completely different from the limping old dodger you know. Oh yes, back then we called him Hanging Deer, but not because he knew how to catch them on the hunt…”

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

          Wit and Pumo barely heard a word of it. They were in awe of what they saw. A table, fit for giants, withstood the passage of time. A great sabertooth cat skull rested on it, next to what appeared to be a large bowl of ashes and various mysteries.

          “Should we?”

          “Should we what?” Pumo asked.

          “Check it out?” Wit had a lump in her throat. Possibilities were tantalizing. Fantastic. Fearsome.

          Simmon moved beyond them, frightening Wit again. “Children talking instead of doing.” They moved for the table and in one swift move, was on top of it.

          Pumo charged. “Hey! What was that behind you?”

          Simmon wandered about the table. “You’re jumping at shadows.”

          Wit, grumbling, climbed up one of the table legs using knives to dig in. Pumo followed her lead. Once up with Simmon, they found the skull, its disturbing gray luminescence, and a heap of ore, litter, molted insect carapaces, and other unknowns.

          “Were you born an ass or did you have to work hard for it, Simmon?” Wit asked while moving debris with her foot, checking for valuables.

          “Experience means knowing. I know.”

          Pumo moved to get in his face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

          “It means we need your mussels and gear, not your tongue.”

          “Oh, I’ve got muscles ready for you–”

          Wit growled and got between them. “Okay, okay. We’re here to find what the village needs, not fight each other. Let’s cool down?” Down below Meetwee was parsing grime with its snout, searching for a meal.

          “...anyway,” Old Tin said, wandering into the charred, blackened chamber, “we got him down from the tree but boy did we laugh all night. Called him Hanging Deer for the next decade or so…hey. You guys got up there, huh? Find any oh’puque?”

          “Tobacco?” Wit screeched. “If we did, do you know how bad it would be after all this time?”

          “Mmm, can’t know until it’s smoked.”

          “That is one strange elder,” Pumo noted, moving back from Simmon. He kicked a lump of coal big as his head. It smacked the wall and broke open. “Look!” He pounced on it. Meetwee hiss-barked.

          “Are those gemstones?” Simmon asked, voice raspy.

          “Gems?” Old Tin yelled. “Bring those down here. Let me take a look, eh?”

          Wit smacked another lump, finding only more coal. A second break revealed a hollowed out core, home to a pinkish maggot with a noxious odor she committed to torchlight. A third had a single, shining clear thing like glass she and Pumo took down to their guide.

          “Diamonds. Yeah, I remember now. Waaptukiyinok ate these to fire their bellies.”

          “You’re lying,” Wit scoffed through clenched teeth. “Nothing can digest diamonds.”

          “Stories don’t lie or tell the truth, bunny. They just get told. We take what we need from them. Lessons. Rumors. Jokes. Regrets. But, aren’t you curious as to why?”

          She turned away from him and made for the main tunnel. “No. You want a lesson learned, Old Tin? I learned one above, in the forest saving women and children every week. Curiosity kills.” 

          Pumo followed, Meetwee right behind him.

          Old Tin took the jab in stride. “You didn’t think that when you climbed that table.”

          “We were following your suspicious little friend who jumps like a sky frog.”

          “Fair.” Old Tin gave Simmon a cautious glare as the dark man jumped down. “Okay. We better set a fire, eat something, then move on.”

          “So haaw ha!’ Wit commanded.

          “We’re going, we’re going.”

          They camped at the far end of the tunnel, where yet again, a dropoff could be seen that trailed off into another unfavorable shade of darkness. All around them were conical towers of earth, and chaotic flapping sounds above, too far up for them to see the source.

          “Ouch!” Wit slapped her thigh, then struck the dark ground with her knife. She brought it up. On its tip, squirming, a ten-legged bug, horns on its flat, amber head. “Ugly thing! Like a slitherneck but whiter and more gooey.” She shook if off into the fire. It popped and sizzled.

          Meetwee rushed the flames to snatch it out and swallow it, flaming bits and all.

          “Weakaanuk. They live in these cones,” Old Tin said as he carved a pipe from an old stick he found while searching for kindling. “Yeah, they thrive down here. Clean up dead matter. Tough job.”

          “They don’t have to enter a strange world of menace to find what they need,” Pumo quipped.

          Old Tin gave the warrior a look not unlike a disapproving father. “No, don’t suppose they do. Then again, we don’t need pimowees. We chose to move up in the world, get fancy technology. The steam baths for hot water every season. The mills to ground kayiin, turn water into power, make those ridiculous gliders the kids love so much. Choice. Bugs never forget need.”

          “What happened to curiosity?” Wit chided. “Isn’t technology a push into the unknown, your precious motto?”

          “It is, so long as you can take the consequences that come with.” He stared into her eyes.

          Wit soon became uncomfortable with the way in which he seemed to see right through her. “Right. I ate. Turning in early.”

          “Good,” Old Tin warned, “because when we awaken, we tackle the Big Dark. And that’s when a story worth telling back home really begins.”

          The Big Dark represented a steep chasm, one that gave the quartet, well, quintet ample opportunity to slide, walk fast, run. Tumble. Five times they had to stop and catch their breath. Twice they evaded fumbling face first into the sharpened remnants of skeletons from undecipherable beasts before the land was kind enough to stabilize.

          Two hours passed, so Wit surmised, before anyone noted anything worth making any noise about. Old Tin demanded quiet, even whispering once that the crackle of the torches was a bit too vocal. 

          One time he actually told the fires to keep it down.

          Most of the journey had been a fast walk through a myriad of tunnels, some cramped, others vast. All of them were thick in lichen, moss, uncountable webbings of primordial vines and things that liked to glow in the darkness. Beings foreign enough to surface eyes as to mark them all as potential monsters.

          Every village on the surface knew about Bone’s Concealment, but the Elders who dared come here, and survive, were correct. No one could imagine the scope of it. Haunting echoes like the screams of night monsters drifted in and out of paranoid ears. Dripping water. Sounds of scurrying, but no bodies. Stories claimed the hollows were like Mowas. Neverending.

          “Now a mantokump,” Wit said cold. 

          Old Tin regarded her, then the sights. Ahead of them lay a drop off, where water-beaten stone crumbled down into a twenty meter deep ravine. Torches revealed only a hint at what lay ahead. But up close were the bones. Those curious, rustborn bones of iron, one over the other, an historic battlefield no one survived to talk about. Wit, up front to avoid Pumo’s salivating scalehound, got the first glimpse, and shuddered.

          “Eh, you might be right,” Old Tin handed her the pipe at last. “Could be a bone house, but not the organized, reverential kind we’re accustomed to. These ancestors of, whoever, are all over the place. No respect. Lots of theories drifting about over this among those too old to run and free enough to think too much. We think this was a fight. Pretty sure everyone lost.” He carefully stepped down into the ravine.

          “Wait!” Pumo yelled. “We can hardly see. I have a battery light. Two. Got them from one of those electriclovers from Ophelia.” He fumbled through a pouch to get one out, a boxy item with a fat translucent lens on one side and a squeaky curved handle of steel. He lifted a lever and cranked the box hard three dozen times. 

          Ol Tin sucked his teeth. “Hey, Simmon, this guy’s right. Maybe we go back to the village with empty hands and make everybody sad.”

          Simmon had no comment. He moved into the depths.

          Pumo charged. “No! What I mean is…let a warrior go ahead. I can take the hits. It’s why I was voted to come.” He moved ahead, the box emitting a powerful beacon, as his eyes looked to and fro. 

          Long wetted bones had rusted stalactites and stalagmites on them. Scurrying sounds were alive in the distance, or up close, damn that insufferable and constant echo. These dead giants were unnerving ecologies which bore a multitude of fabulous and dire animate beings. Away from a smithing forge, Pumo trusted nothing. He doubled his pace and moved beyond Simmon’s skulking.

          They followed his path, one chosen by the furthest distance from anything resembling a deceased being. Pumo found comfort in the electric light’s range. He had an eye on half of the view ahead now. “There,” he whispered. “Hear it? There’s a stream up ahead. A tree bridge.”

          Simmon took up the back along with Meetwee who wandered in between bones searching for a scurrying morsel to nab. The black-clad man watched every massive, empty eye socket he could detect, wondering if spirits had eyeballs.

          But Pumo led them through the Valley of Iron Ribs, as Old Tin called it. They stood at the base of a great bridge over rushing waters. Here, the temperature plummeted. Breath became an egg white fog and jaws tightened. Under clear waters enormous catfish with visible skeletons pushed against a heartless current.

          “The First Elders who came here were the second generation of one hundred,” Old Tin stated aloud. “Mapped the rivers. All the melting waters find their way down and through the hollows. They followed them here. They planted these kwunuktukak in all their rainbow colors that grow in the dark, so that we could cross safely now. Yeah, we make good tree bridges. Thinking ahead pays off. Like Pumo with the spark-light. That’s a good bunny.”

          “Ha,” Pumo mouthed through a clenched jaw as he planted his feet onto the stiff, hard red bark, hands on blue branches.

          Meanwhile, Simmon and Wit were squatting, fingering loose stones.

          “Pimowees?” Wit held it up at him. “We can pitch camp here, no need to move on.”

          Simmon shook his head. “Mata, look closer. See how it crumbles too easily? That wouldn’t make good fuel. Good pimowees is like its name, oily like animal fat. That’s what makes it burn for so long. This is dry. Ancient. Dead.”

          Pumo was about to turn and advise they hurry up. But then the loose earth shuffled under their feet. The cavern trembled. A great screech dominated, hurting their ears.

          One of the skeletons illuminated, and saw fit to start an uprising in the bone house.