Down the Mouth of the Copper Nothing 

A Hollow Earth story by WilliamJJackson

"We came here on the back of Mowas, 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 bearhide 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 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 torchlights bobbing up and down.

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

But Pumo had no sense of humor, only a sense of combat, and 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 legbone, 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 everythin 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..."

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.

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.