I didn't want to think about what the Bone Men did to me after they snapped my neck. For the third time I'd woken up on a sandy beach next to a clear blue ocean. It was three times that I walked cluelessly, starving, and dehydrated until I became something's dinner. At that moment, I decided that I wouldn't be a meal again.

I'm back for some reason. The Bone Men spoke as if it was normal for me to have died and come back. That man that they dragged out of the cage said something about not coming back for a year. What does all of this mean?

I stumbled off of the beach, soaked and frustrated. The environment on this side of the island wasn't as harsh and dry as the dessert and it wasn't as humid and green like the tropics. At my current location there was large woodland trees with trunks the size of a school bus. They stretched so far into the sky that the tops were lost in the glare of the rising sun. The ground was black dirt and red mulch which cut my bare feet with every step.

They were raw by the time I reached the base of a sequoia. I pressed my back onto it and sat down, relieving my aching feet for a moment. A sudden gust of wind sent a large brown figure sailing onto the ground next to me. The crash made me flinch and cover my face.

"This place has stolen my back bone," I laughed quietly as I realized it was only a tree branch.

The branch is too big to pick up, but it's foot sized leaves and strong twine could still be useful, I thought.

I picked a few healthy green leaves and layered them together so that they wouldn't easily rip. I poked a few holes on both sides of the leaves, vertically, and placed my foot on top of it. I ran the twine through each hole and knotted it tight at the top. They were far from fashionable, yet the makeshift shoes would make my wandering bearable.

For a moment I had a smile, one I'd felt when I had first learned how to tie my shoes as a boy. That smile was replaced with a unhinged jaw when I saw what was behind the tree. Creatures with long, leathery, featherless wings soared around the middle of the trees. A pond with a dozen different dinosaurs drinking from it seemed to glisten in the morning sun. To finish it off, a long necked, four legged, seventy-five foot tall, gray Brontosaurus ate leaves off of the branches. There was a heard of them behind it, five adults and three babies, which were still around thirty five feet tall.

"Quite a sight, ain't it?" an elderly voice said from somewhere above me.

My head snapped up and I swore that I didn't see anything besides leaves and trees.

"Who's there? I mean no one any harm, but I will fight if I'm provoked," I warned as I took cover.

"Are you going to fight me with those vegetable shoes of yours?" the voice chuckled.

He's laughing at me. The Bone Men laughed at me too and they ate me. Are all the people on this island like the Bone Men?

"Do you mean to kill me and eat me?" I shouted up.

"Oh, yeah. I'm going to put my spear through you and roast you over an open fire like those savages in the Bone Lands," he laughed a little harder.

A wooden spike with a stone tip crashed into the ground in between my legs.

"There, sit on it! It'll make it easier to cook you!" he shouted.

A fine, almost invisible, string was tied to the hilt of the spear. I followed it with my eyes to a green wooden hut built on a thick branch. It was camouflaged with a thick bushel of leaves held together by the same fine string, making the house nearly invisible. A man with a trimmed white beard and white curly hair stood on a small platform that branched out from the house. He was wearing a worn down black trench coat with a pair of torn blue jeans.

"You have clothes and a house? How?" I asked him when I was finally able to look him in his dark brown eyes.

"I had friend, an ally of sorts. She and I built this place to survive the creatures that lurk down there."

"And the clothes? Did you and her make that too?"

"No. I got these off the men that killed her," he answered.

His face darkened with every word. He ripped his arm back and the spear tugged out of the dirt and slid along the ground and into the air until it was on the platform with the man. He held it in one arm and looked at me with a smirk.

"Are you throwing your cane? You should be careful, a guy your age might fall over without that extra wooden leg."

He laughed again and kicked a bundle of wooden planks off of the platform. It unrolled into a wooden ladder held together by twine.

"Come on up. The raptors will be waking up soon and trust me, you don't want to be their first meal of the day. Name's Sam by the way."

I struggled to climb the ladder; it swayed every time I went up a step.

"Why are you helping me?" I cried as I got up the second step.

"You remind me of me when I first got here," Sam replied.

"What? Brave, cunning and whimsical?" I sang as I climbed a little higher, still struggling to move up.

"No. Scared, lost, and an unbearable ass. Now climb! Don't your young muscles still work?" he badgered with a smile.

I climbed the rest of the way and stood a good foot above Sam. His skin was wrinkled and wet with sweat.

"You don't remember anything about who you are, do you?" he asked.

I shook my head no and he patted me on the back.

"If you're lucky, your demons will forget about you as much as you've forgotten about you."

"And if I'm not?" I asked as he led me through the door into the surprisingly big tree house.

"Then your past will hunt you down until there is nothing but the void and that damn timer," he comforted poorly.

"You've seen the timer too?" I asked as I sat down in a chair made of smooth branches and rope.

The house had a spiral staircase that extended three floors high. The kitchen had a sink made out of chiseled rock. In the sink was a small hole in the center that dropped out of the house and onto the ground below. A bamboo tube hung from above it with a wooden nozzle to keep the water from constantly draining.

"That timer has spent more time with me than I spent with my own son. You've probably noticed that the time increased after you died right?" Sam said while he walked to the kitchen and pulled a cup off of a shelf next to the sink.

"Yes, it went from two seconds to four after the Bone Men killed me."

He filled the cup with water and handed it to me, "Every time you die, the time doubles that you have to sit in the void and watch that clock tick. The noise only makes the madness worse. It's not bad at first, only a few seconds, then you're coughing up half the damn ocean on a beach, but then you start getting into the minutes. 

They eventually start to add up until soon enough, it's been decades. During the whole time you're frozen watching the timer. You can come back from the dead, but it doesn't take long for a blessing to turn into a curse," he said with his body stiffened and his eyes fixed on a wooden rocking chair that was in the living room.

My tongue tingled when the water touched it. It felt like it had been three days since I last had a sip of anything other than seawater.

The King of the Bone Men talked about the Revenant meat being more rotten with death.

"What is this place? How are we able to just come back to life?" I questioned.

Sam met my eyes with a grim look and said, "To be honest, I have no idea where we are. All I've learned is that the people that call this place home were far from innocent, you and me included. When you're dropped off here, you're here to die a death of a thousand punishments. That's why we are called Revenants."

"How many times have you died, Sam?"

He took a deep breath, "Too many times to count. I lost track after twenty. I can only tell you that the next time I go will be my last. I'm an old man. I'll wither away before my timer runs down. From what I've heard, I wasn't the best person."

I sat the cup down and realized my hands were shaking.

How bad can I be? Who was I to deserve such a death?

The thoughts made my head feel like a thousand bees were buzzing around cluelessly.

"How did you find out who you were?"

The thoughts settled when I realized that he knew his name and that he had a son.

Sadness filled his face quickly.

"I've said too much. Look at you. You've turned so white that I could confuse you with a patch of snow. You've got some learning to do if you're going to survive out here."

I didn't want to stop the conversation, my thoughts weren't going to allow it, but Sam was already walking back out the door. I got up and chased after him.

"You can't just..." I started to say.

He covered my mouth and pulled me to the ground.

"Sh. No loud noises or they will see us," he whispered while he pointed up into the sky.

I thought it was just an act to get my attention away from the subject, but soon learned that it wasn't. There was a large black silhouette darkening the blue sky above us. It had wings thirty five feet long and a body twice that size. It was the biggest bird I'd ever seen and there were two little pterodactyls flying next to it in formation.

They flew into the valley and circled around the pond. I was able to notice something shiny on the back of the pterodactyls. It made a bright white light when the sun hit it.

Metal.

"There's a person riding on the back of that," I said, amazed.

"Yes, there's one on all of them. They're the kings of the west, a gang called The One Eyed Sparrows, and they are here for those birds.