Chapter 3
By Friday noon, the rain had stopped and the accusation had not.
Briar had slept two hours in her clothes on the floor of the machine shed.
She woke to the sound of Mace setting a cup of coffee on the workbench.
“She’s up the mountain,” he said.
Briar looked at the empty space where the toolbox had been.
“I know.”
“She’s sealing the old shaft. Took your mother’s winch and a box of wedges.”
“She’s moving Aru.”
Mace rubbed his mustache.
“After she walked you off the hill Thursday, a deputy came up with a volunteer fire crew. I gave them the snapped powerline and the rock slide, like she told me.”
“And they bought it?”
“Lorna had a tarp over the pod by then. The crew sprayed down the hot spots, and the deputy shut the road at the cattle guard. Nobody climbed down.”
He looked into his coffee.
“Last night she waited for the hull to cool, dug it loose, and winched it onto the flatbed. I held the light. That’s all I did.”
He cleared his throat.
“I ain’t seen anything like that shape on the glass. I keep telling myself it was headlights.”
Briar got up.
Her left arm ached.
The silver mark had not faded, but it sat under the skin now like old scar.
She pulled her sleeve down.
“Help me find the toolbox.”
They searched the house first.
Then the machine shed.
Briar checked under the seed bags, behind the chainsaw files, inside the cold box where Lorna kept the spare fuses.
No toolbox.
Mace stood by her mother’s truck.
“You’re looking for a hiding place,” he said. “Lorna don’t hide things in drawers. She leaves them close enough that she can get to them.”
Briar looked through the rain-streaked windshield.
The olive-drab toolbox sat on the passenger seat.
The keys were still in the ignition.
She opened the door and lifted the box out.
It felt lighter than it had in the crater.
“Either she wants you to find it,” Mace said, “or she knows it’s no good to anybody else.”
Briar set it on the bed of the truck.
The lid opened with a soft metal pop.
Inside, the worn tools were arranged the way Ephraim had kept them.
Briar touched the tray.
Her wrist throbbed.
The tray moved under her fingers.
She slid it aside.
The bottom of the toolbox was false.
It came up in one thin sheet, no thicker than a credit card.
Etched lines covered its underside.
They matched the branching mark on her arm.
“What is that?” Mace said.
“The reason my grandfather said never to open it.”
Mace reached into his coat and brought out a brown folder.
“Ephraim’s map case came to me after the funeral,” he said. “Lorna told me to keep it dry and not look. I didn’t, not for six years. Then at three this morning I couldn’t sleep.”
He spread the papers on the truck bed.
Old survey maps.
Cave outlines.
And one sketch in the lower corner.
Briar held the plate above it.
The lines lined up.
The sketch showed a beam rising from the mountain to a circle in the clouds.
Under it, in Ephraim’s small, careful handwriting, were the words: “The first fell in 1619. The return comes when the beacon wakes.”
“The family didn’t hide a wreck,” Briar said.
“No,” Mace said. “They hid a door.”
Briar turned to the mountain.
The hidden entrance was above the tree line, behind two leaning rocks.
A glint of metal moved there now.
Lorna was working at the old shaft.
The plate grew warm in Briar’s hand.
She wrapped it in her bandana and put it in her jacket pocket.
“We need to see Aru again.”
They climbed to the entrance.
Lorna had bolted a steel grate halfway across the opening, but one side still stood open.
Briar slipped through before Mace could stop her.
Inside, the tunnel was dark and cold.
A generator chugged somewhere deeper.
The pod sat on a low cart under a worklight.
Aru was awake.
She turned her head as Briar came close.
Her pale eyes were not human, but they were patient.
She pressed four fingers to the glass.
Briar held up the plate.
Aru’s face changed.
She reached for the pod’s wall and began to tap in short bursts.
A shape glowed on the glass in front of her.
It showed the mountain with a beam inside it.
Then the beam was broken.
A dark wave rolled over the valley below.
“She’s saying if you destroy it,” Mace said from the entrance, “something worse comes.”
Briar looked back.
“How do you know?”
“I don’t. I’m reading the picture.”
Aru tapped again.
This time the image changed.
The beam rose from the mountain in a clean line.
Far away, an object above the clouds tipped sideways and slid into the dark.
Below, small silver marks lit up across the hillside.
Hundreds of them.
“She’s showing us the other way,” Briar said.
Lorna’s voice came from behind them.
“The other way is the one that ends us.”
She stood in the tunnel mouth, her jacket torn at the shoulder.
“The beacon can be destroyed from the chamber. I can still stop this without drawing a map to every one of our families.”
Aru shook her head.
The pod showed the image again.
Break the beam, and the dark wave.
Briar turned the plate in her hand so Lorna could see it.
Lorna didn’t reach for it.
“You left this on the truck seat,” Briar said. “Keys in. You could take it right now.”
“It’s a flat piece of metal in my hands,” Lorna said. “It wakes for the mark and nobody else. I took the box Thursday so you wouldn’t try it blind. I left it on the seat because there was nothing in it I could use.”
“You called her Aru. Thursday.” Briar kept her eyes on her mother. “How did you know that?”
“She told me. Hand flat on her chest, three clicks, while you were staring at your arm.” Lorna’s mouth tightened. “I said it back and she nodded.”
The old crash sketch was still in Mace’s hand.
Briar took it from him and tilted it toward the worklight.
Under the circle in the clouds, tiny hatch marks fanned down over the valley, like rain.
She had taken them for a smudge.
Ephraim had written one word beside them.
He had pressed so hard the pen tore the paper.
Welcome.
The silver along Briar’s arm went cold.