It was Jak who found the thing. That didn't surprise anyone in the least, since he was always stuffing his den with anything unusual: a pebble glinting with mica, a particularly bright maple leaf, two acorn caps joined at the stem, a withered chrysalis. The rakuun expected such behavior in kits, who couldn't keep their eager little paws off anything whether it was useful or edible or not, but one expected more sense from him now that he was considered an adult and had a den of his own.

The nursing sows all shook their heads whenever he showed off his newest find. He would never find a mate that way, they said. A shame, really. He was young and might father strong kits, but what female would risk her children inheriting such an odd habit?

Jak had been searching for acorns when he saw an unusual glint of light in the dirt. True to form, the acorns were instantly forgotten, and his nimble fingers scraped the packed soil and leaf litter away. He thought at first it might be a black rock, but once it was free, it wasn't like any rock he'd ever seen.

He turned the thing in his paws, watching how the sunlight bounced off its surface. It was shinier than a beetle's shell. He put it in his mouth and nibbled experimentally, but it didn't taste like much of anything except for the earth it had been in. It did make an interesting sound against his teeth, though.

Then he realized the thing opened like a mussel shell, hinged on one side. He pried it open carefully, hoping for a morsel of chewy meat inside, but instead there was a segmented pad like the underside of a turtle, with strange little spots in each section. He pressed the sections and found them slightly spongy.

Was it a shell? He sniffed and pried and poked, but nothing came out. Perhaps the living thing inside had died long ago.

Jak had no idea what it was--except that it was, without a doubt, the best thing he had ever found.

His mother was on forage that day, keeping to the cycles that supplied food for the clan. He found her collecting caterpillars in the far trees, prying open rotting logs and depositing her finds in the basket beside her, then fitting the lid back on snugly to keep them from escaping. Back at the clan fire, these would be toasted and eaten warm from communal baskets passed around until they were empty.

"Mother!" Jak rushed up to her. "Mother, look what I found today. I've never seen anything like it."

Nilsa plucked a particularly fat brown caterpillar from one of the pieces of bark and slipped it into the basket with one swift, efficient motion. Then she looked up to see what her son was holding out to her. "What is it?"

"I don't know," Jak said. "That's why it's so special. Have you ever seen anything like it?"

She took it from him, turning it over in her paws, her long fingers searching at the edges, stroking over the smooth surface.

"It opens," Jak said. "There--like a shell--like that."

Nilsa sniffed at the inside of the thing, touching it to her nose. "It smells... different."

"I know," Jak said. "It's not a shell, or a stone, but I don't know what it is. Do you think Wascher would know?"

Nilsa handed the object back to him. "I wouldn't bother him with this," she said gently.

"But if anyone's seen anything like this before, it'd be him."

Nilsa sighed and nuzzled her son's ruff. "Jakeri," she said softly, the name only she, as the one who suckled him, was able to use. "These things you find, they're always... very interesting. But there are a lot of other important things to think about."

She rested a hand on her belly. "I'll have a new litter soon to look after. You have a den of your own now. I think it's time you started looking for someone to share it with, to be part of the clan."

Jak blinked. "I am part of the clan. Aren't I?"

"Of course you are," she said soothingly, but the worried look in her eyes said something else entirely. "I just don't want to see you worry so much about these things you find."

"I don't worry about them, Mother. I just think about them." He pried the thing open again, turning it over, testing it with his teeth. "It's so strange, isn't it? Hard like a stone, but light, and it almost sounds hollow. Almost like an eggshell, but thicker."

Nilsa turned back to the log, searching through the bits of bark in case she'd missed anything. She found two small grubs and added them to the basket. When she looked up again, Jak had already gone.

Wascher was the oldest of them, though no one knew by how much. His fur had faded to white in places, and though he spent most of his time sleeping and never went foraging anymore, he was given the first choice of food. If he did not arrive when meals were eaten, morsels were set aside for him and left outside his den until he wanted them.

Jak trotted eagerly through the forest, carrying the mysterious thing clenched in his teeth. It was slippery, and he almost dropped it twice. He was beginning to feel certain that the thing was not alive, and that it was not a dead thing either, but a thing like a stone, only he was sure as well that it was not a stone.

Jak paused outside Wascher's den. It was a fine, old, dry den, dug by a groundhog ages before, and in the seasons since, Wascher had added a bit here and taken away a bit there until everything was just so. It was warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer than the tree-dens they usually used.

Jak listened a moment, but he heard no snoring from inside. He wasn't sure what Wascher did when he wasn't sleeping, but maybe he was just thinking. The old rakuun was wise, after all, and he carried more memories than anyone. Jak hoped some of those memories were about the thing he carried.

Jak hesitated, then churred a polite, rising note and waited for a reply. A few moments passed. He churred again, a bit louder this time. Wascher was a bit deaf in one ear; perhaps that one was closest to the den-mouth.

At last Wascher waddled out. "What? Oh. You again." He sighed. "All right, let's have it."

Jak held the object out with both hands, respectfully. Wascher reached for it slowly, and that hesitance set Jak's heart beating faster. This was no common find, then. Either it was something truly rare and precious, or it was something Wascher had never seen before-though surely Wascher had seen everything there was.

"Hm," the rakuun grunted. He bit the thing, a little harder than Jak had. He was obviously trying not to act surprised, but Jak saw how long it took him to figure out that the thing opened on one side. He must have never seen it; otherwise he would know. Jak's pulse raced.

Finally Wascher looked back at Jak. "Come inside."

No one was ever invited into Wascher's den. Jak shivered from a mixture of excitement and nerves, then followed Wascher inside.

He was expecting to see unusual things in Wascher's den, maybe something even like his own collection, but it was as ordinary a space as anyone else's. The usual water-basket sat just inside the entrance, and Jak dipped his hands in politely as he entered. A neat pile of shells was heaped in one corner, and a few lidded baskets for storing food lined one earthen wall. Beyond, he could see a short tunnel that no doubt led to Wascher's sleeping-space, a smaller room that his body heat could easily warm.

Jak sat patiently as Wascher examined the thing. He sniffed it all over, tasted it, listened to the sounds it made against his teeth and his claws, dunked it in the water-basket, and felt it all over again. Then he sat there on his haunches for a few minutes, holding the thing and just looking at it. Jak was bursting with questions, but he stayed quiet. Whatever Wascher had to say about it, he wouldn't be rushed.

"Hm," Wascher said at last. Several long moments passed. "Hm." At last he laid the thing down between them, shuffled to one of the baskets, and took out a pipe made of clay and bone. "You smoke?"

Jak shook his head.

"Oh. Well, help yourself to the baskets, then."

Wascher lit his pipe from coals in a clay jar near the door. Jak tried not to cough; the smoke had a thick, muddy scent. He went to the food baskets and peeked inside. One was empty except for a few crumbs. Another held a few toasted caterpillars that looked as if they'd been there for days. The last one was half-full of dry corn, so Jak took a small handful of the kernels and made his way back to where Wascher sat.

The older rakuun blew smoke out slowly and thoughtfully. "I don't know what it is," he said at last.

Jak nearly choked on the kernel he was chewing. He had never, ever heard Wascher admit to not knowing something. Even the thought that he might not know seemed not only impossible, but ridiculous.

"It may be," Wascher continued, spacing each word carefully, "it may be, that this is a thing from Before."

"From Before?" Jak echoed in a whisper. "I didn't know there were things from Before. Not things you could still touch."

"That's because you're young," Wascher said. "There are a few things that remain from Before, but most of them are big. Stones in odd places. That sort of thing. And some say that the corn we eat"--gesturing to the yellow kernels Jak still held--"was planted by those who lived Before."

Jak had heard those stories when he was a kit, colorful tales of how the trees and streams and fish were made, how crawfish got their claws and mussels their shells. But he'd never truly thought of those who lived Before as real. When he told Wascher this, the old rakuun snorted. "Of course they were real. We know that. You should know that too. Don't they teach that to kits anymore?"

"The ones Before loved us," Jak said hesitantly. "They made corn grow in great fields for us to eat. They made the streams and the fish and the things that scuttle in the mud. They knew they could not stay, and they made the earth ready for us."

"Possum scat," Wascher said. "They lived and they died, and if you ask me they probably died because they were stupid."

Jak toyed with the corn kernels, stirring them in his palm before choosing one and crunching it quietly.

"I know what you're thinking," Wascher said. "And it doesn't matter, really. They're gone, so when you come right down to it, whether they loved us or hated us or didn't even know we were there, what difference does it make?"

Jak said nothing, but he couldn't help feeling that it did matter somehow. Not in any way that affected the corn harvest or how many fish they caught in a day, of course, but still... "Isn't it nicer, though," he offered finally, "to think that they loved us?"

Wascher puffed his pipe and regarded Jak though the curling smoke. "Like I said, you're young."

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment--uncomfortable for Jak, anyway; he couldn't tell what Wascher was feeling, but he didn't look bothered by much of anything, not even the mystery that the strange object represented. Jak wondered for a moment if he should take up smoking--it certainly seemed to agree with Wascher--but he decided he wouldn't be able to deal with the smell.

Wascher picked the thing up again, holding it carefully in both hands. "If this is a thing from Before," he said, speaking more to the thing itself than to Jak, "there is one person who would know, but he lives far from here. I haven't seen him myself since I was your age. He might be dead by now, for all I know."

Jak waited, but Wascher said nothing more. His eyes had gone distant and unfocused, and Jak wasn't sure if it was from the pipe or if the rakuun was lost in memories.

At last Jak dared to speak. "Who?"

"Hm?" Wascher shook himself a bit and coughed. "His name is Inkari. He's not one of us."

"What is he?"

"Yotl."

"Is he... a friend of yours?" Jak had never seen one of the yotl; they had left the clan's lands ages before. But he had heard enough stories to make him wary.

Wascher half-shrugged. "In a manner of speaking. I wasn't born to this clan, you know. My mother denned in the Beforeplace; I don't know why. Maybe she was cast out of her clan, or maybe she never had one. She had two kits, but I was the only one who survived. And then she was gone. Left or died, I never knew.

"Inkari found me. It would have been easy enough to let me die, but he didn't. He kept me alive, and I stayed with him until I was about your age, and came here."

Jak looked down at the object. "And he would know what this is?"

"If he doesn't, no one does. It was all something of an obsession of his."

"Where does he live?"

"Well, if you leave tomorrow, you might make it there before the leaves are down."

Jak gulped. "That far?"

"That far. But you're young and strong, after all."

Jak looked at the thing, then at Wascher. "I... I don't think I can do that." He'd never gone beyond the wood and had never wanted to, but he couldn't tell Wascher that.

Wascher shrugged and turned away. "Suit yourself. If you change your mind, I can tell you the way. For now, I think I've had enough excitement for one day." He dropped to all fours and headed for the far chamber.

Jak took up the object again, cool and smooth in his hands, mysterious and wonderful. He opened it and traced the soft pad with the symbols. Would the yotl know what they meant?

His stomach growled. Outside, the sun was setting. He sighed, folded the thing back up, clenched it in his teeth, and headed for the clan-fire.

This excerpt and all characters (c) 2014 Renee Carter Hall ("Poetigress"), from Signal, published by
Goal Publications (www.goalpublications.com).