Mac held the skull in her hands. She had held many skulls in her days as a raider, but this one had a terrible weight to it. She could feel something stir within it, like a deadly snake wriggled behind those black eyes. The spiritual force it gave off was mirthless, chaining her to an unreality just beyond the veil that turned her stomach. Still, she couldn’t take her eyes off of it.

  Cathartes Voll waited patiently. His disgusting blindfold was fixed on Mac as he waited for her answer to his question, but the girl had been silent for quite a while now. “So… Where’d you get it?”

  “It belongs to a friend,” Mac murmured. She didn’t look up from the skull. The black gaze had her pinned like an insect on a sample board. “It was his friend.”

  Black teeth glittered in the fire light. Cathartes traced a bony finger in the fire. Grey skin sizzled, and the smell of slow roasting flesh filled the room. When he pulled it back, the finger gained a new pinkish color. The retinue of devils salivated over the stench of meat, and they stirred like a pack of restrained hounds. Cathartes sucked on the finger as he spoke. “Is your friend in the cells?”

  “No.”

  “That’s too bad. I’m very interested in these remains. Tell me, Macaw, do you believe in magic?”

  "Magic’s a load of crap,” she said automatically. She had always believed that. She had always been told that at least. To the Gordo clan, the only good sage was a dead one. But holding that skull was enough to turn her into a believer. The way it thrummed with power was exactly how she imagined a magician’s staff must feel when wielded.

  Cathartes was smiling, his chipped teeth drawing blood from the finger. He licked it up before it could reach the corners of his mouth. “Some people think so. When you get to be my age, you start to see that magic was there all along. When you feel the gusts of the winds, don’t you wonder where they drift from? Does the rain not inspire wonder in you? When the entire world shifts beneath our very feet, is there no awe to be felt? It’s all around us, deep in the earth and high in the air. You must simply be willing to breach that barrier in your mind. Breach the barrier and believe.”

  The band of inner circle cannibals were getting closer. While Mac stared into the skull, they reached for her. Dirt caked fingers raked at her bare legs. They snagged on her clothes like the dry tangle of dead branches. The girl couldn’t move, couldn’t wrench her eyes away from Rufus’s skull. Chipped nails lightly scratched her neck, and one of the fiends pressed its nose into her hair and sniffed.

  There was no such thing as magic, she told herself again. But there was a such thing as despair, as memories best left locked away and forgotten. The power that skull had over her didn’t come from Cathartes Voll or his court of devils. It wasn’t blessed by the earth or ordained by any god. It was in those damned eyes. If it wasn’t for those scabbed over, dreadful orbits, she wouldn’t have to remember. She could remain blissfully unaware of a past seeped in fear and despair. The memory of a mindless waster, the kind lost in their own prophecies and divined futures. The witches, she called them. The witches had eyes just like that, if not worse. Looking at Rufus’s skull, she could hear their gibbering voices. She could see the shadows behind the skull, loping on all fours as they reached for her.

  It was the best part of being a member of the Gordo clan. Jackmaw Yapyap’s degenerate warband was good for two things, acquiring new recipes for tinctures, and killing witches. And Mac loved to watch him kill witches. Sometimes she would find their mangled corpses after he got to them. If she was lucky, he would execute them in front of the clan. He always gave them a chance to live, to prove their worth to him. But what good was a mindless witch? He’d ask, “Where’s the emerald expanse?” the way a child might wonder about El Dorado or the fountain of youth. Those with any sense left would beg for their lives or capitulate to his childish curiosities. Any who were too long gone would spout out their prophetic nonsense. They’d call him names like Red Devil, The Scorpion’s Barb, The Infinite Drought, or The Cataclysm of Men. They’d always offer a cryptic message in place of cooperation, and depending on Jackmaw’s mood, that either earned them a death by the warlord’s bare hands, or a burning at the stake. And she loved to watch witches burn.

  The noise of sniffling in her ear and hot breath all around her was almost enough to tear her from the black eyes. She could feel them like ill-mannered children who couldn’t wait to say grace before tearing into their dinner. Knobbed fingers closed over the skull’s eyes, and the spell fled from her like a chill on a hot day. One moment she was in the grips of an unseen force, the next, she was fully aware of herself. The bodies of the inner circle were pressed to her. They weren’t gnawing on her anymore. All of them were upright and surrounding her like a cage that was too tight. Cathartes Voll stood before her, gripping Rufus’s skull and smiling with his glittering teeth.

  “Magic is real, Macaw. The best conduits for it are the remains of those who were beloved in life. Doubly so if they were cursed by the wasting. If this man was special enough to burden your companion with, then what we hold in our hands is one of the most powerful relics in the wasteland. I can feel it. Can’t you?”

  She couldn’t, not anymore. Not without the black eyes fixated on her, and definitely not while she was flanked by so many cannibals. Now all she felt was their skin, clammy and dreadful. She could smell their excited sweat, and the thought of being mashed between their toothy mouths made her twitch.

  “No, I can’t,” she said.

  “That’s too bad,” Cathartes replied. His grip on the skull tightened, and he ripped it away from her. Mac didn’t even realize she was reaching for it like a baby who just had their bottle taken away. Cathartes Voll sat on his mat and rolled the skull from one hand to another like a ball. “That’s too, too bad. They tell me you’re the only one in the cells who isn’t begging for their lives. Indulge me, Macaw. Do you understand how much danger you’re in?”

  “I’ll be ok,” she said, but deep in her gut, a splinter of ice formed and planted the seeds of doubt. The ragged, hungry bodies that touched her as they swayed in their trance bounced off of her, and she could feel their elation like electricity. She knew the way raiders were, and she waited for the snap of Cathartes Voll’s fingers to send them tearing into her. It was the way the rabble among the Gordo clan behaved. The strung out, new recruits with something to prove to their lieutenants and warlords. But this was an inner circle. This was the sanctum where the clan’s brightest gathered to assume command. And this clan’s brightest were drooling on her. They were as mindless as the witches she despised.

  Cathartes Voll grinned. In truth he hadn’t been able to do much else since Mac was brought to him, but her response seemed to make room in his cheeks for that smile to grow two sizes too big. “I hope so, Macaw. We are friends, after all. Unfortunately, my friends have taken note of you. They enjoy your kind best. Young, firm… female. You’re a delicacy. Any older and you might be too tough. Any younger and you might be too fatty. No, you’re perfect.”

  “Thanks,” Mac said. A stream of spittle poured from one of the inner circle member’s mouths. It dripped onto her shoulder and rolled down it like thick, stinking honey.

  “No, thank you. You’ve helped me more than you think.”

  He was about to give the order. She could tell their conversation was over and there was nothing more she could offer the warlord. Mac racked her brain for a response to buy her some time, to afford herself just a few more minutes. There was a trembling breath in her ear from one of the waiting members of the inner circle. She searched Cathartes Voll for something, anything that might spark his interest, but he hid all his secrets behind his filthy blindfold.

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  It was luck that saved her, and luck alone. Her hero came in ignobly, riding the grip of two large captors. He was thrashing and kicking like an animal that needed to be put down. Curses flew from his lips; the kind mothers shield their children’s ears from and spit in the direction of. Mac could have recognized that foul language in a crowd of sailors and mechanics. She turned and pushed one of the dripping inner circle members out of her way and saw him.

  “Krav?” she said. She didn’t realize she was smiling when she saw him. The boy from Agua Fria was wrenching and twisting between two thickly built guards. His thin arms look like they might break before the guards’ grips would, but that didn’t seem to stop Krav. Knowing him, she thought, he’d gnaw his limbs to stumps before allowing himself to surrender.

  “What’s this about?” Cathartes asked. He wiped stringy spit from the corners of his lips and rattled his staff of spinal bones. It sent the inner circle twisting back into the shadows, hissing and gnashing at the staff like defiant wolves against a taser prod.

  “The outside guys found him and a group of others up on the ridge. They said- Ouch!”

  His grip left Krav as the boy managed to drive an elbow into his kidney. The second guard laughed and now held Krav by both arms. The boy kicked and thrashed his head backwards to attempt a headbutt. It knocked against the barrel-chested Bone Eater without effect.

  The injured one struggled to regain his posture, but he was able to get a bit of payback as he stood. One fist cracked against Krav’s face, and he slouched in his captor’s arms. “Useless piece of-”

  “What’s the big deal? Kill him and sort through his shit like everyone else. He’ll be leftovers by tomorrow morning.”

  “The outside guys said-”

  “The outside guys? They have names. What’s the point of taking the time to name things if everyone’s just going to call them whatever they want?”

  Cathartes Voll’s staff clicked against the stone floors as he drew nearer to the guards. Somehow, Mac felt more exposed as he slinked away from her side. The eyes of the inner circle gleamed with exotic hunger, and they all locked onto her.

  He was bent like a very old man when he walked. Without the staff to lean on, he might have to walk on all fours like an animal. He was appraising the boy with his hands, feeling his features. The skin was rough, splotchy with sunburn in many of the spots he felt. His arms were thin but taught with youthful muscle. Cathartes could feel the boy’s ribs poking through his robes. This was a terrible meal, he thought. Barely good enough to be rations for his prisoners.

  “Sorry, Lord Voll! The drones found his group up on the ridge. They’re not sure who’s side he’s on. Could be a group of refugees from a settlement. Should we attack their camp? More could be up there.”

  “Now would be a bad time. I was just getting ready for breakfast. Send him to the chefs to cook up his scraps for the rest of the prisoners.” Cathartes Voll waved his knobby hand like he was lazily swatting a fly and turned back to his prized feast, the girl.

  She was about to say something. Not sure what, still, but something to save their lives. Mac didn’t have to, though. Another voice spoke up from the shadows. A member of the inner circle did have a voice, it seemed. But the figures that had pressed up against her just moments before were old, decrepit things. Elders kept alive too long by taboo consumption. She expected their voices to be reedy and full of bone dust. This man sounded strong and of middling age. When he moved, the whole of the cave wall did so with him.

  “You’d be wasting him,” grumbled Garth. “He was part of the resistance at Kiva Noon, even landed a blow on me.”

  “A wound you deserve. I might just wait for him to wake up just so I can offer him another chance at your empty head!”

  Garth made a low growl, then raised his voice slightly. Not enough to be screaming back at Voll, but enough to command the respect he felt he deserved as champion of the Bone Eaters. “They’re saying he came in a group, dumbass! And the last group he was in put up a better fight than we were prepared for. He could have brought an entire army to the hive!”

  Cathartes Voll shook as he held himself upright by his staff. He looked like an angry little goblin trying to come up with the perfect comeback to his wife’s bickering. For a long while, the only noise in the inner circle was the clicking bones on his staff and the crackle of the impassionate fire. All eyes were on the blind man, and he could feel them like expectant beggars. His jaw went left to right, then he said, “Garth, send as many as you need to go check out that ridge. The rest of you, get the prisoners back to their cages.” He turned and looked at Mac with unseeing eyes. “We’ll continue this shortly, my friend Macaw.”

  She had noticed he used that word a lot: friend. But her friends called her Mac.

  They were cast back into the darkness. Back into the cage where hope faded with the light and the stink of your neighbor pressed itself against you with nowhere else to go. Where bodies ungulated together in a single mass, and where voices were concordant in their helpless weeping. There, Krav was held upright against the wooden bars by the pressure of the rest of the prisoners. His head swam, but he was awake again. The world of the cage turned until he might vomit through the bars.

  Mac was pressed up against him by no fault of her own. She was shoving the other prisoners away, trying with all her strength to make a space for herself between them without any progress. In the end, she relented and was pushed into Krav. She was leaning on him, her chest feeling like it might crack against his if she didn’t take shallow breaths. The boy’s head was bent toward her, and it found comfort as it rested against her shoulder. Krav was on the verge of unconsciousness, and in this position, Mac felt a maternal sense flare up inside of herself. Something told her to let him rest there for as long as he wanted, but instead, she said, “Get off me! How the hell are we going to get out of here?”

  She was shoving him. Her hands were against the scratchy cloth robes pushing him against the bars until they creaked. Just as Mac’s motherly tenderness was blooming, Krav wanted to revert to a child’s state. He wasn’t long aged out of childhood. A boy of seventeen was a man in the valley, but only by virtue of experience. Had he been this age before the fall of civilization he might have just entered senior year of high school. Krav would be spending his days stressing over test scores and college admissions. Out here he had a kill count that was beginning to reach the double digits.

  Just as he had aged out of childhood, so too did he age out of childish activities. As far as he was concerned, resting his head against the comfort of a woman was a childish activity. Krav felt his chest shrink between her hands and the bars of the cage and he snapped his head up. “You’ve been here longer, don’t you have a plan?” he groaned and threw her hands away from him. The pressure of the crowd immediately stuck the two of them back together.

  “I had a plan, then they threw a wrench in it, and I’ve got a new plan.”

  “Mind letting me hear it? I want to get out of here too.”

  “Move!” She cried. Awkwardly, they shuffled around until they had switched positions. She was still facing him when she began to crouch. Her face slid down his chest, his stomach, and if Krav was a senior in high school at this very moment, he might have had a heart attack. But Mac wasn’t doing it for his sake. As soon as she reached his waist, she turned her head to the bars and bit into the cage.

  In the dark, Krav could only hear a splintering crunch. He couldn’t see Mac, but he could feel her head as she chewed at the cage like a rabid dog. “What the heck are you doing?”

  “Getting us out,” she said, spitting out the wooden fibers. “It’s just wood.”

  “They build houses out of wood, scab head. Do you really think they would build houses out of something a random person could eat through?”

  “I’m not just any random person, I am the Great Macaw, grand apothecary! If I can’t chew through wood, I don’t deserve to call myself a member of the Gordo clan!”

  “Why are you even chewing down there? I don’t like how close your teeth are to my junk!”

  “So that you can chew up there, stupid! Now get to work. They were talking about marching an army up to whatever army you guys brought to rescue us.”

  "Army? There isn't an army. We came here by ourselves, plus the guy from the bar."

  "The one who got us into this mess? I owe him a slap in the face and a kick in the balls!"

  Krav felt through the darkness like a blind man, letting the sweat drenched arm of another prisoner lead him to the cage wall. The bars were airy and light, but firm. If he couldn’t smell the earthy fragrance of sun-dried wood, he might have thought it was made of pocked bone. He tested the wood with a bite. It tasted salty and sour, like it had absorbed all the sweat and despair its prisoners had filled the cage with since its inception. His jaw clenched against it, and he could tell Mac was filled with some unholy dedication. He had eaten many things out of desperation in his life, but biting the wood was most like his experience with eating leather shoes. At least with the shoes he could pretend they were meat. Chewing the cage was like trying to break those bones attached to the meat.

  The two worked at the bars. A new metallic flavor touched Krav’s tongue, and he realized somewhere in his mouth he was bleeding. Mac had saliva dripping from both corners of her mouth as she munched away. There was a crack, and both of them knew that sound had to be a broken tooth, but neither could guess who it belonged to. They continued on until their lips were covered in splinters, their jaws felt like they were rusting near their temples, and fibers wedged between their teeth. It was an awful experience if there ever was one, gnawing wooden bars in the dark, but finally Krav heard a snap from his waist.

  “One down!” Mac said triumphantly. “A bunch to go.”