The End of Time by Avi

Author:Avi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2010-08-31T04:00:00+00:00

17

I STARTED BACK in fright. Moonlight revealed the skull to be old, brown, and smashed in on one side, as if the person had been struck and thereby killed. Perhaps he had been a man of importance. He might as well have been a nobody. What could he tell me, teach me, warn me about? Though it was empty of life, I felt the skull was observing me. Disturbed, I made the sign of the cross over it and murmured a prayer for the person’s soul.

Even then I was not sure what to do. I had no desire to have a grinning skull for my night’s companion. Yet the place I’d discovered was better than anywhere else I’d found. In the end I decided to stay where I was, but rebury the bones.

Again making the sign of the cross—this time for my own protection—I edged nearer to the skull. I was about to replace the stones when I realized that the skull was resting not on earth but on the edge of a box.

I peered closer—the eye sockets were staring right up at me—and realized the box was made of iron. I studied it, wondering if it might contain anything of value. The thought of pulling it out and opening it came to me. But though this was clearly not holy ground, I feared doing so would be disturbing a burial.

I went back to where I’d been and tried to settle myself. It wasn’t long before the heat of my work left me. I became colder than before.

As I lay there, trying to control my shivering, I kept thinking about that box, wondering what it might contain.

Impulsively I scrambled around, knelt by the skull, and began to pull away more stones until the box was much exposed. When it proved larger than I’d first perceived, my fancy began to enlarge in equal measure. Perhaps it held gold, or jewels. I might be as rich as Rauf! I could buy my own and Owen’s freedom.

I yanked away more stones until the box was completely uncovered. It was not so big that I could not wrap my arms around it. But to retrieve it, I would have to shift the skull.

Even as I told myself I might suffer for such actions, I gently shifted the skull—how weightless is an old death!—and pulled at the box. As I did, the skull fell back. In doing so, it twisted toward me, grinning, as if to watch what I was doing. Stifling my disquiet, I examined the box closely. Moonlight revealed a lid with a rusty clasp. I plucked it open and lifted the lid.

Inside was cloth. When I lifted it out, it proved to be a woven wool coat, enriched with some small embroidery as well as metal clasps. Beneath lay plain leggings, leather boots, even a dark over-tunic with a long-tailed hood. Nothing else. No purse or wealth of any kind. Yet to my eyes, what I had found was far better than jewels.

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