Mazelton woke up hurting. It took a moment for the pain to be understood- his ribs had been broken and rebroken so many times in the past couple of weeks, it was a wonder he hadn’t punctured a lung. He could hypnotize himself to fall asleep, but all those mental defenses were down as he woke up.

He brought his attention to the strut- hah, the rib- holding up the roof of his tent. He picked a point directly above his eyes and focused. He brought his breathing into focus. He consciously acknowledged his pain. He really focused down to where it hurt, as specifically as possible. And then he pushed his mind past. Acquainted himself with today’s body. And once he had examined every muscle from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, he got up, and went about his day.

It’s not that his ribs had stopped hurting. It was just that he knew everything else was generally fine. Bruised, stiff, strained, covered in cuts and scratches that would need careful cleaning, though thankfully not stitching- basically fine. He would live.

He started his morning routine, maintaining the body and the living space, ensuring that things were just as they should be. It was comforting, and he knew his day would be the better for it. He frowned a bit, thinking through yesterday’s conversation. What did he want from this marriage?

Safety, security, peace, a continuation of the clan which was so much of his identity. Inseparable from his identity. Ma Clan, Zel Generation. The least important bit of his name was the part that referred strictly to him- Ton. And that was chosen out of the big jar of names by whoever was on duty at the maternity ward, then discarded into the jar of names for the next generation.

Being a Ma was a genetic legacy, but it was also an intellectual and cultural legacy. It was the traditions and the craft, and the mindset. A mindset that he accepted the way he accepted gravity, but he was repeatedly told, by people who knew better, that Danae would never accept.

And that was a problem. He could reconcile his faiths, but could he reconcile his identities? It seemed perfectly natural to him to train a child’s hardiness with thin blankets and strict conditioning. But none of the Dusties in the caravan did so. Smacked their kids around, yes, but in anger or frustration. That was just bad parenting. None of the systemic education of the survival instinct that had defined his childhood.

Was that something he could reconcile with Danae? Lettie had called his childhood nightmarish, which was bizarre coming from her. The Pi had their own weird customs, and the private belief of the other Great clans was that their odd inheritance resulted in almost universal mental illness. The wild swings from blind idealism to consuming paranoia were almost synonymous with the clan. Who was the most egotistical, the Pi or the Xia, was still hotly debated.

He packed up the little camp table, smiling as its legs neatly folded up underneath it. Always so satisfying, the way it tucked itself away. He remembered the little display table next to the door in his parent’s apartment, polished to a fine ruddy sheen, ready for a new skull to display.

Wait. Wait just one damn second. The skull. All this started over the skull. The glowing skull. The glowing skull that Lettie still had. Why that sneaky little shit.

Mazelton calmly packed away his tent. Duane was his usual superb self, and silently helped pack and load when he saw Mazelton’s ribs pained him. He hoped Duane would change his mind and marry his kids into the clan. He was too good to leave running around in the wild. He then calmly selected a stout stick, and went to find Lettie. Calmly. Extremely calmly. Possibly, just possibly, the most calmly.

He found her buried deep amongst the independents. Her wagon was jarringly clean, its light blue paint still fresh, its wood unmarred, and even the canvas cover was in near new condition. Her auroch was cropping the grass nearby, looking strong and fit. The morning light refined its red fur, spinning it into fiery gold. The other aurochs around it didn’t look half so fine.

Next to the tidy wagon and admirable auroch was a inky black pavilion, some three meters tall and perhaps two meters on the square. It was like someone had spilled ink into the world and some frantic painter had tried to confine it to a fortune teller’s tent. Mazelton had a mind to barge in, but decided that life still had its sweetness and yelled instead.

“Knock Knock. The Office of Mazelton, Mazelton, and Stick are here to discuss skull theft.”

“It isn’t theft, you loaned it to me!” Her voice shouted out from the pavilion.

“Taking something with the intent to permanently deprive its owner of its use and benefit is theft. My attorney and spiritual advisor, Stick, is insistent on this point. Come on out and let him explain it to you.”

“What’s an attorney?”

“An excellent question. An attorney is a stick used to beat the law into you.” He waved the stick pointedly in the air. “There may be other meanings. Let’s explore together.”

Lettie came out, arms crossed but pistol belted on. “Wasn’t trying to permanently deprive you of it. I would have returned it.”

“When, exactly?”

She looked away.

“I’m not done studying it.”

“What do you mean, not done studying it? What’s to study? How it’s turning from normal bone into a glowing skull? How much could you really learn on the trail?” Mazelton shook his head disdainfully. Then shook his stick reprovingly. Mr. Stick had an ethical obligation to diligently and zealously represent his client, after all.

Lettie glanced around. They had drawn a lot of eyes. She leaned in towards Mazelton and whispered: “It’s not done transforming. It’s not just a skull. I think it’s a map.”

Lettie hauled Mazelton into the little pavilion. The walls absorbed sound and light almost perfectly. This was apparently quite necessary as the skull was even more blinding than before. She had draped some of the light absorbing cloth over the skull, and handed Mazelton a blindfold.

“I only have the one welder’s mask. This will have to do for eye protection.”

”How am I supposed to see anything through a blindfold?”

“Oh, that’s not going to be a problem.”

She pulled a thread which lifted the cloth off the skull. The light was suddenly everywhere, harsh, almost stinging on his skin. It was kicking out a significant amount of radiation. He was surprised Lettie could stand it. The blindfold was enough to block most of the light, but Lettie was right- he could see the skull just fine.

It was refining itself, Mazelton concluded, becoming a little denser and much thinner, as whatever process was creating the light worked through the material of the skull. Little etchings appeared. There had been runes and patterns carved on it before, but those had sublimated and shifted into strange new diagrams.

Sometimes the patterns looked like a star map, elsewhere like topography, and yet other places like mathematical progression in a numerical language he didn’t speak. It was beautiful, in a way the Insect had never been. He wondered if her madness came from carrying such a superb skull. Or if it was her cult that transformed her worthless head into art.

“You dare to say that this is a bad wedding present? This is high art!”

“It’s a damn skull, Mazelton.” Lettie said in a tired voice. “And Danae isn’t going to give a damn about whatever riddles are carved into it. I, on the other hand, really do. Look, do you see this collection of dots here?”

“Yes, it looks like a star map.”

“I think it is. I think it's a very precise set of stellar arrangements that exist when viewed from the location shown on the topographical map here, and when the stars align, something happens. Maybe you have to crack whatever code is going on over here, or use it to open something. Maybe it’s a key.”

“Ok. So?”

“So? SO? Mazelton, this is a riddle that is a key to something incredible! I don’t know what it is, but look how elaborate the whole thing is. It is just impossible to have done all this as a prank, or as mere religious symbolism.”

“You, ah, aren’t big on religion, huh.”

“I have my own views. Why?”

“There is no such thing as “mere religious symbolism.” Entire mountains have been carved to honor a faith or religion.”

“That’s- are you talking about Mount Ephistioa?”

“Yep. Hand carved for five thousand years by the Gentle Sisters of the Syncretic Worshipful Convents of East and West, until they met at the peak. I have seen pictures. It’s gaudy, but sincere.”

“We are getting side tracked here. It’s a map on a chemically transforming skull that had a living brain inside of it, until it ran into a particularly bloody minded, vengeful Ma. What you were avenging, I don’t know, but I am sure it was something.”

“Oh? Why do you think that?”

“Because it is kicking out enough heat that my dosimeter is turning black at a terrifying rate. I have my own ways of managing the heat, of course, but I try to keep it shielded as much as possible.”

“That wasn’t me. The radiation poisoning I gave her would have been confined almost entirely to soft tissue. There would be some bone penetration, maybe even into the marrow, but not nearly enough to radiate this hard. In fact, it’s probably put out more heat since I have been in here than I put into the Insect and her mate over months.”

“I knew it!”

“I mean, they died of completely natural causes?”

“You stabbed them to death then decapitated them.”

“What could be more natural than that? Little miss “human-ish.”

“I can slap your head clean off.”

“Prone to violence too. Tsk tsk. Truly the Pi are a Clan of monsters. But let’s not discuss your personal failings. We don’t have all day.” Mazelton smiled kindly. “Let’s return to the skull. You think it is both map and key, as well as some kind of novel chemical process that can convert bone matter into what looks kind of like porcelain, but isn’t.”

“Right. Although, “chemical” is a bit of an understatement. How much do you know about nanotechnology?”

“Don’t fuck with it, and don’t assume you can kill it with fire. Hard heat, and lots of it.”

“Alright, look, “nanotechnology” is more of a branding thing than any kind of useful, specific noun. It just means really, really small tools. And those tools can be anything from electrical machines, chemical machines, or even biological machines that blur the line between biology, chemistry and mechanics.”

“Eh?”

“Look at your mitochondria some time, or RNA at work. It’s incredible stuff.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“Point is that what’s going on in the skull is, yes, a chemical transformation, but there is stuff going on in there that looks like it’s running a program of some kind. Like it is transforming along set paths, and the chemistry is a means. If that makes sense.”

“Not really?”

Lettie waved her hands in frustration.

“I am wondering if there aren’t tiny machines working alongside the chemical reaction, so tiny and so like chemical molecules that I am not detecting them. Or not understanding what they are when I do detect them.”

“I am really not trying to be shitty here, but that is one hundred percent a Pi thing and not a Ma thing. You guys are in charge of the Black Dust.”

“I know, and I agree. I don’t want your help to solve this. I just want to keep studying it for longer, and will lose my goddamn mind if it’s just locked in a box on your wagon for the rest of the journey, then gets turned into an overhead light fixture in your future home.”

“Oh you can keep it. Yeah, take it as a wedding present, from my family to yours. Look at it and toast the many happy years of marriage Danae and I will doubtless have together.”

“Eh?”

“After consulting with Mr. Stick, we have decided that, while glowing skulls are awesome, glowing skulls kicking off hard radiation around hopefully soon to be pregnant women is a shockingly dumb idea.” He waived the stout stick reprovingly. “We generously gift the radioactive, chemically active, nanotech hazard to one Letti Pi, long may she live. We ask that all letters of admiration be sent to Mr. Stick, as I value my privacy.”

Lettie’s face started twitching.

“And the astonishing trove of ancient and forgotten treasures that it points to?”

“Mmm. Months or years of adventure, trekking across glorious mountain ranges, matching wits and fists against the desperate, mad dreamers in prospecting camps, then plumbing the depths of some unfathomable ruin seeking treasures that our meger comprehension cannot even imagine?”

“Right!”

“I’m going to plant a garden, figure out how to be good to my wife, and raise a big family. You do it.”

Polyclitus moved them out quickly, and kept them moving quickly. The caravan had lost almost half of its number from casualties and the Collective splitting away. The weathered man took it hard. Mazelton knew that Polyclitus had been proud of the relatively safe crossing, even with all the strangeness along the way. To lose all that, even when it wasn’t really his fault, hurt. Mazelton could sort of understand.

“Like the trail won’t ever let you be any kind of safe. Like there isn’t any such thing as a safe crossing, and the trail will always demand its measure of blood and pain.” Mazelton murmured as he watched Polyclitus silently wolf down lunch. Duane just nodded sadly.

They were turning away from the massive river that they had been following north through the mountains, ready to turn west and south again. Mostly south from here on out, thought Mazelton. Mostly south, until he had to leave the caravan and go up another huge river to New Scandie. Not long now.

The mountains were playing their usual games, seeming to distort your sense of scale. You were high up on a ridge- until you realized that you were down in a river valley. Then UP! The slope was easy, until it was near vertical. Then easy again. Some of the greenest land he had ever seen, and then they turned the corner of a mountain, and saw sheer rock covered in blinding white snowcaps. Mazelton just stared with his mouth open. What were mountains? This. These were mountains. This was your authentic mountain pass, with everyone looking up and fearing a rock fall.

It was all so big. So utterly indifferent. Mazelton could understand why Polyclitus found it malicious, but Mazelton disagreed. He was used to alien gods, and these mountains struck him as no different.

It was a dry camp that night, and dim in the shadow of the mountains. The campfire broke up early, and Mazelton was glad to retreat to his tent. He started sketching Danae in the blue dress. He didn’t know her height, exactly, but he could guess size and proportions from her picture. He would just tack the dress together once he cut it. The final fitting would be done on Danae herself.

Would she be flattered, flustered, by the fine blue fabric? She knew he knew how to tailor clothes, he had told her so in his letters, but seeing him do it would probably bewilder her. Plenty of people knew how to cut clothes in a village. Not many could make the beautiful dresses that were considered quite collectable by the cognoscenti of Old Radler.

Mazelton smiled down at the paper. He had started to draw a robe around her, all billowing and swirling, like the vast river they had traveled along. He loved robes, with all their billowing sleeves and sweeping skirts, and quite missed wearing them. The tunic and trousers were very practical, immensely more so than his gossamer robes. But much less elegant. The dreams they carried were those of a hard life well lived, and not much more.

He hissed and pressed his hand over his chest. His ribs had been burning all day, but now they stabbed insistently. He put down the pencil and went to bed. He could dream just as well asleep.