The rock had eyes. Not just eyes: there was a mouth of chipped teeth in a crooked jaw beneath them, and underneath that, vanishing into the wrinkled, flat orange stone the acacia roots had tried to pierce and finally had curled around, you could see thinner bones—a clavicle, surely, and perhaps part of a rib.

Was it a child? Banyard wondered. The head was small, but it was also curiously flat and sloped on top. It struck him that there was something curious in the skull’s expression—something feral and wise. Banyard could see the way the jaw had probably jutted forward before being smashed flat and broken in what had once been mud.

Once been…