OTHERBORN: THE DIG [WP PROLOGUE EDITION]

NINE

I'm sure that feeling sorry for myself isn't part of my present assignment—reflection—but I'm too profoundly discouraged right now to want to be entirely clear. And then I hear...

"Alejandro... Ermano, Brother, you there?"

I jerk again...like out of stone sleep. "What?—a vision? Mateo!" Then I recover my mind, and in barely a whisper, I urge, "It's Kai now."

"Oh, yeah, I forgot," the voice of my cousin speaks—his silhouette, by the mouth of the rock. "Are you real?"

"I am, Brother."

I've been given my new tribal name at my nine winters mark. "Kazio", means I'm of peacekeeper clan, but some days I think it's more of what Grandfather wishes, and he's saying so by lending me just such a name.

After Ceremony, all the children are to call you only your tribal name until you can wear this with unflinching pride. I guess I have managed. I'm used to it now.

I was certain at first I could live up to a "peacekeeper" name. But after this...they'll know I have failed all of them. I'm no longer sure.

I am now called Kai Bueno Luis, in the tradition of white folk, for I must consider their schools, Reggie tells me. I'd begged for this white-sounding, multi-part name, and it took much convincing. Whoever Alejandro (my translation) once was as an infant—his past, where he's from—he's long gone by now.

The Circle of All Tribes was eventually consulted, and that isn't 'done', but Reggie had pushed them with Grandfather's approval. And they went along. So, after whatever he said, I was allowed to have the two extra names, should I need them one day.

It gives me the only real hope I have that I'll be allowed to go there one day. And that I'll be worthy... It did before now! Can it still? "What are you doing?" I ask.

"I came to save you!" Mateo's voice says. He's still a silhouette in the mouth of the cave.

"It will be light soon. You cannot get caught. You will be spotted!"

"No, I won't. I crept down from behind the boulders above, in the shadow of first light on the top—not up from the cliffs."

"You climbed along the back canyon wall in the dark?"

"Of course! No one will see. I'll leave in a moment. I just brought you this."

I gasp first, as I see the skull outlined against the increasing pale gray beyond the cave mouth, then I moan with moving muscles unaccustomed to use.

Mateo walks the skull towards me.

I scramble to reach. "Is it all right?"

"I don't know. How bad was it before you dropped it?"

I realize he's teasing. I ignore him.

"Arrepentirse! I cannot see him." I speak like Hueso Amigo is a person.

"I better get out." Mateo, heads back to the entrance. "Me lo debes mucho, you owe me," he says, from a dark corner and vanishes, as mists drift away, and Songwolf is gone.

It's what I call him. And he's right, this very much warrants a great deal of repayment.

Songwolf, not his name yet, at least it's not for a while, is younger than me. And I doubt I'll be able to bestow the clan names, like the others—not at least, until I've done something so brave and valiant for all to hear of this moment, and to earn me such rights. I will be old then.

I thrill again at touching the skull. The cave echos my sounds. It is so empty here.

I could swear Songwolf was never here...except that I'm holding my skull! "Are you real too?" I stroke the round smoothness of Amigo's barely-cracked head. I want to cry, I'm so relieved. But my aching relief distracts me from tears.