The boy stopped in front of a collapsed shambles of mud and a half-toppled acacia. He pointed eagerly at something orange and white, exposed by the great tree’s roots as it had fallen over in the rain. Banyard stared, keeping his distance. His boots ruined for a bloody rock? His fist clenched on the stick. He would strike the child, just to make a point. The boy grabbed his hand again and yanked.

Banyard tried to resist, and that was probably the main reason he wasn’t limber enough to avoid falling down to his hands and knees, his face a mere foot from the exposed thing that had excited the child. It wasn’t just a rock, Banyard saw: there was something within the rock.

Curious, he tried to turn the rock around, but there was still a much-larger part of it under the tree and hill. So, he finally turned himself around, and that’s when he saw what it was.

“A child, surely,â€? he muttered, uncertain. The local child who led him out here shouted something cryptic.