One by one, he began pulling bones out of the pile; examining them; setting them on the ground beside him.

At the sight, Linden’s mind went blank.

She could not think or feel; could not react. Paralysis stopped her private world. Words seemed to whirl through her like stars and wink out as if every form of language had become incomprehensible. She had no name for what she was seeing.

He had already selected five bones, no, six. Two were twisted into unworldly shapes, but they appeared intact. One resembled the metatarsus of a creature large enough to dwarf a Giant. The others looked like phalanges of various sizes. Now he put his hands on a bone that might have been a mammoth femur.

It was splintered at one end, or perhaps in the middle, obviously broken. Still it should have been too heavy for him to lift. But ages of the sun’s heat had cooked out most of its substance, or it was as hollow as a bird’s—or he had become supernally strong. Without any visible strain, he took the bone from the heap, tested it in his grasp, then placed it carefully on the ground as if its position required precision.

Jeremiah—

That was as far as Linden could go.

He moved a step to the side, studied the pile. After a moment, he found two more bones like long candles that had been heated in their centers, warped into useless twists. He collected several more phalanges, another metatarsus, a massive lump like a talus. From the abundant clutter, he extracted a second femur, a match to the first. This he set exactly parallel to the first with the space of a long stride between them.

Jeremiah was—

Displaying the same steady lack of impatience or doubt that had characterized his work with Legos or Tinkertoys in his former life, he gathered more bones. Some he found nearby. Others he discovered hidden within the heap. Phalanges by the dozens. Five more femurs that he should not have been strong enough to move, one of them whole. A number of metatarsals. And as he added to his selections, his choices became more diverse: cuboid shapes and tarsal lumps; a variety of scapulae that had apparently belonged to some titan; joint-bones with condyle sockets wide enough to cover Linden’s head, or Stave’s. All of these he arrayed in an open space like a craftsman readying his materials.

When he was satisfied, he stooped to his parallel splintered femurs and began to balance other bones on top of them as though he intended them to serve as foundations. As though he were constructing walls.

Jeremiah was building.

That’s natural talent. Roger’s tone had falsified everything he said; but he had told the truth about Jeremiah. The right shapes can change worlds. They’re like words.

Linden struggled against blankness until her heart felt ready to burst. She had to fight to breathe. She had forgotten any words that were not prayers. Oh my God. Oh my God. OhmyGod.