Jacky and Rad and the chief joined him, and the chief began talking incomprehensibly about the skull. Marty would have given anything to have been able to understand him.

“Where?” he demanded.

“Where?” the chief said.

“For the love of God,” Marty griped. “How do we get through to him?”

Jacky pointed at the skull, then raised a hand in a salute over her eyes, pantomiming looking around.

“Where?” the chief repeated.

“Yes, where?” Marty snapped. “Where the bloody hell did you find it?”

“Easy, Marty,” Rad said. “He doesn’t understand.”

“I know he doesn’t. But it’s a simple question, isn’t it?”

She touched the chief’s wrist to get his attention. She pointed at the skull, then shrugged in feigned bafflement, turning left and right, as if she were searching for something.

The chief spoke a word they had come to associate with the moonshine.

“We don’t want anything more to drink!” Marty said. “We want to know where you found that!” He jabbed a finger at the skull.

The chief stared at him blankly.

Rad said, “Maybe you can come back with a Vedda translator, Marty?”

“Know any good ones?” he asked sardonically.

“They would have found it on the beach,” said Jacky. “Where else would they have found it? It washed up, or maybe a complete merfolk washed up, and they only kept its skull? Either way, isn’t that all that matters? That it washed up on the beach? Now you know merfolk are definitely in these waters.”

Rad said, “She’s right, Marty.”

“I know she’s right. It’s just… Perhaps there are more somewhere, more remains. Perhaps the skull is from a graveyard of sorts. Something like that… A discovery like that…”

“Hey,” Jacky said, “where are you going?”

The chief had started walking away from them and gestured for them to follow.

∆∆∆

He led them out of the village and through lush rainforest for about ten minutes before coming to a depression carved into the vegetation. At the bottom was the crumbling mouth of a cave, overarched by an eldritch, gnarled tree with beards of moss and lichen veiling the darkness beyond. Just inside the cavity was a stockpile of resources from the village. The chief quickly went to work creating a fire in a nearby stone-ringed pit. He retrieved a torch that lay next to the pit, smeared the cloth-wrapped end in what appeared to be animal fat, and lit it in the fire. Holding the brightly burning torch above his head, he gestured once again for them to follow.

“Where’s he taking us?” Jacky asked. “There clearly won’t be merfolk bones in a cave.”

“I’ll go,” Marty said. “You two can wait here.”

“Forget that!” said Rad. “I live for creepy crawly cave walks.”