The symbol Ha had built was near the waterline, two meters from the wet sand that marked the water’s encroachment. It had taken her a few hours of careful work. She had built it of seaweed, dark stones, and driftwood. It was probably twice the size of a person. It was careful, exact, its edges defined against the sand:

The three points faced away from the water, back to the hotel. The curve of the crescent faced the sea. Evrim and Altantsetseg moved their lights over it, and then Evrim pointed at it, and at Ha. Ha nodded.

The other symbol was farther down the beach.

They approached with Altantsetseg in the lead, her headlamp scrolling across the line of spindrift, the chop on the sea’s surface, the sand of the beach. Nothing.

This symbol was rough, hasty. The edges were blurred here and there by a jutting or misplaced piece of material. But its shape was clear enough:

The arrow directed away from the water, up the beach. Its tip was tilted to the left. It pointed exactly at the hotel.

This symbol, too, was made mostly of darker rocks, seaweed, and driftwood.

But there were other objects mixed in. Ha bent down. Among the seaweed, driftwood, and the stones were pieces of the submersible drone sent into the shipwreck, the one that had been destroyed. The submersible had been torn apart. Pieces of its hull and internal workings were scattered inside the symbol.

And there were other things: A dive mask. Scuba tanks. A speargun. A glove. And …

Ha almost did not recognize it right away. It was crusted with barnacles and a green verdigris, so that it did not stand out from the other objects under the light of the moon, waning now from full for the last several days but still bright enough in the sky. Of all the objects, it was placed with the most care, near the tip of the arrow that pointed back to the hotel, staring up unseeing into the sky.

A human skull.

It was complete, with all its teeth in place and its lower jaw hinged open, looking up as if agape at the beauty of the stars overhead.

Evrim and Altantsetseg stood a slight distance away from Ha—the kind of distance one would keep from someone looking into the coffin of a relative at a funeral. Ha stood a long time, not moving. Then walked a slow circle around the symbol.

“We need to photograph this,” she said, holding her voice steady.

“I have taken many pictures of hieroglyph by this time.” Altantsetseg pointed up into the sky.

“I mean detailed photographs. We need to…”