‘You know that place I go to work in every day? Well strangely enough it has this weird word Museum on the sign outside. I just noticed it one day and then, hey, I also noticed all the cases had these real funny old things in them …’

‘Yeah. Okay. Hardy har.’

‘Of course I know, Sam. I just never had the opportunity to talk to you about it. Or more like, I knew you wouldn’t want to hear it.’

She looked at him to see if that would wound him. It wasn’t meant to. And it hadn’t. He just looked dazed.

‘What else you know about it?’

‘You want the full schools lecture tour?’

‘Yeah.’

She touched the curious-shaped amulet, running her finger over the indentations that scored the not quite circular bulk of it. It was a good excuse to touch Sam’s chest too.

‘Well yours obviously can’t be the original, which is supposed to have been made from the skull of Pitah Annes, Eagle Robe, the greatest ever Kinchuinick shaman, who was around in the sixteenth century. But we’ve got a book in the museum by an English archaeologist with a drawing of the Isksaksin in it, and this is the absolute double. Bored yet?’

He shook his head, his face darkening. She tapped the bone.

‘It’s a real curious one, since this is about the only Kinchuinick charm that doesn’t come with a list as long as your arm about what it can do. Most of these things, like, you know, claim they can heal, ward off bad spirits or make you babies or something like that. But not this. In fact that English guy, P.R. Nicholson, said that the wearer wouldn’t discuss it, and he could find no living Indian who knew its purpose, but all were in awe of it.’ She looked up at him with love through her puffy eyes. ‘I thought it was just like you to have something as special and mysterious as that round your neck when I read it.’

Sam’s head was reeling and he sat in silence staring into space in front of him.

‘Sam?’ Her voice was thick again.

‘Mmm.’

‘How did you survive?’

He looked away from her into a nothing distance, and spoke as if the answer were so obvious it was barely worth discussing. ‘I breathed in and out.’

She felt him doing it now, and she could barely speak. But she did. ‘I love you so much.’

He looked back at her, pulled her up to his knee and kissed her. She was crying through the kiss and the salt ran into their mouths as they caressed each other’s lips with slow tongues and gentle teeth.