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some precedent for the thing in the world he already knew, no matter how big a stretch that precedent was, helped him stave off madness.
    He tore his eyes away from it long enough to look down at the Jaw and grip his shoulder. “It’s just a thing,” he insisted. The Jaw’s eyes were wide, he was making barely audible gibbering noises. “It’s just a thing, like anything else,” he repeated.
    Whatever Chert meant by those words, they seemed to work. The Jaw still looked terrified, but he managed to nod and silence himself.
    They should have run. But Chert wanted to see what the floating stone would do.
    With a blast of strange thunder, a line of red light instantaneously filled the space between the stone and the head of one of the living corpses, and the creature’s head exploded. After toppling, its body continued to crawl weakly along the grass on its belly.
    “A spear of fire!” gasped the Jaw in amazement.
    “You’re right, that’s exactly what it is!” said Chert, excited to have an explanation for the phenomenon, even one that made no sense. “That’s exactly what it is!” Smoke drifted up from the smoldering chunks of the corpse’s head. Again the red spear appeared, this time connecting the floating stone with the head of another corpse, with identical results. As they watched, the stone dealt the same treatment to each of the undead. Despite the fact that five of the corpses had been their brethren an hour earlier, both Chert and the Jaw felt their chests swell with desperate grateful joy once all the heads had exploded.
    The huge stone continued to float overhead. Happy as Chert might be for what it had done so far, he watched it with trepidation. It was an impossibly powerful thing, of a nature and an origin Chert couldn’t begin to fathom. He would be relieved when it went on its way. Now that he knew there were such things in the world, both the undead and the impossible stone, Chert felt he would never be at ease again.
    For a long time they watched the stone hover there and do nothing. Finally Chert’s reason began to reawaken. “We must go,” he said to the Jaw. “Boy, we must go. This is dangerous ground now.”
    The Jaw blinked, as if he’d been in a trance. He nodded.
    They turned their backs on the stone, and the hillside where their people had been destroyed, and took the first steps of their new, lonely wandering. It would be dangerous, to be only two hunters with no band, with nothing but the skins they wore. The Jaw, as a half-breed, was especially likely to be killed, whether they came across people like the People or Big-Brows. Every few paces they looked back to snatch patchy glimpses of the floating stone through the trees of the forest.
    They moved swiftly. Before long, they had recovered themselves enough that they were not leaving obvious trails. Although in mourning for his People, Chert was a pragmatic man, and he was already looking to the future. Perhaps these mad spirits were only passing through, but in case they were planning to make a new home here he and the Jaw would move far away. They were strong hunters and would find a band willing to take them in. Grief was fine, and they would find a place for it, but for the most part life would be normal.
    So far away was Chert in his own musings, that it was the Jaw who raised a hand to signal they should stop and crouched in the brush. Chert followed suit. There was some animal nearby, rattling through the vegetation. Chert tried not to show how shaken he was at not having heard the noise himself, first. He guessed the animal to be sick and disoriented, from the commotion it made. He doubted any human alone would be foolhardy enough to make so much noise, unless it were a child, and whatever this was sounded too big to be a child.
    Of course, it might be one of those undead things.
    The Jaw began to creep toward the sounds to investigate. Chert grabbed his shoulder to hold him back, but the Jaw shook off his hand.