Chapter 11

I stood in the middle of the new exhibit, Pine’s soulshine glowing in my chest. The zig-zagging hall was dim and empty, but I could hear other guests somewhere close by. They must’ve all gone ahead.

As I took my first few steps into the dark, a projector spread flickering firelight across the wall, and an animated shadow theater appeared. A dolphin dove beside me, and its clicks and squeals played overhead. When I rounded the corner, a flock of birds took off, cawing. On the next turn, a hyena sneaking in the tall grass giggled.

A bright line followed me through the maze, weaving between the animals and splitting off in different directions. Homo erectus. Homo sapiens. Denisova. It almost looked like a family tree.

I came to the final stretch, and the shadows of a short, stocky woman and a toddler stepped out. The woman raised her hand, almost like she was saying hello. The toddler hung on her leg. The timeline ended over them with the words Homo neanderthalensis.

A huge, white mountain rose behind them, and the glowing family line snaked over the peak to form a title—The Neanderthals of Gorham’s Cave.

“Neanderthal.” I tested the word against what I knew about Pine. The slow, slouchy, club-dragging caveman I immediately imagined suddenly felt mean.

What is that? Pine asked. Neanderthal?

It’s a kind of person. Your kind of person. But—I wasn’t sure how to break the news—I don’t think they exist anymore.

A heavy silence settled between us as that sank in.

Then, finally, very quietly—That can’t be right.

I bit my lip. What could I even say to that? Maybe it would be better to let the museum do the talking for me.

What happened to them? Pine asked.

I don’t know. I’ll try to find out. I paused at the corner, waiting for some kind of reaction. Pine wasn’t much of a talker to start, but this was a whole different kind of silence. Are you okay? If you need a second—

No. His voice came back firm and cold. I need to know more. To be sure.

Okay. I sort of wished I could hold his hand, so he knew we were in this together. Here we go.

I rounded the corner and found myself in a room full of animals stuffed, mounted, and staged on bright white platforms—a seal, a deer, even a leopard. Glass cases hung on the walls, full of arrowheads, spearheads, and a bunch of other stone tools I’d never seen in movies. Several adults stood around, sipping their cocktails, swiping through info on glass panels, chatting and laughing.

A big group had gathered around Dr. Cruz, the dark-haired scientist Dixon’s mom introduced onstage. He was preaching about the artifacts around us with so much excitement, I expected him to throw in a hallelujah.

I took a walk through the aisle of stuffed animals. Does any of this look familiar?

Yes. Pine whispered like we were in a library.

I paused in front of a goat with tall, back-curved horns. It had a plush brown-and-white coat like the one Pine wore in my dream. What’s this?

I know my word for it. I just don’t know yours. From the frown in his voice, it sounded like he wished our magic translator had better cusswords, too.

I read the plaque for us both. Ibex. Turned out, I didn’t know the English name, either.

When I reached the end of the aisle, I was finally within earshot of Dr. Cruz. I hung near the back of the crowd and listened in.

“After identifying the bird bones in Gorham’s cave, it’s clear that Neanderthals had a preference for black feathers,” he said. “In fact, scientists discovered vulture bones with butcher marks that clearly suggest this bird had its wings removed, completely intact.”

He gestured up to a pair of huge black buzzard wings hanging on the wall, unfurled to their full five-foot span.

A shock from Pine’s soulshine kicked my heartbeats into high gear.

That’s the Crow’s cape. He sounded frozen.

When I’d seen Crow in person, Dinosaur Valley was totally dark. Same with Pine’s last-ever memory. So, when I imagined him, all I could picture was this stocky, shadowy outline holding a stone knife. A pair of jet-black wings strapped around his arms definitely tied together his whole Grim Reaper vibe.

Now I get why he’s called Crow, I said.

I could feel Pine itching to get away from those wings, so I beelined for the next doorway and walked into a dark, private nook where the soundscape completely faded out. The room was quiet as a funeral. Or at least, how I imagined a funeral would be, if I’d been allowed at Grandpa John’s.

Here, a spotlight shone down on a single, small display case.

I crept up close.

A familiar jawbone with shiny teeth lay on black velvet. On a short step above it, several shattered pieces of skull—a cheekbone, a brow ridge, part of a nose—were puzzled together to form an almost complete face.

There wasn’t a drop of soulshine in those bones.

A small plaque under the glass read, Homo neanderthalensis—Gorham’s cave complex. Juvenile with exostoses.

“Pine,” I whispered. “I think this is you.”

We both tensed up.

This says you died almost—I whooshed out a breath as I read the tag—thirty-thousand years ago.

Thirty-thousand, Pine repeated, weighing the enormous number. Thirty-thousand years.

I just stood there for a second, letting the date echo inside me. Imagining time like that felt like staring deep into the Grand Canyon.

Pine’s homesickness welled up inside me.

No. This was way beyond homesickness.

I’d felt this when Grandpa died. When it really sank in that he was gone forever. When I realized I would never get another chance to rock with him on the porch swing during a thunderstorm, or eat his special popcorn with hot peppers in it, or duet Country Roads on the slide guitar.

Except, Pine had lost everything. All his friends and family were gone. His whole culture was extinct. Even the plants and animals where he lived had disappeared. No wonder he didn’t want to believe me.

When my magic woke up his soulshine, I’d put a thirty-thousand-year-wide trench between him and everything he loved. And now, he could never go back.

My eyes blurred with tears that weren’t mine.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.

A hot teardrop dripped onto the glass case.

Finally, I understood why Grandpa never, ever worked with human soulshine.      

“Excuse me.” A man with a British accent startled me out of the moment.

I turned to see Dr. Cruz and blinked to clear my watering eyes. “Hi. Sorry.”

“Please don’t be.” He pulled the handkerchief out of his suit pocket and offered it to me. “These fossils can be very moving. It’s a human species, after all.”

Pine’s soulshine shifted from passenger side to the backseat, like before he spoke to me for the first time. He’d retreated so deep into the dark, he almost seemed invisible—except I could still feel him aching. He probably needed some alone time.

I wiped the damp corners of my eyes. When I looked up at Dr. Cruz again, I noticed one of the Hemmings’ silver handaxes pinned to his suit.

“You know,” Dr. Cruz said, taking his pocket square back, “if I had to guess from the dental wear, I’d say this boy was about your age.” The more he talked, the more I noticed his accent was full of small Spanish sounds. “At least thirteen years old. Maybe closer to fifteen.” He shook his head. “Poor fellow. These Neanderthals were among the last of their kind.”

I hugged myself and focused on the plaque under the case. It was hard to look at Pine’s skull behind glass. “What happened to them all?”

“Gibraltar got colder. Forests replaced the plains. The animals and plants Neanderthals were used to eating changed or disappeared.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “They just faded away.”

“Why didn’t they go somewhere warmer?”

“They couldn’t.” He pulled up a map on his phone and showed me the Strait of Gibraltar. “Not without a way to cross the sea.”

The land to the north was labeled Europe, with Gibraltar marked on the coast. And on the other side of the water, in the south—Africa.

“Wait.” I zeroed in on the map so hard I almost grabbed his phone out of his hand. “Across the sea from Gibraltar . . . That’s Africa?”

He nodded. “To this day, you can see it from the cave.”

I pictured the fires across the ocean, Pine’s friends from far away. The reason he swam as far as he could every night. The reason Crow killed him. I had to know—“Who lived there?”

“Homo sapiens.” Dr. Cruz smiled. “Us.”

Every hair on my body stood up at once.

Dr. Cruz’s phone dinged. He checked it. Frowned. “I’d better get going.” He shook my hand. “It was wonderful talking to you, Miss . . . ?”

“Um.” I was so shook up, I didn’t have the strength to grip his hand. I could hardly remember my own name. “Cecelia.”

“Cecelia. Good night.” He doubled back to the animal room, leaving me alone in front of Pine’s bones.

Pine. My whole body buzzed with electricity. Those fires you were signaling? Those were humans. My kind of human, I mean. I looked at my reflection in his glass case, into my own eyes—and I swear I could see him in there, looking back at me. You did it. A lump formed in my throat. You got across the water.

Slowly, his soulshine floated back to the surface, and I could feel his glow in my chest again.

Hello. He almost sounded shy, like we were meeting for the first time. It sort of felt like we were.

I tried a little smile. “Hi.”

The group behind me started making their way into Pine’s display area, so I took a picture of the plaque under the glass, just in case the information would come in handy, and moved on to the last room.

It was dark, like Pine’s, with a spotlight on a glass case in the center. Except this case was the size of a coffin, with several different bones carefully arranged to form a half-complete skeleton. Ribs, backbones, hips, arms and legs, bits of fingers and skull.

No soulshine in these fossils, either. This had to be Crow.

I walked up to the foot of the case and skimmed the plaque. Homo neanderthalensis—Gorham’s cave complex. Adult male with arthritis.

Give me a break. Arthritis? So far Crow’s greatest weakness was climate change. I couldn’t wait that long.

I sighed and left through the open exit. The exhibit let out into Trinity Hall, under the stairs that led up to the second floor.

A few guests walked around, looking at dinosaurs. There was a snack bar in front of the wall of windows that looked out on the back parking lot, where caterers were passing out slices of fancy, layered cake. Pedro the security guard was taking a picture for a group of tipsy ladies fake-screaming in front of the Acrocanthosaurus skeleton.

But there was one man, hunched on a bench against the wall, who caught my eye. And when I saw him, I couldn’t look away.

Not because his suit seemed too long in the sleeves and tight around the chest. Not because he had a no-shave November beard and the weathered face of a panhandler. Not even because his long, blond hair was clipped back with what I was pretty positive was a girl’s pink barrette.

It was because he was wearing my dead grandpa’s cactus-print tie.

RUN. That one word broke out of Pine like an entire lake blasting through a hole in a dam. His panic crashed through me with house-leveling power. And suddenly, I knew.

I was looking at Crow.

In about three seconds I was across the exhibit, fumbling for the keycard in my pocket. I swiped into the paleo lab.

The second the door locked behind me, my knees dissolved. I dropped to the ground, queasy and shaking.

Pine was shouting through my entire body. How is he here?

“How is he dressed?” I clapped a clammy hand to my forehead. “He’s supposed to be eating bugs in the woods right now, and he’s definitely not supposed to be wearing my dead grandpa’s Sunday clip-on—” I stopped. The clothing drive. Mom took some of Grandpa John’s old stuff to church just a couple of days ago. He must’ve gotten into those boxes somehow. “Oh my gosh.” I dropped my head in my hands. “Why? Why would he come here?”

He’s hunting you. I could barely detect the shake in Pine’s voice. This is the place he woke up. The only place he knows you might come back to.

Spidery chills skittered down my back. He had to be right. “Do you think he’d recognize me?”

Pine went silent for a second. Maybe not.

Crow only had the chance to swipe some basic knowledge from my brain before I shut him out. Stuff like language—and putting on pants, apparently. It explained his choice in ties. And hair clips.

But he didn’t have my personal memories. And as far as I knew, he’d never seen me. I was just a voice in his head.

“I have to know for sure.” I peeled myself off the ground and started searching the paleo lab’s buckets and drawers.

What are you going to do?

After a few seconds, I found a black bandana. The one the paleo team blindfolded me with the day we met. “I’m gonna reach into his head.”

What if he can see through you like I can?

I sat with my back pressed against the door, wrapped the bandana around my eyes, and tied it behind my head. Pure darkness. “Then there won’t be much to see.”

Be careful, Pine said.

I took a deep breath and rested my hand on my chest, feeling for Crow’s soulshine like a heartbeat.

When I found him, I took a minute to steady myself. And then, very slowly, I reached through the layers of his senses.

Dusty air. Woodblock-and-chimes soundscape. Party chatter. Rough hands. Green tile.

He was still sitting on the bench, staring at the floor. His head rang with silence and his heart hung like a rock in his chest.

Did he just learn what Pine learned? That he was the last of his kind?

Suddenly, I felt his attention on me like tiger eyes.

You. He snapped his head up.

I froze. Shoot. That was fast.

He scanned the Trinity Hall. Where are you? His hand slipped into his jacket pocket and wrapped around something cold, spade-shaped, and sharp-edged. Are you here?

I stayed in rabbit mode, totally still and silent.

In one sudden, shocking push, he shoved into my mind. But when he broke into my senses, all he got was blackness.

I pressed my back against the door, holding my breath. Nice try, stupid.

Keep your mind closed, then. He smiled. I know enough.

Did you know your hair doodad is for girls?

He sat there for a second, almost like he was trying to figure out if I was messing with him. Finally, with a frown, he unclipped his barrette and tossed it aside.

I missed you somehow the other night. He got up from the bench and stalked among the dinosaur bones on quiet feet, slow like a panther. As he passed each guest, he focused on their face—like he was trying to decide if they could be the voice in his head. I need to meet you.

More like kill me and take my magic.

He laughed out loud, attracting a few concerned stares from the caterers dishing out cake. You’ve been talking with the Pine.

Pine’s nervous soulshine twitched in my fingers.

I curled them into fists, hoping he caught my silent promise. I wouldn’t let Crow get him, not again. We were in this together.

He’s with you, isn’t he? Crow raised his voice so that it boomed in my head. I’ll speak loudly for you, boy. Welcome to your kingdom across the water. Is it everything you hoped for?

Pine didn’t say anything. But the hole where his family should’ve been crumbled around the edges.

You thought we could rule the earth beside these people. But if they intended to live peacefully with us, we’d be here. He turned a circle in the middle of the exhibit, arms out. I don’t see our kind. Do you?

In the corner of his vision, I noticed Pedro staring, whispering into a walkie-talkie. Good.

He’s messing with your head. I focused on Pine. You heard Dr. Cruz. Your world got too cold. It was bad luck.

Bring me the mage. Crow was talking right past me, now. I can restore our world. Your family.

That offer was followed by way more silence than I was okay with.

Pine. He wouldn’t. Right? We were in this together.

I know you miss them. Crow’s voice softened like a hand on Pine’s shoulder. I loved them, too.

I held my breath, waiting to see if Pine would reach for my steering wheel. Ready to fight for it with a death grip. But all I got was silence.

“Pine?” I whispered.

A white flash slammed me like hit-and-run headlights. And suddenly, through closed eyes, I could see the beach where Pine died. The human fires across the sea. And I knew Crow could, too.

You never loved us, Pine said. The fires seemed to burn brighter. You just hated them.

Crow grunted and tore away, breaking all of us out of the vision.

When I landed behind Crow’s eyes again, he stood in front of a horse-sized dinosaur skeleton posed with its head raised like a spooked deer. Rage hotter than I’d ever felt burned deep inside him—a volcano hidden under mountains, waiting to be born.

I sat there, locked up stiff, trying to prepare myself for his next move.

Fine. He grabbed ahold of the bronze bar in front of the dinosaur skeleton and hoisted himself up onto the platform.

“Excuse me, sir.” Pedro fast-walked over to the exhibit, radio in hand. “Sir. You can’t be up there.”

Crow didn’t even look at him. He walked across the stage to the duckbilled dinosaur and smoothed his hand down its cold, Roman nose.

“You won’t come to me?” he whispered. His voice was thin and gritty, like he hadn’t used it in a long time. “I’ll flush you out.”

The volcanic heat cooking in his core rumbled and rose. It flooded his veins—filling his chest, snaking down his arms, surging up his neck.

My magic lurched inside me, powering up without my permission. My heart dropped into my stomach. “Hey . . .”

A ring of warm, red light circled his head. Bright like a halo, eerie like an eclipse.

He closed his eyes. Reached through our connection. Grabbed my magic.

“Crow.” It was supposed to be a warning, but when I heard my voice echo around the paleo lab, all I heard was fear. “Don’t you—”

Magic jerked out of me so hard and fast, I bumped my head on the door behind me. Power spun out of me by the yard. It burned me from the inside out.

Crow took his hand off the dinosaur’s skull and opened his eyes.

At the center of a dust devil of loose napkins and golden confetti, a dinosaur the size of a rodeo bull rose out of a fresh crater in the floor.

Everyone screamed and backed away. Pedro turned to face the dinosaur and dropped his radio.

Crow glanced over his shoulder.

Even more people were spilling in from the foyer, rushing to see what the commotion was all about. A few of them got out their phones and started snapping pictures.

While everyone was distracted, Crow dropped off the platform and pushed through an emergency exit door, ignoring the alarm, and walked into the warm night.

I lay on the floor, breathing through the burn still sizzling in my core. “You’d hurt all these people? Just for my magic?”

This will continue until I meet the mage. He stepped into the dark woods at the edge of the parking lot, taking one last glance at the museum. If you change your mind, you know how to reach me.

This time, he hung up on me.