Bone

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

They hadn’t seen anything like it before. It looked almost like a stone, but it was too long for that, it was too thin. And it was too white, too. Not a bright kind of white but still more white than they’d expect a stone to be. It wasn’t a stone.

“What is it, then?”

“I just said I don’t know.”

The two of them lived next door to one another and they’d been playing in the woods over the road behind their houses. They did it every day, each dare each one dared the other to go further and further into the forest until one of them lost their nerve and they turned back. Today, both of them felt braver than ever. It could have been the sunny weather. It could have been the fact that it was pocket money day and they felt like the world was at their feet. Either way, they kept walking and walking, and soon began to wonder whether they would come out of the other side of the wood before turning back. If it had an other side at all.

That’s when they’d come to it.

A river, or a stream even, that flowed across their path. Suddenly it became light as the sun was no longer so hidden by the trees, and they could look left and right along the river for what seemed like forever.

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know.”

There wasn’t any way across the river, or at least there wasn’t a way across that wouldn’t have got them wet. It didn’t look very deep but it would certainly be at least at knee height and then they’d be trudging on the rest of the way with wet jeans. If they ever dried, they’d just have to get them wet again when they came back past.

“I think we should go back, I guess.”

“What, you’re chicken?”

It was like kryptonite. All of a sudden neither of them could fathom going back, and neither of them wanted to go on, either. They were stuck here and so just sat on the side of the river and hoped that the other would give in first so that they’d be able to go home, it would be time for dinner soon and if they didn’t hurry the shop would almost certainly be closed when they ran there, too.

Neither of them gave in, and instead looked around for something to entertain themselves. That’s when he’d picked it up from the side of him. It must have been there all along but all of a sudden it was as if it had thrust itself into his hands. He wiped some mud from it and held it up to get a better look in the light.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

Eventually they’d discover that it was a forearm, and they’d wonder how it had ended up there. So would a lot of people.