The golems' cave was lined with small bones and skulls, rank and row
climbing the walls, twined with dried grasses in ascending
geometries. These were the furry animals that the golems patiently
trapped and killed, skinned, dressed, and smoked, laying them in small,
fur-wrapped bundles in the family's cave when they were done. It was
part of their unspoken bargain with the mountain, and the tiny bones had
once borne the flesh of nearly every significant meal Alan had ever
eaten.
Davey crouched among the bones at the very back of the cave, his back to
them, shoulders hunched.
The golems stood stock still as Marci and he crept up on Davey. So
intent was he on his work that he didn't notice them, even as they
loomed over his shoulder, staring down on the thing he held in his
hands.
It was Alan's thumb, and growing out of it -- Allen. Tiny, the size of a
pipe-cleaner man, and just as skinny, but perfectly formed, squirming
and insensate, face contorted in a tiny expression of horror.
Not so perfectly formed, Alan saw, once he was over the initial
shock. One of the pipe-cleaner-Allen's arms was missing, protruding
there from Davey's mouth, and he crunched it with lip-smacking
relish. Alan gawped at it, taking it in, watching his miniature
doppelganger, hardly bigger than the thumb it sprouted from, thrash like
a worm on a hook.
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