The dog watched this man walk from the clearing with the axe and the wedge and then turned his eyes to the pile of bones and struggled in his canine brain to regainthe fading significance of this pitiful pile.

Cicadas

There was no hint in the dust on the track. The runes left by snakes and lizards and smaller aimless beetles held messages for the boy, but nothing to make him aware of what he was to find at the end of his mission. There was nothing in the magpie’s song, or the steady gaze of kangaroos to tell him that anything more unusual was happening than the ponder­ous progress of a globe’s track in endless space. To the boy it was hot be­cause it was summer and summer meant cicadas, of which he now held the transparent amber case of one that had crawled from the earth, cast off its shell, sung its song and died. Enough awe for a boy in one day.