Secret
A message.
He was practically giddy with the thought of them seeing his handiwork, the carving crowning the ribs, wrapping around in a message that only they could read.
He laughed. It had taken him hours to deflesh the body, hours to sketch the perfect design. Then draw it on the ribs and rehearse the cuts before making the very first mark on the pristine white of the bones.
And it was done.
Running his gloved fingers over the lines he'd carved, he felt how they ran around and around and through, cutting against each other in a pattern that was purely brilliant. A continuous line that wove through each other joining up then parting only to join again.
His message.
Only a few would be able to read it; only a few would be able to really understand the significance of what he was doing.
But they would.
They would know and they would rejoice.
He admired his handiwork for a moment longer before settling the bones into the box. Years in the soil, the box offered up another clue for them to decipher, another clue in the game he had devised.
The box really was a stroke of pure. . . should he say it? He laughed again. Pure genius.
The wooden box inside another, inside another—the proper way to package something this delicate—each box another clue to be decoded. He affixed the label—mucilage and an old rag paper.
That was the secret to this all, wasn't it? Everything a riddle, a test of their abilities.
He hoped they would be worthy of the game, because he really wasn't willing to work with second best.