I hoped the camouflage wasn’t even necessary. I didn’t think there’d be any prospecting parties working through the winter. Especially now that the Indians were on the move and everyone festering for a big battle.
Rachel made several drawings so we’d have no trouble finding the spot in spring when we came back.
And we would come back. Withrow promised. As a sign of good faith, he handed over a portion of the fee we’d agreed on in cash. Rachel and I would get the rest when we reached New York City. He said it was likely Mr. Barnum would put the two of us on retainer, to quarry out the Black Beauty in the spring, and after that who knew?
The next morning we rode for Crowe to catch the next train east.
That first night on the train, after the porters had closed all the curtains, and the lamps burned low, I slipped down from my berth into Sam’s. His arms were waiting to guide me to him in the dark. His body was luxuriantly warm, and we spooned together.
“I’m looking forward to seeing New York,” I whispered.
“We have enough money to rent a cozy apartment through the winter.”
“And enough time to prepare the skull for Mr. Barnum.”
“We’re fossil hunters, you and me,” he whispered back. “We can work for whoever we want. We can sell to museums, paleontologists, our own fathers.”
We both giggled at this.
“I think we’ll have a very eventful life together,” I said.
He flexed his fingers. “I’m a bit worried about my hand. That I won’t get all my feeling back.”
I took his hand and placed it against me.
“I feel that,” he said.
“You’ll be fine, then.”
We kissed each other for a long time, and as the train shuddered and pulled and rocked through the darkness, our hands moved over each other, exploratory, gentle at first. We were patient with each other, and then neither of us could be patient anymore. Your right hand still hurt, but we figured it out—we were very clever, both of us, with our hands—and the only difficult part for me was not crying out.
You were the first to fall asleep.
I nestled with my back against your chest and stomach, your legs folded with mine, your arm across my breast, enclosed on all sides by you, and your unique marinade of desert and sweat and rarely laundered clothes, and yet you still managed to smell good.
As the train moved us east across the prairie, across that ancient inland sea, I thought how little of us got left behind after death. How none of the most important parts survived. It all decomposed: kisses, caresses, tongues, mouths. Passion spent itself in our animal heat, dissipated as vapor, left no permanent record. No echoes of spoken words, moans, gasps, endearments would be stored in the earth’s layers.
You said I wasn’t one bit romantic, and you were right mostly. But I knew that bones remained, like the terrible lizards who left their teeth and vast femurs for the jigsaw-puzzle pleasure of us paleontologists.
I hoped that when they found us, me and you, we’d be entwined together just like this, among the dinosaurs, in the ruins of the world.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EVERY HIDDEN THING WAS INSPIRED, IN PART, by two pioneering American paleontologists, Edward Drinkwater Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh. Their rivalry in the late nineteenth century was famous, and has been referred to as the “Bone Wars,” during which each scientist tried to outdo, undermine, and even destroy the reputation of the other. Nonetheless, between them they found and named over a hundred new species of dinosaurs—though today, a much smaller number of them are considered valid.
Researching this book was fascinating, and I’m very grateful to Donald Henderson, Curator of Dinosaurs at the Royal Tyrrell Museum; Donald Brinkman, Director of Preservation and Research; and Dennis Braman, a Research Scientist in Palynology, for allowing me to tag along with them during a dig at Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada. They were generous with their time, and patient in answering my many questions.
Two books in particular were invaluable to me in researching Cope and Marsh, and the history of American paleontology. The first was The Gilded Dinosaur by Mark Jaffe, an enthralling history of the fossil war between Cope and Marsh, and a great primer in the evolution of American science. The second book was The Life of a Fossil Hunter by Charles H. Sternberg. Sternberg was largely self-taught, and became an indispensable fossil hunter for Cope, before striking out as an independent collector. In 1912 Sternberg moved to Canada with his three sons and they prospected for dinosaurs in Alberta for decades.
The period in which my book is set was incredibly eventful not just scientifically, but politically and socially as well. The Civil War had ended just years before; the Union Pacific Railway had just bound the nation coast to coast, and American expansion was pushing farther west, displacing the Plains Indians, breaking territorial treaties and promises, and pursuing a policy whose aim was to confine the Indians to ever smaller and poorly maintained Reserves, while deliberately exterminating their traditional food source, the bison. Black Elk Speaks, as told through John G. Neihardt, helped give me an insight into this period of American Indian history, and the culture of the Lakota Sioux. Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian was an excellent overview of the collision between First Nations people and white European settlers. Since my story contains several Lakota and Pawnee characters, it was very important to me that my depictions of them be as accurate as possible—so I am very grateful to Brandy Tuttle, a member of the Lakota people, for agreeing to read and comment on the manuscript before its publication.
Finally I’d like to thank my editors, Justin Chanda, Hadley Dyer, and Bella Pearson, who, as always, helped me to write a much better book.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KENNETH OPPEL is the Governor General’s Award–winning author of the Airborn Trilogy and the Silverwing Saga, which has sold over a million copies worldwide. His most recent novels are The Nest, winner of the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award; and The Boundless, winner of the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award. A two-time nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, he lives in Toronto with his wife and three children.
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ALSO BY KENNETH OPPEL
The Nest
The Boundless
Half Brother
The Airborn Trilogy
Airborn
Skybreaker
Starclimber
The Silverwing Saga
Silverwing
Sunwing
Firewing
Darkwing
The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein
This Dark Endeavor
Such Wicked Intent
CREDITS
COVER DESIGN BY LUCY RUTH CUMMINS
COVER ILLUSTRATION COPYRIGHT © 2016 BY DADU SHIN
COPYRIGHT
EVERY HIDDEN THING
Copyright © 2016 by Firewing Productions Inc.
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Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
First Canadian edition
EPub Edition: August 2016 ISBN: 9781443410335
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