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was
burning down the stick at an alarming rate, prompting the two to
speed up their actions.
    “Fuck.” Aryan had scraped his hand against
something sharp, breaking skin as he pulled away. Salt from the
earth stung the wound, and he sat back for a moment. Jahaan was
down in the hole, already almost three feet deep, and she saw the
sharp edge that had wounded Aryan sticking out of the ground. It
was metal, which seemed odd to her. Metal, on the salt
plains? This place was a wasteland, a desolate tract of land
that was rumored to be an endless desert without signs of any life,
pitted with deep pockets of quicksand and natural traps that meant
that humans rarely found their way out. As a result, humans never ventured in.
    She started digging around the edge, smoothing
away the sand as she found straight edges of what was clearly a
box. Aryan silently joined her, ignoring the sting of sand and salt
against his hand.
    The box was huge. The two struggled together to
pull it out of the sand and into the hole they had dug. It was
buried deep within a nest of wooden planks, and they were both
panting with exertion by the time they lifted it out of its
cocoon.
    It was beautifully engraved but rusted and
weathered.
    “It’s beautiful.” Jahaan reached out to stroke
the ornate edge of the box.
    “It looks like it was…deliberately buried.”
    “Hidden, do you think?”
    “Wait—the planks! We can light a fire, and
figure out what this is.” He scrambled out of the hole, and Jahaan
grabbed a handful of the crumbling planks and passed them up to
him. Within a few minutes, the flickering torch settled as the fire
found new material to burn.
    Jahaan was already examining the box, but there
seemed to be no lock, no visible way to open it. Frowning, Aryan
rested his hand on a corner, and pushed down. Jahaan jumped as a
small handle popped out in front of her.
    “What on earth?”
    “Pull it.” The handle came away in her hand.
Aryan took it from her, turned it around and pushed it back into
the slot it had come out of. The box split in two.
    “How did you know how to do that?”
    “You grew up riding horses, I grew up reading
books.”
    They both looked down at the scrolls of paper
that had slipped out of the open box. There were pictures, stacked
neatly just below the scrolls, and what looked like a stamp.
    “I read too—just never heard or read of a box
like this.”
    Aryan frowned. “I read about a box just like this; it had something to do with an important event…” He
pulled open a scroll, and suddenly sat down with a thud. “ The
Kutch Treaty …” His voice was a mere whisper.
    Jahaan saw the familiar crescent and star that
was their tribe’s symbol on the paper. Right next to it was an
ornate blue wheel, Aryan’s tribe...
    “What was the Kutch Treaty?”
    Aryan smoothed his hand over the textured paper,
his brain feverish with the idea that he held the original treaty
in his hand. Could this be a way forward out of the desolation in
which they lived? How, he wondered, how was this in such good
condition?
    “It was the beginning of the end. A treaty to
unite our tribes forever.”
    “The beginning of the end?”
    “Something happened—it’s not recorded what,
exactly. But that was the beginning of a war that lasted almost
twenty years, and ended with something called a nuclear disaster.
It’s the reason we live in tents…” He pulled up the pictures and
fanned them out in front of Jahaan.
    Important men and women posed in front of
awesome concrete structures. Shaking hands and smiling, people
posed against lushly green, decadent buildings, under the shade of
tall trees and bright flowers; she found images of long cars and
sleek planes, technologies and a way of living that hadn’t existed
in this land for almost a hundred years, but she had read about in
the books she read.

    ***

    When the sun rose, the young couple was already
astride the horse. The metal box sat awkwardly between them. Jahaan
had