It came as a kit. It had taken all of her egg money to buy the metal detector, but the tiny box even had a soldering iron that lit like a cigarette lighter and some silver solder with flux inside. Aili was only ten and alone, but her parents had taught her well. She recognized a few words of the five languages in the instructions although none of them were her own. She looked at the pictures and made some guesses and burned the index finger of her left hand. Over the long, Sunday afternoon she was able to make the foot-long device recognize a paper clip hidden in her hand. The steady "beeeep" was like a very funny sort of victory trumpet, and her smile was so broad it made the old scar across her cheek hurt.

She spent that night and the next day in the luxuriant vegetable garden behind what remained of the house. She searched on her hands and knees in the bright spring sun, smelling good dirt and green, growing things. For hours she waved the little disk at the end of the shaft like a magic wand an inch above the ground. She found bullet shells and burned bits of metal which she was careful to separate for the market later. This was where they had been standing. The battery was growing weaker, and it had been many months, almost two years now. She couldn't be sure where it had fallen. As the battery died, she thought she heard a small chirp. She dug with her hands and then with the big trowel she'd made of a bomb shell casing until she struck something white and hard. It was small brown and white bones. On one of them was Mama's wedding band. Aili carefully removed the ring. She put it on a string and closed her eyes a moment, remembering, then she sprinkled some wildflower seed and covered the bones with rich brown dirt.

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