Page 108

THE BLOODLETTER

WREN

A ll of this happens in the space of a breath, and, on the exhale, Tahrik is gone.

He is nowhere in this world, his bones curiously silent in front of me.

Tahrik, I whisper frantically, Tahrik! reaching out with my senses to run them along his cold, white corpse.

Death has rarely been an Almighty where I live.

It’s simply a funny little door that few have a key to, but it can be opened and, occasionally, one may step through briefly in the Dreaming.

Unless you are an Exiled, marrow hollowed and burned, or Silent, death is just a moment away, waiting in the Nowhere for the Dreamers to visit.

It is not…it is never this goodbye, not if I am close enough to catch its hand.

When you mourn for the departed, it is a sadness of the day to day.

Not a sorrow that leaves a scar on your heart.

So the pain of this is unknown, and staggering.

A low moan presses against my ears, and I cover them, rocking back and forth like a child on the ground, not realizing the sound comes from inside me.

I’m so lost in the moment, to the bitter taste of sorrow in the air and the winter memory of Tahrik’s soul slipping through my fingers like spilled wine, that it takes me a heartbeat, and then another to remember.

The sword! A sword! And I look up, numbness and death warring on my face.

To bring a soul home to its bones — to try to bring a soul home — takes everything within a BoneKeeper, and I have nothing left to fight.

I am empty, and weak, and inexperienced in the crippling sadness that runs in my veins like poison, and, in this moment, can’t bring myself to feel anything at all, other than the void that has opened inside me.

In front of me, frozen like a statue, stands a creature I almost recognize.

It is tall and broad, rippling muscles under stretched tight skin.

His skin — it must be a male — is covered, every inch, with strange, swirling patterns in blacks and greys curling along bands, unfamiliar creatures' heads and bodies woven in the backgrounds. He is all darkness — dark boots, dark pants with a thick leather split skirt of some sort over the top, heavy leather vambraces on his forearms, and the fur of an animal I’ve never seen covering his shoulders.

But the chilling part, beyond the blood now covering his skin like paint, beyond the ornate dagger in his hand, sharp and gleaming with a curious twisting groove down the center, beyond, even, him sliding his sword from Tahrik’s unresisting back, is his face.

I stare up, mesmerized, paralyzed. Above me is cold, exposed bone — a long, thin animal-like face with ridged, thick, twisting horns, and two gaping orbital sockets that house black, fathomless eyes.

The… thing …studies me for a breathless moment, then tips his head back and howls, a long, liquid sound that pours from his throat and echoes in the darkness.

There is a pause, and then he howls again, this time louder, almost ear-shattering; in the distance, answering calls rise up from all corners around us.

It is almost musical, something wild and tempting in the sound, pulling physically at my blood, as though it would burst from my body to sing with him.

I shiver, and he jerks his head around to look back down at me with careful consideration.

Cocking his head, he asks a question in a curling, dancing sound I’ve never heard before. His voice is deep, almost a purr, and holds secrets upon secrets. Confusion must be clear on my face, though, because he pauses, then tries again.

“You want to sing with us?” The words are unexpected, rough and raw, as though he rarely uses them.

Squatting down in front of me, skull eyes locked on my own, he tilts his horns, considering me carefully before asking softly, “Have I caught a blind bird in my snare? Not the prey I was seeking.” He stares at me as though waiting for an answer, then sighs.

“I’ll rid you of this at least before I leave,” and, reaching around me, moves to roughly shove Tahrik aside.

In the movement I finally come to my senses.

“No!” I gasp, flinging my body over Tahrik’s.

He’s no longer there, no longer anywhere, I know, but I can’t let…

he can’t just be pushed aside, like a now empty sack.

The creature rocks back in surprise. I take the chance to straighten Tahrik’s crumpled body, to fold his hands, to close his unseeing eyes.

“This…this man would have hurt you.” The creature spits the words out; they carry bitterness and judgment.

“He was not in his right mind,” I whisper, more to myself. “He stopped, just at the end, he stopped. He would not have…”

“He already did, Huldra.” The creature touches his knife to my wrists. Bruises mix with blood from where I was bound.

“He was not in his right mind,” I repeat again, tears choking my voice. I lost Tahrik twice in the space of a day — once when he attacked me and erased our history, and once when he abandoned me and erased our future. Grief, like a boulder, crushes me, and I sway under its weight.

The creature reaches a hand out to steady me, then passes me a skin of water.

“Drink.” When I hesitate, there is amusement in his voice.

“Had I wanted you dead, I would have pushed the sword harder; it would have cut clean through you both. I cannot be sorry for taking his life, only for causing you sorrow, however misplaced.”

“It is not misplaced.” I am shaking, from cold, from loss, from the effort of bringing his soul home, from the realization that I failed, I failed, and I would never see my friend again.

That he took with him the only part of my life that had color in our village, that he took my secrets with him to Silence, and now there is no one alive who knows the pathways of history that led me to this moment.

It is selfish of me, but I mourn for the parts of me that he took with him, that I cannot get back.

My voice is slow-moving water, candlelight soft when I continue.

“He was lost, but before he was lost, he would collect water for me before himself. He would bring me the better bread and keep burnt crusts. He would walk me to the caves and wait, if he could, til I came out unharmed.” My words drift away, and my shaking increases, almost vibrating.

The words mean nothing to the strange creature, but I am reminded of our childhood, where he gave me the best of what he could, and my heart clenches painfully.

“He sang me a future that was more than the coming Storms.”

He crouches before me in the last of the fading light from a dying sun, and cocks his bone head to one side.

Though the expression is frozen, he manages to look curious, and considering.

He’s on his heels, but, even so, towers over me.

I feel as small as a child, and as lost as one, fatigue from the failed Guiding frosting my skin with cold fingers, pressing down on my eyes, trying to force them closed.

Exhaustion suffocates me, thick enough to sleep, even here, death laying beside me and looming before me.

In this moment I think, perhaps, that the creature before me did me no favors by stopping his blade before it entered my heart as well.

Suddenly and without check, tears course down my face, reminding me painfully of a day at a waterfall, of a boy teaching me to swim, giving me his meal, and singing me to sleep with a sorrow I did not understand.

I understand it now. I wish I had then.

I don’t move, just sit dumbly, waiting for him to speak. When he does, it surprises me.

“I am sorry for your loss,” he offers formally.

“I can’t be sorry for my actions; I would not suffer a man who harms a woman to live.

But your tears tell a story that was more than that moment, and you have my sympathy, for whoever he was.

And for whatever drove him to become the man I saw.

” He hesitates, then continues as though searching for the words, speaking more softly than I would have thought possible.

“I offer no offense, but he had you bound to a horse. Gagged. He…your wrists are bruised and bloody. He had you against a tree. Had I known he would stop, my actions would have been different perhaps. But he…he did not stop before the strike of my sword. ”

I nod dully. When the first tile is knocked down, it does not matter if the last wishes to fall.

Once the movement is set in motion, they all tumble, whether they want to or not.

Though I want to hate the creature in front of me, to lash out at him and drive a knife through his heart, as he did through mine, I know in my bones that it was not his actions which led to Tahrik’s death.

Only I am responsible for the loss of his soul — no other.

I swallow back tears, inhaling and exhaling on shaky, measured breaths.

His death is on my skin, and my lips — I can smell the blood in the air, can taste the metallic red on my tongue.

The creature’s black eyes glitter in the last light of day, and he sighs, as though making a decision.

“I’ll start a fire, and we’ll see what to do with you.

I’m not in the habit of rescuing fairies, no matter how needy.

They bargain in ways that cost more than you know you’re giving.

” Shaking his horns, he tips his head back again, but this time to whistle, sharp stutters of sound, then a low chirr, and once more is answered, from much, much closer.

“Don’t worry. They won’t approach. Not yet, anyhow. ”