Page 22

IN THE AFTERMATH

WREN

B y the time I’m back in my little home, my anger has faded and I’m left mostly with confusion at Councilman Rannoch’s attention.

I can’t deny a small amount of amusement pushes through, unwisely tilting up the edges of my lips into an almost smile when I think about his face when Hattie spoke to him.

But the confusion rushes back when I remember her sudden shift, and her odd request to come back and speak with her alone.

Bones don’t often make requests for themselves — not like that anyway.

They will say they miss their families, or whisper of desires from lost lives, but to ask such a direct thing?

The only ones who ever do so are imprinted on my skin.

Speaking of which, I frown, a shadow of a thought suddenly becoming tangible. Reaching up, I gently run my fingers through my hair, rousing the Hunter’s bones, and then reach around my neck and pull Lorcan forward, over my shoulders.

“You two are awfully quiet tonight. I thought you’d have more to say about me fraternizing with a Councilmember.” I’m teasing, but also, even though Lorcan and the Hunter tend to be quiet, for them not to say anything at all is unusual .

The silence is alarming, and I call to them both a little more strongly. Lorcan rouses first.

Little Keeper?

He’s on alert, but sluggishly so, sounding more like the skeletons in the walls of our city than my Protector, and my brows knit together in concern.

“Are you alright, Protector?” I ask cautiously, but don’t get an immediate answer. The Hunter speaks next, seemingly confused, but then focuses in.

Ah. It’s past the first of the month, BoneKeeper. We did not think to…You have been preoccupied.

His voice, even in bone, even faded, is apologetic, and I want to slap myself.

Of course! How did I forget such a thing!

They haven’t had to remind me in years at this point.

I am not myself lately, feeling pins and needles along my skin.

I’m too much in the waking world and getting distracted from my purpose, wasting time on long lost dreams of friendship and fireplaces.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” I whisper frantically, checking the lock on my door before shedding my bone armor, my heavy dress and cloak, and my undershift.

Fumbling in the dark room, I light a single candle, just enough to see by, and grab the Guiding Knife from my kit — no other knife will do for some reason, and I have tried many.

Many . I don’t like the feel of the jagged, sharpened bone against my skin, and the way the first line of blood is absorbed almost greedily by the Silent blade.

It makes me uneasy every time, and even now, after so many years, I have to quell the shiver that runs through me.

Lorcan, as always, notices, despite my best efforts. When he speaks, his voice is stronger, more purposeful.

We are fine, BoneKeeper. Wait a few more days. We’re fine.

There is a pregnant pause before the Hunter, regret clear, contradicts him.

We are not, Keeper. I’m sorry. To have left you alone with a Councilmember…I am sorry, but we are fading.

“Of course. Of course ,” I whisper back.

The darkness of my room is not a place for human voices; it is for bone only — even my words feel out of place in the thick air.

The bones can hear me if I address them directly, even if I don’t speak, but it is more draining.

“A moment, Hunter. Lorcan. Jeweler? Are you there?”

Lorcon sighs, a funny sort of sound that usually makes me smile. Bones do not often get frustrated, but it is Lorcan’s main emotion toward me. You know he won’t take your offer, Little Keeper he says, and I shrug.

“ You know I won’t stop offering,” I reply snarkily, voice shaking only slightly as I lower the knife toward my parchment pale skin. I hate this part, I hate this part, I think on repeat, but out loud only say, “Next time please remind me before it gets this far. I can’t believe I–”

Enough. Lorcan is firm, and I stop speaking.

My Guiding Knife shimmers in the candlelight, catching the pale glow on its paler surface.

I have to move the candle closer to make sure I’m not cutting over well-used territory, and as soon as it’s within a warmth’s distance from my skin, it dances along row after row of hair-thin lines running from my knee to hip.

The scars vary in age, but each is a pale, straight echo of the one before it, shimmering white, precise, and etched in excruciating detail.

Smaller cuts run in delicate designs between each longer line, connecting them, little raised lace patterns on my skin.

Once I realized how often I would have to do this, between my sacrifices to keep the children from the Offerings, and the monthly ritual with my personal bones, I decided to make the necessary pain into pointless prettiness. Of a sort.

“Alright,” I say, voice overly loud now, faux cheer grating my ears. “Who’s first tonight? I miss the Baker,” I add as an afterthought. “I didn’t think that through.”

You never think anything through Lorcan says teasingly. I can tell the effort he’s putting in to making this easier for me, and the Hunter echos him moments later.

That’s unfair. She thinks. She just ignores her own advice.

“Hmph.” It is normal for Lorcan to try and distract me, but it says something about how uneasy I must have made them that the Hunter, usually silent, joins in.

Taking the very point of the knife, starting just above my knee, I sink the tip into my unresisting skin, studiously ignoring the strange shiver that goes through the knife.

It pulls at my stomach, and I shake my head at my foolishness.

I know the Guiding Knife is Silent bone.

Frowning, I push the knife in deeper, until a thick crimson rises to the surface, and then slice in one straight, continuous movement almost to my hip.

The blood is vivid in our muted world, always shocking in its intensity. Its color never ceases to silence me; every Rending or Reaping, as many as I’ve ever been to, I still have to force myself to speak, force myself to turn my eyes from the pools of fire red around the Offering.

Keeper? The Hunter’s voice is hesitant, and I come back to myself.

“You’re first, I suppose, since neither would claim it.

” Loosening his bones from my hair, I coat my hands in my blood, and roll him around my palms until he’s completely covered.

The blood slowly dissipates, so I do it again, and again, and again, until finally when I paint him in garnet it simply sits on the surface of his teeth and fingers, and is not absorbed.

I wait a beat, two beats, and when the glistening ruby does not change, I take the bones and rinse them in my small cistern, then weave him back in my hair.

“Better?” I ask.

Much , he confirms, voice almost audible it is so strong.

Be on watch, then, Lorcan commands weakly as I remove him from my neck, the only time I ever have him off my skin.

Laying him down on my thigh, straight along the length of my opened skin, I wait.

I used to try to coat Lorcan’s bones in my hands, as I did with the Baker before she left, and the Hunter.

But Lorcan’s necklace was too long. It would tangle, and nothing would ever be coated evenly.

Eventually I came up with a solution, though it makes him soul sick every time to see me cut into myself for him.

The Hunter is much more pragmatic; he is sorry for the necessity, but accepting of it.

Lorcan — Lorcan is a hollow, stomach churning apology every time I paint him.

The flame is guttering by the time his bones stay carmine, and I have to fight to not sway in my seat.

It’s the first time I’ve ever had to go deeper along the same incision before there was enough blood; anytime before tonight, the first slice was enough.

But maybe I let it go too long; it has been a full four, and almost into five days since the first day of the Harvest. Foolish, Wren, foolish I chide myself, trying to distract myself from the burning on my thigh.

Lorcan’s voice, when he speaks, is a world of misery, though he tries his best to hide it.

It’s always difficult the first day or two after I anoint them; their emotions are much nearer to the surface, to the living, and I can’t imagine how it feels.

I pull them closer to the edge of the veil than they’re meant to be, so close that they must feel almost back in flesh, and it’s a pain I can’t understand.

I’m sorry, Little Keeper.

“Hush, Protector. You do it for my own good. I don’t give you a choice, anyway, old man.

” The joke falls a bit flat, and there is silence, each of us lost in our own guilt and grief, until I sigh, wrap my wound, and pull on my night clothes, draping Lorcan back around my neck without rinsing him off.

He surprises me when he finally speaks.

How old do you think I am, Little Keeper?

Lorcan sounds unusually frustrated. Wondering if the night has been too much for him, and knowing how much he hates his anointing, I resist teasing him, and really try to think.

I…I don’t actually know. I’m…I’m sorry, Lorcan. I should know.

Wracking my brain, I try and cast my mind back to that time, when I was kept on a leash like livestock, when I woke and slept by Silent bones, and it makes me sick in my soul to rest on any piece of it.

No. I’m sorry, Little Keeper. I forget you were a child. I’ve known you too long at this point to remember just that piece of you. But I’m not a greybeard, however much you may cast me as one. He’s purposefully light, trying to pull me from my darkest places, and for him, I make an effort.

“I was twelve, and you were…you were eighteen? Only? Can that be right?” Speaking out loud helps push the memories away, though I sometimes feel half-mad being the only voice in an empty room.

Correct. So you are 23 now, which means, well. I don’t know what I am , but I would have been only 29. Though you insist upon treating me as though my bones are about to fall to dust.

“It’s not my fault you act like an Old One,” I joke back, and the feeling of him rolling his eyes washes over me.

Children, children, the Hunter chides, and Lorcan almost laughs.

Now he is old, my Protector says.

I am indeed. Fifty and some years more, though it’s none of your business, Protector. And old bones need rest. So hush yourselves. Tomorrow is bound to be…unpleasant.

Curling up, I blow out the candle, trying to ignore the howling wind outside my shuttered window, and the strange scratching sound the branches of a nearby tree seem to make only at night.

It sends freezing shards of fear into my heart, sharp spikes of cold panic, but anytime I’ve been brave enough to check, there has been nothing outside my window but night and all its terrors.

The scratching grows louder and louder in the wind, until finally I put my hands over my ears, almost moaning in panic.

Something is happening to me, and it’s scaring me.

This…feeling of living….it’s too much. I can’t find the emptiness that usually fills me, gleaming white, with no shades of color.

The scratching comes again, and I have to bury my face in the thin pillow not to scream.

Little Keeper. You are safe. I am here, Lorcan whispers, and I fight against the tears clogging my throat.

I’m not usually afraid of the night; this is a grave secret I would never tell another.

In our village, everyone is afraid of the night.

But darkness is just a masque of death, and even the blood moths aren’t what prevent me from leaving my home and wandering the empty streets.

There are things more dangerous with razor teeth and hidden talons than the creatures of the Everfire. Things that live inside our bone walls.

“Tell me a story,” I whisper through a choked throat, surprising my bone Protector.

Keeper? He asks, caught off guard.

“Please, Lorcan. Just…just until I fall asleep. I’m going mad tonight. Please.” I rarely ask favors, and never beg, and I can tell how worried he is, how unsure, but the TriGoddess bless him, because, after a long pause, he does not hesitate again.

Once upon a time, there was a girl made of starlight and sorrow, and all the hills and valleys of the world were held in her imperfect hands…

I drift off to peace, guided by his low, hollow voice.