Page 27

So yes, the old ways are changing, and the twisting, shifting snakes of dissent started 24 years ago, late in the Month of the Maiden, once the winds ceased and the world woke from its darkness.

Things were already uneasy — the Storms had come early that year, following strange and unheard of events that left a child as the Village Father.

There wasn’t enough food for the longer winter, and the luckiest emerged from their homes gaunt and hollow.

In near desperation, on the first clear day without rains, the Council demanded my father’s return to their Keep from his tiny stone cottage where he had been for the whole of the storm season, curled up with his wife and new infant daughter.

He showed up in front of the Council House, face tight, broad hands wrapped around a tiny baby, already marked with hair the color of bone .

The Council was furious when they realized what had happened during the long silence of the winter months.

The village wanted to see it as a benediction, a sign that perhaps the Vengeance was nearing its end, that a second Keeper was a sign of forgiveness, but the Council was as stone, tradition engraved in every line of their faces.

To have two Keepers, to have one be a girl …there was no path but the inevitable.

The Council ascended the mountain, climbing the treacherous Path to the Stars, or the Sacred Stairs, a shining, twisting series of steps carved into the side of the grey mountain rock.

The steps start between two enormous, curved boulders, but within the distance of a hundred feet, rise up alone, like spikes on a dragon’s back.

Following a single ridge, over a bottomless gully, the stairs go left from the north wall of the village, up, up, up into the heavy mist that hangs like a shroud at the edge of the treeline.

When the sun is just right, it reflects blindingly off the bone that lines the front edge of each stair.

The femurs from every member of the council who has ever served guild the footpath of the current Council when they leave the village monthly to ascend the mountain to a small, hidden chapel at the top, where they deal in secrets and sacred things.

The stairs have no rails, no protection from the elements, and, in the past, it was said that the winds sweeping down the mountain face had knocked a Councilor or two from their feet and into the lost world below.

I would not mind, in my deepest heart, if the winds would take one of them now.

It is there in the round, ivory House of the Gods where all sacred decisions are made if the bones do not speak, and the bones offered no guidance to my father at my birth.

They didn’t leave the sanctuary for a week while debating.

The women of the village braved the treacherous staircase up the cliff, bringing sweet honied breads to the fourteen men — the Councilors, the young Father, and the Justice — and left it as gifts on the doorstep to soften their decision. My father was beloved.

But two Bonekeepers…. .

His death was written in my first cry.

My father was killed when I was four months old, and my eyes were anointed with his blood, as was custom.

There were only two differences — the first that my father himself was able to press his thumbs to my lids, coated in living blood pulled from his veins before he was Offered, rather than reconstituted dust. The second that his prints remained there, clear crimson whorls and loops stained on paper thin translucent skin, despite many, many efforts to scrub them away.

They are now the only color on my face, two vibrant thumbprints the scarlet of freshly spilled blood, standing out in stark relief when my eyes close, his final blessing seared into my flesh.

There was little rejoicing in the village, though the naming of a Keeper would normally be cause for celebration.

In a break with tradition, the people called for my father to live, and my death instead.

Too many had passed to the Void in Silence during the winter, too many were on the edge of death now, and the absence of a Keeper meant their bones would be Silent as well.

The fear pressed them, folded them, and I have heard that they were close to rioting, but my father would brook no argument.

If a Keeper was to be Offered, it was his soul that would pass unguided. He would not sentence me to the Void.

There was no food for the normal feast with the naming of a BoneKeeper, just gaunt, hollowed eyes and cheeks, and unending hopelessness. The villagers were distraught and desperate after a vicious storm season, and it morphed into resentment towards the little ghost girl with blood stained eyelids.

The Council followed all traditions of my birth, but did nothing to silence the whispers that raced through the crowds.

There was no real Father, just an eight year old child, and no real BoneKeeper, only a milk-white babe with the colorless hair that marks a Keeper’s calling, and the Council reveled in the unease, stepping into the vacuum and taking control from places outside of their magistrate.

When the blood prints on my eyelids would not wash away, and settled instead into permanent marks, they did not speak.

When the bones started speaking to me earlier than any Keeper in memory, they did not speak.

When there was worry about me being a girl, when I was taken from my mother to be raised by the Council, when I was forced into a cage, when they called her to Offering, when I had to Guide her soul, they did not speak.

When my eyes turned white and color drained from them as water from a cup, they did not speak.

The Council waited, and watched, and let the silence be filled with suspicion and supposition, and then, finally, made their move when the village felt close to shattering with worry.

In the absence of a full Keeper and a full Father, they had “interpreted” the will of the Sun God and Earth, and had Reaped and Rendered so many that some thought the days of the Sword had returned.

The villagers were scared, and the fear turned them silent, eyes wide, mouths empty.

It was a brutal, merciless time, and though at the end of it we returned to the old ways, the shadows of the previous years were still evident in the anxious footsteps of our people.

Nickolas still hovers in front of me, anger building as I drift through the memories of what has passed.

He demands attention like a petulant child, hating when anyone or anything takes the focus from him.

He looks as though he is about to speak, and, putting steel in my spine, I draw myself up to my full height, pulling in strength from the bones around me.

The old ways are changing, he said.

Then let them change. It is better to alter than be altered. To destroy than be destroyed. I will either be the storm or the sacrifice, and by the Lady, I am not giving more blood than I have already given.

“I will no longer read for the Council.” The words are out of my mouth before I can snap them back, loud enough that the villagers around me pick up their heads in startled interest, and an odd ringing sound echos from the bones around me.

Nickolas looks like he has been slapped, and moves suddenly, as though to hit me here, in the open light of day, before jerking to a stop and glancing surreptitiously around.

Even now, with the chaos of the Council riding the city, hitting the BoneKeeper would be a death sentence.

He bares his teeth in a rictus grin, trying and failing to seem as though I’d made a joke.

“Ha.” He forces the word out. “You never fail to amuse me, Keeper.”

“There is no jest here, Councilman. You have overstepped your bounds in ways of which I was previously unaware. The bones are now silent to you until the errors are corrected.”

He roars in anger, beyond caring what the people think, and grabs me again, dragging me behind him through the dry roads of the town, down the main street toward the Council House, followed by a crowd of nervous onlookers.

I am silent, but the noise of the building audience draws the rest of the Council onto the stairs in front of their home, watching the scene with wide and worried eyes.

Steps from the rest of the Council, Nickolas pulls me in front of him and tosses me to the ground, bloodying my hands, rattling all the bones in and on my body.

I don’t fight it, take the pain as penance for abandoning my people for so long.

In a way I act a pantomime, welcoming Nickolas’ anger and using it to expose him for what he is.

So if I cry out more loudly than I would have, if I am slower rising to my feet, my stuttered movements belying the anger in my belly, than so-be-it.

“Brother Nickolas!” The Father’s voice is dark and dangerous, the stone of the mountain in his words. “What excuse could you possibly have for your treatment of our Keeper?”

Nickolas is a rabid wolf, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth. “She is refusing to read for the Council.”

There is a startled intake of breath, knowing glances between the Twelve. The Father, however, is focused on me. “BoneKeeper?”

I shrug, uncaring, and blank my voice to be as cool and white as the winter air. “The Bones refuse. You have abused your power and position for too long, and they will not speak.”

Nickolas whirls around, face centimeters from my own, and grabs my arms in a bruising grip, flowers blooming on my pale skin, hissing, “You will make them.” His brother steps forward and lays a calming hand on Nickolas’s trembling arm.

“Peace, brother,” he whispers tightly, forcing a mirthless smile from his thin lips, trying to ease the situation.

His eyes dart quickly toward the anxious crowd, who are studying every movement with growing concern.

“Peace, for now.” Raek is much more of the politician than his younger brother.

It is his only saving grace, but it is balanced by his downfall — this blind love for his family.

Nickolas shakes him off. I have not moved, do not flinch when he lurches towards me, my bored expression a stark contrast to his crazed countenance.

“Who do you think you are?” he screams, high pitched, like a scavenger spotting prey, and I lean forward, reveling slightly as he steps back.

“I do not think , Nickolas. I know. And you have not been careful enough.”

“I am a Councilmember, and you will address me as such!” He is trembling, panting, and beside him even Raek is beginning to let the cracks show.

“ Brother! Cease! ” he commands through gritted teeth.

Careful, Keeper Lorcan cautions from my spine, and I reach up to rest my fingers on the strand of him around my throat, drawing strength.

Nickolas is a rabid beast, ignoring the square of people, the restless tumult in the growing assembly. “You are a tool of this Council, and your sole purpose is our will and whim. You will make them speak to us!”

“ Nickolas! ” The Father’s voice is a barked command, but it is too late, and the collective intake of breath in the square drinks all the oxygen from the world. I respond to Nickolas as I would a toddler.

“I will not make them. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? I won’t even ask them. You have betrayed the legacy of our people, and their counsel is silent to you until your ways are mended.”

“Do not speak to me as though I’m a child, Keeper.” His words are a threat, violence shaking them, trembling on a sharp thread.

“Do not act as a child, and I won’t treat you as one, Councilman.

” My tone stays flat, emotionless, and Raek is now wrapping his arms around his brother to pull him back.

The Council has been struck dumb — they are not used to me with teeth, and I am suddenly, viciously glad that I found a spine this morning.

The square is crackling with barely restrained energy, an almost violent, frozen tableau on the edge of decisions which can’t be taken back.

Raek is as close to frantic as I’ve ever seen him, desperately trying to maintain a stony demeanor while muzzling his brother, for the first time unsure of the next step.

My words and Nickolas’s actions have thrown us into an unknown territory, destroying the careful, unspoken balance of a crumbling ecosystem.

So I think in some ways it’s almost a relief to the brutish men on the stage when I turn from them toward the listening crowd and pluck control with a simple, gentle smile.

Where the Council threatens and coerces, I will offer and give freely.

Where they are carrion birds, I will be a mourning dove.

And I will correct what has become a place of sinew and sacrifice.

Tilting my head and staring over them, as though listening to the bones, I wait a beat, two beats, until the people quieten.

“Though today would be a nice day to be a child…” I begin, a teasing note dancing in my voice, shifting the attention from the hovering Council, “because the Bones are calling for a Scavenger Hunt.”