Page 37

THE BLOODIED TREE

WREN

W hen I come back to myself, I am on the ground by the tree, the Councilmen hovering over me with scared faces and wide eyes.

Somewhere in the distance Raek is berating Nickolas in a low, steady stream of words that are unending despite several meek attempts at protest. The Father is standing above me, hands clenched in tight fists at his sides, and Rannoch is kneeling in the dirt beside me, pouring water in my mouth.

“Cease…” I say sputtering weakly, and the relief breaking on his face is like the first sunrise after the storm season.

“You stopped breathing.” He doesn’t try to hide the panic in his voice, perhaps because it is echoed on the faces of the men around him. “You stopped breathing , Keeper.”

“He should not have forced her!’

“She knew something was wrong!”

“It’s a sign…”

“It’s a sign…”

The Council, Protectors, Renders, and Reapers are all murmuring amongst themselves, a combination of disgust at my treatment, and something darker, more insidious. I don’t have time to consider their reactions though, because it is so loud out here, beyond the wall, and yet so quiet.

It is… too quiet.

Sitting up in dawning terror, I look around frantically, creeping hysteria freezing my heart. The only sounds in the world are from the men around me, the wind, the tree branches, the birds…but no bones. No bones!

Grabbing Rannoch’s arm, I pull myself to my feet shakily then stumble toward the wall, falling into it, uncaring that I cut my hands and arms pressing into the skeletons.

Hello? Hello?

I know where I am, inches from my family, and I turn to them.

Hello? Hello?

There is no answer. The bones here are empty.

Empty.

They were not when they went through the archway, that much I know, and I’m gutted with a reborn loss, long-shelved grief dusted and polished and placed before me, bright and new again. What has happened? Where is everyone?

A sickening thought strikes me — if fear were a flame before, it is now an inferno, flowing through my veins like Everfire — and I raise a violently trembling hand to my hair. I cannot touch my neck yet. I simply cannot.

Hunter? I ask, hope choking my throat, tears stinging across the bridge of my nose.

Silence.

HUNTER? I scream, but still. Silence.

I do not even need to question the jeweler to know he is gone as well, and, without moving from the wall where my face is pressed into unresponsive bone, I cry, and cry, and cry, tears pouring unchecked down my face, sobs tearing through my body in tremors as brutal as any storm.

He is gone.

And if the Hunter is gone…I can’t even think the words.

Forcing myself, I raise a shuddering hand to my throat, where Lorcan’s bones are wrapped around my neck in a crimson and ivory collar.

The silence in front of me is echoed now behind me, the world having fallen into a mute hush with only my keening to shatter its stillness.

Lorcan?

Silence.

Please, please Goddess.

…lorcan?

His name is a whisper, barely a whisper, a prayer.

And the response is a breath, not even, but…

keeper…what?

The relief births a fury in me unlike anything I have ever known, and I turn in one, savage motion, skin raw and bleeding, the cuts from the bone crown and thorn vines reopened here a third time by the bone wall, wind whipping my hair into twisting strands, all my bone armor now completely silent other than Lorcan, who is barely a sigh on my skin.

“ What have you done ? ” I scream, the sound reverberating off the mountains, echoed by the hawks circling above us, biting shrieks of a predator spotting prey.

The men cower before me, pressing back against the Blood Tree.

“What bonds have you broken, Council? Here beyond the sight of your people. What. Have. You. Done ?”

Raek, still with Nickolas, stares at me, eyes bright with malice, but does not respond.

Several of the Council mumble and mutter, placating noises full of meaningless excuses.

Interestingly enough, others turn to each other in confusion — Rannoch and Silas exchange long, heavy glances, an entire conversation held in the space of a breath.

“This is not your province, BoneKeeper.” Nickolas’s entire body is tight with disdain, my title an insult in his mouth, and I turn my full attention on him, stalking toward him, trembling with rage.

“ You dragged me out here, Nickolas. You have made this my province. ”

He falls silent as his brother’s grip tightens down again, and I smirk, glancing back and forth between the two men. “A caution, Councilman. Your brother will not always be here to save you and silence your tongue.”

“Is that a threat, BoneKeeper?” Raek asks, voice purposefully loud, faux concern and indignation clear. He is trying to take control, to turn the tide on this chaos. Tilting my head, I smile and reply softly.

“I certainly hope so, Raek. I rarely waste words.”

“How dare you!...” His outrage would be funny if it weren't so hideously out of place.

“How…how dare I ?” Turning from him, I dismiss him in a casual shrug of motion, then slowly approach the tree. It is a black, twisting thing, with climbing, looped roots bursting from the ground then diving back beneath, branches like claws and talons curving toward the sky and the bone wall.

The Blood Tree has been here, just outside the gates of our city, for as long as anyone can remember, though it has grown in recent years, grasping root systems running up to and climbing the bone walls of our city.

During the warmer months it produces a thick red sap identical to its namesake that the Hunters collect in endless buckets.

The sap is boiled down with brackish water to create a heavy, salty-sweet syrup used in every village festival.

The syrup is mixed with fermented grain to make mead, is kneaded into dough for flavored breads and cakes during the solstices, and is even combined into tinctures to aid against sickness or help with pain.

In turn, during times of hardship, the Blood Tree is anointed with blood collected at the Rendings and Reapings, as a plea for help from the Sun God and Earth.

It is a practice outside of the Rendings and Reapings called for by the bones and the Gods, a tradition born of desperation, like the watering of our fruit tree groves.

I am certain, though I have no part in it, that as soon as wheat in the silos was growing scant, the Council was out here, pouring small, ceremonial drops of Offering Blood on its bark.

But the ground is wet beneath my feet, marshy and spongy.

A cold chill runs down my spine, where Lorcan is painfully quiet, and I raise a horrified hand to cover my mouth.

They could not. Even them. It would be…but the tree has grown so much.

So quickly. Approaching it carefully, I ignore the protesting men around me and pick my way through the curving roots to the soggy earth nearest the trunk.

It has not rained here since the last storm season.

Shaking, I drop to my knees and press my hands to the ground.

They come away red and metallic, smelling of iron.

“BoneKeeper…” Silas’s voice is cautious. He and Rannoch stand directly behind me, blocking me from the watchful eyes of the rest of the men, and I cast blank eyes up to their faces.

“Did you know?” I can barely get the words out, and am strangely relieved by their confusion.

“What is there to know?” Rannoch asks, voice tight with trepidation, and I turn my hands over to show them my glistening palms. They inhale as one, shock and horror clear in their eyes.

“Unguided?” Silas is unmoving, hasn’t flinched, but it is clear the weight of the mountains behind him have settled on his shoulders.

“Unguided. Who knows how many? The outside walls are completely silent. There is no living bone there.”

“Raek!” Silas’s voice is a roar of sound, a tearing rumble of thunder that even Raek cannot stand against.

“We have had to make hard choices, Sir, hard and desperate choices….” He is obsequious, hands wringing in front of him as he casts glances around him for support.

His cohorts step back surreptitiously, fading into the background, trying not to attract attention, and Raek’s face twists in disgust before he can smooth it back into penitence.

“What have you done, Raek.” It is a statement, not a question, as though Silas either already knows or cannot bear to hear the answer.

“The Blood Tree was dying. Dying . And you were off, as usual, with the Hunters, for weeks.” He’s accusing, but not accusing, even now laying the groundwork for the future.

“You’re doing what you can for our people, Sir.

How could we do less? We only chose people from the outer rings for the water — no one with families.

No one of importance to the village. These are dark and terrible times. ”

“No one of importance ?” The words burst from me, wild and untamed. “Unguided? Uncalled to Offering? Sent to Silence for what? For what ?”

“I do not expect you to understand the struggles to rule this village, Keeper,” Raek responds stiffly, and Silas’s head snaps around at his words.

“ Rule , Councilman?” There are flashing teeth in his voice, and Raek straightens.

“A poor choice of words, Father. Forgive me. And perhaps a poor choice of actions, but the Blood Tree was almost dead. You were absent. We had no other options.”

“But why would you not call me?” My throat is choking tight. “Why would you send them to Silence?”

“You have not been yourself of late, BoneKeeper.” This is an accusation, a clear one.

Raek isn’t dancing with me like he is with the Father.

He sees soft flesh and is coming for it.

“Who knows what you would have done? Something is happening to you, Keeper. It worries us. Refusing to read for the Council. Ignoring the practices put in place for your safety. Wasting time telling stories to children. Be truthful, Keeper. You barely get through the Offerings. You do not have the mettle in you to do what it is going to take to save this village.”

The mettle? I do not have the mettle within me?

I have Guided every Offering in this village since I was five, holding wriggling souls in hands that could not tie bootstraps, have watched skin be stripped from bodies and fed to the Earth, watched throats be slit and, still bleeding, be put on a pyre to the Sun God.

I have emptied myself of everything that made me human in order to be a vessel for the Gods, carved the living flesh from my body to keep these people from harm. I do not have the mettle?

My hand floats to my Guiding Knife, thinking of all the souls lost to water this gnarled tree, and I grip the blade, unusually warm beneath my fingers.

Keeper it whispers, and I freeze, its voice shattering my ears. Keeper. Blood.

All else falls to silence, the pressure of the voice in my head allowing for no other noise. I close my eyes tightly, pressing my hands against my lids, trying to breathe through the rupturing voice from the razor sharp bone.

Now, Keeper. Blood. And then Blade.

Nothing more is said, but I know as clearly as if I had been drawn a picture what to do.

I just don’t know whether to listen to the voice that splinters my brain into such tiny pieces, that causes such terrible, terrible pain, that demands such endless payment.

Stomach churning, I open my eyes and the world comes back into sharp focus, the men arguing in an incoherent, senseless stew of noise and bluster.

Blood.

Blood.

Blood.

I am desperate to ask Lorcan his counsel, but he is so faint around my neck that my heart stutters, and his fading is what finally makes up my mind. In one, vicious movement, I yank the blade from my belt and stab it full center into my hand.