Page 4

For the first time in weeks I am outside, the air tasting clear and pure as fresh water, the relief of being out of my room so painful I can’t prevent tears from coursing down my face.

What a waste of water. Leaning my head into the curved bones of the walls, I stroke the smooth ivory, calling to the souls inside.

They respond in surprise, eager and falling over themselves to speak.

At first they’re confused, then concerned, voices pushing through each other.

Collared, like a dog? Kept in a cage? What to do?

What to do? It’s pure luck, nothing but chance, that I hear the almost silent whisper of an old, pockmarked bone at the very bottom of the wall, half in dirt and covered in dry leaves.

Keeper , he sighs, Keeper. Attend. I was a jeweler in my flesh life.

I can assist. Listen. Listen. Loosen me.

Take me. So I pull him from the wall and tuck him in my shirt.

Over the next few weeks, I concentrate carefully on his faint voice, remembering every word, following every instruction, until I have the beginnings of my armor, my escape, my new “eyes”.

Lorcan is only able to negotiate leashed walks outside three times a week, and always under a watchful Protector, so at first, all of my bone armor is made from the Silent — those poor, lost souls who had no Keeper to guide them home after their deaths.

These are the bones lining my cage, the only ones I have constant access to, so I apologize gently to their absent souls, then I pull pieces from the walls in the darkness to weave together on leather and wire.

I connect vertebrae in long cuffs — almost bracers — running from the curve of my wrists to my elbows, their v’s interlocking and pointing down toward my fingers, linked with other, shorter bones.

Using scraps of hide, I bind them tightly around my forearms. A wide necklace of teeth and fingers, also taken from the Silent, covers my chest, almost to my shoulders, and drips down my back in a straight, thin line along my spine.

Tiny, pearled sesamoids are strung together and curve around the shell of my ears, and I braid a series of bones on thin leather strands into my long, white hair.

Knowing the Council and the young Father cannot tell a bird bone from a leg bone, or Exiled from living bone, I spend all my free moments under the guidance of the jeweler creating my new skin.

No one comes to see me — I am not allowed visitors, and have no family or friends, so only Lorcan and Ollendar watch me through knowing or amused eyes, respectively.

Lorcan is curious but silent, while Ollendar is condescendingly lenient, thinking my tinkering the fumbling pastime of a little girl.

Neither sees the deeper truth, and I hum softly to myself in the night, curled up against the jeweler, my only friend .

I am learning to trust living bone, and no other.

Once all my pieces are complete, I put them on every morning, and practice.

It will be only a matter of time until the Council demands my presence; despite their attempts to hide me away, I am still needed for Reapings and Renderings.

So at the turning of the month, when they finally call for me, I leave my room and the girl I was behind, and glide into their meeting on silent, ghostlike feet.

The moment I enter the Council Chamber, it erupts into chaos.

“Peace,” I say, voice cast low, no hint of the child I’d been left in my tone.

“Peace.” They look at me, eyes wide with fear, as though they are seeing the TriGoddess return, and back up against the wall behind them.

Twelve men brought to wetting themselves by a girl.

It is my first taste of my own power, and I grab it, swallowing it to glow in my belly like the Everfire.

“The Bones have volunteered to be my eyes and ears. They offer me their protection so I may resume my full duties as Keeper.”

A murmuring, a muttering, and one man, Raek, steps forward, face set. Turning unerringly to face him before he speaks, I cut him off at the knees. “Councilman Raek? You have a question?”

He looks uneasy, voice placating. “Surely you can’t mean to leave yourself vulnerable, Keeper. We are here to keep you safe.”

“If you are offering your bone to join me, I accept. Thank you for your sacrifice.”

His eyes flare, panic clear as a bell ringing in them. “NO! No. BoneKeeper, you misunderstand me. I meant ? —”

“I do not misunderstand, Councilor. Your meaning is obvious. I no longer need your particular brand of protection. I have the bones. It is enough.” Touching my neck, I smile, a vicious little grin, sharp teeth flashing in the torchlight.

“They tell me all I need to know, and show me what I need to see.”

Nickolas slithers away in the darkness, around the edges of the room, and approaches me from behind, seemingly trying to surprise me and prove me wrong.

Whirling around to face him, I raise my Guiding Knife, bone sharp, blade ready, to rest against his unexpecting throat.

“Do you wish to go to your forever home, Councilor?” The bones on my body chatter together when I whip around, creating an eerie rattling, like the shaking tail of a snake, and the color drains from his face .

“I thought…I thought…” he stutters, and I shake my head, enjoying the wooden rattling of the hollow bones laced in my braids..

“You did not think. But you will. You will. I am returning to my home now. Visitations will resume immediately. The bones demand it.”

It is the end of my caged time. I emerge like a phoenix, covered in new feathers, only my feathers are white and hard, and hold the whispered words of centuries in their depths.

There is nothing they can say. Nothing they can do — not in the moment, at least. But they can plot, and they can plan, and try to prove me vulnerable and wrong.

So at the turning of the month, when I am struck down by illness, the Council calls Lorcan to Offering— one of the last named by the Council and not the Bones.

Their message is crimson clear in his unusually bloody Reaping, and my vertebracelets are soaked red when I take his shimmering soul in my shaking hands.

They are clever when they punish me with Lorcan’s Offering, but even then, make a mistake.

The Bones around my neck and cuffs stay those of the Silent, but, a few weeks later, during his Waking, Lorcan offers his bones to line my back, and I accept.

He was a silent man in life, and remains silent in death, but with his living bone down my back and around my throat, I no longer have to fear what could be approaching me, trying to catch me unawares.

The first day I adorned him I sliced my shirt from collar to hem, unswerving down the spine, and every piece of clothing since, no matter the weather, has had a cutaway for Lorcan’s bones.

The Protector’s fingers, vertebra and teeth fall in a straight, graceful line from my neck to the sway of my back, and he rarely whispers to me except to warn of danger.

The bell echoes a fourth time, and I’m yanked back to the present.