Page 79

He lowers himself to the ground in front of me, hesitates, then bends his head to my hands, touching his forehead to my shaking fingers .

“Wren….I—” His voice trails off, but it is enough. I know. If I were to have witnessed what he witnessed, I would think myself a monster as well. I am a monster. I do not think it.

The telltale sound of clicking in the silent night pulls me out of my dark thoughts, and I shoot frantic glances at the two men. “Closer, closer…Marrin, close your eyes. Please. I can’t help your ears, but please.”

He obediently screws his eyes shut. Rannoch wraps his arms around us protectively, and Tahrik, looking from me to the child, quickly rips small pieces of fabric from his shirt before balling them up and placing them in Marrin’s ears.

He presses his hands over the boy’s head trying to mute all sound, before meeting my eyes again.

“Will it be bad?” he mouths, no sound escaping, and I nod, jaw clenched.

“Worse than imagining. You will live, but not untouched. Just don’t move.”

And there we sit, an unlikely tableau, frozen like storm ice in the heart of winter, when the first Councilmember steps outside the tenuous safety of the bonfire into full night. His friends are inches behind him.

Thankfully there is no time for screaming.

The cloud of blood moths is so thick that the men are covered in an instant, their mouths full of tearing, fluttering bodies burrowing in as soon as they open, eyes already eaten by razor sharp teeth.

The only sounds are the gnawing of thousands of tiny teeth tearing at living skin, the wet, ripping of flesh being stripped of bodies, the low humming of the blood moths’ wings.

There are no soul songs; blood moths are creatures of the Ender, and eat sinew and soul the same.

It is worse than the Silence, worse than Exile. It is a nightmare made real.

Marrin’s tiny, bruised body quakes against mine, and Tahrik can feel it. Clearing his throat, he tries once, and then once more, before he is finally able to speak.

“If I don’t move, can I sing Wren? Or will it be?—”

“Oh sing! Sing, please , Tahrik. Just quietly. ”

He stutters, his voice is shaking, but he sings directly into Marrin’s ear, his neck bent to press his head against Marrin’s.

There’s a road up a hill where the wildflowers grow

Oo-dallally, hey-dallally, where the flowers grow

And a stream full of fishes where the wild waters flow

Oh, the water, hey the water, where the waters flow…

Marrin shudders as he lets out a small sigh, and relaxes against me, the sound of Tahrik’s song drowning out what little noise remained through the cloth in his ears.

Tahrik keeps singing, verse after verse, voice growing steadier even as the ravenous moths focus their attention away from the bodies they’ve just stripped to bone and onto our tiny group.

Rannoch’s arms flex around us, but otherwise he stays still, unflinching, the first line of useless defense against the Ender’s delicate, deadly creatures.

“Wren?” he whispers as the squelching sounds cease, and the blood moths turn as a group of starlings toward us. I can’t answer; he does not move, placing all his trust in my trembling body.

They move towards us in a swarm, some flying, some crawling, dragging their blood-soaked wings along the ground behind them.

The ones wriggling forward on the earth, bellies too full and bodies too sodden to be airborne, creep to the warm, dripping remains beside us and cover what is left of Nickolas in a cloud so thick it looks like writhing stone.

Nausea fills my throat as they feast, the soggy gurgling of flesh a sickening harmony to the clicking of teeth on cracking bone.

It’s impossible to ignore, distracting me, so they are almost upon us before I reach out and push against them.

The moths swirl like smoke in the air, heavy and choking, then try again.

Again I push back, and now we are locked in a dance, and I am giving away all my secrets to save a small boy I barely know and two men of whom I am entirely unsure.

“BoneKeeper?” Rannoch questions, astonishment clear in his voice, words barely audible above Tahrik’s song, but I can tell he hears it, and his body tenses, waiting for the answer.

I am sweating, head pounding, heart skipping necessary beats in a staccato rhythm. I’ve done too much tonight, more than I ever have before, and I’m swaying in place, fighting against myself and the famished, fluttering wings.

“They have exoskeletons. They…their wings are lined with bone, of a sort…”

“They’re…they’re not human, Wren.” The fear in his voice is shattered glass; whether he is afraid of me or for me, I can’t tell.

“They aren’t,” I confirm, but have no energy to say more, and he does not ask.

The moths don’t give up easily, not when they can smell the blood on Tahrik’s knees and Marrin’s throat, not when they know they are close to breaking me, close to more food for their endless bellies.

Every time they press forward they get closer and closer, until tiny mouths are scraping Rannoch’s arms, nibbling on his fingers.

A few clamber in my blowing hair; those, though, stop fighting immediately, crawling up with thin feet, sitting like jewels around my head.

Others walk carefully down my arms to perch on my wrists like living bracelets, nestling in the grooves of my skin where my vertebracelets normally go.

Once there, they are still, unmoving, and make no attempt to go to the others.

The battle seems endless; by the time they finally retreat, it is only because the sky has lightened marginally, from pitch to ash, though the fire has burnt out completely.

The taste of dawn is cold in the air; it is enough to drive the bulk of the blood moths back to their caves.

The few that are on my body, some fifteen or twenty, stay, frozen, then fall off and remain on the ground when we all finally stand, muscles screaming.

Marrin, past the point of exhaustion, has somehow fallen asleep in Tahrik’s arms. He cradles the boy gently, and looks to me cautiously.

“Am I safe to take him to my home? I don’t know what else to do.” I bend my head in silent reply, and he sighs. “Wren, I?—”

“It is forgotten, Tahrik.”

Nodding uncomfortably, he stares at me for a moment, face inscrutable, then shifts Marrin’s sleeping form, and leaves on silent feet.

My eyes trail his every step, the growing distance between us a tangible thing, pulling air from my lungs.

Suddenly and desperately I wish for nothing more than for him to glance over his shoulder one more time, for something in him to force him to look back and reassure himself that I’m alright.

A bright, almost painfully relieved spark flares to life in my heart when he pauses at the edge of the square, long enough for the wait to tighten my throat in agonizing hope.

But it dies when his head drops without turning, when his feet stutter forward again, when he rounds the corner and disappears from sight.

Studying the ground where the moths lie, unmoving, I try desperately to ignore the weight of Rannoch’s eyes on me.

“Secrets upon secrets, Keeper,” he whispers softly. “Secrets upon secrets.”

Reaching out, he takes my hands gently in his own.

They are rough and calloused, but steady and unwavering; there is no hesitation in his touch.

Lifting my trembling fingers to his lips, he kisses them softly, his mouth unexpectedly warm against my skin, a flare of heat in a frozen world.

“Thank you, Wren,” he whispers, feather-soft and fervent. “You were very brave.”

I want to respond, say something , but the night finally catches up with me, the relief of surviving surging forward, replacing all the adrenaline with crippling fatigue. In one sudden, crushing wave, the price of my choices crashes over me, my vision flickering, then failing.

“Oh!” I say briefly, stupidly, then hear his shout of alarm as everything in me dissolves into unconsciousness.