Page 114 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

“No,” I reply. “The betterment of our livestock benefits everyone, so breeding rights have never been for payment, not as such anyway. You ask, of course, and are free to refuse, but it only harms the village as a whole if the herds are thinned or weakened. It does no good to the Council to keep the heartiest and strongest to themselves while the Third Ring’s livestock grow spindly and scrawny, year after year. If it continues this way, they’ll lose their herds altogether, and then the Storms will be a dire event.”

“Are…are most of the chosen animals from the Third Ring?” Kaden is thoughtful, and Rannoch nods in response.

“Lately, yes. Though we’re trying to change things. Some of us choose our five, and then just return them to the farmers. But it’s a losing game — ten, fifteen, twenty from two hundred.”

“Hmm. And do you get five as well, Wren?” Kaden surprises a bark of hard laughter from her, bitter as yarrow.

“I don’t even get village folktales, Kaden. You think they’d give me an animal to love?”

“Would youwanta pet?” Rannoch is curious, gentle in a way I’m not used to hearing from him. Some of the arrogance that cloaked him in the village has fallen away, and it makes him frustratingly likable at times. It will be hard to remind myself that we are not friends when we return to the village; easier to keep him at a distance now so I don’t have to unlearn bad habits. I’ll have to caution Wren later to do the same.

“She wants chickens,” I reply for her, and she grins at me. “Many,manychickens.”

“And then some,” she adds, sending electric starlight through me when she laughs at my pained expression.

“Just how manyismany?” I groan, and she almost giggles, a girlish, bubbling sound I’ve never heard her make. It’s happiness distilled intoa single moment, filling all of my empty spaces with nothing but pure, unfiltered joy.

“Manyis many,” Wren laughs, and I shake my head, burying my face in my hands in mock despair.

“The winter barn I’ll have to build you?—”

Her eyes are drops of moonlight, and because she’s staring at me, she misses the way Kaden and Rannoch’s faces darken, the looks they exchange when they think we can’t see them. I fight to keep a smug smile from my face; it’s uncharitable, but I’m suddenly and fiercely exultant they’re hearing pieces of our secret plans.

“Perhaps we won’t need a winter barn, if we settle somewhere outside the walls…” Her voice is quiet, wistful now, and I have to ignore the worry tugging at my heart. She’s mentioned this before, leaving the village, but…our people need her. Especially now. I shudder to think of how many souls have gone unguided since we left, how many are lost forever to the emptiness of the Void. Dreams are drifting across her face, though, delicate longing sketched in every line; now is not the time to take them from her, to try and urge her down a different path. So I leave it, and just bring her a scant bowl of broth.

“Alright. Enough with you and your army of chickens,” I tease her. She squinches up her face in adorable protest, and laugh helplessly. “Eat something,” I urge her more seriously, and she sighs.

“You’re a mother hen, you know that, Tahrik?” She’s smiling, but in a strange way that I’m unused to. Still, her happiness is mine; grinning down at her, I shrug.

“You wanted chickens, Keeper. Careful what you wish for.”

Rannoch and Kaden laugh from the firepit at the expression on her face, continuing their own quiet conversation as we settle into our evening meal. And if it takes everything in me to ignore the fear that gnaws at my stomach, growing bigger every day we are away from our home, then it’s a small effort for these moments of dreaming together.

THESE SAD TRUTHS

WREN

The water is a strange consistency — thin, and clear to the bottom, frothing in tiny white bubbles where it hits rock or shore. It’s almost singing as it runs over stones and tree branches, and in its shadows I can see tiny fish darting through glinting sparks of sunlight then back again. Everything here is foreign and fascinating, and my stomach clenches in an unfamiliar but eager anticipation for the next unknown thing.

From in front of me Kaden crows, a happy, excited sound that bounces off the larger boulders around us. “I wonder…” he mumbles under his breath, and runs ahead, leaping from stone to stone with practiced feet, until he’s a hundred yards up, at the turning of the small river we’ve been following for the last few days. “Yes!” he shouts from the curve. “Wren! Rannoch! Tahrik! Come see!”

And we do, stumbling like children across the tiny pebbles, the stump-sized rocks, keeping close to the shale cliffs that border the quick-flowing water. Tahrik is careful, cautious, reaching for me to help me over rough areas, but I gently shake off his hands, pulling myself up and over the jagged surface.

“Let me help, Wren,” he whispers, looking behind at Rannoch whois watching the interaction, head tilted like a bird, curious and waiting. “You’ll hurt yourself.”

An unfamiliar kernel of rebellion sits heavy in my heart. I’ve never felt this hardness towards Tahrik, but my whole life has been lived within tight boundaries of cold, white walls, the dead my only comfort. This openness calls to me, its raw, strangelifeechoing through my bones and coursing in my blood. I’ve been protected and kept from the world long enough, and have no desire to continue the patterns of my youth in this new, wild world. “I can do it.” I try to be gentle. He just wants to take care of me. But I am not a child.

He frowns, opens his mouth to speak, and then wisely shakes his head to silence himself. I know he’s unhappy with me, and it curdles in my stomach. Tahrik’s unhappiness is my own, and it distracts me as I climb over the next boulder, scraping my knee, drawing a small, startled “oh!” from my mouth before I can smother it.

Tahrik jerks back, examining my skin frantically.

“It’s nothing, Tahrik. It’s nothing.”

The lines between his brow are caverns deep as he stares down at my tiny cut, little ruby teardrops decorating the surface.

“You’re bleeding.” The words are flat, accusing, and I’m about to snap back, but feel the weight of Rannoch’s watching eyes. Taking a breath, I study Tahrik’s face, really look at him, instead of just responding. His jaw is clenched tight, his eyes wide, hands shaking, and suddenly, clearly, I can see his fear. Not just for me, although that is at the forefront, but of this adventure, the enormity of the open sky above us, the creeping forest around us. The walls that were, for me, an Exile — bones that never fit my soul quite right — for him were safety, and surety. He would never have left the shadow of the mountains if it were not for me, and the magnitude of what he sacrificed to stay with me suddenly hits me. Reaching out, I lay a pale hand on his face, and study him, even as he stares unwavering at me in return. We are caught in a moment, a fork in the road, and I don’t have a map to lead me from this place.

Tahrik never minded the boundaries of his birth. His family is well-respected, three or more generations of millers grinding grainfor our village. They were never in the mines, had comfortable lives, as much as any in our village ever had. He had friends, family, parents — he was in line to run the mill if his mother and father made it to their sunset years, or before that if they were called to Offering. Thinking back, really thinking, I remember now how many people loved my friend. My only friend. How he would laugh with the women in the streets, how the children would sneak to him for crusts of new bread, warm from the oven. He would sing at every wedding, would dance at every birth. And, somehow, even in all of that vibrancy, he had seen me in my stillness, and had chosen me.

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