Page 123 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

He leans forward slowly, so far that I cannot move away, and softly presses warm lips against my own. Everything in me curls away from him, from his cautious tongue tracing my mouth, from the low moan emerging from his own. “Wren,” he murmurs, such reverence in his voice that it sickens me, and the small, secret part of my heart that held our story dries and crumbles like a winter’s leaf. With less than an exhale, it is lost to the wind.

“No.” The word is torn from me, like tendons yanked through flesh. “No!”

Rocking back from me, his face creases in unutterable sorrow. “No? I…Wren. We have dreamed of this together…if we bind ourselves before we return, they cannot turn back time. They will have to let us — we will be as husband and wife. I would never take from you what you don’t offer, Wren, but— There is no one here to stop us finally. Just the world we will build together.” His hands caress my arms, and I shiver back from him, pushing him away.

“Wren?”

“We are dreaming differently now, Tahrik.” If the words were kind it would have seemed a lover’s song from one to another, our faces areso close and my tone was so gentle. But they are not. They are edged in fear, in regret, and it is as though I’ve struck him. Trying to soften myself for the memory of a boy beneath a bone wall, I whisper, “We are traveling different paths. Tahrik, can’t you see?”

“What ishappeningto you?” He is hurt, and the pain turns to anger; it is easier to deal with a bright flame of emotion than a sour stab. “Iloveyou, Wren. You…You love me as well. You have just forgotten it, somehow you have forgotten us.” He is frantic, angry, and so,solost. Helpless almost, beneath the weight of his plans, his expectations, and this bitter, foreign reality that he clearly never expected. “Are you trying to protect me somehow? Driving me away from you to keep me safe for some reason? You…do you doubt me?”

“I don’t doubt you, Tahrik.” He relaxes slightly until I continue. “But…but I cannot love you, not as you want. Not in the shadow of a black mountain, not in the poisoned Storm season. Not in a house on a village street, even filled with song.”

Rearing back, face like a thundercloud, his hands clench to white fists at his side. “Do not lie to hurt me, Wren. It is not a thing we do to each other.”

I have never seen him like this; if leaving the village changed me, it has changed him too. The gentle boy I knew who kept my secrets and treated me as a hearth flame is gone, leaving only this man made of anger and bitterness in front of me.

“I cannot go back. And you only love the girl I was there. I never lied to hurt you, Tahrik. The person I was…she was a lie. I just didn’t know it at the time. I cannot be her again, no matter where we go. To make you that promise would be a betrayal.”

He turns and slams his fists into a tree nearby, bruising and cracking his knuckles til they run red with bright blood. “Abetrayal? Have you betrayed me?” The question is soul deep, thorns being ripped from his heart.

And perhaps I had. Perhaps I had betrayed him, because I always knew that the girl I was in the village was a muted version of myself, but I let him believe it was the truth of me. I let him be a safe space for me to feel a little free, a place where I could breathe. In such a barrenplace, he was a breath of life and possibility. Perhaps it was not fair of me to cast him in a role unfit for him, to have put so much of my hope in his hands.But,I think with a spasm in my heart,if he had stayed that boy, I would have loved him. And if I had stayed that girl, he would have loved me.That is the sadness of it all; we loved a passing version of each other, a brief moment of the other, and was it love at all then if it could not grow with the people we have become? What is love if not an experience of infinity?

“You were not mine to betray, Tahrik.” I say softly, raising a hand to his face, the lines of which I know so well I could draw them in my sleep. “We were never each other’s. Not really. We were stolen moments. And that could not last.”

I meant to be kind; I tried to be kind. But I could hear his heart crack, an audible sound like a boulder splitting from the top of the mountain. And like that, it starts a rockslide that was not planned and cannot be controlled.

“Wren!” He screams my name, pain breaking it to pieces. Hands to his face he tears at his hair, a wildness coming over him that scares me more than anything else to that point. Dragging his bleeding hands down his face, he stands over me, tears streaming ruby rivulets down his hollow cheeks. He has been giving me his rations for weeks, not trusting that I could survive without his help. Not seeing that, as he was wasting away, I have been thriving. Chest heaving, he stills, eyes wide, nostrils flaring. “Something has changed you. Some sickness is in you. You will remember yourself if I make you my own. You will forgive me for it, because you will remember what we are to each other.” Stepping forward, he reaches down and drags me up against his chest, shaking me, fingers pressing bruising ovals into my pale arms. “You willrememberyourself!” he begs, and demands, and we are both crying rivers of sadness, for what has been, for what is to come. “You will forgive me,” he repeats, whispering against my lips, which I keep pressed firmly together, a wall against his poisoned affection.

I think back to the sweet taste of orange by a curve of bloodied thorns, and feel a pang in my heart for the things I have given, for the things that have been taken. “If you do this, you will raze my heart andburn all to the ground, Tahrik. What we were can never be again.” It is a prayer, a plea, and a promise.

He is trembling, vibrating against me. My feet are still bound; I cannot get away from him. He wrenches my hands behind my back, pressing me into him. I can feel his heartbeat through his chest, a stuttering rhythm, and he bends his head to my own, breathing deeply. “Wren,” he whispers, trying to calm himself, calm me, to settle the situation, to bring us back to center. “Wehaveto go home. We are lost out here. I…I am lost. I won’t hurt you, I promise. But I have to take you home. Once you are there, we’ll find ourselves again.” He straightens, his voice hardens. “I won’t hurt you. But if you fight me, I will bind you andmakeyou come with me.”

“You don’t want to do this. Please!” I am frantic, a trapped bird, trying to free my hands, but am no match for muscles built from years in the mill. This is worse than Nickolas. This is shattering pieces of me that cannot be mended. He is gone from his mind. I know him; he would not do this. But he is lost in some darkness, and cannot find his way out. “I can’t go back, Tahrik! I will die there!”

He pins me to the bark, face directly over mine in the darkness. “I will be gentle,” he promises roughly, voice raw with chaotic emotion. “I will protect you and keep you safe. But youwillcomehome.” Tahrik forces my eyes up to meet his, and pauses, seeing the fear and pain written in my white gaze, the tears streaming down my face, and finally, finally freezes.

“You will be killing me,” I whisper, all of the broken pieces of me spread naked in front of him. “It will kill me.”

His eyes widen, a dawning look of horrified clarity appearing on his face. “What am I doing?” he whispers, pulling back, his hands relaxing, just slightly. “What have I done?” But before I can speak, his eyes flare open, a startled bewilderment on his face, and he stops, and looks down.

A small pinprick pushes into my chest, and there is a thin trickle of wetness followed by a rushing river of warmth. I look at Tahrik’s face in confusion — his eyes are wide in astonishment, nostrils flared, mouth gaping as he stares down at me. The mania drains from hisface with all of his color, leaving a pale, desperately grief-stricken boy behind. “I’m….I’m sorry, Wrenling…Oh Gods…what was I…forgive me…forgive me…” he manages to say, a bead of ruby red spilling from the corner of his mouth. Our hands drop together as one, as he slumps forward against me, limbs shaking. Tears are running down his face, falling freely onto our intertwined fingers. He raises them to his mouth and kisses them gently, gently with his bloody lips. “Forgive…” he whispers, barely a sound at all, before slowly collapsing to the ground in front of me, sliding off the sharp tip of a sword gleaming red in his chest.

There is silence, silence, silence, then his soul bursts into muffled song from his crumpled body.

THIS BREATH AND NO OTHER

WREN

Here is the truth of a final breath. When you die, your soul sings a requiem, so sad and so beautiful it drowns out all other sound, and makes you weep for what has been lost. The soul hovers for the length of its song, above the body, wrapped in music and memory, waiting to be held and Guided home to bone. If you do not catch it in time, the soul will dissolve, like mist in the rising sun, gone forever. There is no way to rescue a soul once it fades. Tahrik’s soul sings in color, all of the memories he has of me since the first time he saw me in the village, before I even knew he was a heartbeat in my life. Memories are always most vibrant in those few minutes after death, and I am lost to the rest of the world as they flood me. If there is death around me, then I am not of this world for a time, but stepping between, and it is in this inbetween that choices must be made.

In the village there is no choice, not really. As Keeper I must bring the soul home to bone. It is the most sacred task I have. If I do not Guide the soul, it will be lost to the Absence, gone forever in the Void. There will be no gentle moments of memory, no passing of history from father to son, no time for recollections or remembrances.Nothing but emptiness. And I have mere moments to collect the soul, to command it to bone, to save it from being lost. Forever.

Tahrik’s memories flash before me, lightning quick, vivid pictures of my face and eyes in a way I have never seen them. Here I am smiling sunshine bright, all the happiness in his small world pooling in my pale eyes. Here I am bent over a small child, guiding her hand gently to a smooth bone. Here I am sharing a crust of bread with an old mother in the town, here I am holding Tahrik’s fingers in my own, in the shadow of the bone wall. Scattered through these are the sounds of strings plucked in quiet corners, the feel of cold nights, the warmth close friends — all these and more fall like rain upon my skin, burning and cooling all at once. Every second played in intricate harmony, layer upon layer of life and love shimmering in soul song. But even those cherished recollections seem dull compared to the iridescent moments where I existed for Tahrik — his life was a series of steps that mapped my own — and I realize how deep the fissure must have been when the girl he lived his life for was shown to be a phantom.

I’m sorry, I’m sorry,I whisper, and his soul echoes back to my own,I’m sorry, Forgive me.But when I try to grab it to bind him, it fights me, a bright ball of burning light in my hands. I have had souls fight me before, of course I have, but never like this, with a violent, desperate pulling away.Calm, calm, Tahrik.I try to soothe the soul.Be at peace. It does not hurt. It is going home. And I will keep your bones sacred. I swear it. I will weave you in my hair. I will wear you on my heart. I will hold you to my skin.Yet still he fights, his light dimming moment by moment, the liquid requiem fading further and further away. I know from experience that, once I can no longer hear his song, he will be lost to me forever. I have not made that mistake but once, and have never forgotten the loss of that soul.Do not fight me, Tahrik! I don’t have long.Yet still he pulls from my hands, water running through my fingers, the light of his soul dripping from my fingertips like golden blood.

Do not make me, Wren.His words are a whisper. I cannot hear him. Iwillnot hear him. I am the BoneKeeper and his soul will do mybidding.Ah, my love. Let me go now. Do not keep me.He is pleading.Forgive me if you are able, give me peace and let me go. I cannot stay in bone, knowing what I would have done to you. It would be an eternity of pain. You would be damning me. Let me find emptiness in the Void. It would be a gift.

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