Page 124 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

His song is so soft now, the sound of a newborn’s breath at night. Barely a noise at all. And still I grip him, refusing to let him leave.

Your song made me a promise, Tahrik. You promised your bones would sing for mine.

I promised a dream, Wren. A dream that faded when the world woke.He flickers.Forgive me. Forgive me.He is pleading.

I forgive you, Tahrik. It was not you. You were not in your right mind.

I am sorry, Wren. And I love you. I will love you until the Void takes me, and beyond.

I love you, too, Tahrik.

His soul flickers again, and pales.I know that is not the truth for what I am now, but it is a comfort that perhaps it was true for what I once was.

My heart thuds painfully. His soul is now a pale, frost yellow, barely a color at all.Shall I just tie the version I knew of you, and no other?I ask frantically.I will take you home to your sister, and you can whisper stories from your childhood.

Can you do that?His song is a breath, and nothing more.Can you split my soul and leave only what was good of me behind?

I don’t know, have never tried it, but I can see a faint grey ring around the brighter, central glow. He is almost gone, and I reach out, cupping the small, flickering ball in my hands, blowing away the grey like smoke, watching it dissipate, before trying to compel the small soul left to the bone blade at my waist. It…shivers…there is no other word, then rejects the Guiding Knife, dissolving in my hands.

Tears course down my face, small tracts of pain planted in familiar fields. Loss is a crop I have grown my whole life. But this loss is deep. It is losing the only joy of my childhood. Without him, I have no ties left to who I used to be.

In the last glow of his faint soul light, a barely there whisper, hetries to comfort me.Don’t be sad, Wren. I tied my soul to yours long before the rest of it drifted to the Void. I live on in your heart and memory, if nowhere else. Be at peace. Let me go.

And so, I do. I stop fighting him, letting him fall from my fingers like tears from my eyes. With that, there is a pulse of light and sound and color, and he is gone.

THE BLOODLETTER

WREN

All of this happens in the space of a breath, and, on the exhale, Tahrik is gone. He is nowhere in this world, his bones curiously silent in front of me.Tahrik,I whisper frantically,Tahrik!reaching out with my senses to run them along his cold, white corpse. Death has rarely been an Almighty where I live. It’s simply a funny little door that few have a key to, but it can be opened and, occasionally, one may step through briefly in the Dreaming. Unless you are an Exiled, marrow hollowed and burned, or Silent, death is just a moment away, waiting in the Nowhere for the Dreamers to visit. It is not…it isneverthis goodbye, not if I am close enough to catch its hand. When you mourn for the departed, it is a sadness of the day to day. Not a sorrow that leaves a scar on your heart. So the pain of this is unknown, and staggering.

A low moan presses against my ears, and I cover them, rocking back and forth like a child on the ground, not realizing the sound comes from inside me. I’m so lost in the moment, to the bitter taste of sorrow in the air and the winter memory of Tahrik’s soul slipping through my fingers like spilled wine, that it takes me a heartbeat, and then another to remember.The sword! A sword!And I look up, numbness and death warring on my face. To bring a soul home to its bones —totryto bring a soul home — takes everything within a BoneKeeper, and I have nothing left to fight. I am empty, and weak, and inexperienced in the crippling sadness that runs in my veins like poison, and, in this moment, can’t bring myself to feel anything at all, other than the void that has opened inside me.

In front of me, frozen like a statue, stands a creature Ialmostrecognize. It is tall and broad, rippling muscles under stretched tight skin. His skin — it must be a male — is covered, every inch, with strange, swirling patterns in blacks and greys curling along bands, unfamiliar creatures' heads and bodies woven in the backgrounds. He is all darkness — dark boots, dark pants with a thick leather split skirt of some sort over the top, heavy leather vambraces on his forearms, and the fur of an animal I’ve never seen covering his shoulders.

But the chilling part, beyond the blood now covering his skin like paint, beyond the ornate dagger in his hand, sharp and gleaming with a curious twisting groove down the center, beyond, even, him sliding his sword from Tahrik’s unresisting back, is his face. I stare up, mesmerized, paralyzed. Above me is cold, exposed bone — a long, thin animal-like face with ridged, thick, twisting horns, and two gaping orbital sockets that house black, fathomless eyes. The…thing…studies me for a breathless moment, then tips his head back and howls, a long, liquid sound that pours from his throat and echoes in the darkness. There is a pause, and then he howls again, this time louder, almost ear-shattering; in the distance, answering calls rise up from all corners around us. It is almost musical, something wild and tempting in the sound, pulling physically at my blood, as though it would burst from my body to sing with him. I shiver, and he jerks his head around to look back down at me with careful consideration.

Cocking his head, he asks a question in a curling, dancing sound I’ve never heard before. His voice is deep, almost a purr, and holds secrets upon secrets. Confusion must be clear on my face, though, because he pauses, then tries again.

“You want to sing with us?” The words are unexpected, rough and raw, as though he rarely uses them. Squatting down in front of me, skull eyes locked on my own, he tilts his horns, considering mecarefully before asking softly, “Have I caught a blind bird in my snare? Not the prey I was seeking.” He stares at me as though waiting for an answer, then sighs. “I’ll rid you of this at least before I leave,” and, reaching around me, moves to roughly shove Tahrik aside. In the movement I finally come to my senses.

“No!” I gasp, flinging my body over Tahrik’s. He’s no longer there, no longer anywhere, I know, but I can’t let…he can’t just be pushed aside, like a now empty sack. The creature rocks back in surprise. I take the chance to straighten Tahrik’s crumpled body, to fold his hands, to close his unseeing eyes.

“This…thismanwould have hurt you.” The creature spits the words out; they carry bitterness and judgment.

“He was not in his right mind,” I whisper, more to myself. “He stopped, just at the end, he stopped. He would not have…”

“He already did, Huldra.” The creature touches his knife to my wrists. Bruises mix with blood from where I was bound.

“He was not in his right mind,” I repeat again, tears choking my voice. I lost Tahrik twice in the space of a day — once when he attacked me and erased our history, and once when he abandoned me and erased our future. Grief, like a boulder, crushes me, and I sway under its weight.

The creature reaches a hand out to steady me, then passes me a skin of water. “Drink.” When I hesitate, there is amusement in his voice. “Had I wanted you dead, I would have pushed the sword harder; it would have cut clean through you both. I cannot be sorry for taking his life, only for causing you sorrow, however misplaced.”

“It is not misplaced.” I am shaking, from cold, from loss, from the effort of bringing his soul home, from the realization that I failed, I failed, and I would never see my friend again. That he took with him the only part of my life that had color in our village, that he took my secrets with him to Silence, and now there is no one alive who knows the pathways of history that led me to this moment. It is selfish of me, but I mourn for the parts of me that he took with him, that I cannot get back. My voice is slow-moving water, candlelight soft when I continue. “He was lost, but before he was lost, he would collect waterfor me before himself. He would bring me the better bread and keep burnt crusts. He would walk me to the caves and wait, if he could, til I came out unharmed.” My words drift away, and my shaking increases, almost vibrating. The words mean nothing to the strange creature, but I am reminded of our childhood, where he gave me the best of what he could, and my heart clenches painfully. “He sang me a future that was more than the coming Storms.”

He crouches before me in the last of the fading light from a dying sun, and cocks his bone head to one side. Though the expression is frozen, he manages to look curious, and considering. He’s on his heels, but, even so, towers over me. I feel as small as a child, and as lost as one, fatigue from the failed Guiding frosting my skin with cold fingers, pressing down on my eyes, trying to force them closed. Exhaustion suffocates me, thick enough to sleep, even here, death laying beside me and looming before me. In this moment I think, perhaps, that the creature before me did me no favors by stopping his blade before it entered my heart as well.

Suddenly and without check, tears course down my face, reminding me painfully of a day at a waterfall, of a boy teaching me to swim, giving me his meal, and singing me to sleep with a sorrow I did not understand.

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