Page 20 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

“Alright,” I say, voice overly loud now, faux cheer grating my ears. “Who’s first tonight? I miss the Baker,” I add as an afterthought. “I didn’t think that through.”

You never thinkanythingthroughLorcan says teasingly. I can tell the effort he’s putting in to making this easier for me, and the Hunter echos him moments later.

That’s unfair. She thinks. She just ignores her own advice.

“Hmph.” It is normal for Lorcan to try and distract me, but it says something about how uneasy I must have made them that the Hunter,usually silent, joins in. Taking the very point of the knife, starting just above my knee, I sink the tip into my unresisting skin, studiously ignoring the strange shiver that goes through the knife. It pulls at my stomach, and I shake my head at my foolishness. Iknowthe Guiding Knife is Silent bone. Frowning, I push the knife in deeper, until a thick crimson rises to the surface, and then slice in one straight, continuous movement almost to my hip.

The blood is vivid in our muted world, always shocking in its intensity. Its color never ceases to silence me; every Rending or Reaping, as many as I’ve ever been to, I still have to force myself to speak, force myself to turn my eyes from the pools of fire red around the Offering.

Keeper?The Hunter’s voice is hesitant, and I come back to myself.

“You’re first, I suppose, since neither would claim it.” Loosening his bones from my hair, I coat my hands in my blood, and roll him around my palms until he’s completely covered. The blood slowly dissipates, so I do it again, and again, and again, until finally when I paint him in garnet it simply sits on the surface of his teeth and fingers, and is not absorbed. I wait a beat, two beats, and when the glistening ruby does not change, I take the bones and rinse them in my small cistern, then weave him back in my hair.

“Better?” I ask.

Much, he confirms, voice almost audible it is so strong.

Be on watch, then,Lorcan commands weakly as I remove him from my neck, the only time Ieverhave him off my skin. Laying him down on my thigh, straight along the length of my opened skin, I wait. I used to try to coat Lorcan’s bones in my hands, as I did with the Baker before she left, and the Hunter. But Lorcan’s necklace was too long. It would tangle, and nothing would ever be coated evenly. Eventually I came up with a solution, though it makes him soul sick every time to see me cut into myself for him. The Hunter is much more pragmatic; he is sorry for the necessity, but accepting of it. Lorcan — Lorcan is a hollow, stomach churning apology every time I paint him.

The flame is guttering by the time his bones stay carmine, and Ihave to fight to not sway in my seat. It’s the first time I’ve ever had to go deeper along the same incision before there was enough blood; anytime before tonight, the first slice was enough. But maybe I let it go too long; it has been a full four, and almost into five days since the first day of the Harvest.Foolish, Wren, foolishI chide myself, trying to distract myself from the burning on my thigh.

Lorcan’s voice, when he speaks, is a world of misery, though he tries his best to hide it. It’s always difficult the first day or two after I anoint them; their emotions are much nearer to the surface, to the living, and I can’t imagine how it feels. I pull them closer to the edge of the veil than they’re meant to be, so close that they must feel almost back in flesh, and it’s a pain I can’t understand.

I’m sorry, Little Keeper.

“Hush, Protector. You do it for my own good. I don’t give you a choice, anyway, old man.” The joke falls a bit flat, and there is silence, each of us lost in our own guilt and grief, until I sigh, wrap my wound, and pull on my night clothes, draping Lorcan back around my neck without rinsing him off.

He surprises me when he finally speaks.

How old do you think I am, Little Keeper?

Lorcan sounds unusually frustrated. Wondering if the night has been too much for him, and knowing how much he hates his anointing, I resist teasing him, and really try to think.

I…I don’t actually know. I’m…I’m sorry, Lorcan. Ishouldknow.

Wracking my brain, I try and cast my mind back to that time, when I was kept on a leash like livestock, when I woke and slept by Silent bones, and it makes me sick in my soul to rest on any piece of it.

No. I’m sorry, Little Keeper. I forget you were a child. I’ve known you too long at this point to remember just that piece of you. But I’m not a greybeard, however much you may cast me as one.He’s purposefully light, trying to pull me from my darkest places, and for him, I make an effort.

“I was twelve, and you were…you were eighteen? Only? Can that be right?” Speaking out loud helps push the memories away, though I sometimes feel half-mad being the only voice in an empty room.

Correct. So you are 23 now, which means, well. I don’t know what Iam,but Iwouldhave been only 29. Though you insist upon treating me as though my bones are about to fall to dust.

“It’s notmyfault you act like an Old One,” I joke back, and the feeling of him rolling his eyes washes over me.

Children, children,the Hunter chides, and Lorcan almost laughs.

Nowheis old,my Protector says.

I am indeed. Fifty and some years more, though it’s none of your business, Protector. And old bones need rest. So hush yourselves. Tomorrow is bound to be…unpleasant.

Curling up, I blow out the candle, trying to ignore the howling wind outside my shuttered window, and the strange scratching sound the branches of a nearby tree seem to make only at night. It sends freezing shards of fear into my heart, sharp spikes of cold panic, but anytime I’ve been brave enough to check, there has been nothing outside my window but night and all its terrors.

The scratching grows louder and louder in the wind, until finally I put my hands over my ears, almost moaning in panic. Something is happening to me, and it’s scaring me. This…feeling of living….it’s too much. I can’t find the emptiness that usually fills me, gleaming white, with no shades of color. The scratching comes again, and I have to bury my face in the thin pillow not to scream.

Little Keeper. You are safe. I am here,Lorcan whispers, and I fight against the tears clogging my throat.

I’m not usually afraid of the night; this is a grave secret I would never tell another. In our village,everyoneis afraid of the night. But darkness is just a masque of death, and even the blood moths aren’t what prevent me from leaving my home and wandering the empty streets. There are things more dangerous with razor teeth and hidden talons than the creatures of the Everfire. Things that live inside our bone walls.

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