Page 3 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

Let me out.

Please…please Gods, let me out.

Fumbling for control, I try to breathe, to center myself and push the memory away, but as the Council Bell chimes a third time, the sound is mirrored eerily in my mind, and I am sucked into blackness, the world before me being replaced with a long-buried past.

After the harshgong of the Council Bell, the silence is painful.

I wonder if it’s morning.

When the Council is angry with me for any perceived infraction — though they say it’s for my protection — they lock me in a small room.Ostensibly for my “safety”. They tell the people they are trying to help me, to keep me from harm, to learn to hear the bones better so “when I am well” I will be able to serve my full purpose as the Keeper. Really, though, they are trying to teach me in subtle ways how to bend to the will of the Twelve, forcing an unnatural relationship between the Keeper and Council. My little cage is lined with both Silent bones and the bones of the Exiled, and the alternating pressure of the quiet and the screaming pushes against my eardrums and head. It’s so heavy that it sometimes causes my nose to bleed or eyes to pulse with each heartbeat, but it’s usually only for a few hours.

This time I’ve been here for days, or weeks, and I’m crumbling to pieces, terrified they’ve forgotten about me, that I’ll be kept here until I die.

It is a punishment specially crafted for a BoneKeeper — well, specially crafted forthisBoneKeeper. They would never have dared chastise a Keeper before me with words, let alone with actions. But no Keeper before had been a girl. And no Keeper before had woken to bone so early. They had spoken to me earlier than any other in memory — I Guided my first soul at only five, with the clumsy, soft fingers of a child, and had been at every Rending and Reaping since. And it scared them.Their fear makes them bold and stupid though, and every inch they steal from me has made them falsely brave. Since they took me from my family, they’ve been pushing, pushing, pushing, and they’re fracturing my brain. The bones twist me one way, the Council another, and I’m fragmenting into tiny shards.

I’m so alone.

So very, very alone.

And things are breaking inside me that cannot be fixed.

Over and over and over I knock my head against the cold, empty bone, finding strange comfort in the rhythmic sting that does little to distract me from the strangling walls.

“Are you there?” I murmur to the carpals dull brown with dried blood. “Come play with me...Is anyone there?”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I pull, and pull, and pull at the bone, fresh crimson dripping down its surface. “Come out and play!”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“BoneKeeper?” There is a voice behind me, hesitant and thick with worry. I don’t turn around, still crooning to the silent bones.

“If you whisper to me, I’ll hear you, I promise. Just saysomething.”

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“I can almost hear you…just come closer…” And Icanalmost hear them, which isn’t possible. Not from the Silent. But…but… thereissound, bubbling below the hollow surface, and I call to them over, and over, and over. “I just want a friend. Please. I’m so…I’m so lonely.”

Knock, knock, knock.

“Keeper, are you…are you well?”

The Protector at the now open door to my tomb has grown from concerned to panicked, so I turn to face him, a wide, sweet smile on my pale face, teeth stained red. “Why would I not be well, Lorcan?” And I laugh, and laugh, and laugh, then turn back.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Little Keeper — your eyes…” He sounds horrified, but I can’t see him through the rivulets of blood. I turn back to the wall, crooning softly.

“Come play, come play.”

Knock, knock, knock.

For a brief, heartstopping moment I swear I hear a hesitant knock, knock, knock back from the silent bone.

“Come play! Come play! Saysomething! I’m here!”

A second male voice joins Lorcan’s.

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