Page 6 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

The BoneKeeper, a pale snow bunting kept in a cage, brought out by the Council to sing for her supper.

Every Gathering is the same — twelve men like carved statues in a row, and me, a pale shadow just behind them, though today two are missing from its ranks, and the Village Father as well. They must be off with the hunters. The Council never asks that I stand with them — I am but a tool to be wielded. Not an equal — not anymore — and they do all they can to make sure I remember my place. I don’t know how they have convinced themselves that their warped version of our history is true, or why they think I would believe them when their words taste of iron and deception. Even if they could force their words to burrow like worms in my brain, the Bones have whispered the true map of our people to me, and the Bones cannot lie.

The Council was not always the crown and the scepter of our land, though they have done all they can to erase any whispers of the past. Long before the Earth rose and the Sky fell, we worshiped a trinity of women — the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone. And in that time, when the earth was soft and the wind was gentle, and the TriGoddess gave her blessings to us, the bones have a memory of a woman like me, though they won’t name her, no matter how many times I ask. But she was a Flower, a Jewel, a Treasure Box. Not a whip, or a rod, or a knife. It was in thebefore, brief in the golden, fading memories of the oldest bones.Beforeour people were torn limb from limb and left in pits to feed a flesh-starved earth,beforewe filled the skies with smoke carrying the scent of burnt skin and boiled blood,beforewater drained from our world and left us cracked and wanting.

Before the Council.

Before the BoneKeeper.

“We are asking the BoneKeeper to search for an answer!” Raek steps in front of the other Councilman, unhappy losing the attention of the people, and his words yank me from my dream fog in a whiplash. I do not start, am too well trained, but my heart beats faster at his words. “Perhaps there is someone who will have lived through this, who will be able to help guide us.” He clicks his fingers at me, commanding his leashed pet, and I step forward, pressing my handstogether as is our way, and bowing slightly, the white curtain of my hair hiding my face.I am a ghost.I am a soul tethered to Earth, transparent and weightless.“We have time!” he promises, the words a steel prod. “We still have two months until the Storms descend. We have given our hunters permission to go outside the Northern Arch and beyond the growing lands of the Southern Arch to bring back enough provisions to last us through the worst. And if we go hungry, well, we have suffered and survived similar.”

It is almost laughable that a man the size of Raek can speak of going hungry. He is not heavy — heavy does not exist in our world, even for our leaders — but he is not gaunt and hollowed out like the rest of us. Even at almost fifty years, Councilman Raek is tall and broad, hard cut muscles taught on his forearms. There is no part of him that has dulled to the dust that coats every other villager. It is amazing what sleep and food can do for a man; his gleam and vitality is a lure to the downcast eyes of the people. I have heard the women of the village whisper about him over their kneading and washing. “Raek looks like a man whoknows,” they say, smiling and winking at each other, falling into a giggling quiet if he passes by and nods at them. I thank the long silent goddess every night that I have never been one swayed by shiny things.

No, Raek will not go hungry, even with half-full silos. He and the rest of leaders of the village will have their share, even when the rest have none. All who have a place in the Council House — the Father, the twelve Brothers of the Council, an equal number of Protectors, six Renders, six Reapers, and the sole Justice — when we have one —will never go hungry.Nor will their kept women,I think ungenerously, and immediately regret it. I don’t envy the wild-eyed women who I sometimes see scuttling away from the Council House in the early hours, hands laden with burlap sacks earned at a stomach churning price.Not all the Council. Some are decent men.It is best to be honest, even in my own head.Still, aren’t all guilty if none speaks?

Nickolas stands shoulder to shoulder with Raek, the siblings bearing a startling resemblance to each other, looking almost like twins despite the five year difference between them. Raek has eitheraged well, or Nickolas poorly. Reluctant sadness sits heavy and awkward on his face, almost a mockery of the villagers' own terror. Nickolas has never been as good at hiding his true self as Raek. “We must ask you to sacrifice for this,” his voice heavy with faux regret. “If the BoneKeeper is to find an answer, we must ask you not to request visitations for the foreseeable future.”

And now there is a rumble in the crowd, like breaking rock from the mountain overhead. There are few things that could light any sort of fire beneath these desperate people, but visitations are aright, a gift from the Gods that not even the Council can take away. I smile to myself beneath my veil of hair, then school my face and look up at Nickolas, eyes wide and unseeing. Blind and blank, and white as bone.

“I cannot condone that action,” I say, voice flat and toneless.Show no human heart, no human emotion. You are merely a conduit between the living flesh and living bone.“The Bones will not allow it. Especially this close to the Storms.”

And indeed, I can hear them crying out around me, voices drowning out any noise from the living, the whispered word running from the first gates to the farthest outreaches of our city. Things pass quickly from bone to bone, and even the skeletal fingers hanging like windchimes from the four distant bone arches marking the boundaries of our city rattle in response, a cacophony of sound for me alone. I have to fight not to lift my hands to cover my ears and push out the deafening roar.It would not help anyway,I think, wincing in pain from the vibrations. I don’t hear them in my ears, I feel them in my marrow. And unless I slice my skin open, wrenching myself apart piece by piece, there is no way to silence them. It is never fully quiet in my body until the sun sets, and oftimes, not even then.

Nickolas’s face darkens. He cannot hurt me in front of others — to do so would be suicide — but he can make my life…unpleasant. And I don’t normally dare to challenge the Council. But this is not a challenge — not really. It is simply a statement of fact, a truth borne of blood.

“The Bones will do what is best for our people.” He snarls, his voice harsh, anger like acid corroding his tone. He speaks with suchconfidence, as though he can hear the Bones, as though our ancestors surround him and granted him their Blessing. But his eyes are brown, and his hair is dirt, and his feet are heavy on the ground. “They will do what we tell them to do.”

I shake my head. “You are not correct,” I state, cold and calm.

There is a collective intake of breath from the crowd. This is unheard of. I’ve never censured a Councilman in public before, even if I am the BoneKeeper. To maintain balance I tend to bite my tongue to blood in front of our people, or at least speak with careful deference. But something has come loose in me today, surprising us all. He moves toward me with barely restrained savagery, the air churning around him, when there is a sharp crack, almost like a tree exploding in frost. Everyone freezes, rabbits in the hunter’s sights, as the strange sound echoes like thunder off the mountain peaks. It is not one we have heard before, and it resonates, shuddering, through the square. Cocking my head, I listen to the bones, then nod, trembling. “You should not have presumed to command the bones, Councilman.” Grief and fear are thick in my voice, and, for once, Nickolas hears the nuances.

“BoneKeeper?” he whispers, all kindness and concern now, the shimmering violence of moments before forgotten. I don’t bother answering him, just cautiously descend from the stage. The villagers crowded around the base of the platform flinch back from me, as though I were a flock of blood moths pouring from the distant cave mouths, coming to gnaw off their flesh in long, jagged strips. Bitterness sits thick on my tongue at their response, hurt sour in my stomach. I have never done a single one of them harm, but they blame me for the choices the bones make. And the unfairness of it makes me want to cry, though I would never waste water on such a small and stupid thing as…well, as loneliness.I am not alone. I have the ancestors and their memories. I…I amneveralone. Even now the bones are whispering. I have enough. And sometimes, in stolen moments, the promise of more…I have to force myself not to turn and search the crowd for his face, for the one soft, secret thing in my life.You have more than most.

For some reason, the thought doesn’t comfort me as much as it normally does.

Trailing my fingers along the silent stonecut wall, I follow it all the way to the edge of the large keep square. It is clear where I am going — there is only one reason to round the sharp corner to where the Councils’ ancestors reside. From the platform I hear a low curse, then a scurrying of bodies as the ten Councilmen follow, careful to keep me in front of them. Despite my worry, the sound of their feet scuttling like chickens behind me twists my lips in a sudden rush of disdain and disgust.I am a toothless wolf until they need protection. How quickly the winds change when their own skin is risked.Pausing as I round the corner, I smirk, expression hidden behind my veil of hair, when they immediately stop, not one venturing forward to walk near me.So now who holds the leash?

The bones on the small, weather wall in front of me whisper a gentle chiding, and I bow my head in contrition. Of course I did not mean to disrespect them with my anger, my sadness, my fear, but still. I offer an immediate apology.I let myself be distracted.It won’t happen againI try to assure them. Most are content with the simple “I’m sorry”, but, like those in living flesh, not all bones are the same. While many who were bitter in life soften over the seasons, mellowing to the best version of who they were before the Offering, a few, usually louder than the others, have high-pitched, complaining whines that set my teeth on edge. Visiting the former is, if not a happy experience, at least tolerable. But there is a reason I don’t visit this corner of the keep often — not unless I’m made to, really. All of the dead here are the families of the current Councilmen, the Protectors, and the Father, though in all my time as Keeper I have never spoken for his ancestors. They raised the weak, power-hungry men still hovering anxiously behind me, and it only makes sense that at least some would share their children’s views. Those few bones are currently screaming out, berating me for the sin of my own emotions. Clenching my jaw, I accept the weight of their reprimands, their wailing laments about the poor choice the Gods made in bestowing the blessing of bone on asimplegirl, until they finally fall quiet, and I am able to focus back on the living world.

On the ground in front of me lies a fractured femur.

The Councilmen are close behind me, but no one else dares leave the boundaries of the square, which isn’t really a square at all. It was built as an echo of the Council House, an immense castle carved directly into the black rock face of the mountain itself. The Council House juts out of gleaming stone, smooth and oily, five sides of an octagon. Large heavy doors carved from an ancient ebony wood tower over its front steps, which descend to the stage where all gatherings are held. The square mimics its design, but has seven of the eight sides of the octagon, the eighth being the mountain itself. It’s deceptively massive, able to fit, at a pinch, both the inner and middle villagers if needed, some ten thousand people.

The stage and doors to the Council House are positioned directly across from the bottom of the octagon, where every morning, the creaking First Gates open onto the widest street of the inner village. All of the inner village trade occurs along the cobbled thoroughfare, from smithy work to sundry shops. There are even two tiny but bustling tea shops, for those lucky few who have the leisure time to sit and coin to spare. Nothing interrupts the sightline from the face of the mountain all the way to the Second Gates, other than a single, towering pillar directly in the center of the keep. Most people try desperately to ignore it, looking through or around it unless forced to cast their eyes up to its heights when its fire is burning.

Perhaps, though, most importantly — except for the intricate carvings on the pillar and unassuming, almost ceremonial well far over on the side — no living bone is allowed on the inside of the keep’s rock walls. I have heard that, in my father’s time, the boundaries of the inner keep were decorated with the bones of village heroes and in memory of beloved elders. On the eve my eyes were anointed, though, they were stripped and smashed, sometime deep in the night, when no villager would ever venture out. Whoever committed the atrocity left the bones cracked open and hollowed of their marrow, charredand silent on the ground. The savagery it would take to cast so many into Exile in one night was unheard of, and a new dawn was born.

The Council immediately enacted a ruling that no living bone would be permitted inside the keep’s walls, for murky reasons which vaguely referenced protection and safety, but were never clear. The villagers, too numb from the collective loss to argue, had no protest, and the square has been quiet to bone since. The only grace given was to this small collection of ivory, tucked around the corner of the square, where they do not look out over the town, but are stacked in pretty patterns facing a steep cliff drop. The ancestors are kept at the juncture of the mountain, keep, and cliff, where a misstep would send you tumbling down into an endless abyss. The Council’s family bones stay here to give their blessings until a Council Member resigns or is removed, at which time their families are also relocated.

The small spit of land in front of the Ancestors’ wall cannot fit the entire Council safely, so Nickolas and Raek push through the rest. Some who give way easily, some stay their ground and cast narrow-eyed looks at the brothers. I make note of the discord, every ripple in the pond a chance, however small, to breathe more freely. Once Raek and Nickolas reach the front, everyone stills, and they wait in expectant silence, all eyes on the splintered bone, pockmarked white on dusty grey ground. Nickolas is first to move, turning his head to me fearfully.

“Keeper?” he asks, the full question clear in the word.

I sink to the dirt and stroke the bone with gentle fingers. She is fading, fading, fading, and her final words are as soft as a fledgeling’s cry. “Your mother.” I reply, sighing, then shake my head sadly. “Her Marrow is dry. Her bones empty now. May her memory be a comfort in the quiet hours.” Touching two fingers against my lips, I breathe on them, then push the warmth against the bone. “May pure water and tender heart wait for you in the Dreaming.” I whisper, finishing the benediction, then turn to Nickolas, expecting him to offer his blessing as well.

The Councilman moans under his breath. “Surely you aremistaken, BoneKeeper!” He presses the fragments of bone together, as though he could mend them.

“I am not.” I try to keep my voice flat, but a hint of steel enters it despite my best efforts. Standing, more to move away from him than anything else, I brush the clinging dust from my cloak, and look down at him through my colorless eyes. “She is gone.” He hisses in response, but I continue. “She did not wish to see a future where the Council disrespects the Bones.” But there is more, though I don’t fully understand the message I have to convey. “The ancestors warn they willallleave if their words are not heard.”

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