Page 9 of The BoneKeeper's Daughter

THE BRIGHT MOMENTS

WREN

The Councilmembers retreat from the Ancestors’ Wall, faces churning in black fury. If they can find a way around their given permission, they will, and as soon as they are able. But until then, the space has been granted, and with no guidelines, an unusual failure on their part. If I can speak to all the bones at will, they can’t keep me from hidden pockets in the village; no excuses need to be made for my presence anywhere. Raek is too busy physically dragging Nickolas away from the small jut of land to think of his rare misstep, followed closely by his supporters in the group. Sinking to my knees, I begin to gather the broken pieces from the ground in front of me. Logically I know that there is no value left in the empty shards, but it feels sacreligious to just leave them in the dirt. She was not Exiled, is not Sleeping, was not lost to the Storms, did not pass without a Keeper…I am not surewhathas happened to the bright, singing soul. In my lifetime I have never known Living Bone to just…just…cease to exist.

Bending my head, I listen as the bones around me recite the names of Raek and his followers as though committing them to memory.Nickolas, Killian, Malik…A weary sigh from one of the bones asthe list continues.Corbyn.

At the sound, I find the weather-marked curve of an occipital bone, and trace gentle fingers along its surface.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper to her, and she echoes the apology back to me, shame thick in her voice. She is embarrassed to claim Corbyn as her grandson, a funny word for an older man, but most bones don’t see age as the flesh living do. Their memories don’t move forward in the same way as the people who still walk the earth. Everything from their time on two feet is bright and vivid, and is like seeing the world through my own eyes. Taste, touch, sound, smell — it is all fresh and new, and I can feel each recollection on my tongue, on my skin, in my nose. Anything from after they are woken in bone, though, is like watching the world through a heavy veil, or oil smeared window. Nothing in their recent memories is quite as clear or vibrant. So two Corbyns overlap in her thoughts — one a clear, gleaming-eyed child with chubby fingers and a loving smile, the other a grey-shaded man, face lined and lips sneering. They ebb and flow into each other, one picture surging to the front then fading into the other. And the pain for her seeing the boy she sang to sleep slip into the Councilor who didn’t even greet her bones is overwhelming.

“I’m sorry,” I murmur again, but she does not respond. There is nothing more to be said, and the wall falls quiet.

Once I finish collecting the empty bone, I place it carefully at the base of the shrine, and consider where to go. None of the ancestors offer advice; all refuse to speak, as though it drained everything inside them to argue against the Council. I wait for a time to see if they’ll relent and give me some guidance, but they may as well be carved from stone, so eventually I offer a blessing, then go back to the main square. It has emptied completely by the time I return; even with the threat of half-silos, life must continue, and there is work to be done. Chickens and sheep don’t care if you are hungry. Crops, however scant, won’t plow themselves.

In any case, now that the morning chill has faded and the air warmed to midday, it is harder to hold onto the frantic fear of the morning. Here is a truth only those who live constantly at the edge know — when your cup is already full of fear, and sorrow, and misery,eventually it overflows, the excess running off and falling, uncared for, onto dry ground. You do not have the capacity to add to it for longer than a moment, because life pushes through, even in the darkest moments, dulling the pain so you can breathe, and walk, and laugh. If you drink too long from the cup, trying desperately to keep it from overflowing, give weight to every sadness, eventually you will forget to inhale, and you suffocate. You drown yourself because you are unable to focus on the tiny sparks of joy in the blackness, on the realnowinstead of the maybethen. When you are always starving, you eat the bread you have before it goes bad, or is stolen in the night. Borrowed pleasure and borrowed pain are mirrors of each other. Neither is real, just a shadow of emotion. I know that better than most.

The Harvest Month holds the brightest sparks of our golden seasons, the flames of shimmering moments that help us as a people get through the winter Storms. Panic will not make the silos produce more grain. Sadness will not give the hunters more game. But taking every drop of pleasure from the time we have, well. Those moments, however brief and seemingly meaningless, can pull you through the cold and endless hours of the coming months. Offer hope. And hope, in its own way, is more powerful than an empty stomach.H is for Hasten, when thunder is done.Take the bright moments when you can.

With that thought, I know where to go. And, with a smile in my soul, I leave the square.

THE CHILDREN’S GARDEN

WREN

When the Council is quiet and the days are still warm, my feet lead me, inevitably, in one direction, to one place, to one person, where my heart is safe and my secrets kept in locked rooms. He is a feather of hope in my world, a crack in the wall where the light pours through in promise. And if I am free, drifting on the wind, I will always float towards him, as though he commands the breeze.

I do not need to look for him; the bones are whispering to me, guiding me to the far curve of the wall near the Northern Arch, in the Children’s Garden. Not flowers, just a delicate section in the bone wall where most of the children are sheltered, their tiny bones the only ones in our village that are laid in decoration. The children are patterned in sweet blooms, shapes of petals not seen since before the dark times. Ivy runs along the wall here, dust green on pale white — the single place the villagers let the flowering vine grow wild, twisting in and around the fragile scapulas and sternums, helping keep them anchored in place. Anywhere else the clinging tendrils dry the mortar, weakening the bone structure, but in the Children’s Garden, it is as though even the plants want to protect our most valuable Offerings.

Since I was chosen as Keeper,Ihave never named a child forReaping or Rendering. Almost all of the most recent bones in the Children’s Garden are from before my eyes went white and I was still guiding souls named by the Council; only one has been added to the ivory flowers since. Slowly, slowly, during my tenure, the almost sickening anxiety all parents feel from the instant they fall pregnant has morphed into a cautious gratitude. They do not know why the Sun God has seemingly never called for a child, nor, apparently has the Earth demanded one, but are increasingly hopeful with each Offering that passes without a child being chosen.

In thanks, a new tradition emerged — from the moment their children are born, they light ever burning candles for the Sun God, and leave small dirt holes outside the infant’s window for the Earth filled with the best meat from their meals. No parent would dare let the flame go out or the pit go empty, even if it has been long enough thatI is for Infanthas faded from a numbed acceptance to a toothless threat.

These small acts of obsequience are the only guards between me and the wrath of the Gods.

I do not know what I will do if they stop.

Or if the Gods refuse my own Offerings made in the children’s stead to keep them from fire or blade. At the thought, the twisting scars under my vertebracelets flicker briefly with the memory of bright pain.

Dragging my fingers along the wall, I swallow hard.Perhaps,I whisper to the bones beside me,perhaps I would…I would refuse to guide anyone at all..until the Gods promised…The bones shudder in response, and I do not confide in them further.

The liquid sound of a lute calls like a bird in the thin mountain air, pulling me from my grave thoughts, and it slows my feet. A man is singing softly, a love song I have never heard, and the words make me want to cry.

“I shall take you to the river

Where the wild waters flow

And I’ll crown you with flowers for your starfire hair

A bower your bed

and the night sky your home

And I’ll sing you a love song so sweet and so fair…”

Looking up, he meets my eyes immediately, as though he has been waiting his whole life for me.Tahrik, Tahrik, his name like the call of the birds from outside the walls of the village. A short, sharp chirp, a trill, a song on my lips and in my mouth. Tah-REEK, Tah-REEK, an unexpected burst of music in a soundless world. Head tilted, gaze locked on mine without wavering, he smiles, the slow, sweet curve of a lover’s mouth, and continues singing to me, and for me, alone. His voice is soft but sure, sounding as though he is making a handfast vow.

“You’ll give me your heart

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