The Bone Charmer

by Breeana Shields

  Several more candidates come and go—apprenticed as bakers, craftsmen, merchants, farmers. A few of them are apprenticed to one of the bone magics—as Masons or Healers. But so far, no Bone Charmers. The line is shrinking and my courage along with it.

  I drag the toe of my boot along the edge of the path that leads to the Marrow. The cobblestones are still shimmering and rain-slicked from last night’s storm. I think of my mother’s creamy, soft hands, of the way she used to take my face in her palms after she’d tucked me in at night. “You have a hundred possible futures, my love,” she always said.

  But of those hundred possibilities, my mother can only pick one. And unfortunately for me, she’s always cared more about what the bones tell her than what her daughter does.

  Saskia

  The morning inches along like a river of syrup and yet, when it’s finally my turn, I don’t feel ready.

  The door to the Marrow opens and the smell of sandalwood incense hits me full in the face. A girl with curly black hair and copper skin steps into the sunlight. “How did it go?” I ask.

  She gives me a tremulous smile. “I’ve been apprenticed as a tailor,” she says, “which is close to what I hoped for.” Her smile falters. “I really wanted to work as a seamstress, but”—she shrugs—“at least I get to work with fabrics.” She’s trying to put on a brave face, but it’s clear she’s disappointed in her match. A surge of anger rises in my chest. Why should she have to spend her life doing something she didn’t choose? But saying it won’t do either of us any good.

  “I hope it brings you joy,” I tell her.

  “Thank you,” she says. “I hope so too.” She squeezes my arm before turning away. “Good luck.”

  I watch her as she makes her way down the path. As she marches toward a future she’s only half-excited about.

  The impulse to run rises inside me like a wave. I lay a palm flat against my stomach and pull in a deep breath. My father’s face floats to the surface of my memory. Trying to escape your fate is like trying to make a toad croon like a songbird, he used to say. No matter how good your intentions, you’re just wasting your time. And he was right.

  The bones said he would die young, and he did.

  Death came for my father just months after we lost Gran, and sometimes I can feel its breath against my neck like it’s looking for any excuse to come for me, too. In a few minutes my mother might provide one. There’s nowhere to hide, no way to avoid this. I can only hope of all the potential directions my life could take in this moment, she chooses one that will please me.

  I bite my lip and push open the door. The Marrow is dimly lit and it takes my eyes a few moments to adjust. Flickering candlelight sends long shadows crawling up the stone walls, and thin tendrils of smoke curl toward the ceiling. In the center of the room, my mother sits on a large white rug. An empty stone basin rests near her knees, and a silver velvet-lined box is at her side.

  She’s dressed in red silk robes that bring out the blue in her eyes, and her pale hair is braided and looped on the top of her head like a crown. She looks like an older version of me.

  “Saskia,” she says. “Come. Sit.”

  I settle across from her. My heart is a hummingbird inside my chest.

  “Are you nervous?”

  I swallow. “Should I be?”

  She opens the clasp of the silver box and tips its contents into the basin. Gran’s finger bones clatter against the stone. The sight of them tugs at my grief. I’ve suffered far too much loss in the last few years. I pull my gaze away from the bones and find my mother studying me intently. “Do you trust me, Saskia?”

  “Do I trust you? Or do I trust the bones?”

  She presses her lips together. “It’s the same thing.”

  But it’s not. I know how the reading works—the blood and flame will combine, and my mother will see multiple possible futures for me. Branches that head off in opposite directions. Paths that diverge toward different destinies. But as a Bone Charmer, she’s taken a sacred oath. She’s duty-bound to pick the future that best uses my talents to meet the needs of the people of Kastelia. Even if it’s not the path that would make me happiest.

  “You have a choice,” I tell her.

  “Saskia—”

  But I hold up a hand to stop her. “Don’t. Just do the reading.”

  She opens her mouth, as if she’s about to argue, but something about the look on my face must make her reconsider, because she snaps it closed again.

  “Very well, then.” She reaches for me and I wince as she pricks the pad of my middle finger with a sewing needle. She squeezes gently until a drop of blood wells at the surface. I hold my hand above the basin and let the blood spill onto the bones.

  “It’s not enough,” my mother says. She pricks another finger, and then another, until Gran’s bones are speckled in crimson. Once she’s satisfied I’ve bled enough, she picks up a rock and a piece of flint and, with practiced hands, sets the bones alight.

  My head swims, and I’m not sure if it’s the nauseating combination of the smoke and incense, or the loss of blood, or the prospect of these particular bones being used against me. My mother’s eyes flutter closed. She breathes deeply and the smoke seems to rush to her, as if it’s ready to do her bidding. Several minutes pass and my eyes grow heavy. My limbs go slack. I forget what I was so worried about.

  But then the clatter of an iron lid lowering onto the basin pulls me from my reverie. My eyes snap open just in time to see my mother spill the blackened bones across the white carpet. As she studies them, a crease appears between her brows. Her eyes are shimmering when she lifts her head.

  “You’ll be apprenticed at Ivory Hall,” she tells me, her voice flat and emotionless. “You’ll train as a Bone Charmer with the Second Sight.” She swallows and her gaze slides away from me. “Bram will be your mate.”

  For a moment I’m too stunned to react. And then rage wells in my chest.

  “Why would you do this?”

  She doesn’t answer. I can hear my pulse roaring in my ears.

  “Which one of Gran’s bones told you to ruin my life?” I ask, scooping a handful of them into my palm.

  “Saskia.” Her voice is low and threatening. “Don’t.”

  But what could she possibly do to me that is worse than this? I’ll be sent far from home to be trained to read bones—a fate I couldn’t be less suited for. And she’s paired me with a boy whose tattoos have made the whole town fear him, a boy who might have been my very last choice—if choice were actually a luxury that belonged to me. I’ll not only live a miserable life, but I’ll live it alone.

  “Was it this one?” I ask, holding up a slender bone. When she doesn’t answer, I throw it aside and pick up another. “Or maybe this?”

  My mother’s hand shoots out, her fingers roughly brushing mine as they close around the bone. Two bright splotches stain her cheeks and she has fire in her eyes. “Give it to me.” She tugs. But I tug harder.

  And the bone snaps in two.

  All the blood drains from my mother’s face. She sucks in a sharp breath and snatches the other half from me.

  Broken bones are bad luck.

  “What have you done?” Her voice is shrill, terrified.

  But it should be me asking that question. She’s destroyed any chance I have of happiness. And these bones are worthless now anyway—they can only be used once. I climb to my feet and stalk toward the door.

  “The answer to your question is no,” I say. “I don’t trust you.” But she doesn’t respond. And when I cast a final glance in her direction, she’s still staring at the fractured bone, one hand pressed against her mouth in silent horror.

  I squint into the sunlight as I step outside the Marrow. The next girl in line is bouncing lightly on her toes. “So?” she asks brightly. “How did it go?”

  I shake my head and brush past her. Suddenly the chatter in the square dies away and I feel the weight of a thousand stares fall on me. The townsfolk are watc
hing me with expressions ranging from open curiosity to outright glee, as if scandal has a scent and they’ve just caught a whiff. But I refuse to give them the satisfaction of becoming a topic for their gossip, so I force a smile onto my face. I walk confidently toward the other side of the Marrow, where the boys are waiting.

  Declan gives me a sheepish grin as I approach, and my heart twists in my chest as I pass him.

  I stop in front of Bram. I don’t know if I can find the courage to do this. But what choice do I have? No one ever rejects a bone match on the kenning day. I take a deep breath and hold out my hand. My fingers tremble. Bram’s dark eyes widen and he retreats a step or two behind the other boys.

  He actually backs away from me.

  Heat climbs up my neck, floods my cheeks. I stand there with my hand outstretched for a beat.

  Two.

  Three.

  Finally he rakes his fingers through his hair, leaving it sticking up in all directions. He gives his head a little shake of resignation and slides his hand in mine. Each of his knuckles is tattooed with a small black triangle. His palms are rough. It’s been years since I’ve been this close to Bram. Touching him stirs up memories I’ve fought long and hard to suppress, and I force myself not to pull away.

  We walk toward the bonfire, and slowly the low hum of conversation starts up again. We sit on a large, flat rock and a small girl thrusts a fluffy white blanket into my arms. “Congratulations on your pairing,” she says. From the corner of my eye, I see Bram flinch. I want to tell her thank you, but the words feel stuck in my throat. Instead I just nod, which seems to satisfy her, because she smiles and scampers away.

  I unfurl the blanket and settle it over both of our laps. As soon as our hands are hidden, Bram lets go of me.

  I feel as if I’ve been slapped. After the sting fades, an older ache surfaces like a bruise I thought had healed long ago but is still tender when probed.

  “You weren’t my first choice either,” I tell him.

  His eyebrows pull together. “What?”

  “I obviously wasn’t your first choice,” I say. “And I just want you to know that you weren’t mine either.”

  He doesn’t say anything for several long seconds, but when he speaks, his voice is dry, almost bored. “Duly noted.”

  We sit together in tense silence and I wonder what my father would think of this pairing. He and my mother were bone-matched, but he claimed he already loved her by the time she held out her hand to him on the kenning day.

  “You most certainly did not.” My mother scoffed when he told me the story.

  Father’s palm covered his heart. “Della, my darling, I’m wounded. Just because you didn’t love me yet doesn’t mean I didn’t love you.”

  “I don’t remember seeing a red tattoo around your wrist,” she said lightly. “We’d hardly spoken before the kenning day. When exactly did you have time to fall for me?”

  A grin spilled over his face then. “The day Kyle Dennis challenged you to race him to the top of the Poulsens’ huge oak tree, and you beat him by five minutes.”

  She shook her head, but her eyes were dancing. “How did that make you love me?”

  “How could it not? If your gumption didn’t win me over, your tiny little legs dangling from the branches as you hummed all three verses of ‘Meet Me in the Treetops’ would have.”

  The story earned a laugh from me and an amused gasp from Gran. “Della, you didn’t!” The song is about two young lovers who have to keep their relationship a secret because they haven’t had their kenning yet. Each night the boy climbs a tree to reach the bedroom window of the girl he adores to give her a midnight kiss. My mother humming that song was a taunt to the boy who challenged her. Not only did he lose, she announced to the gathered crowd that he was fond of her.

  “To be fair,” my father said, “half the town was head over heels for your mother. I was just lucky the bones chose to smile on me.”

  But I guess I didn’t get my father’s luck.

  Gran’s bones have paired me with someone who couldn’t be more opposite from my father. Someone who is marked with tattoos that hint of a dark past. Someone who has been matched as a soldier in the Ivory Guard.

  And my apprenticeship … for the first time since I stormed out of the Marrow, it sinks in that I was matched with Second Sight. I always assumed, if I became a Bone Charmer, I would have First Sight like Gran or Third Sight like my mother. But the ability to see things in the present never occurred to me. It certainly sounds safer than the other Sights—finding misplaced objects, helping people make decisions, assisting Healers in diagnosing pain for patients who can’t speak for themselves. But then I remember that Second Sight Bone Charmers are sometimes used to question accused criminals, and I feel queasy.

  I turn my face toward the bonfire, let myself be mesmerized by the way the flames consume everything in their reach, at the wooden logs in the center that started out enormous and strong but will soon be reduced to ash. That’s how I feel inside—on fire. Like no matter how strong I am, soon there won’t be anything left.

  Except bones.

  When everything else is destroyed, the bones always manage to survive.

  Saskia

  The Second Kenning

  My mother is holding two halves of a broken bone.

  Smoke clouds my vision, and I fight the urge to let my eyelids slide closed again. I’m sleepier than I should be. The Marrow is too warm, and sandalwood incense snakes through my nostrils, making me light-headed. I rub my eyes and study Gran’s blackened finger bones scattered across the white carpet among bits of ash. My head throbs lightly, and I wonder if it’s normal for the kenning to be so much more draining than a typical reading. But it’s not until I focus on my mother’s face that the disoriented feeling turns to alarm. She’s staring at the fractured bone as if it’s her own broken heart she’s cradling in her palm.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  Her head snaps up as if she’s surprised to see me here.

  “Oh, Saskia.” There’s a reprimand in her tone that I can’t make sense of. Is she still upset that I wouldn’t say I trust her? Did the bones tell her something terrible about my future? I wait for her to say more, but she doesn’t. She turns her attention back to the bone, her lips pressed together in a thin, pale line.

  “Mama,” I say, suddenly feeling small. “You’re scaring me.”

  “We’ve done this before,” she says.

  A chill inches down my spine. “Of course we have.” She’s given me readings dozens of times—they’re as familiar as the berry-filled tarts she makes each year on my life-celebration day.

  She shakes her head. “We must have argued,” she says. “You must have broken this.” She sets the two parts of the bone down carefully beside the others.

  “What are you talking about?” I say. “No, I didn’t.”

  She’s not making any sense. But then again, that bone wasn’t broken a moment ago. I’m sure of it. And tipping it onto the carpet couldn’t have caused a fracture like that.

  My mother sighs and covers her face with her hands. Her slender red tattoo—the one that etched itself over the contours of her wrist bone when she fell in love with my father—stands in sharp contrast against her skin, which has gone unnaturally pale.

  “These bones were special,” she says.

  “Because they were Gran’s.”

  “Yes, that too.” Her hands tremble as they fall to her lap. “But there’s more. I infused them with extra magic—the blood of three generations of Bone Charmers, each with a different Sight.”

  “I don’t understand,” I tell her. “We don’t even know someone who has the Second Sight.”

  Gran had the ability to see the past and my mother can read the future, but the present … and then it dawns on me. “My blood? I have the Second Sight?”

  But how would she know? She hasn’t finished my reading yet.

  “The additional magic made them more powerful—they
were supposed to allow me the ability to see your future much more clearly. The bones were from a close family member. They were woven with context from the past and the present—but it also made them more dangerous.”

  “Dangerous how?”

  She swallows. “I’m worried … Saskia, I don’t see the path for you that I was expecting to see.”

  The band of tension that’s been tightening around my heart suddenly snaps and I feel lighter.

  “Oh, well, maybe the bones just surprised you. Maybe my path is different from what you thought it would be.”

  “You don’t understand … Look at the bone. Do you see how one side is blackened around the edges and the other looks like it’s never been touched by flame? Something changed. The extra magic … It’s possible that because this bone fractured, your future has actually split in two. Instead of possibilities, the path this bone represented may have become realities. That’s why I’m not seeing what I thought I would. Because the path of one half of the bone is invisible to me.”

  I examine the broken bone. She’s right—the two halves look different.

  “But nothing terrible happened, right? We’re still sitting here. Only one set of us and not two.”

  She gives me a look that makes my stomach squirm. We’ve done this before.

  “You don’t mean …”

  “I think you’re already living in an alternate reality based on the reading I gave you before.”

  All the breath leaves my lungs. “Which was what?”

  “That’s the thing,” she says. “I don’t know.”

  A tremor goes through me as if the earth has shifted. As if it’s still moving. “How could you do this? Why would you make the bones more powerful?”

  My entire life has been held captive by the iron fist of my mother’s readings. I’ve had so many that my freedom has been peeled back layer by layer, like an onion, until I don’t have any choices left. I can’t imagine why she would need to increase the strength of the bones when they’ve already built an inescapable cage around me.

  A piece of hair has loosened from one of her braids and blows across her face in time with her shallow breath. My mother is usually as unruffled as a lake on a windless day, but right now she looks more unhinged than I’ve ever seen her. She doesn’t even seem to realize I’ve spoken.