The Bone Charmer

by Breeana Shields

  “Everything all right in here?”

  I turn to see a tall man in a red cloak held closed at the neck with a bone clasp shaped like a bear claw. His dark hair is shot through with silver at the temples and he wears it pulled back and tied with a slender leather cord.

  “I’m fine,” I tell him.

  He chuckles. “You look like you’re trying to escape. Was your first lesson that terrible?”

  “Just trying to escape the smoke,” I tell him, “not the building.”

  He pulls a small pouch from the pocket of his cloak and dumps the contents—a fine white powder—into his palm. Then he leans forward and blows gently, like a child scattering dandelion seeds. The substance hovers in the air like a small cloud before breaking apart into delicate tendrils that gather the smoke and absorb it. Suddenly the air in the room is as crisp and fresh as the breeze wafting through the window.

  Delight bubbles in my chest and I laugh.

  “Better?” he asks.

  “Much,” I say. “Are you a Bone Mixer?” I assumed from the red cloak that he was a Charmer, but maybe I was wrong. My mother has never performed magic like that.

  “No,” he says. “I just have very gifted friends. I’m Latham. The Third Sight mentor.”

  “I’m Saskia Holte,” I say, taking his extended hand, “the Second Sight apprentice.”

  “Ah, I thought so. You’re an exact replica of your mother.” He lets go of my hand and leans back against the table, his arms folded across his chest.

  “You know her?”

  “We trained together,” he says. “It was a rarity to have two Third Sight apprentices at the same time, so we grew close. How is she? It’s been too long since we’ve seen one another.”

  “She’s …” An unexpected wave of homesickness washes over me, and it takes me a moment to find my voice. “She’s well.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he says. “And how are you?”

  Maybe it’s the reminder of home, or maybe I’ve just been worn down by my failures this morning, but before I can stop myself, I’m sinking into one of the chairs with a sigh. “I’ve been better.”

  He leans forward and lowers his voice. “My first day at Ivory Hall, I got sick all over the entrance floor. In front of every single apprentice, no less. It was humiliating.”

  “Really?”

  Latham had an even rougher start than I did, and he was able to become a Bone Charming Master. Maybe that means there’s still hope for me to gain control of my magic? The assurance alone feels as if he’s taken a pair of sharp scissors and snipped the string that tethers my worry. I feel lighter as it floats away.

  “The first time within these walls … it’s something else, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I say. Though I’ve mostly adjusted, I can still feel the effects faintly—the gentle roll of my stomach as if I’m on a boat in the middle of the sea. The unsettled way my blood rushes through my ears. “Why don’t they warn us first? I might have handled it better if I’d been prepared.”

  He shrugs. “I think they like to keep the mystery alive.” His glance sweeps over the bones on the table. “Kyra isn’t making you train with those, is she?”

  “Yes …?” I say uncertainly.

  He shakes his head. “And let me guess: You couldn’t read them any more than you could have read a handful of coins.”

  “I might have done better with the coins.”

  He goes to the back of the room and riffles through one of the cupboards along the wall until he finds a silver box with a fancy clasp. “Let’s try with these.”

  Latham unfurls a square of navy-blue velvet on the table and then tips the box on its side. Eight small bones roll onto the cloth. They’re black around the edges, as if they’ve already been used in a reading, but I can still make out the slender red lines that have been painted across each to mimic the tattoo that would have rested over them in life. Carpals from the left wrist, then.

  “Whose are they?” I ask. Bones from human hands are extremely valuable. I can’t imagine he really means for me to use these in a training reading.

  “They’re practice bones,” he tells me.

  “Practice bones? They’re not real?”

  “Oh, they’re very real,” he says. “They were prepared so that they could be read again and again. Without blood and with a bit more clarity than is typical.”

  I run a fingertip along the edge of the cloth, leaving a crooked path in the thick velvet. “I didn’t know that was possible.”

  “We don’t do it often,” he says. “It requires the bones to be prepared with the blood of a Charmer, so it’s not practical to do it with every set—there are only so many of us, and we don’t fancy being used as pincushions. But it’s very useful for training. It helps you get the feel of a reading without needing quite so much concentration.”

  “What were these used for?”

  “A kenning,” he says.

  My hope deflates. “Oh. I have Second Sight, not Third,” I tell him.

  He waves a hand in the air as if clearing my words away. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “You can still read them.”

  I start to ask how, but he’s already lighting the incense. “Close your eyes,” he says, and I obey. “When you’re ready, touch the bones.”

  I take a few deep breaths and then inch my fingers forward and scoop the bones into my fist. This time it’s not a shadowy image I see behind my eyelids but a vision that unfurls before me in dazzling color and sharp sound as if I’m watching a life from the vantage point of a bird that hovers overhead. I’m in the future of a man—I’m not sure how I know, except that I can feel him there, as if I’m in his mind.

  A multitude of paths stretch out before me—an endless array of possibilities, like the branches of huge tree. But two paths are wider than the others, and they seem to glow with a faint light.

  I walk along one path and see the man as a carpenter. He loves his work—the clean smell of the wood, the roughness of it on his palm before he sands and then the satiny texture afterward, the warm satisfaction of making something useful with his own hands. One day a girl comes into his workshop to buy a birdhouse. She has emerald eyes and hair like flame. She makes him laugh. He asks her if he can make her dinner. A few weeks later he asks her to dance. And they do—barefoot in his shop, the soles of their feet coated in the feather-soft pine shavings that cover the floor like carpet. A few years and several dozen dances later, he asks if she’ll agree to a joining ceremony because he can’t imagine living without her.

  I watch the two of them build a life together. A house in a pretty meadow with wildflowers in the yard. An orchard full of peach trees, which frequently results in fragrant pies cooling in the window. Moonlit nights sitting on the porch, her feet in his lap, talking until dawn.

  They have three children—boys with dimpled knees and cheeks like small ripe apples.

  I watch them celebrate and I watch them suffer. The man’s mother dies—too young, he thinks, weeping, while he carves her name into the family tree. But then a few years later one of his sons dies, too—a drowning accident in the river—and he realizes what too young really feels like.

  Breathless happiness and unspeakable sorrow weave together into a rich tapestry of life. By the time I’m at the end of the path, I know it’s a good choice. A life that would bring him joy. I turn around and follow the path back to the beginning, watch his children grow younger and younger, watch the deep lines on his partner’s forehead smooth away, see each scene in reverse.

  Once I’m at the fork in the road, I turn left instead of right and make my way down the other path. This time the man lives in the capital. He can see Ivory Hall gleaming in the distance from the window of his workshop. He has bone magic—a Mason—and his hands move swiftly over various bones—shaping them into flutes for Watchers, weapons for Breakers, smooth boxes that are impervious to theft, and containers to hold memories. His work is deeply rewarding in an entirely different way than his othe
r path. It’s the same satisfaction of creation with the addition of feeling that he’s part of something bigger. The man is different, too—a little bolder in this life, a little more confident.

  His partner is a Healer—a quiet woman with a stillness that seems to envelope the people around her, to calm them with her presence. She’s not as pretty as the girl on his other path, and not as lively, either, but she’s a deep thinker and she makes him a better man. Their life is filled with joys both big and small. A daughter—just one, though they wished for more—with raven hair and a knack for numbers. A spacious house halfway between his workshop and her clinic. Nights spent walking hand in hand along the cobbled streets near the river, bathed in the warm glow of the streetlamps. The man’s mother still dies. He still weeps as he carves her name into the tree, still thinks too young, still grieves.

  Some things are the same. And some things couldn’t be more different. He grows old more slowly in this life, more comfortably. His partner’s healing abilities are well used on his creaky joints and arthritic fingers. Another portrait of joy and sorrow. Another rich and happy life. But it’s so different from the first.

  I open my eyes and the room slowly comes back into focus. I feel hollowed out. Empty.

  “Which would you choose?” Latham asks.

  The question is like a weight on my chest. I had never fully appreciated my mother’s burden—how selecting one path so thoroughly eliminates the other. The vision was so real, so vivid, that choosing feels like destruction. If I choose the path where the man is a Mason, those three apple-cheeked boys will never exist, will simply cease to be, even though I know the timbres of their voices, and where the gaps in their smiles will be when they lose their first teeth. But if they are born, the man’s daughter won’t be and the world will be robbed of her easy laugh and sharp mind.

  But I don’t have to choose. These are only practice bones.

  “I don’t know,” I tell him. “One doesn’t seem better than the other.”

  “That’s the coward’s way out,” he says. “Choose.”

  I swallow. “The second path,” I say, deciding that perhaps losing a child is a grief that should be spared.

  “The Bone Charmer chose the first,” he says. “Though the man never did fall in love with the redheaded woman.”

  At once I register both the sharp grief that pierces me and the surprise that it should be there at all. Grief for a man I never met, whom I wouldn’t recognize if I passed him on the street.

  “But why?” I ask. “How?”

  Latham shrugs. “Fate is predictable, but choice isn’t. I suppose, after his kenning, he made decisions that didn’t lead to meeting her after all. Or perhaps he did meet her, but said something thoughtless and ruined his chances. We’d need a First Sight Charmer to do a reading of his past to know for sure.”

  My fingers curl around a fistful of my cloak. “Then what’s the point of bone charming? Why bother if nothing is guaranteed?”

  “Because information is power,” he says, “but unfortunately, the Third Sight is limited—it only tells us possibilities, not realities.”

  “Then I’m glad I have the Second Sight,” I say.

  He laughs. “Well, then I am, too. Though I do wish I had an apprentice this year. But since no one was matched to the Third Sight, I’ll have to settle for helping the other mentors where I can.” He scoops up the wrist bones and puts them back in the silver box.

  “Where is he now?” I ask, inclining my head toward the bones.

  “Ah,” says Latham, “he passed away a few years ago. We never use training bones until the subject of the kenning is dead. Too dangerous.” He closes the latch on the box and puts it back where he found it.

  “Thank you,” I tell him.

  “Of course,” he says. “But now that I think about it, we should probably keep this bit of extra help to ourselves.” He nods toward the animal bones I was training with earlier. “Kyra prefers to teach the hard way before she uses practice bones, and I’d hate to get on her bad side. Especially since I didn’t ask her permission first.”

  A prickle of unease goes through me at the thought of lying to Master Kyra, but I brush it aside. I won’t lie to her. I just won’t volunteer the information.

  The bones know I need all the help I can get.

  Saskia

  The Tutor

  It’s as if my father has died all over again.

  A tight knot of grief wedges beneath my breastbone—a sensation that’s at once heavy and hollow.

  My mother and I stand in a huge room at the back of the bone house. Deep shelves filled with containers in all shapes and sizes stretch from floor to ceiling on three of the four walls. In the center of the room is a large, beautifully crafted box made from the crushed fragments of a whale’s rib cage and inlaid with diagonal stripes of lapis lazuli. After my father’s death, my mother had it commissioned by Hilde Bystrom. Even though she’s the only Bone Mason in Midwood, there’s no one more gifted within ten towns. The box is a work of art—ivory and blue, pearl-smooth, and now utterly empty.

  Gone is the right humerus, which Oskar prepared with the same jewel-tone waves that graced my father’s painting arm in life. The beautiful, swelling design seemed to grow more intricate each time my father completed a project he loved. And by the end of his life, the tattoo extended from shoulder to elbow, like a sleeve made of treasure.

  His bare left humerus is gone, too. And his skull, and his sternum, and both patellas that were each marked with the three gray slashes that appeared when he was robbed as a boy and fell to his knees to plead for his life.

  Everything is gone. All the evidence of his hopes and dreams, and loves and fears.

  Master Oskar stands off to the side. His green apron is coated in bone dust. His face is haggard, and violet-blue half-moons curve beneath his bloodshot eyes. “I don’t know how this could have happened,” he says. His arms hang at his sides and his fists open and close repeatedly as if there’s something invisible he keeps trying—and failing—to grasp.

  “Why did they leave this here?” my mother says. Her voice is raw and gruff. She trails her fingers gently across the side of the box as if it’s my father’s cheek she’s caressing.

  “I …” Master Oskar pauses to dab at the sheen of sweat beading on his upper lip. “I’d imagine the box itself was too heavy to carry.”

  My mother cuts him with a sharp look. “No, why did they leave it here? In the middle of the floor where it would be obvious what they’d done? They could have put the box back on the shelf and let us discover the missing bones weeks or months or years from now.”

  He pales as if this thought hadn’t occurred to him. His gaze sweeps over the shelves—over the hundreds of boxes that house the remains he’s charged with protecting. I can see that he’s wondering the same thing I am: Are any of the others empty?

  “Perhaps they were in a hurry?” he says. “Surely they knew what was at stake if they’d been caught.” Stealing bones is a crime punishable by death. Only a fool would take the risk. That, or someone very desperate.

  “Or maybe they wanted to make sure we knew that the bones were missing,” my mother says. “Maybe they wanted me to know.” Her expression is a tangle of emotions—grief, fear, resignation. But oddly, not shock. Not the icy blow that I felt when Ami burst into our kitchen with the news, a chill that slowly enveloped me in unbearable pain until it finally gave way to numbness, leaving me feeling nothing at all.

  My mother meets my gaze and a look passes between us. “Did you know this would happen?” I ask softly.

  “Of course not,” she says. But her eyes bore into me and they say something different—something akin to, Don’t ask questions like that. Not here.

  Master Oskar crouches down to study the thumb-sized indentation that serves as the box’s lock—a lock that was sealed by bone magic and shouldn’t have allowed entry to anyone but me or my mother. And yet the box is both open and empty. “Why would the thiev
es want to announce themselves,” he says, “especially to you?”

  She leaves his question unanswered. “We need to find who did this. Soon.”

  “I won’t rest until the bones are located and the culprits are punished,” he says. “You have my word.”

  But it’s a promise he’s in no position to keep. It might be impossible to find the bones—because what reason would anyone have for stealing them except to use them? The thought of my father’s bones being wasted in a reading for a stranger makes my blood spike with fury and dread.

  My mother shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Oskar, but your word isn’t enough. Not for this.”

  “If people find out …” He trails off, but his meaning is clear. If the townsfolk don’t believe he can keep the bones of their dead safe, he’ll be ruined.

  I think of the Healer who practiced in Midwood when I was a child. Three of her patients died within a week of one another, and even though there were explanations in each case—a small boy who choked on a bit of fruit and was already blue when the Healer arrived, an elderly man whose failing heart finally stopped beating, and then, a day later, his wife, who died of a broken heart—three deaths in such a short time was enough to cause whispers, and worries. Soon parents were taking ships upriver to Brisby or Colm to see the Healer there. Midwood’s Healer quietly left town, and we were without that particular bone magic until a new apprentice was matched at the next kenning.

  “I’m sorry,” my mother tells Oskar. “I have no choice.”

  Before we leave, I place a palm flat against the box and close my eyes. It’s the last resting place of my father, and I don’t know if we’ll ever find him again.

  For the first time in my life, I long for bone magic. Not the Charmer gifts of my mother and Gran, but the powers of a Bone Breaker. The ability to mete out justice. To punish with pain.

  To exact revenge.

  The next morning—after a restless night—I finally give up on sleep and get out of bed just after dawn. My mother obviously slept poorly too, because she’s already at the door when I come downstairs, fastening the button at the collar of her red silk cloak. Her hair is braided and twisted into a figure eight at the back of her head.