The Bone Charmer

by Breeana Shields

  He laughs and the knot in my chest loosens. He runs a thumb across the design. “I wonder why it has three points?”

  “Body, mind, and spirit. The three cornerstones of a well-rounded education.”

  He makes a small noise of appreciation. My answer seems to have convinced him, because the suspicion is gone from his expression. He pulls me close and plants a kiss on my forehead. I will myself not to recoil. “I have to get going,” he says.

  “So soon?” I ask, even as relief floods through me.

  “It’s a delivery that can’t wait,” he says. “But I promise I’ll see you later.”

  It’s a promise I hope he never has a chance to keep.

  Gran’s bones wrench me into a vision with more speed and force than ever before.

  But it’s like trying to swim in a turbulent sea. Waves of images crash over me, one after another, leaving me breathless and disoriented—my mother standing on the riverbank, gazing out over the water; Declan and Latham sitting at a corner table in a dimly lit pub; Ami biting into a ripe apple. I’m not sure if I’m seeing the past, present, or future. I’m not sure of what I’m seeing at all. My stomach spins dizzily.

  I decided to use my own blood for the reading. It might be a close enough match to mother’s that it’ll allow me to see her in the council meeting, or maybe even stretch further into the future to see what danger might be there.

  Slowly, a single image begins to crystalize—a pear-shaped face softened with wrinkles, wise gray eyes, a crooked smile that promises mischief and love in equal measure. My heart stills. It isn’t my mother I see—but Gran.

  I suddenly feel powerless. I long to fling myself into her arms and rest my head against her shoulder, curl up with her on a patch of grass and pepper her with questions, hold her forever. Something inside me splits apart, and two feelings twine together in the chasm like clasped hands. Joy at seeing Gran’s face again and sorrow that it’s not real.

  Gran sits at her dressing table, unbraiding her hair. It spills down her back like a trail of freshly fallen snow. She’s humming to herself, a tune I recognize from an old lullaby she often sang to me when I was young. A soft knock sounds at her door.

  “Come in,” she calls, her voice raspy with age, and so familiar, it makes me ache inside.

  I watch as a version of me—a recent one—enters the room, drops a kiss on the top of her head, and sits at her feet.

  “What’s on your mind, love?” Gran asks.

  “Do you think the bones are always right?”

  Outside the vision, my stomach clenches. I remember this discussion. It happened the night Gran died. I can’t bear to watch. I can’t bear to pull away.

  Her hand drops softly on the top of my head. “Well, that’s a tricky question. I think the bones always tell the truth, but how accurate they are depends on the reading.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “First Sight is the most accurate—the past is a rigid and unchangeable thing. Second Sight is usually correct as well. Sometimes people make last-minute decisions that deviate from a reading, but that’s more about the Bone Charmer’s range than the accuracy of the bones. It’s Third Sight that often proves more thorny.”

  In the vision, I lean into her. In my memory, I can smell the delicate lilac scent of the oil she used to keep her skin from becoming dry.

  “So Third Sight can be wrong?”

  Gran laughs. “I feel like this is a trap you’re laying for your poor mother. No, it’s never wrong. It’s just more open to interpretation. Third Sight Charmers see many, many potential paths for someone during a reading. They can’t possibly wander down each one—it would take years. So they have to choose the most likely paths to explore.”

  I turn and look at her. “But what about the kenning?”

  “What about it?”

  “What if Mother doesn’t go down the path I would choose?”

  Gran strokes my hair. I can nearly feel the ghost of her hand on my head. “Saskia, you’re acting as if fate and freedom are opposites.”

  “Aren’t they?”

  “No, love, they’re partners in the dance of life. Always circling each other, touching and then coming apart again, both made more beautiful by the existence of the other.”

  My expression falters in the vision. I remember wondering if Gran’s lucidity was fading, as it so often did in the evening hours. If what she was saying was wisdom or foolishness.

  The vision moves forward. I watch myself hug Gran good night. Watch her stare after me with an expression of uncomplicated love that squeezes my heart.

  And then a noise. A shuffle.

  “Who’s there?” Gran calls. Someone steps out of the shadows. It’s the same man I saw in the earlier vision with Declan. Latham, my mother called him. He’s wearing black leather gloves and holding a cloth in one hand.

  “It’s you again,” Gran says. “Why are you here?”

  “That was a beautiful speech about fate and freedom,” Latham says, moving toward her. “I’m here because I intend to control both.”

  “Get out.” Gran’s voice is firm.

  He laughs, a dark, horrible sound. “Oh, I will. But not until I get what I came for. I’ve waited years to find three generations of Bone Charmers.”

  It’s Gran’s turn to laugh. “Saskia hasn’t even had her kenning yet. She could be matched as a baker for all you know.”

  Latham scoffs. “I think we both know she won’t be a baker. I’ve been watching Saskia for a very long time. If anyone ever had a natural affinity for bone charming, she does.”

  Gran’s eyes go as hard as flint. She pushes her chair back from the dressing table and takes a step toward him. “You clearly don’t know the women in our family if you think you’ll get away with this.”

  She opens her mouth, a scream already forming on her lips, but Latham steps behind her and presses the cloth to her nose and mouth. While she struggles, he whispers in her ear the graphic, terrible way he will kill her daughter and her granddaughter.

  I want to shout at myself in the other room. Do something! Help her!

  But I can’t save her. The past is a rigid and unchangeable thing. Gran died knowing the people she loved most would suffer. For her, that would have been the most violent death of all.

  I emerge from the vision, trembling. Droplets of sweat bead on my forehead. My stomach lurches and I run outside to be sick, heaving and gagging until there’s nothing left. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and sink into the grass.

  Gran was murdered while I was in the next room. The knowledge ruptures my grief, turns it into a freshly opened wound, a sharp, blistering pain that nearly suffocates me. If only I had known she was in danger. If only I had walked back into her room once more.

  And nestled right beside my anguish is confusion. If Latham’s goal was to kill all three of us, why didn’t he do it that night? We were all in the same place. It would have been so easy. And why does he need Declan to pass him information? To pretend to be in love with me? The unanswered questions swarm my mind like a colony of ants.

  I think of Gran’s steely gaze as she promised that the women in our family wouldn’t let Latham get away with killing us all. I rise from the ground and go back inside to do another reading.

  My final gift to Gran will be to make sure she told him the truth.

  Saskia

  The Bone Charmer

  We’re going to use Latham’s own plan against him.

  He made sure I saw him in a vision to draw me to Midwood. So if he sees us in one, perhaps we can lead him somewhere else. It will only work if he doesn’t suspect we’re trying to trick him.

  Bram and I stand outside the cave. My fingers are clutched around the slender cord of the shield, but I have the pendant pressed tightly to my sternum, so the bones don’t lose contact with my skin.

  “Are you ready?” I ask. “Once I let go, we have to assume we’re being watched.”

  “Ready when you are,” he says.


  Carefully, I thread the cord of the shield around a branch and let go. Bram and I make a show of gathering small berries from the bushes, trying to act as naturally as possible. We duck back into the cave and pack up our things, and after a suitable amount of time has passed, Bram touches the back of my hand.

  “How are you feeling?” It’s the signal we agreed on before I removed the shield.

  “Nervous,” I say. “But I managed to use the bones Esmee left behind to trade for enough coin to purchase a Swift Note to send to my mother.”

  Swift Notes are messages sent via bird, usually white-throated needletails, though occasionally golden eagles are used as well. The birds are exceptionally fast on their own, but when outfitted with message capsules made of bone and controlled by Watchers, their speeds are remarkable. But they’re incredibly expensive.

  “Where did you tell her to meet us?” he asks.

  “At the pier in Calden.” And then, uncertainly: “Do you think that’s far enough from Midwood?”

  “I hope so.”

  My fingers fly to my throat. “My shield …,” I say, in what I hope is a thoroughly panicked voice. “It’s gone.”

  Bram’s eyes go wide, and he leaps to his feet. “It has to be here somewhere,” he says. “I’ll help you look.”

  We make a show of searching the cave and then the area outside until we find it exactly where we left it.

  “Oh, thank the bones,” I say. “It must have snagged on a branch.” I slip the slender cord over my neck and breathe a sigh of relief. If Latham believes we’re meeting my mother in Calden, maybe he’ll go there first to try to intercept us. It will buy us some time to get to Midwood before him.

  I can only hope that Latham was watching. And that we were more convincing than he was.

  Bram and I stand on the pier in Kastelia City, waiting to speak to the shipmaster of the Falcon. It’s one of several winged-fleet vessels—small, narrow ships with three masts and square rigs, that are mostly used for transporting tea and spices. They travel with a limited crew and don’t generally accept passengers. But they’re the fastest ships in the entire country, and I’m determined to be aboard this one when it sails out later today.

  I shift on the balls of my feet as we wait. My hands are sweating.

  Finally a man approaches us. He’s younger than I thought he’d be—maybe in his midthirties—with bright copper hair and a neatly trimmed beard. “What do you want?”

  “We need transport to Midwood,” I tell him.

  “You had my men call me over here for that? Idiot kids. Go buy a ticket.” He points to the other side of the harbor. “Ships leave from over there.”

  “No,” I tell him, “we want to sail aboard the Falcon.”

  “I don’t accept passengers,” he says, “and even if I did, you couldn’t afford it.” He walks away.

  “We have bones to trade!” I call out.

  He stops. Turns. “What kind of bones?”

  “High quality. A mix of animal and human. Already prepared for readings.” I open the bag and take out one set of bones to show him.

  He gives them a cursory glance. “Nice, but no deal. You two would take up space I can use for cargo, and those bones wouldn’t make up for the lost revenue.”

  I swallow. Pull out a second set of bones. “What if I add these?”

  His eyes flicker with interest. “How many bones do you have there?”

  Bram and I share a glance. We hoped to hold on to at least some of the bones, but I’m not sure we have a choice. I open the bag wide and show him. He gives a low whistle.

  “What in Kastelia’s name would make you give up all these bones for a ride?”

  “We have to get to Midwood as quickly as possible,” I tell him. “It’s a matter of life and death.”

  He studies both Bram and me with narrowed eyes, looking us up and down. Finally he sighs. “I can’t turn down an offer like that. Hand them over and follow me.”

  I give him the bag, hoping I’m not making a mistake. Without the bones, I’ll be blind.

  Bram and I sit side by side on the sun-warmed deck of the Falcon. Crew members give us occasional odd looks, but for the most part, they leave us alone.

  The wind blows my hair around my face. In any other circumstance, it might be relaxing, but all I can think about is getting to my mother before Latham does. What if our final moments together were the ones at the harbor before I left for Ivory Hall? I was so angry that I barely acknowledged her. I didn’t even say goodbye. What if she dies believing I hated her?

  Would things have turned out differently if I’d accepted the kenning? If I’d forgiven my mother for being a servant of fate? Maybe then we would have left on better terms, and I wouldn’t have arrived at Ivory Hall already homesick. Maybe then Latham’s connection to my mother—the connection he claimed they had—wouldn’t have had the power to warm me like it did, to soften my defenses. I sigh.

  “Where did you go?” Bram asks. “You seem lost in thought.”

  “Do you ever wish you could go back in time and choose a different path?”

  He’s quiet for a moment, and I can tell he’s weighing his answer. “No,” he finally says, “not really.”

  I turn to him, surprised. “There’s nothing you would change?”

  “Terrible things have happened to me, but I wouldn’t change my own choices, no. They made me who I am, mistakes and all. And who’s to say a different path would have led somewhere better? It could just as easily turn out worse.” He nudges my shoulder gently. “Of course, maybe I’d feel different if I were a Bone Charmer.”

  “So you believe in freedom over fate?”

  “I believe in both. Fate is the ability to see the choices people will likely make. It doesn’t rob freedom.”

  The words have a familiar ring. “Where did you hear that?”

  Bram’s mouth is soft, as if he’s recalling a pleasant memory. “Your mother.”

  His tone is like a key in my mind. It turns over and lifts my ignorance like the lid of a box. One filled with vivid and glittering insight.

  “You know her. As more than just the Bone Charmer.”

  “She always watched out for me. I think she felt she owed it to Esmee. Before I even moved to Midwood—when Esmee was still trying to convince me to go—Della came to the cottage and gave me a reading.”

  “What did it show?”

  His mouth curves into a gentle smile. “She didn’t tell me. She just put her hand on top of mine and said, ‘I’ve peeked into your future, Bram, and I promise there’s a lot of happiness there.’ It was enough to sway me.”

  Sorrow swells in my throat. What if my mother saw me in that future? What if I was supposed to be part of that happiness? Instead I’ve spent the last several years pushing Bram away and accusing him—in my own mind, at least—of being a monster.

  Gran gave me a blanket when I was a little girl. It was woven on one side with a beautiful summer scene—trees and birds and a golden sun in the sky. But on the other side, the pattern looked completely different, just a jumble of connected threads that didn’t make any sense at all. When my mother matched me to Bram, I assumed she was matching me to someone she knew was violent. But maybe she was just matching me to a boy she knew had a future full of happiness.

  At midday the shipmaster—whose name, we recently learned, is Gunnar—presents us with a simple meal—hard bread, salted dried meat, and an apple for each of us.

  “It’s probably not what you’re used to, but it’s all we’ve got,” he says. “So I don’t want to hear any complaining.”

  But Gunnar didn’t need to worry. Nothing has ever tasted better. It eases the gnawing hunger that’s been plaguing me since we left the cave. And Bram must feel the same, because he eats eagerly and without small talk.

  When we’re finished with our food, the crew shows us to our quarters—a tiny cabin with two beds built into an alcove on the wall, one on top of the other. It’s so cramped that ther
e isn’t room for both of us to stand in the space at the same time, so I slide onto the bottom mattress and sit with my legs crossed at the ankles. Bram follows behind me and settles on the top bunk.

  Moments pass. The only sounds are the rustle of Bram digging through his pack and the soft rhythm of his breath.

  There are so many things I’m longing to say. All morning I’ve been on the verge of opening my mouth, yet each time I came close, I lost my courage. This feels different, though—somehow being alone with Bram, but unable to see him, loosens my tongue.

  “Before Esmee died, she told me what happened to your parents.” I swallow. “I wish I’d known. That day on the prison boat … the killer pulled me into a vision of his past when he touched me. He’d done unspeakable things. I was terrified. And then when you grabbed me, I saw the fire in your past. You were so angry. You were both so angry. Later, when I saw your tattoos … I was scared and I made assumptions. I was wrong, Bram, and I’m sorry.”

  He doesn’t speak for so long that I’m sure he’s fallen asleep. But then I hear him shift above me. Inhale quickly.

  “Do you remember the first day we met?” he asks.

  The question is so unexpected that I go still. “Yes,” I say softly. It was at the Harvest Festival just after Bram moved to Mid wood. I spotted him under the shade of an oak tree, braiding vines together into a long chain, so I sat by him and introduced myself. He was shy at first, but with a little prodding, I eventually got him to talk. At the end of our conversation, he twisted the vines into a crown and put it on top of my head. Keep it, he said. It’s yours.

  I haven’t thought about that day in years.

  “I was so broken when I first got to Midwood,” Bram says, “and you made me feel like I had a chance for happiness there. Like I might be loveable after all. And for a few years things were good. Until …”

  I stop breathing. My heart feels like spun glass. Transparent. Breakable. I wait for him to finish the sentence. Until I tried to help you, but you betrayed me. Until you ruined my reputation. Until you treated me like a criminal.