The Thread that Binds the Bones

by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

  “Tom—damn! I wish I could talk to you. I mean, I wish I could understand you. I don’t know what to do!” Laura said.

  Tom imagined himself tugging the net loose with phantom hands. As soon as he touched it with a mental finger, it frayed to nothing. He closed his eyes during the disorientation of shapeshifting, then opened them again when he was upright on his hind legs. It was less confusing now because his standard human worldview had returned, with only a faint overlay of Othersight. “It’s okay,” he said.

  Her eyes widened. Then she hugged him. “Did you—oh, never mind!”

  “I’m underdressed again,” he said. He wasn’t sure how his new in-laws viewed nudity. He wasn’t that comfortable with it himself, not in front of strangers. Most of the wedding party had left the amphitheater, though some had seen him turn into a jackass and back, and a few were grinning at him as they walked past. “Please don’t move away from me,” he said, facing Laura and keeping his arm around her shoulder.

  “But—” Laura said, laughing a little herself. “I don’t know if we can walk back to my room this way.”

  Michael dashed up. “I’ll get Carroll for you, Tom,” he said.

  Surprised, Tom said, “Thanks. I’d rather have a robe. Laura’s dress isn’t big enough for both of us.”

  “Oh!” Michael picked up all the scraps from Tom’s former clothing, puzzled over them, frowned up at Tom, bit his lower lip, and managed to spell jockey shorts, a pair of white jeans, shoes, and a shirt out of the remnants. The jeans and underwear seemed fairly normal and even fitted; the shoes had changed from hightops into deck shoes; but the long-sleeved shirt was made of scraps from both the T-shirt and the windbreaker, patchwork fashion. Tom put everything on. He decided he liked it. He grinned. “Thanks! And congratulations,”

  “You too,” said Michael. “You really want me to leave Uncle Carroll alone? I don’t think it was fair, his pulling something like that on you, even if it was only a short-term spell. You haven’t had time to get used to us yet.”

  “I appreciate your concern. Michael?”

  “Yes?”

  “When we were driving here, Laura said your family would enjoy torturing me. And you didn’t seem very friendly last night.”

  “Yeah, but now you’re married to us. We don’t hurt each other. At least, not permanently. And if anybody’s going to tease you, I want to start it, but I can’t till tomorrow, because it’s First Night for Alyssa and me. But Uncle Carroll…”

  “Don’t worry,” said Tom. “I’ll get him.”

  “You will?” Michael squinted at him.

  Tom smiled serenely. “Sure. Are there any refreshments at this party?”

  “Tanganar will be setting up tables by the kitchen.” Michael dashed off.

  “Tanganar?” Tom asked Laura. He remembered the definition he had extracted from Laura’s rather the night before: mind-deaf, ungifted.

  “Another reason for us to live far, far away. Fetches. Slaves. What I thought would happen to you. But I don’t want to attack a long-established tradition. This is the way my family has done things for as long as I can remember. I’ve never had enough power to change things.”

  They walked toward the kitchen. Some of the stragglers stopped to offer congratulations. A little dark-haired girl Laura introduced as Pandora gave them each a white rose. Some of the relatives condescended; some sneered; some seemed happy. Laura named them all.

  Aunt Agatha came by and stroked the air in front of Laura’s stomach. “Caught one already,” she said, beaming as if she hadn’t changed expression all night.

  “What?” Laura sounded stricken.

  “Is that what makes it blue-green there?” Tom asked, touching the air near Laura’s stomach.

  “Good gracious, boy! Can you see it?”

  Tom raised his eyebrows.

  “I’m Arkhos, and even I can’t see them. I can sense them when I’m close enough.” She pointed at him. “You come to me. I’ll train you. Good gracious, the boy has Othersight,” she muttered as she wandered off.

  “Tom.”

  He looked at Laura.

  “We’re going to have a baby.”

  “I thought that might be—your halo is blue and mine’s green, but right here there’s a green-blue patch…is this okay with you? Is this too soon?”

  She put her hand on her stomach and frowned. Then she smiled. “I think—I think it will be okay. It’s too soon to tell. But I think we can work with this. And—” She grinned. “It’s going to drive the others crazy! Most of us have to work hard and cast a lot of spells to get a baby.”

  “What?” he said, but the sight of tables laden with food distracted him. Laura seemed equally distracted. They raced to the end of the line, and when their turn came, grabbed plates and loaded them with food—sliced meat, dark and light, though he couldn’t tell if it were fowl or beast, only that the steam rising from it promised savor; sliced dark bread spread with butter, redolent of garlic; crescents of melon, slices of yellow cheese and white cheese, fresh oranges and pickled apples, mashed potatoes and tureens of gravy—everything promising joy and restoration.

  “Delia?” Laura said to the woman holding a large knife and standing behind the table that bore the meat.

  “Welcome home, Miss Laura.” The woman looked like a shadow creature, thin and pale, with white hair and great mournful dark eyes. She smiled, though, reminding Tom of Laura’s talk about sparks. Someone was home in her head.

  “This is my husband Tom.”

  “Honored, Mr. Tom.”

  He held out his hand, but Delia looked away with a slight shake of her head. He reached instead for a sliver of meat and put it on his plate.

  A man about Laura’s age came out of the kitchen tunnel, carrying a tub full of fresh apples. “Chester?” Laura murmured. “Oh, God.”

  The man saw her and ducked his head, looking away. Laura gripped Tom’s arm. Tom led her off to a seat in the amphitheater; once there, he ignored all mysteries and ate. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t wait any longer,” he said between bites.

  “I know.” She picked up bits of food and put them down. “After ninth grade, he was in my class. His family moved to Arcadia from out of state. Imagine that. They didn’t know us. Barney Vernell tried to explain to him about us, but he just laughed, and pulled my hair, and spat on Michael’s shoes, and mouthed off to Jaimie and Meredith. Michael and Jaimie and Meredith were too young to do anything about it at first, and I could never do anything anyway, even though I had passed plakanesh. I wonder who brought him here, and when.”

  “When did you leave?”

  “Almost six years ago, just after I graduated from high school.”

  “Chester was—tanganar, and now he’s out here being a slave? Normal people are tanganar? And that means you can steal them?” Tom asked, putting down the piece of bread he had been eating. His hunger had eased, leaving him room for worry.

  “Would you like a demonstration of what else we can do with them?” said Carroll, materializing before him again.

  Peregrine, still close by, said—Tom? If you can do anything to him, you had better act; he has been designated official tester.

  “I’m glad you came back, Carroll,” said Tom. “It saves me the trouble of finding you.” He took a deep breath.—Please help me, Peregrine.

  —You need to craft a casting in your mind—a net, I suppose. Cast it over him, and instruct it to change him how you will.

  Tom remembered childhood games of cat’s cradle and Jacob’s ladder that an aunt had taught him. She had given him a string as if it were the most precious toy in the world, and showed him how many different things a string could make between skilled fingers. He stared down at his hands, imagining his fingers were spiders, capable of casting web into the wind. His hands warmed and his fingers tingled. Silver strands flowed from his fingertips. He held out his hands, aiming his fingers toward Carroll, and twitched, watching as the strands veered and tangled.

  —
Go to Carroll, he thought, and, as if magnetized, they shot to Carroll and twined around him, sticking to themselves, weaving together in their appetite for close contact with their target.—Now, thought Tom.—Raven. Raven, as he envisioned a black-winged bird with rainbow-sheened feathers.

  Carroll compressed before his eyes, squawking and shrieking, his nose lengthening into a black bill, his skin darkening and sprouting feathers. He vanished inside his clothes for a moment, then tore his way out. The hazel in his eyes had stained black, and his legs and feet were black too. He gave an outraged hoarse caw.

  “Come back when you’ve had enough, and ask me nicely,” said Tom. “I’ll consider reversing it. Maybe.” To his net, he whispered,—Keep him healthy, but don’t let him change.

  Carroll squawked and flew off into the woods.

  Frowning, Tom peeled an orange. He felt shaky and hungry again. He could feel sweat at his hairline, under his arms, and down his spine.

  —I just transformed someone into something else, he thought, and didn’t believe it.—I mop floors. I drive taxis. I turn people into birds.

  He shuddered.

  “Did you do that?” Laura asked him.

  “What do you think?”

  “How did I find you? What were you doing in that bar in Arcadia?” She sounded either afraid or amazed.

  “Eating beer nuts, and probably waiting for you.”

  “Did you ever turn anybody into anything before?” This time he heard an edge of laughter in her voice.

  “No.” He offered her a section of orange.

  She took it. “Then how—”

  “Peregrine helped me. The ghost, from last night.”

  “A Presence? But they only manifest when we call them.”

  He bit into a section of orange and the sour-sweet tang spread across his tongue. “You people don’t see them, is that right?”

  “Not since Scylla died. Unless we do a special spell to reveal them.”

  “They’re all around, Laura. I think Peregrine’s adopted me. He helped me all morning, even told me what was happening during the wedding.”

  —You would have managed the unspelling and the casting on your own, Peregrine thought.

  —But it would have taken me longer to figure out. And the wedding translation—oh, Peregrine, it was beautiful.

  Tom laid a slice of cheese and a slice of meat on a piece of bread and ate it. “Peregrine said I better do something about Carroll, because he was the official tester. Did I pass?”

  “The official tester?” Laura said, then smiled. “Yes, I see. Oh, you passed.” She smiled even wider, and ate. When she had finished everything on her plate, she said, “I’d like to go back to bed now. Would you?”

  “Are we allowed to do that?”

  She patted her mouth with a cloth napkin, then laid the napkin gently on her plate. “Carroll is the most powerful shifter in our family. I don’t think anybody can stop us doing anything we like.”

  “Is that the end of the testing?”

  “I hope so, but probably not.”

  “But for now—” He got to his feet, setting his empty plate on top of hers in her lap. Then he picked her up. “Want to be carried across a threshold?”

  “Mm, okay. As long as it doesn’t signify this is our final resting place, just our first.” She kissed his neck. “If I had enough power, I could carry you across a threshold.”

  He thought of the green sparkling curtain she had cast across the front door that parted for them with the welcome of fire. “I think you already have.” Following Laura, he had walked into this house, and into aspects of himself whose existence he had never suspected.

  Her hands around the plates, she leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “I like the sound of that.”

  Carrying her, he wandered up to the tunnel leading to the kitchen. It was dark after the sunlight outside. When he reached the kitchen, his eyes hadn’t quite adjusted yet. Two people were preparing more food, and two others washed and dried dishes. One of the dishwashers was a hulking long-haired man who turned to accept the dishes from Laura. Tom stared at him. The outline was familiar. As Tom’s eyes adjusted, he saw familiar tattoos on the man’s arms. “Eddie?” said Tom.

  Chapter 8

  “Tommy? What are you doing here? Did you get caught too? Don’t let her play with you. Get away as fast as you can. They like you for a while, then they put you in the kitchen or scrubbing floors or worse.” As Eddie spoke, he turned away and began washing dishes again. “Look. My hands do it whether I want them to or not. It’s not my body anymore.” He sounded horribly resigned.

  Tom set Laura on the floor and looked into her eyes. “Laura, can we fix this?”

  “I don’t know. I tried not to learn about this, so I don’t know how strong the bonds are. It might depend on whose fetch he is. Providing you can do something about this, is it fair to release just one?”

  “What if we release them all?” he asked. “How many people does this involve?”

  “I don’t know. Used to be ten. Eddie, do you know?”

  Eddie counted mentally as he washed. “Fourteen,” he said at last.

  Laura looked at Tom. “If you release them all, everyone will hate you.”

  “Yes, but we’re leaving.”

  She said, “They’d probably just round them up again. It’s easier the second time.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Tommy,” said Eddie. “That’ll just get you in deeper and dirtier. Get out of here, and leave her behind.”

  “That’s impossible. She’s my wife.” Tom looked up at the cavernous ceiling, searching out the house spirits he had sensed there the night before. Few appeared to be stirring. Perhaps they slept during the day.

  An albino gecko the size of Tom’s forearm walked down the wall a few feet.

  “Eyoo! What is that?” asked Laura, grabbing his arm.

  “Is it a Presence? It’s not exactly bodiless. Does that makes it a Power?” Tom said. “It’s one of the beings that gave us the rings last night. All sorts of things live on the ceiling. Uh, Ancient?”

  The gecko scuttled further down the wall. The women preparing food stopped chopping vegetables, and Eddie and the young brown-haired girl beside him stopped washing and drying dishes. Eddie looked at his hands, then stared wide-eyed at Tom. The girl gazed down at the dish-towel in her hands. The gecko blinked pale yellow eyes at Tom and waited.

  “Is there a right thing to do?” he asked it.

  Its slit pupils flicked wide, then shuttered. “Do as thou wilt,” it said. “We grow strong and powerful because they live here, but we do not condone their everythings.”

  —Peregrine?

  Tom had the sense that the ghost had been trailing them. He glanced around, and saw a silver form emerge from the tunnel to outside.—Do you have any advice?

  Peregrine, arms crossed over his chest, studied the kitchen workers. He frowned.—Any established power system grows decadent over time, if there is nothing with the strength or motivation to challenge it, and if it refuses to challenge itself, he said after a minute.—I can see that this has happened here. Challenge it. Wreak havoc if you like, honored one.

  Tom looked at the kitchen, which was like no other place he had ever seen, with an operating system that he didn’t understand. For a moment he listened to his old instincts, which told him to watch, listen, and stay quiet. Then he said, “Anybody want to leave?”

  The girl with the towel clenched her fists, the towel gripped between them like a garrotte. She glanced up at Tom, a neutral expression on her face.

  The two silent older women who had been chopping vegetables looked up, terrified, and shook their heads.

  “They been here too long,” said Eddie. “No spirit left.” He held up his arms, clenched his fists, flexed his muscles. Eddie had disappeared from town seven months earlier, without saying good-bye to Tom, or to Pops, who owned the garage where Eddie had worked; Tom hadn’t been able to d
ecide if that was characteristic or not. Nobody at the bar had said anything about the disappearance—or had they? Vaguely Tom remembered some remark that hadn’t made sense to him at the time.

  “I’m ready to leave,” Eddie said. “Man! But what if they follow me? Bust me down to cellar boy.”

  Tom glanced up at the gecko. It opened its mouth in a grin and showed him a pale, spade-shaped tongue. Tom looked at his wedding ring and realized the onyx seal was glowing. He had a sense of forces moving around him, locking into his core. He had turned Carroll into a crow, and that was crazy, but the skills were there, inside him, on this side of the threshold Laura had led him across. He held up his fist, the glowing ring uppermost. “I…” he said, stopped, licked his lip. “I can put you under my protection.” He shuddered. “Then they can’t touch you.”

  “Really?” asked Eddie.

  Tom looked at the gecko, at the tunnel leading outdoors, at Peregrine, who raised an eyebrow, and finally at Eddie. “Yes.”

  “What’s the catch? Why are you so nervous?”

  “Because—this is a step I don’t want to take. If I start this, I have to continue. It’s a commitment to—to taking power—” A memory of his cousin Rafe rose in his mind. Rafe had known how to use power. Tom had lived under the lash of Rafe’s subtle blackmail for a while when he was twelve, and the stain had never completely washed away. “I would be taking power over people, and that makes me uncomfortable. But I’ll do it if you ask me to.”

  The girl with the dishtowel stepped forward. She was slender, with blue eyes and feathery brown hair. She was wearing red sneakers and blue jeans and a denim jacket; where the jacket gapped in the front, a tie-dyed Grateful Dead skull crowned with roses showed on her T-shirt. She looked about sixteen. “I’m ready,” she said.

  Eddie’s mouth dropped open and his eyes widened as he stared at her. “Maggie?” he said in a hoarse voice. She shot him a glance, then focused on Tom.

  Tom held out his hand to her, lifting his eyebrows.

  “Maggie Galloway,” she said, putting a slender hand in his. “I ran away from home about three years ago. Got in worse trouble from the guy I ran away with than I was in at home, almost. Mr. Carroll came for me at a rest stop on the gorge, and…” Her eyebrows pinched together above the bridge of her nose. “Now I’m ready to get out.”