The Skeleton's Knife (The Farwalker Trilogy)

by Joni Sensel

  "Ho, it's me." A hand flapped on the cobbles. Neela's arm stretched from the far side of the guard stone. Ariel dropped to her knees and eased forward. There was room at the stone's base for Neela's arm, but no more. Beyond lay a dizzying drop into fog, which was lit in ghostly streamers by flickering flames.

  Ariel backed away quickly. "Not that way."

  When she rose, the mist around them seemed thicker and more purposeful. Zeke kept brushing the same persistent wisp from his face. Neela shimmied back through her hole with mist coiled up one leg. It slithered off when her knee bumped the guard stone.

  Scarl reached toward a familiar pocket that was no longer there. "My glass. In my coat...?"

  "Gone," Ariel said. "Sorry."

  With a sigh, he dropped to one knee and concentrated on his fist. Ariel tried not to watch, aware it might hinder his finding, but she saw him frown and look over the edge of the bridge. Fear gnawed inside her.

  Rising, Scarl kneaded his forehead. "Do your feet tell you anything, Ariel? Can we walk back to the world in any direction at all?"

  She took a calming breath, closed her eyes, and summoned memories of the cove. She imagined them draining, like water, from her head to her feet, but the usual itch to move didn't come. Instead she felt the weak current that flowed off the bridge toward the maelstrom. She recognized that, and she didn't want to follow.

  Bracing against it, she whispered, "Home."

  Cramps twisted her feet as though they were trying to turn inside out. Thrown off balance, she wavered. Her eyelids flew open.

  "I don't understand what that means," she said to herself as Zeke raised a steadying hand.

  "Stop thinking," Scarl said. "You know better. Respond."

  "Nothing works the same here as it does in the world," she protested.

  "Your instincts are still our best chance to get back."

  So as best she knew how, Ariel obeyed the warp in her feet. She took her weight off her heels, tiptoed back a few steps, and pivoted on the balls of her feet. That left her facing the end of the bridge and the shadowy realm that belonged to the dead. The pain in her arches eased, but her feet didn't tickle to move forward, either. She hoped that didn't mean home no longer existed.

  A few notes of her farwalking song trilled in her head, and their rhythm throbbed in her palm. She glanced at the marks among the scars there--a message that gripped her instead of her holding it. The words Zeke had relayed from the stones echoed through her, and the message she'd delivered more than once finally sank in to her, too.

  She sucked in a breath. She knew what to do. Face ever forward. It was no riddle.

  Her feet were already poised, but her friends' expectant looks made her queasy.

  "This is going to sound odd," she told them. "Can you trust me? Despite the mess I've gotten us into?"

  Zeke's scowl made it clear he found the question insulting.

  "Would we be here if we didn't?" Scarl asked.

  "Good," she said. "Then listen. Get closer to me. Turn around and face away from the stones like I am. And I think we'd better hold hands."

  With Neela and Zeke each at one side of Ariel and Scarl on the end next to Zeke, they crowded shoulder to shoulder. Ariel tried not to flinch when Zeke took her right hand, which still hurt. She strained for a glimpse of the beacon that she knew glowed ahead. Her eyes couldn't find it, so she imagined the lighthouse instead.

  "Close your eyes," she instructed. "Think of the sun hidden out in that mist. So bright you can't bear it, and that's why your eyelids are shut. But you can feel it light up your face." As they imagined that brilliance, she let her feet do what they wanted. Her heels lifted to draw her boots backward in a small reverse step. Her motion tugged gently on the hands that she held.

  Her voice softer, she added, "Now hold tight and back up with me. Slowly. We'll come back here some day. We're always facing that light, and our feet should always be pointed here, too." The ghouls in the fog had demonstrated that nothing good came of facing away. She added, "We've just gotten ahead of ourselves. We need to slip back to where we're supposed to be."

  Tense, Neela and Zeke shuffled alongside her. Ariel squeezed their hands, despite the pain, and kept talking to keep their minds from the looming stones just behind them.

  "Face ever forward." She took a baby step backward, and then another. A symbol squirmed under one sole. "We're ahead of ours--"

  Ariel's next step slipped backward as though on slick rock. Her boot plunged into space. She fell, dragging her friends along with her.

  Neela squealed, and Zeke hollered, too. Then a heart-stopping emptiness swallowed all.

  A wail of regret rose in Ariel's throat. She'd been wrong! Her feet had failed, and she'd pulled her friends off the bridge into flames. Her hands clenched tighter, but she couldn't feel anything in them.

  Water, not fire, engulfed her. Her body slammed against it and rocked in the wake. Seawater quelled Ariel's scream, and she choked. Her head whirled. Then her plunge slowed, and her sense of direction returned. She kicked upward. Her head broke the water, which was icy but flat. She spit brine from her mouth.

  Neela splashed alongside her, still clutching Ariel's left hand. The weak right one was empty.

  "Zeke!" The word gurgled through the water clogging her throat. Ariel kicked herself higher. Twilight lay on the sea, but the evening sky was clear, and even dim light was welcome after so much endless fog. Splashing echoed around them as a silhouette flailed toward her.

  "I'm here," Zeke gasped, stroking so hard he bumped her. "The splash broke my grip."

  "Scarl?" A pain gripped her heart. Scarl had never lived near the sea. She didn't know if he could swim, and his recent strangling couldn't help. Frantically she scanned the surface.

  "I held onto him!" Zeke twisted to search. "Until we hit the water..."

  Ariel gulped air for a dive as Cassalie had taught her, though the light was so thin she knew she'd find nothing beneath the surface unless she bumbled into the Finder by chance.

  As she kicked her upper half higher out of the water before folding into her downward plunge, her ears caught the wheeze of a still-damaged throat. Hearing it too late to stop her momentum, she somersaulted underwater, popped back up, and spun. There! Scarl was bobbing behind them, gasping and spitting. His awkward dog-paddle strokes didn't always keep his face clear of the sea.

  She swam toward him, veered wide, and grabbed his collar from behind. "I've got you. Zeke and I used to play lifesaver games. Try to go limp and lean back."

  She turned her attention to land. Shadowed slopes rose on all sides, but she was pleased when her feet chose a direction to kick. "This way."

  A few freezing moments later, they all hauled themselves onto rocks. At first they only shivered and struggled for breath. Then Zeke smacked a kiss on Ariel's uninjured hand.

  "You did it!" he crowed. "I can hardly believe it."

  "I didn't know we were going to fall." Her voice shook. "I thought I'd killed us all."

  "Oh, I'm still planning to beat you to death," Scarl told her. "As soon as I'm warm and dry."

  "Any idea where we are?" Ariel asked Neela. It was not Dead Man's Cove.

  Although the light was melting fast and no moon had yet risen, Neela inspected the land's shape around them. "I think I know, Farwalker girl. You want to lead us home, or should I?"

  Chapter 34

  Ariel and her friends had splashed into a potboiler hole in the cliff. Neela led them to a wall where they had to dive down and swim through a flooded arch to surface in the cove. Fortunately, the sea was quiet and the tide not too high. Using skills she'd learned from Cassalie, Ariel made the trip twice, first with Neela to learn the way and then back to help Scarl, who swam underwater even more awkwardly than he did on the surface. Neela returned, too, to accompany Zeke.

  They emerged onto the shore and clambered over rocks toward the houses. Ariel was surprised to spot the horse near a cottage. Neck outstretched, he nibbled blades of grass
that had sprouted from the edge of a roof. In the still evening, with no hint of the storm that had raged when they left, she could hear his teeth grind.

  "Look! Willow's all right!"

  "Huh. I didn't think he'd live," said Zeke, who again propped up Scarl. "His wounds must be healing, and fast. Cassalie's poultice is magic."

  "No, it isn't," said Neela. "She's used it on me. Mayhap that's a ghost." She shivered.

  As they drew nearer, the horse nickered to them.

  "He doesn't sound like a ghost," Ariel said. "Cassalie must have turned him out. Did you find my note at suppertime, Zeke?"

  "We never made it to supper," he said. "Scarl woke up just before, when the storm calmed."

  "I could feel your absence from the world like the socket of an empty tooth," the Finder told Ariel. "That might have been what called me back from... the darkness."

  "And with both of you missing, Cassalie guessed where you went," Zeke said. "She said Neela--Dain--had once talked about the bridge, and the stones of the tunnel confirmed which way you'd gone. The hard part was waiting until Scarl's dizziness passed."

  "It still hasn't," Scarl muttered, rubbing his head.

  "The storm was supposed to stop you," said Neela. "I can't believe it quit blowing so soon after we left."

  Ariel wondered if the wind knew they'd need Scarl's help or if the crow had warned it about dangerous spirits. Many things in the world seemed more aware than people.

  Zeke offered a simpler explanation. "Maybe your trade skills aren't as strong as you think."

  Though meant for Neela, his words struck Ariel, too. Contrite, she murmured, "Can you ever forgive me for sneaking away?"

  "Not likely," Zeke said.

  Scarl didn't reply.

  Ariel accepted his silence, which was still tinted with anger. But if her departure from the world had turned him back from the gate, right now it seemed worth it.

  They picked carefully through the deepening dark to Cassalie's house. The lingering twilight surprised Ariel; she'd expected the hour to be closer to midnight. It felt as though they'd been gone long enough, but perhaps that was due to her fatigue and an assortment of aches. The thought of a bed sped her feet.

  The glow in Cassalie's window was weaker than it had been on previous nights. Neela reached for the door latch. She found the door bolted. Her knock was followed by a puzzling silence.

  At last the door slowly opened. Cassalie stood behind it, her cheekbones more gaunt than Ariel remembered. One hand was clutching something small to her heart.

  "Cassalie." Scarl sighed her name.

  Her face worked. "Begone!" With a jerk of her arm, she threw the thing she held at him. It bounced off his chest, struck the flagstone, and shattered. Ariel recognized shards of the fossil he'd found.

  He stumbled back, one hand to his chest, while the others looked on in shock.

  "Cass! What'd you do that for?" asked Neela.

  "Oh!" Cassalie's gaze darted across their faces, a storm of emotions crossing her own. "Oh, stars and starfish... you're real? Not haunts?" She stepped unsteadily forward. "Scarl? Forgive me, I'm sorry, I... No, no, I'm not! I should hit you again! You don't know how I've cursed your name!" Bursting into tears, she whirled and groped blindly. "Dain? Dain! Where are you--?"

  Looking daunted, Neela moved in to hug her.

  Scarl stepped closer, too, but Cass slapped at him feebly. "You! Stay away! Not a haunt, but a monster! To come here to me only so I could lose you, and me stranded here, more alone than before! I knew you would leave, but not that way! Not that! And not taking Dain with you!" She clamped Neela tight and buried her face in the girl's hair.

  "It's all right, Cass," murmured Neela. "We're back."

  Taking a ragged breath, Cass said faintly, "You can't be. How can I believe it? Not after a fortnight. You've been gone so long."

  "Two weeks!" exclaimed Zeke. Ariel gasped, too.

  "I despaired after the first," said Cassalie. "You weren't coming back. And then Nace came, poor Nace, like the grim-golly's shadow--"

  "Nace!" Ariel cried. "Nace is here? How?"

  "--and his silent sorrow is even harder to bear. He knew you were gone, your tree-singing friends told him, but he refuses to rest until he's found your bones. I can't stop him. I've tried. And now..." Her brow furrowed. "And now..." She released Neela to sink to the ground, her trembling hands reaching for the shards of the fossil. "And now look. I've broken my memory stone, too."

  Scarl dropped to his knees and gathered her into his arms. "I'll find you another."

  "No, you won't. You're not here." She clung listlessly to him. "I've gone mad at last, that's all."

  "I guess time works differently across the bridge," marveled Zeke. "Oh! I grabbed this from the ground, and then I forgot." He fished in his pocket and pulled out Scarl's timepiece. Seawater dripped from it. He rubbed it on his shirt, which wasn't much drier, and studied its face. "Aw, maybe it's ruined. It doesn't count back any more. It won't go at all."

  But the Finder ignored him, and Ariel didn't care, either. She didn't need a timepiece to tell her what to do now. She edged past Scarl and Cassalie into the house, where she searched every room. Nace was not there. She jiggled until Cassalie had been soothed enough to tell her that Nace was in the tunnels that moment.

  She explained that he'd arrived four days ago, stumbling with exhaustion. He'd followed their tracks and his bond with Willow, but he'd come only to return Ariel's bones to the abbey. Despite hours of creeping through the tunnels, following the instructions the Reaper could give him, he'd naturally found little sign of their passage.

  The thought of him wandering that treacherous maze made Ariel shudder.

  She didn't even put on dry clothes. She went straight to the tunnel entrance in Neela's corner, intending to climb down and find him. The others chased after and tried to dissuade her. Cassalie assured her that Nace had come back every night, if later and later. She thought he'd appear soon. But Ariel's heart would not leave her throat. She feared that today, now that they'd returned safely, Nace would run afoul of some hazard. Fate could be cruel. Perhaps she'd even earned it for not considering the pain he would feel if she'd been unable to get back to the world. Too blithely certain she'd see him again, she'd left no message for him, as she had for Zeke, nor answered the one he'd sent her. She ached with the grief he must have felt.

  "Wait just a piece," Neela told Ariel. "If he isn't here soon, I'll go down with you to find him. The tunnels are tricky, and mayhap he only got turned around. I don't want you getting turned around, too. Or caught by the tide."

  The reminder of their close escape days ago doubled Ariel's worry. "Would you really come with me?" she asked. Neela had to be as sore and exhausted as she was.

  Neela reached for a lamp. "If you've got to ask that, we'd best go right now."

  Scarl beat Neela to the lamp. "No, you won't."

  A muddy hand reached from the hole in the floor and rested a guttering lamp near Neela's foot. A haggard face followed.

  "Nace!" Ariel cried.

  He froze except for a small, confused frown. His eyes flicked from her to the others, ending on Cassalie's sympathetic nod.

  "We're alive." Ariel gripped his arm to prove it. "I'm so sorry you thought anything else."

  With a small, voiceless sob, he scrambled the rest of the way out of the tunnel and crashed into her, clumsy with haste. He smelled dank and his skin held a chill. Heedless, Ariel threw her arms around him in an embrace so tight it was probably painful.

  "It's all right now," she said.

  His cold hands roamed her shoulders, arms, and back as if testing how solid she was. She caught them. How good it felt to grip his fingers and have them respond! She needed those hands more than she needed her own. She clutched them to her heart to warm them, wanting to never let go.

  He scanned her face desperately and tried to extract one hand, most likely to gesture. He must be bursting with questions he couldn't ask.

&
nbsp; She kept his fingers trapped tight. "I'll tell you everything as soon as I believe you're truly here. Just come sit at the hearth with me. Please?" Leaning closer, she whispered, "I'm done fluttering. Let me fold my wings and be still for a while."

  He crushed her in his arms, a welcome cocoon.

  Watching, Neela murmured wistfully, "I wish I had someone to hug me like that."

  Zeke looked at her.

  Neela blushed and turned away. "Someday, I mean."

  "I might hug somebody who climbs stones and talks to the wind," Zeke said.

  Stiffening, Neela darted him a glance. Even Scarl's eyebrows rose.

  "But I don't think I'd hug someone called Dain," added Zeke. "I like girls."

  Neela's hands writhed together. "What about someone called Neela?"

  "I might." Zeke drew one of her hands from the other. "Someday." His gaze rose toward Ariel. "After I forgave her for taking my best friend somewhere awful."

  Neela nodded, her eyes round, and she clutched his hand tightly.

  "Does that mean you might forgive the best friend after all?" Ariel asked.

  "Someday," Zeke said. "It might take a few weeks."

  Conscious of Nace against her, Ariel felt sandwiched between the two boys, but for the first time, instead of tearing her in half, it made her feel supported and safe. It wasn't that Zeke didn't have a place in her heart. He was just in a different corner than Nace was, that's all. And his fingers holding Neela's seemed to show he understood.

  She gave him a small, hopeful smile. He returned it.

  "Neela." The name sighed from Cassalie, who gave it a musical lilt. "I've often imagined this old wound being healed. Thank you, Ariel. Truly." She wrinkled her nose at Neela. "But forgive me if my mouth calls you Dain--or Daineela. I don't know how fast I can break that habit."

  Neela giggled. "Me neither." Her smile fell to a frown. "But Dain Windmaster sounds better than Neela Windmaster, don't it?"

  "No," Ariel said. "You're just not used to it yet. When you make a new windpipe, make this one for Neela."