A Secret of Birds & Bone

by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

  He fumbled in his pocket for the clump of glue beads.

  Corvith was still hovering above, something in his beak, and the aggressive magpie was circling below him still cawing angrily. More magpies were waking, though none of them raised any sort of alarm. Corvith’s disguise was keeping him safe, but for how long?

  ‘The lamps,’ said Ermin. ‘It’s the only way.’

  ‘What if they see us?’ said Sofia, stomach clenching. But Ermin did not reply. Instead, he reached past her and pushed open the grid. She snatched at him but he was already outside, slithering flat to the stained floor.

  Sofia caught the metal before it clanged shut, keeping it ajar, eyes darting between her brother on the floor and the magpies above. She should follow him, grab him. She should go instead. But fear rooted her to the spot.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asked Ghino.

  Sofia could only squeak in answer. Now the awake magpies were watching the stand-off above them, and the sick feeling in Sofia’s stomach grew as more magpies joined in, circling Corvith who was only discernible by the object in his beak.

  ‘Quickly, Ermin,’ she whispered. Ghino’s fingers gripped Sofia’s, her nails digging into the back of his hand.

  Ermin had reached the lamps and opened their glass cases wide. He scattered the glue on to the hot metal, evenly on each, and almost immediately the glue began to melt. Ermin started crawling back, Sofia opening the grate wide and reaching for him desperately.

  Now Sofia could smell the melting glue, fishy and sharp, the stench sticking to the back of her throat. Ermin reached the grate and, as she clasped him tightly in her arms, Sofia saw a magpie’s eye snap open. It raised its head and looked directly at them. It opened its beak and Sofia cringed, waiting for the alarm call . . .

  But it didn’t come. Instead, the magpie’s head drooped and dropped forwards. The still-sleeping magpies next to it fell sideways on to the planks, all knocked unconscious. She tracked the fumes’ progress up the walls as row after row of magpies fell sideways or slumped more dramatically, some sliding down the spiral until they bunched along it like children backed up on a bannister.

  ‘Come on,’ she hissed, but Ermin was looking up.

  ‘I have to catch Corvith!’ He stood up as the fumes reached the top of the tower and the circling magpies began to swoop drunkenly, some finding purchase on the perches while others started to plummet. One spotted Ermin standing below, arms outstretched, and with its last conscious breath, let loose an enormous screech.

  Instantly, there was a startled shout from outside – not a magpie, but a person. A guard. Another magpie screeched.

  ‘Come, Corvith!’ Ermin called, and there was loud swearing from outside. Corvith obeyed, diving past the dizzy and unconscious magpies, until halfway down he too went limp as a rag. The object fell from his mouth, and Sofia saw at last what it was.

  A finger bone, hinged in brass. Mamma’s hairpin. As Ermin scrambled to catch the crow, holding out his tunic so he landed with a soft thump in the fabric, Sofia launched herself out to catch the hairpin. It landed, solid and cool, in her hand and she clasped it like a prayer as the door burst open, a guard charging inside.

  Ghino threw himself out of the grate as if to help them.

  ‘Don’t, Ghino!’ she cried.

  The guard’s hand reached out and grabbed at Ghino’s collar. For one, shining moment, as she and Ermin slid back through the grate and into the tunnel, Sofia thought she saw Ghino slip through the guard’s fingers. She held out her arms to him.

  But then –

  ‘I have them!’ Ghino was waving towards Sofia and Ermin. ‘Tell the capitana! I have them!’

  The world seemed to stop, caught in the trap of Ghino’s words. Ermin with the unconscious Corvith, Sofia with her arms straining against the weight of the grate, the guard with his hand tight about Ghino’s collar: all as still as statues.

  Only Ghino kept talking, moving, flailing against the guard’s grip.

  ‘Tell her I did as she asked!’ he cried. ‘Tell Capitana Rosa I have them!’

  Even the magpies, falling from their perches, seemed to stall mid-air. Sofia’s blood stilled in her veins as Ghino’s yells resolved into words, and his words’ meanings battered against her heart like arrows, striking at every tender place.

  ‘Call the capitana!’ Ghino was still shouting. ‘Take me to her!’

  As the guard let go of Ghino, Sofia let the grate drop. The clang shook through to her bones, which felt as soft as feathers, just before more people came running.

  ‘Quick, Sofia!’ cried Ermin, snatching up Ghino’s lamp in his free hand and skidding down the steps just as a monstrous magpie, huge and horribly familiar, thumped down hard on the grid and began to peck through the holes. It was the magpie who had visited their house, the magpie who accompanied the stranger. But now it was unhooded, free of its leash. It dipped its beak through the grate, caught hold of a hank of Sofia’s hair and wrenched it from her scalp.

  Sofia cried out in pain and climbed down as fast as she could after Ermin, shrinking into the safety of the tunnel just as Capitana Rosa beat the magpie aside. She threw herself down on top of the grate, scrabbling and pulling, but it was set flush to the floor and she couldn’t grip the slick metal. She looked possessed, spit flecking her lips as she called for her guards.

  ‘Rip it off its hinges! Bring axes! Bring acid!’

  Sofia shuddered and stuffed the hairpin into her hair so she could go faster. Her whole body hurt, her heartbeat hammering the realization home.

  Ghino had betrayed them.

  Ghino had led them into a trap.

  This thought echoed in her mind as she and Ermin fled, barely leaving room for anything else, so that when they arrived at the crossroads of the miniature city she felt as though she’d walked for seconds or years.

  ‘He’s with them,’ she gasped, panting. ‘He’s a liar.’

  ‘Why?’ said Ermin in a pale imitation of his voice. ‘Why did he . . .’

  Sofia grasped his hand. ‘We have to keep going. You heard Capitana Rosa. They’ll be after us as soon as that grate gives. We have to go.’

  ‘Where can we go?’ sobbed Ermin. ‘Ghino’s helping them.’

  ‘I know,’ said Sofia. Her shock was hardening into anger, her scalp stinging where the magpie had ripped out her hair. That beast and Capitana Rosa were working together. Was it the captain who had come to their home all that time ago?

  ‘Mamma is there, isn’t she? In the palazzo prison?’ hiccupped Ermin. ‘Corvith fetched her pin. Should we go back?’

  Sofia felt in her hair and pulled out the hairpin. It was warm now, the brass hot from her body’s movement. Something slid into place in her mind, neat as the locket in the model.

  ‘She was,’ she said slowly. ‘She was there.’

  ‘Was?’

  Sofia nodded. ‘Not any more. The hairpin, it was cool when I caught it. If Mamma had been wearing it up until Corvith found it, it’d be warm like it is now. Feel.’

  She tipped it on to Ermin’s palm. ‘See? Mamma was kept in the tower. Maybe she even left this, as a clue. But she’s not there now.’

  ‘Where then?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Sofia cast a nervous glance back at the tunnel that led to the palazzo. ‘But we have to get out, get above ground. This is Ghino’s domain.’ His name tasted bitter in her mouth. ‘He knows it better than us and he’s going to lead them to us. We have to go somewhere we know.’

  ‘But where?’

  Sofia looked at the bone model, at the gates that had swung open before the right passage. She turned to Ermin, who was still clutching the unconscious Corvith. ‘Let’s go home.’

  They hurried along the passage, which inclined softly, and Sofia reassured herself by imagining they were up top – above ground, she corrected herself – and walking home after a market day.

  Or, as this was her daydream, she could imagine they were walking back from the Palio – but instead of Mam
ma fleeing the palazzo and being caught by guards, she’d joined them in the crowd. They’d watched the race, the horses galloping round the piazza and the whole city cheering and joyful. She imagined Mamma’s hand, calloused and strong, in hers. She smiled, feeling the sunlight warm on her cheeks.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Ermin, pulling her back to reality. He was holding the lamp up to her face, peering at her worriedly, and she smoothed the creases of his forehead with her finger.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Well, you know.’

  He nodded miserably and swung the light back in front of them. ‘Look!’

  Above them, roots were starting to twist through the soil. Sofia traced one with her finger. It came away damp, and water dripped on to her face. The soil must be thinning – they were rising to the surface. ‘Come on.’

  They quickened their pace, almost running as they rounded a final turn – and there, solid as the roots, was a trapdoor. Sofia almost sobbed with relief, throwing herself against it. But it wouldn’t move, no matter how hard she pushed.

  ‘It’s locked!’ she said. ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Sofia, calm down,’ said Ermin. ‘Look.’

  He reached out and pulled the trapdoor towards him. It swung open without resistance.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and then, following him outside, ‘Oh!’

  They were home. Not near home, not just outside the gates with a long walk ahead, but actually home. At the twisted tree that marked their boundary, their bone house shining ahead, the hill stretching before them. All about them the olive grove twisted, drenched in a brilliant sunset. They’d been underground a whole day. The trees were alight, their silver leaves burnished bronze.

  Sofia’s heart felt lighter than it had in days. She turned to look behind them. The trapdoor opened into the hollow trunk of the tree, the tree she had seen every day of her life, and yet never suspected what it concealed. She pulled the trapdoor shut. Its wood was as gnarled as the tree’s and it was hidden perfectly by the roots.

  ‘Che cavolo,’ murmured Ermin, and Sofia did not even tell him off for using Ghino’s phrase. ‘Why does it lead here, to our house?’

  ‘Mamma,’ said Sofia. Mamma must have known this was here. She had built the bone house and knew every inch of this hill. Sofia felt dizzy with the secrets, piled atop each other, burrowing through the foundations of what she thought she knew.

  She quickly scanned the road. There was no sign of anyone coming after them, but surely this would be the first place Capitana Rosa would look? They could hide in the grove if anyone came, and Corvith could keep watch. But then what? They could not go on like that for ever, not with Mamma still missing.

  Ermin was stripping handfuls of olives from the trees, stuffing them into his mouth and spitting pits into the air. In his arms, Corvith was stirring grumpily and Sofia held out an olive for him, too.

  ‘Should we go inside?’ asked Ermin, mouth full.

  ‘I think we should wait a bit,’ said Sofia, though she wanted nothing more than to lie down in her bone bed and sleep and sleep and then wake from this nightmare. ‘See if anyone comes. Let’s go to the well.’

  Before they started their climb, Sofia tied two of the younger branches of the trapdoor tree together. She didn’t think she’d find it again without the marking.

  She remembered back to her birthday, three days and a lifetime ago, when they’d left the house only a moment after Mamma and yet not seen any sign of her. She must have been using this passage for years, and she’d never told them.

  Sofia began to climb after Ermin, manoeuvring through the twisting boughs, fresh anger boiling in her belly. Why had Mamma kept so many secrets? Ermin was still young, but Sofia was twelve. Surely she was old enough to be told about things like trapdoors and secret tunnels. Sofia grasped the hairpin, and her anger stalled.

  Mamma’s face came to her, surrounded by her curls. Her lavender smell, her clever hands, the frown line that furrowed between her thick black eyebrows when she concentrated. Sofia twisted up her hair and stuck the pin into it. She would give anything to have Mamma home.

  Ermin was drawing the bucket up from the well. He paused when he saw her.

  ‘You look like Mamma,’ he said, nodding at the hairpin. Sofia smiled and slapped her hands together, brushing them the way Mamma always did after a day of bone building, clapping the bone dust from her fingers. Ermin laughed, but there was such sadness in his face Sofia felt it dig straight into her.

  ‘We’ll find her,’ she said. ‘We will.’

  Ermin sighed and nodded. He lifted the bucket, drank deeply, then passed it to Sofia. She looked down into the bucket, the water drawn from the hidden river made gold by the sunset, remembering Ghino’s cold skin as they pulled him from the torrent, his face drained of blood, his chest breathless. She trailed her fingers into the water, feeling the familiar calm wash through her, and then traced the bone symbol – the intertwined ‘R’, ‘S’, ‘E’ and ‘C’ on the well – to anoint it like a blessing, a wish that they would be together again soon.

  Ahead, the view was the same as ever. Siena’s buildings had remained unchanged through all the years of Sofia’s life – they knew nothing of Palios and smallpox and missing mothers. The towers of the cathedral and the palazzo pierced the encroaching dark, magpies drawing invisible threads between the two. It was incredible to her that they had been underneath that mighty tower, underneath the city, swooping through, unseen as magpies at night.

  Sofia sat up a little straighter. She was wrong. The view was not exactly as it always was. She had never seen the magpies behave like that, flying in deliberate lines from the palazzo to the cathedral. In fact, there were so many of them, massing round the cathedral spire, it was starting to take on the appearance of a swarm, or storm cloud.

  She had hated them when she was younger, hiding under her mother’s skirts whenever they visited town. Years ago, before the pox, when Ermin was still small enough to be carried in a bundle on Mamma’s chest, Mamma had brought Sofia to the cathedral to see the relics. She’d taken her to a small wooden door at the back of the building.

  ‘The tradesman’s entrance,’ she’d said with a wink. ‘Even God doesn’t like the workers coming in the front.’

  She’d led Sofia through the door, and into a different world. The crypt was dug before the cathedral even stood, so ancient you could see mosaics from a time when Italy was ruled by emperors, and there were many gods, not just one.

  ‘Like descending through time,’ Mamma murmured, leading Sofia through the candlelit dark to a curved room pocked with holes like the inside of a beehive. In each of the holes was a relic, a piece of a saint left behind to grow dusty and more holy with the passing of the years.

  ‘I will make a reliquary for each of these,’ said Mamma, patting the sleeping Ermin’s back. ‘To give them resting places worthy of saints.’

  ‘And when that’s done, what will you make?’ asked Sofia, believing absolutely that Mamma would make these boxes in no time at all.

  ‘A bone builder’s work is never done,’ smiled Mamma. ‘Unless I could make a skeleton key. Then I would know I’d mastered my craft.’

  ‘Aren’t all your keys skeletons?’

  Mamma chuckled, her dark eyes flashing in the candlelight. ‘Yes, but none is a skeleton key. A key that can open any lock.’

  Sofia wrinkled her nose. ‘But that’s impossible.’

  ‘Bone is impossible. It is the only material that could make such a thing. There are locks that need the strength of metal, the lightness of wood, the warmth of life and the cool of death. Only bone has all these qualities. So only a bone builder can make a skeleton key.’

  Sofia held her locket tight in her hand. It matters. Keep it safe. It seemed to Sofia Mamma had made the impossible possible. But even this wondrous knowledge made Sofia’s heart ache. If the locket was a skeleton key, why had Mamma not told her what it was? Why would she not have shared her triumph with Sofia?

  ‘Sof
ia,’ said Ermin, pointing to the massing magpies.

  ‘I know,’ she murmured.

  Corvith chattered on Ermin’s shoulder and he stroked his beak gently. ‘What does it mean?’

  Sofia didn’t want to answer. Once she did she knew her fantasy of remaining at home, pretending all was well, would be over. But she said it anyway.

  ‘It means we wait for dark. We can sleep a couple of hours, but then . . .’

  She grasped her locket, the perfect miniature of the cathedral before them. ‘It means we have to go back.’

  The cathedral’s pale stone glowed ghostly in the moonlight, the black bands dissolving so it looked like it had been sliced into pieces and sat levitating in the night.

  They’d made the journey above ground, thinking it was safer than risking being caught in the tunnels now that Ghino was working against them. The fact they now feared him more than the magpies made Sofia almost breathless with fury. She imagined him leading Capitana Rosa and her guards, pursuing them through the belly of the city. No wonder he’d acted so strangely at Saint’s Spring – if Ermin had not forced him to jump, they would never have got so far.

  But then there was his face when the captain had pushed the guard into the empty spring. Ghino had looked pale, afraid. Like he’d finally realized what he had been helping. And now he was in her clutches.

  Good, Sofia thought forcefully. It was none of her concern where he was, so long as it was nowhere near them.

  It had been the right decision to go above ground. They’d passed no one on the night-time streets, and the magpies still seemed to be concentrated round the cathedral spire. As they drew closer, approaching from a narrow side street lined with bakeries, they shrank further back into the shadows cast by its massive walls.

  They’d stayed long enough at home to change their clothes for the darkest ones they owned. They’d even wrapped cloths round their mouths, like Ghino, to avoid the glint of their teeth giving them away. Along with Corvith, the three of them looked like a band of snatchers.