Bone Crier's Moon

by Kathryn Purdie

  Dedication

  To Sylvie, Karine, and Agnés

  for four life-changing summers

  Map

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Map

  Eight Years Ago

  1. Sabine

  2. Ailesse

  3. Bastien

  4. Sabine

  5. Bastien

  6. Ailesse

  7. Sabine

  8. Ailesse

  9. Bastien

  10. Sabine

  11. Ailesse

  12. Bastien

  13. Ailesse

  14. Sabine

  15. Ailesse

  16. Sabine

  17. Bastien

  18. Ailesse

  19. Sabine

  20. Bastien

  21. Ailesse

  22. Sabine

  23. Bastien

  24. Sabine

  25. Ailesse

  26. Sabine

  27. Ailesse

  28. Sabine

  29. Bastien

  30. Sabine

  31. Bastien

  32. Ailesse

  33. Sabine

  34. Ailesse

  35. Sabine

  36. Bastien

  37. Sabine

  38. Bastien

  39. Ailesse

  40. Sabine

  41. Bastien

  42. Sabine

  43. Ailesse

  44. Sabine

  45. Bastien

  46. Ailesse

  47. Bastien

  48. Ailesse

  49. Sabine

  50. Ailesse

  51. Bastien

  52. Ailesse

  53. Sabine

  54. Ailesse

  55. Bastien

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Bone Crier’s Dawn

  About the Author

  Books by Kathryn Purdie

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Eight Years Ago

  FINGERS OF MIST CURLED AROUND Bastien’s father as he walked away from his only child. The boy lifted up on his knees in their stalled handcart. “Where are you going, Papa?”

  His father didn’t answer. The light of the full moon shone on Lucien’s chestnut hair, and the mist swallowed him from sight.

  Alone, Bastien sank back down and tried to be quiet. Stories of cutthroat robbers on forest roads ran rampant through his ten-year-old mind. Don’t be afraid, he told himself. Papa would have warned me if there was any danger. But his father was gone now, and Bastien began to doubt.

  Outside the city walls, the idle cart offered little shelter. Bastien’s skin crawled at phantom whispers. His breath caught when the branches around him formed claws.

  I should follow Papa right now, he thought, but the nighttime chill seeped into his bones and filled them with lead. He shivered, pressed up against the limestone sculptures in the cart. Tyrus, god of the Underworld, stared back at him, his mouth chiseled in a wry line. Bastien’s father had carved the figurine months ago, but it never sold. People preferred the sun god and the earth goddess, worshipping life and disregarding death.

  Bastien turned his head, hearing a song without words. Lilting. Primal. Sad. Like the soft cry of a child or the plaintive call of a bird or a harrowing ballad of lost love. The song swelled inside him, achingly beautiful. Almost as beautiful as the woman standing on the bridge, for Bastien, like his father, soon followed the music there.

  The mist settled, and a thick fog rolled in from the Nivous Sea. The breeze played with the ends of the woman’s dark amber hair. Her white dress swished, exposing her slim ankles and bare feet. She wasn’t singing. The music poured from a bone-white flute at her mouth. Bastien should have recognized her for what she was then.

  She set the flute on the parapet when Lucien met her in the middle of the bridge. The hazy moonlight cast them in an unearthly glow.

  Bastien faltered, unable to take another step. What if this was a dream? Perhaps he’d fallen asleep in his father’s cart.

  Then his father and the woman started dancing.

  Her movements were slow, breathtaking, graceful. She glided through the fog like a swan on water. Lucien never looked away from her midnight-dark eyes.

  Bastien didn’t either, but when the dance ended, he blinked twice. What if he wasn’t dreaming?

  The bone-white flute caught his eye again. Dread dropped hot coals in his stomach. Was the flute really made of bone?

  Legends of Bone Criers rushed back to him and clashed warning bells through his mind. The women in white were said to stalk these parts of Galle. Bastien’s father wasn’t a superstitious man—he never avoided bridges during a full moon—but he should have, for here he was, enchanted like all doomed men in the tales. Every story was alike. Each had a bridge and dancing . . . and what happened afterward. Now was when—

  Bastien sprang forward. “Papa! Papa!”

  His father, who adored him, who carried him on his shoulders and sang him lullabies, never turned to heed his son.

  The Bone Crier withdrew a bone knife. She leapt straight into the air—higher than a roe deer—and with the force of her descent, she plunged the blade deep into his father’s heart.

  Bastien’s scream raged as guttural as a grown man’s. It carved his chest hollow with pain he would harbor for years.

  He ran onto the bridge, collapsed beside his father, and met the woman’s falsely sorry eyes. She glanced behind her at another woman at the bridge’s end, who beckoned with a hasty hand.

  The first woman lifted the bloody bone knife to her palm, like she meant to cut herself to complete the ritual. But with one last look at Bastien, she cast the knife into the forest and fled, leaving the boy with a dead father and a lesson seared forever in his memory:

  Believe every story you hear.

  1

  Sabine

  IT’S A GOOD DAY FOR shark hunting. At least that’s what Ailesse keeps telling me. I pant, climbing behind her as she springs from one rock outcropping to the next. Her auburn hair gleams poppy red in the morning sunlight. The strands whip wildly in the sea breeze as she effortlessly scales the cliff.

  “Do you know what a true friend would do?” I grab a handhold on the limestone and catch my breath.

  Ailesse pivots and looks down at me. She doesn’t mind the precarious ledge she’s standing on.

  “A true friend would toss me that crescent pendant.” I nod at the grace bone that dangles among the small shells and beads on her necklace. The bone came from an alpine ibex we hunted in the far north last year. He was Ailesse’s first kill, but I was the one who fashioned a piece of his sternum into the pendant she wears. I’m the better bone carver, a fact Ailesse encourages me to gloat about. I should, because it’s the only thing I’m better at.

  She laughs, my favorite sound in the world. Throaty, full of abandon, and never condescending. It makes me laugh, too, even though mine is self-deprecating. “Oh, Sabine.” She climbs back down to me. “You should see yourself! You’re a mess.”

  I smack her arm, but I know she’s right. My face is hot, and I’m dripping sweat. “It’s very selfish of you to make this look easy.”

  Ailesse’s lower lip juts in a humorous pout. “I’m sorry.” She places a supportive hand on my back, and I relax onto my heels. The thirty-foot distance to the ground doesn’t seem so vast anymore. “All I can think about is what it will feel like to have a shark’s sixth sense. With its grace bone, I’ll be able to—”

  “—discern when someone is nearby, which will make you the best Ferrier the Leurress have seen in a century,” I drone. She’s talked of little else all morning.

  She grins and her should
ers shake with merriment. “Come, I’ll help you up. We’re almost there.” She doesn’t give me her crescent pendant. It wouldn’t do any good. The grace can only belong to the huntress who imbued it with the animal’s power. Otherwise, Ailesse would have given me all her bones. She knows I loathe killing.

  The journey to the top is easier with her at my side. She guides my feet and takes my hand when I need a little lift. She prattles on about every fact she’s gleaned about sharks: their enhanced sense of smell, their superior vision in low light, their soft skeletons made of cartilage—Ailesse plans to select a hard tooth for her grace bone, since it won’t decay over her lifetime. The defining mineral in real bone is also abundant in teeth, so the shark’s graces will imbue it in the same way.

  We finally reach the summit, and my legs tremble while my muscles unwind. Ailesse doesn’t pause to rest. She races to the opposite side, plants her feet at the extreme edge of the drop-off to the sea, and squeals in delight. The breeze ripples across her short, snug dress. Its single strap complements her shoulder necklace, which wraps in strands from her neck to below her right arm. The dress is the perfect length for swimming. Before we set off this morning, Ailesse removed the longer white skirt she usually wears on top.

  She spreads her arms wide and stretches her fingers. “What did I tell you?” she calls back to me. “A perfect day! There’s scarcely a wave down there.”

  I join her, though not as close to the edge, and peer downward. Forty-five feet below, the lagoon is encircled by limestone cliffs such as this one. The wind can only skip across the skin of the water. “And a shark?”

  “Just give me a moment. I’ve seen reef breeds here before.” Her burnt umber eyes sharpen to see what I can’t, deep beneath the water. Ailesse’s second grace bone, from a peregrine falcon, gives her keen vision.

  The salt spray tingles my nose as I warily lean forward. A heady breeze tips my balance, and I scuffle back again. Ailesse holds steady, her body still as stone. I know that predatory, patient set of her jaw. She will wait like this—sometimes for hours—for what she wants. She was born to hunt. Her mother, Odiva, matrone of our famille, is our greatest huntress. Perhaps Ailesse’s father was a skilled soldier or a captain. Mine was probably a gardener or an apothecary, someone who healed or helped things grow. Paltry skills for a Leurress.

  I shouldn’t wonder about our fathers. We’ll never know them. Odiva discourages our famille from speaking about dead amourés, the select men who perfectly complement our souls. We novices will have to make our own sacrifices one day, and it will be easier if we don’t grow attached to those destined to die.

  “There!” Ailesse points to a darker spot of water, close to the cliff wall below us. I don’t see anything.

  “Are you sure?”

  She nods, flexing her hands in anticipation. “A tiger shark—a king predator! How fortunate is that? I was worried you’d have to dive in after me and scare away the other reef sharks attracted to the blood.” I swallow hard, imagining myself as bait. Gratefully, no creature will come near a tiger shark. Except Ailesse. She heaves a sigh of admiration. “Oh, Sabine, she’s beautiful—and large, even taller than a man.”

  “She?” Ailesse may have far-reaching vision, but she can’t see through the shark to its underside.

  “Only a female could be that magnificent.”

  I scoff. “Says someone who has yet to meet her amouré.”

  She smirks, ever amused by my cynicism. “If I get this bone, I’ll have all three and get to meet him on the next full moon.”

  My smile wavers. Every Leurress must choose and obtain three grace bones in order to become a Ferrier. But that’s not the only requirement. It’s the thought of the final achievement that renders me silent. Ailesse speaks so casually about her rite of passage and the person she’ll have to kill—a human, not a creature who can’t scream when its life has ended. But her tolerance is natural; I’m the anomaly. I must accept, like the other Leurress do without flinching, that what we do is necessary, a price demanded by the gods for the safety of this world.

  Ailesse rubs her palms on her dress. “I have to hurry. The shark is turning back for the mouth of the lagoon. I’ll never catch her if I have to fight against the current.” She points to a small, sandy beach below. “Meet me down there, all right? I’ll drag her to the shore when I’m finished.”

  “Wait!” I catch her arm. “What will happen if you fail?” I sound like her mother, but it must be said. This is my friend’s life. This risk is different from those Ailesse has taken before. Maybe graces from a shark aren’t worth the danger. She could still choose a bone from another animal.

  Her expression falls. I usually support her in everything. “I can take a shark. Most are docile unless threatened.”

  “And a dive attack off a cliff isn’t threatening?”

  “Better than a slow swim from the shore. I’d never gain any momentum on her.”

  “That isn’t the point.”

  Ailesse crosses her arms. “Our hunting should involve danger. That is the point. The animals with the best graces should be difficult to kill. Otherwise we’d all be wearing squirrel bones.”

  A wall of hurt slams into me. My hand closes around the tiny skull resting above my heart. It hangs from a waxed cord, my only grace bone.

  Ailesse’s eyes widen. “There’s nothing wrong with your bone,” she stammers, realizing her mistake. “I wasn’t making light of it. A fire salamander is worlds better than a rodent.”

  I look down at my feet. “A salamander is even smaller than a rodent. Everyone knows it was an easy kill.”

  Ailesse takes my hand and holds it for a long moment, even while her shark swims away. “It wasn’t easy for you.” Our toes are almost touching, her creamy skin against my olive. “Besides, a fire salamander has the gift to heal quickly. No other Leurress had the wisdom to obtain that grace before.”

  She makes me sound so clever. The truth is Odiva was pressuring me to make my first kill, and out of desperation I chose what wouldn’t make me weep. I chose wrong. My eyes were red for days, and I couldn’t bear to touch the dead creature. Ailesse boiled the flesh off his bones and made my necklace for me. She suggested I use the vertebrae, but to her surprise, I chose the skull. It reminded me of the salamander’s life and personality the most. It was the best homage I could pay him. I couldn’t bring myself to carve any pretty designs onto the skull, and Ailesse never asked me why. She never makes me talk about anything I don’t want to.

  I wipe my hand under my nose. “You better get your shark.” If anyone can do it, she can. I’ll stop fretting about the danger.

  She smiles my favorite smile, the one that reveals all her teeth and makes me feel like life is one long adventure, large enough to keep even Ailesse satisfied.

  She unstraps a spear from her back. We fashioned it from a sapling and her bone knife. Like all ritual weapons, it’s made from the bones of a stag to symbolize perpetual life. Ailesse backs up several steps and grips the spear’s shaft. With a running start, she launches herself off the cliff.

  Her leap is tremendous. Her falcon’s wing bone can’t make her fly, but it definitely makes a jump impressive.

  She shrieks in the thrill of the moment and brings her arms together, one hand over the other, to break the water. Her body aligns, her toes point, and she plunges in headfirst.

  Her dive barely creates a splash. I creep closer to the edge of the cliff and squint, wishing for Ailesse’s vision. Won’t she come up for a breath? Maybe she means to strike the shark first. That would be the smartest way to catch it off guard.

  I wait for her to emerge, and my heart thrums faster. I count each beat. Eight, nine . . . thirteen, fourteen . . . twenty-one, twenty-two . . . forty-seven . . .

  Ailesse has two grace bones, the ibex and the falcon. Neither can help her hold her breath for long.

  Sixty-three.

  I crouch and lean over the edge. “Ailesse?” I shout.

  The water st
irs. Nothing surfaces.

  Seventy-five.

  My racing pulse can’t be keeping correct time. She hasn’t been down there this long. Maybe thirty seconds. Possibly forty.

  Eighty-six.

  “Ailesse!”

  Ninety-two.

  I watch for the blue water to turn bloodred. But whose blood will it be?

  One hundred.

  I curse all the gods’ names and throw myself off the cliff.

  In my panic, I jump feetfirst. I quickly straighten my body and pull my flailing arms to my sides—almost. They still slap the water. I gasp with pain and release a spray of bubbles—air I need. I clamp my mouth shut and glance around me. The water is clear, but the salt stings my eyes; my salamander was a freshwater creature. I twist in a circle, searching for my friend. I hear a faint sound of struggle.

  Several feet beneath me, Ailesse and the shark are locked in combat.

  Her spear is in the shark’s mouth. The beast doesn’t appear injured and bites on the shaft Ailesse is holding. Ailesse is thrown about like a reed in the wind, refusing to let go.

  I scream her name and lose more breath. I’m forced to swim to the surface and gulp in air before I swim back down again.

  I charge forward with no plan in mind, only viciousness in my veins and desperate fear in my heart. Ailesse can’t die. My best friend can’t die.

  The tiger shark’s face is ferocious. Serrated teeth. Lidless eyes. An oversized snout that makes her look even hungrier. How did Ailesse think she could defeat her? Why did I allow her to jump?

  Her spear snaps in two between the shark’s jaws. The bone knife sinks. Ailesse is left with a three-foot pole. She jabs the shark’s mandible and narrowly dodges a vicious bite.

  The shark doesn’t notice me. I reach for my dagger, but the blade is caught in my bloated sheath. Weaponless, I use all the force I can muster and kick the shark in her side. Her tail whips, but nothing more. I grab her gills and try to tear them. I can’t. At least I’ve disturbed her. She bites once at me—barely missing my arm—and darts away behind a coral reef.

  Ailesse floats nearby, her energy spent. The broken spear slips through her fingers. Go! I mouth, and point to the surface. She needs air.