Bone Crier's Moon

by Kathryn Purdie

  She struggles to kick. I grab her arm and kick for her. Her eyes close just before we break the surface. She coughs up a mouthful of water, and I hit her back, pounding out the rest.

  “Sabine . . .” She gasps and blinks salty drops from her lashes. “I almost had her. But she’s so strong. I wasn’t prepared for how strong.” Ailesse looks below. I don’t need her keen vision to see what she does—the shark circling and drawing closer. She’s playing with us. She knows she can kill us any moment she wishes.

  I kick madly toward the shore. “Come on, Ailesse. We have to go.” I drag her behind me. “We’ll find a better kill another day.”

  She coughs again. “What’s better than a shark?”

  “How about a bear? We’ll travel north like we did last year.” I’m rambling, trying to urge her to swim. She’s still dead weight in my arms, and the shark’s circle is tightening.

  “My mother killed a bear,” she says, like it’s the most ordinary animal in Galle, even though Odiva’s bear was a rare albino.

  “We’ll think of something else, then. But for now I need your help.” My breaths fall heavier. “I can’t swim for you the whole way.”

  I feel Ailesse’s muscles gather strength. She starts paddling, but then her eyes narrow, her jaw goes stiff. She rotates around. No, no, no. “I remember where the spear tip sank,” she murmurs.

  “Wait!”

  She dives underwater again.

  Dread seizes me. I plunge in after her.

  Sometimes I really hate my friend.

  My eyes burn before they focus. Ailesse zips forward in a sharp line. The shark stops circling and faces her squarely. Ailesse is probably smiling, but she’ll never fetch her spear quickly enough. Tiger sharks are brutes. This one will attack first. She needs a distraction.

  I swim faster than I thought possible. My one grace bone proves helpful; salamanders move through the water with more ease than falcons, ibexes, or even humans. That’s my only advantage.

  I pass Ailesse and briefly meet her gaze. I pray sixteen years of friendship will help her understand my intentions.

  She nods. We separate. I dive for the coral reef, and she dives for the spear.

  The shark stalks her, not me. Ailesse is the one who started this fight.

  I reach the coral and scrape my palms against it, then both my arms for good measure. My skin stings like fire. My blood swirls like smoke. I struggle to free my dagger, but its blade is still stuck in my sheath. I spy a large rock in the coral. It’s sharp and jagged, freshly fallen from the cliffs. I pull it loose.

  Three feet from Ailesse, the shark turns, her dead eyes fixing on me through the blood-veined water. For a moment, all I fathom is the terrifying beast and the twenty feet between us. I barely notice Ailesse swimming toward the seafloor.

  The shark comes for me. Lashes through the water like lightning.

  I brace for impact. I’m fierce. Strong. Fearless.

  I’m like Ailesse.

  An instant later, the shark’s hideous face is before me. I bash my rock against her snout with a muted whimper. I’m nothing like Ailesse.

  My strike barely cuts her face. She jerks sideways and hits my hand with her head. The rock fumbles out of my grip. She doesn’t dart away this time. She circles me twice. So near her fin grazes my shoulder. So fast her head and tail blur together. She tries to bite. I drop below her with salamander speed and grope for the rock. It’s out of reach.

  I look up and startle. Right above me, I stare at the shark’s open jaws and countless blades of teeth. I punch her blunt nose. She doesn’t back off. I don’t frighten her.

  Her jaws snap. I don’t roll away fast enough. Her teeth snag on my dress. She hauls me closer, chomping up more cloth. I twist and kick as her mouth yawns open again. I see into the cavernous tunnel of her belly. I’m out of air, out of options. Desperately, I wrestle with the hilt of my dagger. At last, the blade pries free.

  I swing it up and stab the shark’s snout, then one of her eyes. She thrashes madly, half-blind. My sleeve rips away, and one of her serrated teeth along with it. I wish to the gods it could be the bone Ailesse needs, but an animal must die to impart its graces.

  As the shark pitches and reels, I zoom to the surface and gasp for air. Three breaths later, I’m underwater again.

  Save Ailesse, save Ailesse, save—

  I stop kicking as a cloud of red blooms beneath me. My throat tightens. Just when I fear the worst, Ailesse swims up through the blood, her spear shaft in her teeth. I hurry after her to the surface.

  I push wet black curls from my face and search my friend’s eyes. “Did you kill her?”

  She pulls the shaft from her mouth. Her hand is bleeding. She hurt herself during the fight. “I couldn’t reach far enough to stab her brain, so I cut off her dorsal fin.”

  Nausea pools inside me. The red in the water fans wider. The shark is down there, horribly injured, but still alive. She could rush up any moment and end us both. “Ailesse, we’re done. Give me the spear.”

  She hesitates and looks below with longing. I wait for it, that stubborn set of her jaw. But it never comes. “She’s yours if you want,” she finally says.

  I recoil. “No, that isn’t what I meant.”

  “I’ve given her a fatal wound, Sabine. She’s weak and partially blind. Take her.” When I say nothing, only continue to stare at her, Ailesse swims closer to me. “I’m giving her to you—another grace bone. Surely killing that monster won’t break your heart.”

  I picture the shark’s grotesque face. I see her trying to wring the life out of Ailesse. She isn’t majestic like the alpine ibex or beautiful like the peregrine falcon. She isn’t even charming like the fire salamander. I won’t mourn to see her dead.

  But does that mean she deserves to die?

  “I . . . I can’t.” I’m freezing in the water, but shame still flushes my cheeks. “I’m sorry.”

  Ailesse looks at me for a long moment. I hate myself for turning away the most generous gift she’s ever offered to me. “Don’t be sorry.” She manages a small smile as her teeth chatter. “We’ll find you another grace bone when you’re ready.”

  With a sure grip on her knife, Ailesse descends below.

  2

  Ailesse

  THE CHILL OF CHTEAU CREUX brushes my skin as Sabine and I walk down its crumbling stone staircase and through the entrance of the ancient castle’s ruins. Long ago, the first king of South Galle built this fortress, and his descendants ruled here until the last of his line, King Godart, died an unnatural death. The locals believe he still haunts these grounds. Sabine and I hear them speak of the old days as they travel the rutted roads outside the city walls. They don’t see us perch in the trees or hide in the tall grass. But we don’t have to hide near Château Creux. The locals never venture here. They believe this place is cursed. The first king worshipped the old gods—our gods—and the people do their best to pretend Tyrus and Elara never existed.

  My bandaged hand burns and throbs. I accidentally sliced my palm with my ritual knife when I sawed off the shark’s fin. I’m still upset with myself for its drawn-out death. I feared the gods wouldn’t find the kill honorable, but they must have; I received the shark’s graces when I chose a bone and pressed it into the blood of my wounded hand.

  At my side, Sabine totes a sack of shark meat over her shoulder. She grips the cinched rope with ease. Her injuries from the coral reef have almost healed. She dismisses her salamander skull as a pitiful grace bone, but it was a clever choice. What she really regrets is killing the creature. One day she will see she is meant for this life. I know Sabine better than she knows herself.

  We duck under fallen beams and a collapsed archway. The Leurress could fortify the castle if my mother so desired, but she prefers it to look desolate and disturbing. If our home were beautiful, it would attract people. And a Leurress should only attract someone once in her life.

  I adjust my shoulder necklace and trace the largest shark toot
h, my newest grace bone. The other teeth are only ornamental, but they’ll make me look formidable when I ferry the dead. After my rite of passage, I can finally join the Ferriers in their dangerous work.

  “Are you nervous?” Sabine asks me.

  “Why should I be?” I flash her a smile, though my heart drums. My mother will approve of my kill. I’m just as clever as Sabine.

  My friend’s presence behind me tickles my spine. Now she’s ten feet away. Eight feet. Seven. As the vibrations grow stronger, the sixth sense I wanted so badly begins to annoy me. I prance farther ahead so Sabine can’t see the frustration on my face. If she thinks I’m nervous, she’ll be nervous, too.

  We descend to a lower level of the château, then plunge deeper. The manmade stone corridors, carved with King Godart’s crest of the crow and the rose, give way to tunnels shaped by tides of the sea. No water remains here, but pearlescent shells shimmer, embedded in the walls like ghosts clinging to the past.

  Soon the tunnel opens to an enormous cavern. I blink against the sunlight bouncing off the limestone ground. A magnificent tower used to rise above this place, but it couldn’t withstand the gales of the sea. After Godart died, the tower fell. It crushed and demolished the cavern ceiling. The Leurress chose this château as our home for that very reason. A clear view of the skies is necessary. Half our power comes from the bones of the dead, but the other half flows from Elara’s Night Heavens. Our strength diminishes if we spend too long sheltered away from the goddess’s moon and starlight.

  Twenty or so women and girls mill about the cavern, the vast space we call the courtyard. Vivienne carries a freshly tanned deer hide. Élodie hangs rows of dipped candles on a rack to harden. Isla weaves white ceremonial cloth on her loom. Little Felise and Lisette carry baskets of garments to be washed. Two of the elders, Roxane and Pernelle, are off in a corner, training with their quarterstaves. The rest of the Leurress must be hunting for meat, gathering berries and herbs, or tending to chores within the depths of the château.

  Isla moves away from her weaving loom and steps in my path. Her ginger brows lower as she scrutinizes my shoulder necklace. I purse my lips to keep from smiling. She can’t identify the beast I killed from its teeth. “I see you’ve had a successful hunt,” she says. “It certainly took you long enough. You girls have been gone almost a fortnight.”

  Girls, she calls us with her nose in the air. She’s only three years older than me and four years older than Sabine. Isla completed her rite of passage when she was eighteen, but I’ll do so in my seventeenth year—and with better graces.

  I thrust my shoulders back. Until now, no Leurress has ever killed a shark. Probably because they never had help from a friend like Sabine. “The hunt was exceptional,” I reply. “And more so because we took our time.”

  Sabine sneaks a wry glance at me. We were really gone so long because I kept changing my mind. I needed an awe-inspiring grace bone to complete my set of three and rival my mother’s five—which only a matrone is allowed.

  Isla wrinkles her nose at Sabine’s sack of raw meat. The stink is terrible. After I greet my mother, I’ll wash the scent out of Sabine’s dress. That’s the least I can do. She insisted on carrying the meat because of my wounded hand, but I know she won’t eat it with the rest of us.

  “Another long trek with Ailesse and no new grace bones?” Isla’s eyes drop to Sabine’s salamander skull.

  My teeth grind together. “Do you wish you could have come in her place, Isla?” I turn to Sabine. “Tell her how much you enjoyed wrestling a tiger shark.” My raised voice echoes through the courtyard and turns heads.

  Sabine lifts her chin. “I’ve never had a more pleasurable swim in the sea.”

  I hold back a snort and link arms with her. We leave behind a speechless Isla as the women of our famille flock to us in a flurry of gasps, congratulations, and embraces.

  Hyacinthe, the oldest Leurress, takes my face in her aged hands. Her milky eyes twinkle. “You have your mother’s fierceness.”

  “I will be the judge of that.” Odiva’s silky voice ripples with authority, and I temper my smile. The women clear a path for the matrone, but when Sabine moves to do so, I touch her arm and she stays with me. She knows I’m stronger with her by my side. “Mother,” I say, and bow my head.

  Odiva glides forward, her huntress feet silent on the stone floor. Dust motes sparkle about her sapphire dress like stars in the sky. What’s more breathtaking are her grace bones. The bone pendant of an albino bear, carved in the shape of a claw, dangles among the bear’s real claws on her three-tier necklace, along with the tooth band of a whiptail stingray. Talons and feathers from an eagle owl form epaulettes on her shoulders. One of the talons is also carved from bone, like the bear claw pendant. And then there’s my mother’s crown, crafted from the vertebrae of an asp viper and the skull of a giant noctule bat. The bones are offset by her raven hair and chalk-white skin.

  I hold my posture to perfection while her black eyes drop to my necklace. She slips a finger under the largest tooth. “What graces did you gain from a tiger shark that were worth endangering yourself to such a degree?” She speaks in a casual manner, but her red lips tighten with disapproval. Her famille—the only famille in this region of Galle—has dwindled over the years to forty-seven women and girls. While we seek the best graces, the hunt to obtain them shouldn’t compromise our lives.

  We had numbers to spare until fifteen years ago, when the great plague struck the land. The fight to ferry its countless victims killed half of those who died among us; the rest perished from the disease. Ever since then, we’ve struggled to manage the population of South Galle. But despite our size, we’re still the founding famille, chosen of the gods. The other Leurress throughout the world can’t ferry their dead without us. Our power is linked.

  “A greater sense of smell, good vision in the dark, and a sixth sense to detect when someone is nearby, even without looking,” I say, reciting the answer I’ve prepared.

  I’m about to add swimming, hunting, and ferocity, when my mother replies, “I possess the same from a stingray.”

  “Except for vision in the dark.” I can’t help but correct her.

  “Unnecessary. You have the wing bone of a peregrine falcon. That’s all the enhanced vision you need.”

  Some of the Leurress whisper in agreement. Each Ferrier among them wears a bone from an animal—mostly fowl—that gives her the eyesight to see an additional color. The color of the dead.

  I cross my arms and uncross them, fighting a flare of defensiveness. “But the shark was strong, Mother. You can’t imagine how strong. She even took us by surprise.” Surely Odiva can’t argue the fact that I needed to add more muscle to my graces. Now I have it—with an extra measure of fierceness and confidence, as well. But she’s only caught on one word.

  “Us?”

  I briefly lower my eyes. “Sabine . . . helped.” My friend stiffens beside me. Sabine hates drawing attention to herself, and now all the Leurress are staring at her, my mother’s gaze the heaviest.

  When Odiva looks back at me, her expression is as smooth as the waters of the lagoon. But something fiercer than a shark churns beneath. I’m the one she’s angry with, not Sabine. She’s never angry with Sabine.

  The Leurress grow quiet. The distant sounds of the sea funnel through the cavern like we’re caught in a giant shell. My heart pounds in time with the crashing waves. Receiving the assistance of another Leurress during a ritual hunt isn’t strictly forbidden, but it’s frowned upon. No one cared a moment ago—the incredible kill overshadowed that fact—but my mother’s silence makes them all reconsider. I hold back a sigh. What will it take to impress her?

  “Ailesse didn’t ask for my help.” Sabine’s voice is small but steady. She sets down her sack of shark meat and clasps her hands together. “I worried she might run out of air. Out of fear for her life, I dived in after her.”

  Odiva’s head tilts. “And did you find that my daughter’s life was t
ruly in danger?”

  Sabine chooses her next words carefully. “No more than your own life was threatened, Matrone, when you confronted a bear with only a knife and one grace.” No cynicism drips from her tone, only gentle but powerful truth. Odiva was my age when she took on the bear, no doubt to prove herself to her own mother, the grandmother I scarcely remember.

  My mother’s brows lift, and she suppresses a smile. “Well spoken. You could learn a lesson from Sabine, Ailesse.” Her eyes slide to mine. “A better way with words might curb your penchant to provoke me.”

  I square my jaw to mask my hurt. Sabine casts me an apologetic glance, but I’m not upset with her. She was only trying to defend me. “Yes, Mother.”

  No matter how hard I try to prove my worth as the future matrone of our famille, I fall short of the simple virtues that come naturally to my friend. A fact my mother never fails to make known to me.

  “Leave us,” she commands the other Leurress. With a sweeping tide of bows, they scatter back to their work. Sabine starts to follow, but my mother holds up a hand for her to stay. I’m not sure why, because her words are for me: “The full moon is in nine days.”

  My ribs ease against my lungs, and I inhale a deep breath. She’s speaking of my rite of passage. Which means she’s accepted my grace bones—all of them. “I’m ready. More than ready.”

  “Hyacinthe will teach you the siren song. Practice it only on a wooden flute.”

  I nod fervently. I know all of this. I’ve even learned the siren song by heart. Hyacinthe plays it at night. Sometimes I hear her cry afterward, her soft sobs flowing with the echoing tides of the sea. The siren song is that beautiful. “When can I receive the bone flute?” My nerves thrill at the thought of being able to touch it. I’m on the cusp of a dream I’ve had since I was little. Soon I’ll stand among my sister Leurress, each of us using our graces to guide departed souls through the Gates of the Beyond, the very realms of Tyrus and Elara. “Do I really need to wait until the full moon?”

  “This isn’t a game, Ailesse,” my mother snaps. “The bone flute is more than an instrument to call forth your amouré.”