Bone Crier's Moon

by Kathryn Purdie

  I count 167 steps before I walk onto the fine sand of the shore. I’m standing in a cave. Grayish light glows beyond its mouth. I advance toward it with the Ferriers, and we trail out onto a starlit beach. The water laps gently, and a shower of awe prickles across my shoulders. A faint shimmer of rocks dot an increasingly visible pathway in the sea.

  The tide is lowering. The land bridge begins to emerge.

  23

  Bastien

  AILESSE ISN’T GONE. SHE CAN’T be. But no matter how hard I try to convince myself, I can’t peel my groggy eyes off the evidence. The limestone slab. It’s vacant. Except for a pile of rope.

  My pounding heart is a physical pain in my chest.

  This is impossible.

  No. I catch myself. No, this was very possible. I knew all along Ailesse was capable of outmaneuvering me—even bound, even weak, even without her grace bones.

  Her grace bones.

  I jump to my feet and run, tripping over Marcel and Jules asleep on the floor. “Ouch!” Jules growls. Marcel’s snoring catches.

  I scramble for the shelves. The chipped pitcher isn’t there. I spin around and see it on the table. A few coins from Jules’s pouch are scattered around it. I rush over and peer inside the pitcher. Empty. “Merde!” I shove it back. It slides off the table and shatters on the ground.

  Jules bolts upright. Half her hair has come undone from her braid. “Bastien, what are—?” Her gaze lands on the slab, and her jaw drops. She grabs her brother’s shoulder and rattles it. His eyes crack open. She points to the slab.

  He pushes up onto his elbows. Blinks slowly at where Ailesse should be. “Oh.”

  “Oh?” I pace and try not to bite off his head. I know exactly how this happened. “Show me that small knife you carry.”

  He reaches under his cloak, and his face blanches. “It’s gone. The bone flute, too.”

  I kick a shard of the pitcher.

  Jules turns incredulous eyes on her brother. “How did you let Ailesse get that close?”

  He lies back down and shakes his head. “I’m the one who got close to her. Ailesse told me about the symbols on the flute and . . . she said she was trying to help.” He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Tonight is the new moon, too.” He groans. “Her ferrying night. She practically spelled it out to me. I’m a fool.”

  I sigh. Marcel isn’t entirely to blame. I saw him sitting right beside her. I didn’t ask him to move away. “We’ve all been fools.”

  Jules looks affronted. “Excuse me? I wasn’t here. Don’t blame me for—” She frowns. “What are you doing?”

  I cinch the strap of my sheath harness on my back. My father’s knife presses against my spine. I’ll make this right, I promise him.

  I grab an oil lamp. Kick the door open. Duck outside and charge into the dark of the catacombs. Ailesse is still here. She has to be. I couldn’t have been sleeping for more than a half hour, and this place is a labyrinth.

  Jules bursts out of the chamber. “Wait!” Her hazel eyes glitter in the light of the lamp she’s just snatched up. “You have to think. Ailesse has all her bones now. We need a proper plan. We’re not prepared for—”

  “I’m not letting her get away.” My throat tightens. I saved her from the pit. Didn’t that mean anything to her?

  You also tied her up again, Bastien.

  “I’m coming, too!” Marcel rushes to join us.

  I stiffen when I see the bow and quiver slung over his shoulder. “No one kills Ailesse, is that clear?”

  Jules narrows her eyes. “Are you worried about your life or hers?”

  “What difference is there?” I snap. She flinches and takes a step back from me. My shoulders fall when I see her eyes are watering. I’ve only seen Jules cry twice before—six years ago, when I caught her weeping at her father’s grave, and a little over two months ago, when I told her we just needed to be friends. I reach out and touch her arm. “You know what I mean, Jules.”

  Her nostrils flare, and she shoves my hand away. “Nothing is clearer. We may have to guard your precious soulmate’s life, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make her suffer.” She yanks her knife from her belt. “I, for one, haven’t forgotten my mission.” She marches past me to take the lead, furiously wiping at her eyes.

  I blow out a heavy breath and follow.

  Marcel sidles up to me once Jules has outdistanced us by several feet. We rush along, trying to keep up with her. “Sometimes I think she really could kill Ailesse,” he murmurs.

  “Come on, Marcel. She wouldn’t do that.” We duck our heads to dodge a low section of the ceiling.

  “But would you?” His voice takes on a nervous edge. “I mean, now that you know Ailesse? Assuming the soul-bond wasn’t a component, of course.”

  I rub an uncomfortable stitch in my side. Ailesse could have killed me tonight, but she didn’t—even though she had Marcel’s knife and her grace bones. “What about you?” I throw his question back at him, and he frowns. It’s a stupid thing to say. Marcel never trained to be the tool of our revenge. Jules and I never wanted him to get blood on his hands.

  A dull splash sounds ahead where the tunnel is flooded. Jules has jumped into the water.

  I clap Marcel on the back. “We need to hurry. At the rate Jules is going, she’ll cross half of Galle before we even get out of these tunnels.”

  We trudge onward, moving as fast as we can. We slip through the cracks of hidden paths and comb at least a dozen routes Ailesse could have taken.

  She’s nowhere.

  A horrible thought takes hold of me.

  Her grace bones are helping her escape.

  I don’t know which animals give Ailesse her power, but I do know that most have an uncanny sense of direction—birds, dogs, cats. She was blindfolded when we came here, but she has to have a buried memory of the path we took to our chamber. Her grace bones could have helped her remember.

  I come to a sudden stop. “Jules!” I shout. Marcel bumps into me from behind.

  Her faint ring of lamplight stills ahead, then slowly bobs back to me. She’s sheathed her knife again. A good sign?

  “Ailesse isn’t here,” I say.

  Jules arches a brow. “How can you be sure?”

  I hesitate. She’ll hate my answer. I give it anyway. “I feel it.” Maybe it’s the soul-bond. Maybe it’s just a gut instinct. Whatever it is, it feels urgent and pulse-pounding.

  Jules presses her lips together. She nods with bitter acceptance that borders on ridicule. “So what do we do now?” She tosses her braided hair behind her shoulder. “Ailesse could be anywhere.”

  “I don’t think so. Her family is ferrying souls tonight on that land bridge she told Marcel about. She must have gone back to help them.”

  Jules rolls her eyes. “Bone magic and eternal soulmates are one thing. But ghosts?” She shakes her head. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  I don’t argue her point. “We need to head for the ravine exit.”

  “Whoa, hold on.” She grabs my arm as I rush past her. “How exactly are we going to find this mysterious land bridge? There are over a hundred miles of coastline off the Nivous Sea.”

  “I have no idea, but if we don’t find Ailesse tonight, we lose her forever.” My neck flushes with a cold sweat.

  “You mean we lose our chance for revenge.” Jules scrutinizes me.

  I shift away. “Same thing.”

  “Actually, the land bridge might not be so hard to find.” Marcel pushes his floppy hair off of his face. “Ailesse mentioned sea stacks and great rocks that prevent ships from sailing nearby. That narrows the location to seventeen miles along the west coast where the rocky water is. That’s also where you’ll find the steepest cliffs: Ailesse said you have to take a hidden stairway to get down to the shore.”

  “Seventeen miles?” I turn to consider him. “But it’s over six miles to even get from the ravine to the west coast. That’s too much ground for us to search in one night.”

&n
bsp; “Not if you think a little harder.”

  “Think for me, Marcel.”

  “Well, it stands to reason that Bone Criers ferry somewhere secluded, for instance a small bay or a lagoon. Then you must factor in the complexities of the land bridge itself, which doesn’t emerge at a normal low tide; it emerges twice a month at an extremely low tide—spring tides, they’re called, though that term has nothing to do with the season—and likely due to the shape of the bay. So the most probable place would be a narrow arm-shaped inlet, and I’ve only seen one such inlet on maps of the west coast.”

  I’m a little dizzy trying to follow him. “So can you lead us there?” I try my best to have faith in Marcel’s brilliance. He would have had to memorize an ink trail of tiny squiggles to find the place he just described.

  He gives me a lopsided grin. “I know I can.”

  24

  Sabine

  AS THE LAND BRIDGE CONTINUES to surface, I have to force myself to breathe. I gaze at the serene beauty before me, the silvery sea in the embrace of the limestone cliffs, the silhouetted sea stacks and large rocks guarding the mouth of the inlet. At the dawn of time, this was the place where the first Leurress was born. Elara gave birth to her in a beam of silver moonlight, but when Tyrus tried to catch his daughter’s fall, he couldn’t reach the Night Heavens from his Underworld kingdom. To save her, he formed a bridge between worlds out of the earth that later became South Galle. The child lived and thrived, and the gods taught her how to open the Gates to their realms and ferry the dead.

  The dead. A chill skitters up my spine. I’m about to see their souls for the first time. I glance left, right, and behind me, past the Ferriers pinning me in. I’m not skilled enough for this. I don’t even have a staff to herd souls onto the bridge. My bow and arrows will do me little good if I’m attacked.

  Odiva has a word with Élodie, and the ash-blond Leurress guides me away from the others to a spot thirty feet from the head of the land bridge. I squirm and wrap my arms around myself. I’m in plain sight on the open beach. “Can’t I watch from the cave?”

  “Don’t fret,” Élodie tells me. “No soul will bother you here. The siren song will lure the dead onto the bridge; that much they can’t resist. If they put up a fight, they will do it there.”

  “What if they aren’t lured?” The hair on the back of my neck rises. “Do you really think the new flute will work?”

  “Have faith, Sabine.” Élodie squeezes my hand, but her trembling fingers reveal she’s not as certain as she’d like me to believe.

  She joins the other Ferriers, and they wade out ankle-deep in the water as the tide slowly recedes from the rocks of the land bridge.

  My Leurress sisters look beautiful, all clothed in ceremonial white. Most of them wear the dresses from their rites of passage. I’ve mended holes and torn seams after their ferrying nights. I’ve also watched new Ferriers dry their own tears. These are the same dresses they wore when they ferried their own amourés after killing them. I feel sacrilegious and starkly different in my rough-spun hunting dress, and with two grace bones instead of three. I pray the souls of the dead won’t notice.

  I look back to the sea, and an amazed breath escapes me. The land bridge has almost fully emerged. Only a few webs of water spin around the rocks. From where I stand, the path looks like a cobblestone road on a rainy day, cutting through the current. Odiva is the first to set foot on it, and the others follow without beckoning.

  The Ferriers spread along the length of the bridge in even intervals and hold their staffs ready. The elders choose the more precarious places—areas where the rocks are more uneven or the twelve-foot width of the path narrows to six feet. Odiva assumes her post at the end of the bridge, at least forty yards away, half the expanse of the inlet. Thanks to my nighthawk grace, which not only gives me better vision in the dark, but also far-reaching sight, I can see her in detail.

  The matrone sweeps her raven hair behind her shoulder and lifts the new bone flute to her mouth. An eerie but lovely song rises above the sound of the lapping water. I’ve never heard this melody. It’s different from the one Ailesse learned for her rite of passage. No one practices the song for the soul bridge, I suppose, since Odiva is the only one who plays it.

  I brace myself against being lured to the bridge myself—each initiated Ferrier has labored for the strength to resist it—but the temptation only feels like a weak itch. The song, however, is enough to bring the dead.

  I gasp as the first soul appears at the threshold of the cave I came out of. A little boy. His transparent body is the new color I’ve been told about, neither warm nor cool. The Leurress call it chazoure.

  He walks onto the shore, wearing the nightclothes he must have been buried in. His eyes are round, like he’s been startled awake from a deep slumber. He trips forward toward the bridge, though he looks afraid.

  Vivienne is the first to greet him. Her chestnut hair fans around her shoulders as she crouches eye level to him. “It’s all right.” She offers him a kind smile. “We will help you.”

  The boy shyly takes her hand, and Vivienne guides him to Maurille, the next Ferrier in line.

  I blow out an exhale. That wasn’t so bad. Hopefully most of the dead are like this boy, earnest and sweet.

  I’ve had the thought too soon.

  I flinch when I see the next soul, a grown man. He scales down a cliff headfirst like a spider. Chazoure glows from the forged links wrapped around his neck and torso. He’s Chained, marked for eternal punishment in Tyrus’s Underworld. He’s committed an unforgivable sin.

  Vivienne’s smile vanishes. She touches her wildcat jawbone necklace and holds her staff with both hands in a defensive stance. The man approaches the bridge, but stops at its head. Vivienne’s frown mirrors my own. Élodie told me that all souls would at least ascend the bridge.

  The man paces back and forth, muttering under his breath and tugging at his chains. At the end of the bridge, the siren song warbles on an off-note. Vivienne glances back at Maurille, who shrugs, as baffled by the man as she is. Vivienne cautiously steps off the soul bridge and approaches the Chained. As she reaches for his arm, he shoves her back. I’ve been taught how souls grow tangible, but I’m still shocked to see someone transparent make physical contact with a living person.

  Vivienne’s eyes flash, and she flexes her grip on her staff. She’s a Ferrier. She’s ready.

  Almost faster than I can see, she feints with her staff and sweeps out her leg. The man is thrown on his backside. Before he can react, she hauls him up and swings her staff, driving him onto the bridge. His boots slide on the slippery rocks. He doesn’t have Vivienne’s graced balance. He finally escapes her hold, but Maurille is prepared. In one great leap spanning twenty feet, she lands in front of him and strikes her staff hard on his jaw. He staggers back, but she grabs his chains and drags him farther down the bridge. I don’t see what happens next. A streak of chazoure draws my eye out to the sea.

  The soul of a young woman is in the water. She swims toward the middle of the bridge. I can’t see the rest of her body to know if she’s Chained.

  “Excuse me, mademoiselle.”

  I yelp and spin around. A chazoure man I haven’t seen yet is three feet away. Unchained, thank the gods.

  He takes off his hat and holds it to his chest. “Can you tell me about that path running through the water? I wonder if I should cross it, but, well, I don’t know if it leads anywhere.” His chin twitches beneath his beard. “You see, there’s nothing at the end.”

  What is he talking about? I look at the bridge and focus where Odiva is guarding the Gates of the Beyond. Except there are no Gates. The bridge ends with nothing but the sea.

  My mouth falls slack. I don’t understand. I thought the Gates were supposed to appear when the siren song summoned them. I’m not surprised that I can’t see Elara’s Gate to Paradise—it’s said to be nearly invisible—but I should be able to see the Gate to Tyrus’s Underworld. According to the Ferriers,
it’s made of water and hangs on nothing but air. Some describe it as a waterfall; others say it’s more like a flowing veil. But the man beside me is right—it’s not there. Which means Elara’s Gate is missing, too. The song of the stag-carved bone flute wasn’t powerful enough to raise the Gates.

  My pulse quickens. “You should try to cross,” I say to the man, though my tone is far from reassuring.

  The Ferriers will know what do, I tell myself, but I worry at my lip as I watch Odiva. Her frown deepens as she glances back and forth at the oncoming souls and the space where the Gates should be. She pulls out her bird skull and ruby necklace, clutches it fiercely, and mouths, Please, please, please. If our Gates don’t open tonight, no other ferrying Gates in the world will. The bone flute is supposed to unlock them all.

  The man puts on his hat again and pastes on a chazoure-glowing smile. “Merci.” He tentatively walks toward the bridge.

  Seven more souls pour out from the cave. Five descend from the surrounding cliffs. I gasp and backtrack in the sand. The dead are no longer trickling here; they’re flooding. How many people in South Galle have died this past month?

  Warily, the souls gather toward the land bridge. I’m amazed by the number of Chained—more than half of the gathering souls. Many of them wear soldiers’ uniforms. I remember Odiva said a war had broken out north of Dovré.

  The Ferriers’ staffs whirl, strike, and jab. All of them are fighting now. When the Chained don’t step on the bridge, some Ferriers run onto the shore and confront them. Dolssa battles two at once. Roxane dives into the water in pursuit of a man who swims farther out to sea.

  My heart pounds against my rib cage. Élodie told me the dead can’t resist being lured to the bridge, but the ones on it are trying to get off. They have no destination. They’re going mad. Even the Unchained are starting to fight back. What I’m seeing is a twisted version of every story I’ve been told about ferrying night. I pictured a system of order, the necessary attacks on the Chained quick and graceful. Only a rare soul would prove too lethal.