The Bone Charmer

by Breeana Shields

  “What do we do now?” I ask.

  It takes her a long time to answer, but finally her eyes meet mine.

  “My only option is to choose the best path from what is left. I can’t read something I can’t see.” She takes a deep breath and studies the bones in front of her—not just the broken bone, but all of them. “I have to find a way to fix this. But I have no way of knowing what I selected for you before. Not for sure.” The sadness in her voice sends a shock of guilt through me, even though I’ve done nothing but sit here.

  She studies the bones for a long time, as if she’s choosing between dozens of possibilities. Then, finally, she tucks the stray hair behind her ear and lifts her head. She sits up a little straighter. “You’ll be apprenticed here in Midwood as a tutor,” she says. The next words seem to take more effort, and she can’t quite meet my gaze as she says them. “Declan will be your partner.”

  I step out of the Marrow in a daze and squeeze my eyes closed. The morning is aggressively bright and cold in contrast to the overheated darkness I just left behind.

  The girl at the front of the line bounces on her toes. “So?” she asks. “How did it go?”

  I open my mouth to answer, but then I find I have nothing to say. I got both the apprenticeship and the partner I wanted, and yet I’ve never been more worried for my future. My mother said we’d discuss it later, but I’m not sure this is something that talking can fix. The girl is watching me with an expectant expression, so finally I give her an answer. “Fine,” I lie. “It went just fine.”

  A hush falls over the crowd as I make my way to the other side of the Marrow, where the boys wait. Declan is giving me an eager smile as if he knows exactly where I’m headed. And even though he’s right, my gaze still wanders to the other boys in line. My mother said she would try to choose an alternate path for me. That my two futures will probably be quite different. Does that mean she suspects the bones don’t think I belong with Declan? But then again, how could the bones show paths toward a different partner if it’s truly a fated match?

  A lump forms in my throat as I step forward and hold out my hand.

  Declan flashes me a set of perfectly straight white teeth. His eyes are the bright green of a tart apple.

  “I knew it,” he says as we make our way to the bonfire. He grabs a blanket from one of the children and we sit on a large flat stone close to the flames. He traces small circles on my palm with his thumb.

  “Are you happy?” he asks.

  “It’s what I hoped for,” I tell him. And it’s true. Relief cascades over me—I wasn’t matched as a Bone Charmer and I won’t have a binding ceremony; any potential for magic that I had will slowly ebb away. But my relief is tempered by unease. In another reality, am I sitting in this very spot with someone else? Is Declan?

  Which version of me is better off?

  For the first time in years, I long for the assurance of the bones, for a path I know is sanctioned by fate. Now that I don’t have it, I feel like I’m walking along a rickety bridge toward an uncertain future.

  My mother always tells me that bone readings are a privilege, something to be cherished. But I always thought choice was the greater luxury.

  Maybe I was wrong.

  Saskia

  The Bone Charmer

  The ship that will take us to Ivory Hall is nearly ready to launch and Bram still isn’t here. Maybe the prospect of being paired with me was so objectionable that he decided to leave Kastelia—it wouldn’t be the first time someone had gone missing after kenning day.

  A breeze blows in from the harbor and sends a ripple of goose bumps racing across my skin. I rub my palms up and down my arms, trying to coax warmth back into my body.

  “You forgot something.” A heavy cloak settles around my shoulders, providing instant relief. I turn to see my mother, a tangle of different emotions playing over her face. She gives a rueful smile as she studies me. “Don’t worry, love,” she says. “He’ll be here.”

  I finger the crimson fabric of my mother’s favorite cloak. I’ve always loved how it flatters her complexion. And mine, too. Of all the things she could have given me—the future I wanted, a voice about my own life, a path different from hers and Gran’s—she chose to give me this. I move away from her. “I’m not worried,” I say with enough bite that she flinches. And then her expression shutters.

  I let my eyes slide away from her, to the clusters of families gathered at the harbor. Everyone who was assigned an apprenticeship outside Midwood will board the ship today and travel up the Shard River to Ivory Hall. It’s one of the reasons the kenning tax is so high—the sheer cost of moving so many people all over the country must be astronomical. The same scene will repeat in every town and village across Kastelia. The wind will push the departing ships upriver toward the capital—Kastelia City—which is nestled in the upper delta. From there, the apprentices will board new ships, and the current will carry them back downriver to the different villages and towns where they’ve been assigned. Except those of us apprenticed at Ivory Hall, of course—Bram and I will set sail only once.

  He still isn’t here.

  “Saskia,” my mother says, “there’s something you should know.”

  She takes my hands in hers, her fingers brushing the tiny purple tattoo at the base of my thumb. It was my first. It appeared when I was five years old, on the day I started school, the moment I let go of my mother’s hand and walked into the small stone building where my tutor was waiting. Tattoos always materialize as a result of intense emotional experiences—red for joyous ones, blue when the experience is sad, a hundred different colors for an array of feelings. When I got home that afternoon, I showed my mother the tattoo, a small, rounded shape that looked a little like the petal of a flower. It was at the exact spot on my skin where her thumb circled mine when we were hand in hand. “Why is it purple, Mama?” I asked. “Does it mean leaving you made me happy or sad?”

  She pressed a kiss on my temple. “Purple is usually for bittersweet, my love,” she said. “It means you were a little of both.”

  Her expression now is the same one she wore that day. It tugs at my edges, pulls me toward her like a shell in the tide. But I’m still too angry to give in. We’ve been dancing around each other since the kenning. For three days I’ve known there are things she wants to tell me. And for three days she’s known she has nothing to say that I’m ready to hear.

  But now I’m leaving for an entire year. The reality of it drops into my stomach like a stone. “What is it?” I ask.

  She opens her mouth, but it’s not her voice that comes out.

  “Saskia!” Ami races down the path toward the harbor, her hair blowing wildly around her face. She catches me in her arms and pulls me tightly against her. “Thank the bones I caught you. I ran all the way here.”

  I hug her fiercely. “I’m going to miss you so much.” As the words leave my mouth, I realize they’re meant for my mother, too, even if I couldn’t look her in the eyes as I said them.

  “Promise to write?” Ami says.

  “I promise.”

  We pull apart just as the bugle sounds. The crowd starts surging toward the waiting ship, and my mother’s face falls. Whatever she wanted to tell me, it’s too late now.

  Instead she settles for a kiss on my cheek. “I love you, Saskia,” she says. “I want the best for you. Please believe that.”

  It was the wrong thing to say, and I feel the walls around my heart grow taller. “If you wanted the best for me, you wouldn’t have done this,” I tell her. “Why would the bones pair me with Bram? He’s not even here. How could I ever care about a person who is too much of a coward to show up and deal with his fate?”

  Ami and my mother both freeze, identical expressions of horror on their faces. I bite my lip and slowly turn to look behind me. Bram stands a few feet away, a bag slung over his shoulder, his expression stony.

  “Oh,” I say. “Hello.”

  His gaze meets mine only for a moment
before he stalks toward the dock without a word.

  Later that night I stand on the deck of the ship and look toward home. The inky sky is full of constellations that remind me of small bones scattered against a velvet cloth. As if the future of the whole world could be read with just a glance heavenward.

  Dozens of other apprentices mill around the ship—laughing, jostling, peppering one another with questions about what village they’re from or where they’re going to begin their training. But I’m not in the mood for small talk.

  “Are you a leftover, too?” I startle at the voice. A girl leans against the railing, her face turned toward me. It’s too dark to make out her features clearly.

  The question takes me by surprise and it takes me a moment to answer. A leftover. It’s a derogatory term used for those who can’t afford the kenning or whose kenning was too murky to be useful. Those who are assigned an apprenticeship from whatever is left once everyone else has been bone-matched.

  “No,” I tell her. “I’ve been apprenticed as a Bone Charmer.”

  “Oh.” I can hear the note of disappointment in her voice. “I just thought …” She turns her face toward the water. “You just didn’t seem as happy as the rest.”

  An awkward silence stretches between us. How can I confess that she’s right—that I’m not pleased with my match—when she has it so much worse? My parents could afford to have bones prepared for any reading they wanted, and my risk of being a leftover was practically nonexistent. My whole life has been sanctioned by fate.

  I clear my throat. “Where will you be training?”

  “Leiden,” she says. “I’m apprenticing as a glassblower.”

  “I visited there as a child and I still remember how beautiful it was. The stained-glass windows, especially.” I shove my hands into the pockets of my cloak. “I hope you’ll find success.” But my words ring hollow, even to my own ears. Because it doesn’t matter how talented she is—no one quite trusts the skills of someone who isn’t bone-matched.

  “Yes,” she says, pushing off the railing, “I hope so, too.” And before I can say anything else, she fades into the night, as if she’s already practiced at being invisible.

  Bram is already asleep when I descend the ladder into the sleeping quarters. All the apprentices sleep in one giant room in the belly of the boat. But the others must still be in the mood for celebrating. Apparently, Bram and I are the only two miserable enough to want to turn in early. Not even the leftover girl is here yet.

  Bram lies stretched out on one of the dozens of hammocks slung from the ceiling, his hands behind his head, bare feet crossed at the ankles, his face lit from the flickering light of the oil lamp that hangs from a hook on the wall. It’s as if I’ve never seen him before. As if he’s been transformed in repose, a different person when he thinks no one is watching.

  The sight pins me in place.

  And then I notice the tattoo—a slender green vine with leaves shaped like teardrops—that curls over the top of his foot and disappears under the hem of his pants. I’ve never seen one like it, can’t even imagine what kind of experience would produce such a lovely, intricate design. It’s so at odds with the violent black triangles on each of his knuckles. A sharp pang of both guilt and fear twists my heart as I stare at his hands.

  Why would the bones pair me with a soldier? What if my mother made a mistake?

  But it doesn’t matter if she did or if she didn’t. At the end of our year of training, we can each either choose to accept or reject the match. If we both accept it, we’ll set a date for our joining ceremony. If either of us rejects it, we’ll go our separate ways and spend our lives alone. No one wants a partner who was meant for someone else.

  I select a hammock in the opposite corner from Bram, as far away as I can get. I feel uneasy about sleeping this close to him, even though I know the room will soon fill and there will be so many people between us that he won’t even know I’m here. I watch his chest as it rises and falls.

  Suddenly his eyes snap open. He turns his head and his gaze finds mine across the room. I freeze. He stares at me for several long seconds, as if he’s not sure if he’s dreaming or awake. And then his expression hardens and slowly, deliberately, he looks away.

  It’s going to be a long journey to Ivory Hall.

  Saskia

  The Tutor

  I come downstairs the morning after the ship leaves Midwood to find my mother sitting in her favorite chair with an open spell book perched on her lap.

  She leans forward, studying the pages, a crease between her brows. The delicate skin under her eyes is blue with exhaustion and she’s wearing the same rumpled clothes as yesterday. Bone charming is an ability that takes more than it gives, but the last few days have exacted a higher price than usual. My mother seems lost in her own thoughts in a way I’ve rarely seen before.

  As a child, I made a game of trying to catch a glimpse of the bone spells—creeping down the stairs hours after my mother had kissed me good night to peer around the corner where she worked at a small wooden table. But she would always turn her back at the last moment, positioning herself so that the spell book remained hidden.

  “Your bed is calling, Saskia,” she said each time, without turning around. I used to wonder if she could see my future without the bones. If she’d done so many readings on me that she could predict my every move without magic or ceremony.

  But seeing her like this—unraveled, holding the spell book in plain sight, completely unaware of my presence—is like traveling along a swiftly moving river and noticing a hole in the bottom of the boat.

  She’s been searching for a way to heal the bone for three days now with no success. We’ve barely talked about what happened at the kenning.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” I ask.

  Her head snaps up and she presses a hand to her chest. “Saskia,” she says, her eyes wide. “I didn’t see you there.” The expression on her face tells me she feels it, too—the water seeping up through our weak spots, ready to swallow us if we don’t act quickly.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.” My gaze falls to the open pages in her lap—to the diagrams of bone patterns and neatly written notes in the margins.

  She notices me looking and closes the book. She nestles it inside a wooden box, which she locks with a key suspended from the ribbon around her neck. “I’m getting closer.”

  “What if …?” I try to find a way to ask the question that’s been itching at the back of my mind since the kenning. “What if we do nothing? What if I just move on with my life and we don’t worry about trying to heal the bone? Would it be so bad living two alternate lives at once?”

  My mother pushes open the window and a cool breeze blows into the room, carrying the delicate scent of lilac blossoms. “You won’t be whole until the bone is,” she says. “Doing nothing is not an option.”

  I glance at the bone resting on a shelf across the room. It split unevenly, leaving one half bigger than the other. What does she mean I won’t be whole?

  A gust of wind slams the window shut and I startle. But my mother doesn’t react. She’s staring into the distance, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. “I need you to go to the bone house for supplies,” she says finally.

  I feel guilty for the relief that floods through me at the thought of escaping for a few hours.

  “Of course,” I tell her. She scribbles a list on a scrap of paper and presses it into my palm.

  “Be vague if anyone asks questions,” she says. “And tell Ami I said hello.”

  Before I even have a chance to make it to the door, she’s already unlocked the box and pulled out the spell book again. I’m not sure why she even bothered to put it away.

  The bone house is on the edge of town adjacent to the Forest of the Dead. The smell reaches me long before it comes into view. I cover my nose and mouth with the back of my hand as I climb the hill, but the stench of death still curls up my nostrils and makes me light-headed. />
  The forest is filled with trees, the trunks carved with names, birth and death dates, and carefully whittled memories. In a few of the trees hang burlap bags filled with the bodies of the recently deceased in various stages of decomposition. It’s the first step in bone preparation—to let the flesh rot away so the bones can be prepared for the family. Flowers, trinkets, and notes sit beneath the occupied trees, fresh symbols of grief.

  Our family tree is bare at the base. My father’s body hung here not long ago, and before him, Gran. But now the buttercups and bluebells have been swept away and the branches are unburdened. I run my palm across the rough bark, trace the smooth grooves that spell out the names of the people I loved. I rest my forehead against the tree.

  What would Gran make of the kenning? She always thought I would be a Bone Charmer, and when I was a little girl, I hoped she was right. But then everything changed and magic was the last thing I wanted. I wish I could talk to her just one more time. I think of her last few months—when old age had taken its toll, and she started seeing things that weren’t there, having nightmares, losing her grip on reality. At the end … I shake my head to clear away the thoughts. I don’t have time for grieving. Not today.

  The bone house is situated at the far end of the forest in a small stone building with ivy climbing up the sides. I push open the door to find Ami sitting behind a long counter, bones spread out in front of her along with a collection of tools—small brushes, tiny spoons, flat blades. Her ebony hair falls across her face as she works. At the kenning she was apprenticed as a bone handler. It’s not technically one of the bone magics, but it’s revered as if it were.

  Ami looks up and a smile spills across her face. “What a nice surprise.” She comes around the counter and folds me in an embrace.