The Bone Flute

by Patricia Bow

Her mother threw an arm around her and walked her to the door. “Go to your room, calm yourself. Yes, I know it’s hard, giving up your music. But in a year or two you’ll be too busy with babes to spare a thought for anything else.”

  At midnight Rhianna lay with her eyes wide open. She saw nothing ahead but a darkness darker than the shadows in this room, a darkness that filled tomorrow and next year and all the years of her life.

  When the keep was quiet she rose from her bed, dressed and gathered her belongings into a bag.

  I’ll bring only what I need, she thought. An extra cloak for warmth, a tinderbox, my two gold pins to sell, my flute. I’ll live free; I’ll marry no man. I’ll travel to some great town and lose myself there amongst the people. I’ll play the flute for my living, and Diarmid can whistle for me—for all the good it will do him!

  She busied herself with these hopeful plans to keep herself from faltering. Down the stairs she crept, and across the great hall, a place of mouse-stirred shadows now, and out into the courtyard. There she stopped, because the gate was closed. Beside it her father’s men drowsed but did not sleep. It was the one way out.

  At a step behind her she stood still as stone, and thought, I’m done. But no, it was the old servant. Moonlight silvered his hair. “There is another way,” he whispered.

  “Why would you help me?”

  “For pity.”

  “But you’ll be punished.”

  “Not I. I’ll go with you. I know a secret door.”

  He led her past the stable, where Ned snored in a heap of hay, past the smithy where the smith’s boy slept curled up beside the embers. Rhianna stumbled and a stone flew up and rang the anvil like a bell, and her heart sank. But the boy slept on.

  The old man laughed softly in the dark. Rhianna felt the feathery touch of fear, but she thought of Diarmid and got her courage back.

  They came to a little wooden door in the outer wall of the keep. To Rhianna, who had lived in the keep all her life and knew every stone of it, the door was a fearful thing, for she knew it had not been there before.

  “The way out,” he said. She looked into his eyes and saw only kindness.

  “Who are you?”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  Rhianna put her hand to the latch and the door swung open. On the other side lay the rocky slopes down to the shore of the loch, and the jetty with its barge and the loch itself, black and silver under the moon.

  The door closed behind her. She looked back and it was gone, the wall unbroken. Then she looked at the lame old servant and he was gone too. In his place stood a tall man in black and silver, black of hair and white of face, with eyes that might be blue in daylight.

  “Rhianna of the Island Keep, fairest maid in all the west country,” he said. “Truly, it was no lie.”

  “You tricked me!”

  “Will you call for help? Will you run back to Diarmid?”

  “No.” She took a deep breath. “Please, help me to reach a town.”

  “I’ll do better than that, my lady. For I am a prince in my own country. And in that land there is no weeping, and no dying, and never a cruel word. And you shall have a harp of starlight to play, and a flute of moonlight … forever and ever, my Rhianna.”

  His words brushed over her like the wings of doves, binding her to his will. She said no word more but walked down to the barge and sat beside him. No man worked the pole, yet the barge moved steadily across the loch. The shores of Rhianna’s home moved away, farther and farther, until they were lost in a silver blur.

  19

  A choice of evils

  The silver blur shrank, shaped itself into a rectangle, and became the window of Camrose’s room. Mark was still sitting in the desk chair, watching her with a worried look.

  Miranda was still perched on the dresser, kicking her heels against the drawers. You’d think neither of them had moved in all those hours.

  But everything else seemed strange. Th e room was too bright, the floor was too clean, the air smelled too dry. It took a moment, and then the strangeness backed off a little.

  Camrose took a deep breath. “Well, I’m back.”

  “Back? But—”

  “Oh, she’s been away,” Miranda said. “Far, far away.”

  Another breeze stirred Camrose’s hair. She grabbed the flute and ran to the closet to hide it again before it could take her anyplace else.

  “But it’s only been a few seconds since—”

  “Mark, I was Rhianna.”

  “You what?”

  “I was Rhianna! I saw everything from inside her head.” She dropped onto the bed and told him the whole story. “So now,” she finished, “I can’t believe either one of them is the right person to get the flute.”

  “It’s like I thought. Diarmid is just as bad as Terence.”

  “I don’t know. Terence hasn’t changed at all since then, but Diarmid has. He’s not so proud.” Camrose looked at Miranda. “But I didn’t see those Wyrde anywhere. What happened?”

  “The flute has a will of its own, didn’t I say so? It twisted what you said. Fair pay, Keeper, for playing games.”

  “How could it twist ‘Take me to the beginning of the story’ to ‘Take me to Rhianna’?”

  “It took you home.”

  “Huh?”

  “This is how it goes.” Miranda spoke with exaggerated patience. “Rhianna’s brother? Remember him? He had a daugh–ter when he grew up. His daughter was the first Keeper.”

  “You mean I’m related to Rhianna?”

  “Yes, in a zigzag kind of way.” Miranda hopped down from the dresser and began roving around the room. She pulled socks out of a drawer and sniffed them, opened a pencil case and spilled out the pens and pencils, poked the framed photo of Camrose’s mother on the shelf above the desk.

  “Leave that alone,” Camrose said. “No, it seems like too much of a coincidence, Rhianna’s niece getting the flute. I mean, how could that just happen?”

  “Of course it didn’t just happen. It found her.”

  “It what?”

  “There it was, caught in the reeds by the shore of the loch. She picked it up and it sang to her. Hide me, it sang, and keep me safe, until one comes who can lay rightful claim to me. Do this, and prosper. Fail … ” Miranda showed her teeth at Camrose. “... And great harm will befall you and your kin.”

  “Oh, boy,” Mark muttered.

  “Yeah, how fair is that?” Camrose said. “I mean, who has the right to decide a thing like that for generations and genera–tions of people?”

  Miranda picked up the photo and held it close to her eyes. “Some Keepers believed they were chosen by fate. Fate—also known as the Fates, the Parcae, the Norns, the Wyrde. Always three.”

  Mark rescued the picture and put it back on the shelf. Miranda picked up Camrose’s purple pen and tasted the writ–ing tip with a long pink tongue.

  “It still doesn’t seem fair,” Camrose said. “And there’s one other thing I can’t figure out.”

  “What, only one thing in all the million million universes?

  How very wise you must be!”

  Camrose simmered quietly while Miranda snickered. “Here’s what’s been bothering me,” she said, after a minute. “How come it took so long for Diarmid and Terence to catch up to the flute? I mean, it seems like those two can feel the thing, somehow. They found me easily enough. They both knew I was the Keeper before I knew it. So why, in all the years since the time of Rhianna, did they not find the flute until 1914?”

  “Good question,” Mark said.

  “Rrmm ... You see, truth to tell, that wasn’t the first time.”

  Miranda wasn’t snickering now.

  “There were other times?”

  “Mmmyess. Two or three times. Or ten or twelve. Several.”

  “So, what happened?”

  “Things … went wrong. Each time the Keeper had to hide the flute again and not decide.”

  “And?” Camrose prompted. “
What aren’t you telling us?”

  “There’s plenty I’m not telling you. Ask another.”

  “Okay, so what happened when they hid the flute?”

  “Well, if you must know, there was once a village in the west of Ireland that is nothing now but a plain of blackened rocks. And once there was a great ship like a castle on the sea, and it sank, and the Keeper was one of a few to escape. And other things like that.”

  “Oh, my gosh.” Camrose scrambled off the bed. “I’ve got to get rid of the thing before it … ” She pulled up just short of the closet door and looked at Mark. “No good.”

  He nodded. “That would be the same as not choosing.”

  She spun around and stabbed a finger at Miranda. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “Because you might have feared to go and get it. Why else?”

  “You’d think those Weirds, Norms, whatever they are, could’ve done something to help, wouldn’t you? Instead of sitting on their hands.”

  “I told you, they—”

  “Can’t interfere, I know. Lot of good that does me. What the heck do I do now?”

  “Now? The time has come. There’s no backing out.”

  “I wasn’t planning on backing out! I just can’t decide. And I’m scared.” She was mad too. “Get that pen out of your mouth! I’d like to know what use you are, except for messing things up!”

  “Use?” Miranda’s hair bristled. She went up on her toes and suddenly she towered over Camrose. “I’m your right hand, your eyes and ears, your brains! I tell you, if I’d had the sight, I’d never have made that thrice-cursed bargain all those years ago.”

  “What bargain?” Camrose narrowed her eyes.

  “With that first Keeper, of course, the one who conjured me.”

  She mimicked a plaintive voice. “‘Aid me and guard me,’ says she, ‘and see me through to the ending of this one little task, and then you may go free in the world, provided you swear to harm no human soul.’ And I swore to keep that bargain.”

  “So that’s why you’re still around. You’re tied to the Keepers until one of them—us—gives the flute to the rightful claim–ant.”

  “Yesss!” Miranda shook the pen in Camrose’s face. “But had I known that my bondage would last so long, then before I’d sworn that oath I’d have thrown myself back into Chaos!”

  She jammed her fists skyward, whirled around three times so fast that her rags stood straight out from her body and vanished. The pen fell to the carpet. A smell like burned cinna–mon hung on the air.

  Mark sniffed. “Have you ever tried to figure out exactly what Miranda is?”

  “No, and I don’t think I want to know.”

  After Mark went home for supper, Camrose stayed in her room and ate a chocolate bar out of her desk. Sounds came from below: the television, the fridge door thudding shut.

  Sunset flared and faded. She closed and locked her window, wedged the door shut and stuck her desk chair under the knob. She turned on the radio for company. Behind the music she heard stealthy footsteps in the hall outside her door and scratchings at the window screen.

  She turned off the radio and the overhead light and lay down in the dim light of her bedside lamp, dressed in her jeans and T-shirt. I’ll stay awake till dawn, she promised herself. Maybe by then I’ll have figured out what to do.

  20

  The spell battle

  The sky in the east above the park was green-gold, and lights were just starting to come on in the windows of houses, when Mark caught up to Camrose. She was halfway down Grant Street. She looked around when she heard him coming and hoped she didn’t look too guilty.

  He pointed to the stick shape in her waistband under her T-shirt. “Where’re you going with that at this hour?”

  “What were you doing, lying in wait?”

  “I slept on the shed roof. In case anything tried to get in your window. Figured I’d hear … whatever. All I saw was you coming out.”

  “So?”

  “Not without me.”

  “Don’t worry, Mark, I’m not planning anything dangerous.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Well, here’s my problem.” She walked on briskly and he kept pace beside her. “Yesterday I almost had my mind made up. I was going to give Diarmid the flute, and then the Wyrde would come and take care of Terence.”

  “And now you can’t.”

  “He’d be the wrong choice. They’re both the wrong choice.”

  “But Miranda says you have to choose.”

  “Not exactly. She said that terrible things happen when the Keepers don’t choose.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No. Suppose I never found the flute?”

  “But you did.”

  They were half a block away from the park. The sky was turn–ing peach-colored through the tops of the trees. Camrose walked faster. “Better hurry. I’m going to get back into Ennismor and leave the flute there. It’ll be like it was never found. So if it’s not found, I can’t choose. Or not choose. Can I?”

  “Um … seems to me there’s something not right there.”

  “Got a better plan?” She strode on. Even with his longer legs, he had to trot to catch up.

  When they reached the hollow it was blue with the day’s first twilight. Camrose searched with her eyes.

  “Is it there?” Mark asked.

  “Not yet!”

  “Maybe we’re too early.”

  But the blue of dusk brightened. Sunlight touched the tops of the trees. Camrose clenched her fists. “It’s not coming back!”

  “I could have told you that.” The voice growled right behind them. Miranda, of course. She leaned against a tree and yawned like a cat, showing the corrugated pink inside of her mouth.

  “Then why didn’t you?” Camrose snapped. “What’s happened?”

  “Ennismor is gone. It will never come back.”

  “But why not?”

  “You broke the loop.”

  “Loop?” echoed Mark and Camrose together.

  “The time loop that Gilda made when she first threw you the flute, all those years ago.”

  “Because she threw it out of her time.” Camrose frowned. “Out of hers and into mine.”

  “Close enough. When you carried the flute out, you closed the loop. See? No more house.”

  “Then there’s no point hanging around here. We’ll have to think of something else.” Camrose turned and started up the cedar-chip path toward Grant Street as fast as she’d come down it and with a lot more bounce in her step.

  She stopped short where the path met the street. Mark ran into her. She pointed a trembling finger.

  Grant Street, its cracked pavements, its houses, the cars parked along the curb, were all gone. From this ridge where they stood, the woods swept down into a gorge and up the other side to a higher ridge. Beyond that, forest-covered hills rippled to jagged black mountains on the horizon.

  Mark spoke first. “Whatever happened in the woods Saturday night … It’s happened again.”

  “True,” Miranda said. “This is not your place.”

  Camrose found her voice. “Where are we, then?”

  “By the smell of it,” Miranda snuffled the air, “somewhere near the river of time.”

  “You mean we’re in the Otherworld?” Mark’s voice squeaked.

  “No! This is just the borderland. Safe enough, unless you walk the wrong way.”

  “But how did we get here?” Camrose demanded.

  “You were always close to the borderland in that hollow. The bone flute was hidden there so long, it wore a thin spot.”

  “And when I brought the flute back to the hollow—”

  “It was just enough to pull you through.”

  “So how did you get here?”

  “I go where I please.”

  Miranda slouched back toward the hollow. When they came out from under the trees they found that changed too. It was a grassy bowl as big across as a
football field. A single tall tree grew in the center.

  Only when they came closer to the tree did they see how tall it was. Camrose looked up and up to where the trunk vanished into a stirring dimness.

  “Keeper!” Miranda hissed. “Look what came through the hole you made.”

  Camrose turned. Diarmid walked toward them across the grass from the direction of vanished Grant Street. He stopped three strides away and held out his right hand, palm up.

  Camrose backed away a step.

  “Come, now. You must choose.”

  “I’m thinking about it.” She took another step back. Her mind darted after ideas like a squirrel after nuts and found none.

  “But you know I’m the one. You know how I loved Rhianna.”

  “I don’t know any such thing.”

  “Well spoken!” came a laughing voice. Terence strolled down the slope from the opposite side of the hollow. His dark clothes twinkled with silver. A black velvet cloak was wrapped around his shoulders and pinned with a golden disc the size of his hand. Behind him limped a tall red hound.

  Camrose backed off again and came up against the tree trunk. Mark moved so they were shoulder to shoulder. Something scuttled up the other side and into the branches, and when Camrose looked around, Miranda was gone.

  “Gone while the going’s good,” she muttered.

  But there was no time for bitter thoughts about Miranda. Terence had stopped about three yards away, with the same distance between him and Diarmid.

  “Well spoken,” Terence said again. “You’ve made the right choice, Keeper.”

  “If you mean you, you can forget it.”

  His smile showed teeth. “It has to be one or the other, Sweetness.”

  “Child,” Diarmid murmured, “think!” He took a step forward, held out a hand. “Think of the fate he’s promised me.”

  “And that promise I’ll keep!” Terence snatched the gold pin from his cloak and threw it to the ground, where it bounced and sent up sparks. He whirled the cloak from his shoulder.

  A sudden wind tore at Camrose’s hair. Diarmid staggered as if hit by a fist. The sunlight dimmed.

  Diarmid straightened up. He didn’t hit back at Terence. He didn’t even look at him. Just lifted his head and began to sing.