The Skeleton's Knife (The Farwalker Trilogy)

by Joni Sensel

  Praise for The Farwalker's Quest

  2011-2012 Missouri Truman Award Nominee

  2010 Bank Street Best Book

  2010 Crystal Kite Finalist

  2009 Cybils Finalist

  "Joni Sensel writes like a dream--her language, her settings, and her humor make a great read. Ariel's world--part dystopia and part Eden--could be the future or it could be the past, but it is still all unique and compelling." --Karen Cushman, Newbury Award Winner

  "Absorbing fantasy... Crisp dialogue, an exciting plot, and strong secondary characters." --Kirkus Reviews

  The Farwalker Trilogy Book III

  Copyright 2011 by Joni Sensel

  All rights reserved.

  Published by Dream Factory Books,

  Enumclaw, Washington, USA

  Editor: Margaret Miller

  Cover art and design: Kirsten Carlson

  Available in print at Amazon.com

  For all who imagine--or remember--the far side of the bridge.

  Prologue

  The wind plucked at a hat lying among snow-dusted stones. A coyote, drawn by the scent of decay, had dragged it away from the dead man who'd worn it. Rodents had chewed what the coyote left, and rain and the passage of time had sped rot. Yet the hat held its shape, so the wind recognized it and understood how this hat might be used.

  The leather fluttered and rose. Like a misshapen kite, the hat sailed down the mountainside, over the meadows toward Tree-Singer Abbey.

  Chapter 1

  Ariel Farwalker did not want to find another squashed bug in her boot. When her toes struck a lump as they slid past the laces, she jerked her foot back out with a squeak. The invader was probably only a pebble, but she couldn't forget the crushed spider on her sock a few days ago.

  Nace Kincaller, sitting beside her on the hearth bench, looked up with concern from the crow perched on his wrist. He'd been feeding it scraps of fried egg from his breakfast, but now his green eyes and the bird's tarry black ones focused on Ariel's face.

  "It's nothing. I'm just jumpy." Ariel checked her wool sock--no dead spider. "But tell your crawling friends to stay in the woodpile. I put my boots on the hearth overnight to dry them, not to give bugs somewhere cozy to sleep."

  With a flick of his forearm, Nace tossed the crow to a rafter. He tipped Ariel's boot cautiously over the floor. An almond-sized bone tumbled out, pale on the flagstone.

  Ariel groaned. "I should have known."

  Nace fought a grin, but he raised his face to the bird and shook his head sternly.

  The crow mimicked him, shaking its head in response.

  "Don't bother. It's hopeless." Stuffing her foot into her boot, Ariel picked up the bone.

  "Another one, huh?" Zeke Stone-Singer stood in the Great Room's doorway, still munching a leftover biscuit. No matter how much he ate, the long lines of his body never rounded. "What's this, nine or ten?"

  "Twelve." Ariel was waiting for a thirteenth bone, but she didn't want to admit it, at least not to Zeke. He would scoff at her plan for these bones.

  This latest was yellowed and knobbed on both ends. It had lain in her boot like a toe lost from its foot. That notion was startling. Most of the bones were the length of fir or pine needles, and she'd assumed they'd belonged to some weasel or rabbit before being delivered to her by the crow. Now she realized her growing collection might have come from a much larger creature.

  As she fingered the bone, Nace touched her cheek. Ariel turned her face to his hand with a smile. Although he was mute, silence never pushed them apart, and often their skin served them better than words.

  "Go ahead," she told him. "We'll catch up outside."

  He nodded and rose for the doorway. The crow dropped to ride on his shoulder, feathers blending with the dark hair that fell past his jaw. As Nace crossed the room, Zeke stepped inside, and Ariel noticed the careful space between the young men as they passed. She sighed.

  Zeke offered a bite of his biscuit.

  "No, thanks." She waggled the bone. "If I get hungry, I'll have this to gnaw on."

  "Ha! Looks to me like it's already picked clean."

  "Yeah, so why does that dumb bird keep bringing them to me? It's not like a squirrel hoarding nuts to eat later."

  Zeke's grin slipped and his pale eyes drifted from hers. "Are you sure Nace isn't telling it to?"

  Fighting a flare of impatience, Ariel shook her head. "He didn't make friends with the crow until after it brought five or six. And he's tried to convince it to leave me alone. It just won't obey him like some creatures do."

  Doubt remained on Zeke's narrow face, but he shrugged. "Then it likes you, I guess. Can't blame it for that. My mother's cat used to bring her dead snakes, remember? It's a gift. Enjoy it."

  Frowning, Ariel stuffed the bone in her pocket. Later she'd drop it into the jar where she kept the others. "I'm not so sure it's a gift. Crows are bad omens."

  Zeke snorted. "Winter's getting to you--you're not usually superstitious. I'm surprised you haven't strung the bones into a bracelet."

  "I've been too busy dodging black cats. Never mind." She rose. "Where's Ash?"

  "Meeting us in the woodshed."

  Ariel had lived within the abbey's stone walls for weeks before she'd realized the Tree-Singers had to burn trees. Her friends had to cook and warm the abbey somehow, and peat was uncommon so high in the mountains. One of their most important spring chores was gathering branches and trees that had blown down during winter.

  Yet unless winter's storms had been especially rough, deadfall wasn't enough. Each autumn, the Tree-Singers reaped several large trees in a solemn event they called The Falling. First they sang to their favorite trees to identify others that were willing to leave the world and thus to help the Tree-Singers survive one more year. For three days, the people regaled those trees, thanking them for their selfless gift. Then came the saws. Tears fell when the appointed trees dropped.

  The sacrifice of those hallowed trees made the woodshed sacred. The lintel was decorated, the wood stacked with reverence, and the floor swept each morning. The axes and saws that hung on one wall were treated much as Ariel's mother, a healer, had treated her best knives and needles. Though old, they were kept razor sharp so their work was quick and humane. The grizzled master of Tree-Singer Abbey was sharpening a blade on a whetstone when Ariel and Zeke entered.

  "Thank you for helping us, Ash," Ariel said. "I know some of the others don't think we should do this."

  "I have reservations myself." Ash Tree-Singer's green robe swished as he turned. Above it his face was as wrinkled as the bark of a cedar. "But when you found the Vault here, hidden under our floor, I knew our lives would change, and I rejoiced nonetheless. We cannot hold the past, but only grow from it, like seedlings taking root in a decaying log. This is one of those sprouts, is it not?"

  "Yes." Ariel had discovered a store of lost knowledge there at the abbey almost two years before. Wisdom and drawings for clever devices had been painted on the undersides of flagstones and then hidden from sight to protect the knowledge from people who would rather wipe it away. The hiding spot was forgotten, but the rumor of those secrets turned into a legend. Though many people had searched for a lode of lost riches, buried away in some kind of Vault, it had taken a Farwalker--Ariel--to find it.

  Since then, she'd been guiding Storians and Allcrafts to see it, and they'd begun working to decipher the symbols and to build the mysterious tools drawn on the stones. Ariel didn't usually pay much attention except to pitch in when more hands were needed, but she had a special interest this time.

  "We're trying to make paper," she told Ash. "Like vellum, but from plants
instead of animal skins."

  "I'm sure the goats will be happy to keep their skins on," said Ash. "But it seems to me that boiling wood will only give you wood soup."

  "It sounds strange to me, too," Zeke said. "But I checked with the stone that bore this set of marks, and I'm sure we're understanding them right. If it works, we could copy all the stones in the Vault and people elsewhere could learn from them, too."

  "I could carry more of them on my farwalking trips," added Ariel. "I've used cloth, but it's bulky and we need it for clothes."

  Ash waved a gnarled hand. "You needn't convince me. The cherry tree approves, if you'll proceed with respect. I'll just hope paper works better than the steam wheel did."

  "That flopped," Zeke admitted. "But the new water system works good. Unless you liked breaking ice to draw from the well."

  Ash's white eyebrows jumped and his laughter displayed a few missing teeth. "Great sap, I can't say so. Running water is sweeter. Even if we did have to reap saplings to use as molds for the pipes." He frowned at the ax in his hand. "You won't harm any trees today, will you? Take only branches downed or broken by snow."

  "Of course," Ariel said. "We just need chunks and shavings. We would have whacked up fire logs, if the supply wasn't so low." Winter had lingered, so the woodshed was practically empty. "We'll bring back everything in the goat cart, so not even needles or twigs are wasted."

  "Very well." Ash handed Zeke the ax and two chisels. "Not that leaving the world is a terrible thing, for a tree or a person, when the timing is right. Life and death are not so far apart as they seem. That's one of the lessons of wintertime trees."

  "Like stones," agreed Zeke, although he was the only one who could hear the voices of rocks.

  Ariel felt the bone in her pocket and wondered if it, too, was less dead than it seemed. Uneasy, she thanked Ash again before they hurried outside.

  The March sky was clear for the first time in weeks, and Ariel greeted it with her face upturned and glowing. She felt she'd been swaddled and cooped up for years. The snow, which had been almost endless that winter, had slid off the roof into mounds that were so tall they'd blocked the light from the windows, shrinking the days into drab shades of grey. The orange fire in the hearth and the yellow flames on candles had sometimes seemed the only color left in the world. Now, at last, the thawing sky had turned blue!

  Nace and the goat cart waited near the front door, with two goats in harness. The rest of the herd had spread into the meadow, where they pawed through patches of snow to brown grass. The only other sounds were the trickling of snowmelt and a tentative chickadee's song.

  Nace flashed his wide smile and looked to Ariel for direction. With cold biting her round cheeks, she led him and Zeke up the meadow, skirting patches of snow, toward a dark line of trees. They passed the new mill that used the wind to grind oats. Ariel hoped her paper would turn out as fine.

  Zeke eyed the vanes turning in the breeze. "I bet we could use the mill to grind the wood smaller before we boil it."

  "Good idea," Ariel said. "You're smart." Though she'd known him the whole fourteen years of their lives, he still sometimes amazed her.

  A few paces later, Nace caught her hand as it swung at her side. His fingers tangled with hers, squeezed, and let go as if passing a secret. A warm weakness rushed through Ariel, followed by an ache to be in his embrace. That yearning felt wrong, though, with Zeke there beside her. She'd loved Zeke for longer, and she was all too aware she walked between the two boys.

  Frozen moss and dead leaves crunched under their feet. Ragged caws drifted down from the scattered crows overhead, and Ariel's mind drifted back to the bones. She could find the thirteenth today. It might be waiting in her room even now, left by the crow in a pocket or corner.

  "What's that?" asked Zeke.

  Jarred from her thoughts, Ariel looked up. A dark circle rolled down the hillside, bouncing and lofting on the breeze. If it'd been below them, she might have mistaken it for a wheel lost from their cart.

  "It looks like... leather?" said Zeke as it tumbled straight toward them.

  Nace raced to meet it and leapt to snatch the brown shape from the air. He inspected it briefly, clapped it on his head, and hurried back to Ariel and Zeke with a grin.

  Ariel's body recognized the hat before her mind did. A tremor went through her, and she gripped the edge of the cart. There was something wrong with that hat, worse than split seams and mold, and she found herself gasping for breath.

  Nace pranced up, the tattered hat canted over one eye. Memory slapped Ariel.

  "Take it off, Nace." She tried to keep her voice steady. When he tipped the hat to her and set it back into place, she cried, "Get it off!"

  Zeke didn't wait. He grabbed the hat and flung it to the ground.

  Nace stiffened but looked to Ariel. Clutching both hands to her chest, she tried not to feel as though someone she loved had been tainted by someone she'd hated.

  "That was Elbert's hat," Zeke said. They stared at its dented, warped leather.

  Ariel had told Nace where she'd gotten the scars on her cheek and forearm. She'd described being kidnapped from her home by the sea, how Zeke had helped her escape, and what had become of her worst enemy. But she'd never shown Nace just where Elbert had died, in another high meadow some miles above, nor mentioned the hat he had worn.

  Nace winced and moved to console her.

  Zeke was closer. He wrapped an arm around Ariel and drew her away. "It's rotting cow skin," he told her. "Nothing more."

  She leaned into his side. Zeke had struggled beside her. He'd shared her pain. He'd also heard the voices of ghosts in their past, and he'd tell her if he heard one now.

  "No ghost wearing it?" she asked, to be sure.

  "No," he said firmly. "Just blown on the wind."

  "All this way?"

  "Even stones, which are heavy, can tumble a long way downhill."

  Ariel nodded numbly and took a deep breath. Zeke was right. It was only a half-rotted hat. It had blown miles down the mountainside, but it wasn't alive, and Elbert Finder had left the world two years ago.

  Nace trampled the hat into mud thawed by the sun. The vigor of his stomp gave her strength.

  Ariel straightened out from under Zeke's arm. "Sorry. I didn't mean to crack like an egg. Let's get working. My hands are cold."

  Nace grabbed her fists and cupped them in his palms, blowing warm breath through his fingers to hers. His eyes begged forgiveness. She managed a smile.

  "It's nothing," she told him, convincing herself.

  Then she remembered the bone in her pocket and the others she'd trapped in a jar. Small bones, they probably belonged to a marmot. Still, Elbert's hat had not fallen to bits. It lay near her feet, the crown crumpled but humped as if trying to lift itself from the mud. Elbert's skeleton might be intact, too, free for the picking by crows.

  Forgetting the comfort of Nace's warm touch, Ariel tilted her face up the slope toward where Elbert had met his violent end. A person had more than two hundred bones--but even a big man had a few dozen small ones.

  Chapter 2

  Six blisters later, Ariel returned with her friends to the abbey. All day they'd gathered wood and chopped it to bits. Whittling sticks into shavings, Ariel also had whittled at the foolish idea that Elbert's hat, like the bones, had come on purpose to find her. Surrounded by things that murmured of the past, it was hard not to tangle in gloom.

  Zeke's offer to grind wood like oats went untried. By late afternoon, there wasn't enough wind blowing to turn the mill's vanes. Nace shoveled twigs and bark into the woodshed while Zeke and Ariel put their chips into the abbey's largest cauldron and hauled it inside. She stirred in water and ashes that she'd swept from a cold hearth yesterday. The dust stung her nose. Zeke wrangled the pot to the side of the fire, out of the way of anyone cooking. The mess had to simmer until it smelled sweet and turned into mush, which might take a couple of days.

  "Have you still got that bone in your pock
et?" Zeke asked. "Remember a story called Bone Soup?"

  "It's about making something from nothing. Everyone tosses in some worthless scrap and together they made a good soup." She wrinkled her nose. "I'm not throwing the bone in, if that's what you're thinking!"

  "It might add some magic."

  Ariel tipped her head. Zeke usually believed in more practical things.

  His grin faded. "But I suppose it could ruin the paper."

  "No, thanks," she said. "Ash might not let us try twice." Besides, Ariel had her own plans for the bone.

  Sure enough, when she returned to her room after supper, a new bone awaited: number thirteen. The size of a twig, it sat on her pillow like a promise of nightmares. This time, no crow perched nearby to watch her reaction.

  Ariel stared at the bone. Dread had replaced any anticipation. Still, fear had never deterred her. It wouldn't now.

  She opened the worn trunk she used as a dresser and retrieved the clay jar that contained her collection. Settling on her straw mattress, she unlatched the lid. She dropped in the bone she'd discovered that morning and plucked the bone from her pillow, adding it, too. Then she flipped her pillow so her face wouldn't touch where the bone had rested.

  Thirteen bones jumbled inside the jar. Ariel covered its mouth with one palm and shook it. The dry rattle gave her a shiver.

  As a much younger girl, Ariel had watched Fishers cast albatross bones to foretell a catch or ill sailing. Her mother had scoffed, pointing out that the most ardent casters had been the least talented Fishers. Still, other Fishers whom Ariel respected would not set to sea without checking the bones. Now she had to wonder if these crow-given bones might hold a portent for her. She wasn't sure she'd be able to interpret their spill, but in the past two years, she'd learned many symbols. Maybe the cast bones would form one she knew.

  Holding her breath, Ariel upended the jar. The bones dumped onto the flagstone. They didn't tangle as she'd expected. They fell evenly spaced and arranged themselves neatly. Ariel's breath caught and hardened to a knot in her chest. The shape could not be mistaken. Although gaps spoke for a few that were missing, the bones had once formed a hand, and now they did so again. She imagined it rising and clutching her throat.