“Hey and ho and home we go
To the hearth to the hearth where there rest hearts of gold.”
The song is picked up and echoed around us, repeated through the village as the gaiety of the scavenger hunt builds into a crescendo. I’m suddenly filled with a fierce, biting love for this place and these people, our land and our mountains, our songs and traditions. There are dark, dark parts of our world, but the brightness in the days is a balm, and I feel the village wrap around me as I navigate through the rollicking streets toward the outer edge of the garden wall where my sister resides.
“Will you play later?”
“Did you see who won the hunt?”
“Come by for your mother’s order when you’re able!”
Friends and acquaintances call out as I walk past, occasionally waiting for replies, sometimes just waving in greeting, weaving me into the fabric of their days, into the rhythm of their lives. And though the noise and gaiety fades as I curve around a corner, it stays on my skin, a blanket of love and comfort, of acceptance and belonging. Slowly, I turn down a quiet street, across a patch of grass, and then finally to a small section of bone wall where my sister is kept. Losing her to a Reaping was unexpected and heartbreaking; she had been my best friend and only sibling, even with the years between us. She was my little shadow, trailing me through town, begging me to teach her how to play the lute, wanting to learn all my songs. Everyone knows that anyone could be called, but Cara was so bright, so vivacious — a blessing born one day after the Birthing Day. One short, stupid day, and she was not safe. The Earth must eat, and her sacrifice was not in vain, but I lost a piece of my heart the day my sister was chosen.
My only solace was that the Council named her, and not Wren.
Cara was called to the Offering early, before her eighth birthday, when I was only fifteen and Wren herself was but thirteen. It was during a time when the Council would still occasionally select names if Wren was not well enough to leave her rooms. Even at my sister’s Guiding, Wren was so pale her skin looked almost like mountain ice,and she was shivering as though she had been left out in the Storms. Every inch of her trembled for the whole of the ceremony. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that she was doing as much as she was able; no one ever held it against her that she couldn't speak for the bones. But the Council…that is a different story.
The illusion of their neutrality faded with every Offering.
Before Cara, they had received the same rations of flour from our mills as everyone else in the village, my father refusing their demands for more due to their stations. After, no Councilmemeber ever had to ask for extra again. And no one from my family has been called to the Sun God or Earth since. Though Wren is the only one who names the Offering now, my father is not willing to take the chance, so others have empty bellies, and the Council stays full.
Wren had cried during my sister’s Guiding, the only time I’d ever seen someone in our village openly weep for another. Real tears, heavy as a storm, mixing with the trails of blood falling down her face from her bone crown. The gift of her sorrow changed something in me, watered a flower that had only just begun to bloom. I wanted to give her a gift in return, but had nothing. What could I give the BoneKeeper? I watched, and waited, studying her, hoping that someday I could repay her for her kindness in the darkest moment of my childhood.
Then, one day, in the flowers of the Children’s Garden, I realized what I could offer her that no one else could. Or what no one else would, for reasons I will never understand. So I became her friend. Her only friend in a village of thousands. Her refuge, her safe space, her home.
And she became my goddess, stealing my heart and breath from my body. I’d worship at her feet for eternity if she’d take me. If she’d let me.
She is too much for this world, too good for the dust and death around her.
In so many ways, it is just the two of us. Wren and Tahrik, and no one else exists in the world when we are together. I have my life in the village, surrounded by the everyday, the comfort of dirt and hay,smoke and sweet grass. And then I have the stolen moments with Wren, separate from all of that, above the pull of the ordinary.
She is luminous, like the full moon on a cloudless night, so bright that even stars dim to nothingness beside her. And, in the brief moments we share together, she lets me step into the sky with her, makes me into something more than a miller’s son.
I know her as no one else does. She is mine as no one else is. And I am hers, blood, flesh, and bone. Her heartbeat is mine in another body. So I do not even have to turn when I hear footsteps approach; I would recognize her in any lifetime.
“BoneKeeper.” I am cautious in my greeting until I know we are alone. Every BoneKeeper before her has been allowed a life outside the dead, but something shifted with her birth, and neither of us knows what would happen if we were discovered.
“Tahrik. I heard you singing.”
And the world narrows to the sound of my name on her breath.
“Wren.” I can’t help the way my voice caresses the word, curls around it like a cat. Ever since I gave her the nickname, it has been the only one she uses.Ceridwenis someone else, from a different time she tries to bury deep in the earth where she doesn’t have to look at it.Wrenis who she is now, at least, when it is just her and I, and the bones. She steps beside me, facing the wall with me, and reaches out her hand, caressing familiar friends she finds there. Since I saw her this morning, she has removed her Keeper’s Crown, but her bone blade is still fastened at her waist. Tiny cuts line her forehead, raw and red. Her sigils are still bright on her skin, pale eyes shining inside kohl black lines, and she looks like the TriGoddess returned, so much more than a human woman.
“Your sigils are beautiful, Wren. They suit you.” It is as much as I can risk in the moment.
“Do they?” she asks, a curious note in her voice, and I nod, quick to reassure her.
“You are the Goddess incarnate with them.”
Sighing, she turns from me to the bone. “Ah.” It is an answer and not an answer.
I want to reach out, caress her face, pull her to me, comfort her, but it isn’t safe. I can only murmur, “You are done with the Scavenger Hunt then?”
She nods. “They’re setting up for the dinner. But I’m tired. It was…a long day.”
The silence between us is comfortable, welcoming, stretching into a space that is filled by only us. “I’ve missed you.” It is as much as we ever say to each other; a single stone only to prevent a rockslide which would bury us.
“I do nothing but miss you,” Wren whispers in reply, then sighs, and changes the subject. “Do you know teeth aren’t exposed bone?” she asks me, and her voice is liquid running through me. I love hearing her. It’s such a rare treat that I drink it in like a man dying of thirst, and it pours through me, cool and quenching. Her voice is musical, little trills and unexpectedly low murmurs. “Not exactly. They’re similar but not identical. If they are connected to bone they will work the same for me, but teeth on their own can’t hold a whole soul.” She frowns slightly, and nods, which usually means she’s speaking with either Lorcan or the Hunter. Judging by the very slight rolling of her eyes, it’s Lorcan.
