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.
“How’s the new apprenticeship going?” I ask.
Her eyes flick to Master Oskar, who raises one hand in the air without looking up from the bone he’s brushing. It seems that’s as close to permission to take a break as Ami’s going to get.
“It’s going well,” she tells me. “But there’s so much to learn—thousands of ways to prepare bones depending on who needs them and what they’re being used for. I’m afraid I’ll never remember it all.”
“Of course you will,” I tell her. We sit on a long wooden bench on the far side of the room. Bones are everywhere—spread across the counters, soaking in jars filled with clear liquid, drying on shelves after they’ve been freshly painted to replicate the tattoos their owners wore. The center of the room is filled with tables in various shapes and sizes, all of them laden with open books and stacks of paper. Being here reminds me of why bones are so expensive. So much goes into getting them ready for use—from the caretaker of the Forest of the Dead, to the handlers who clean and prepare them, to the traders who bring rare supplies from the far reaches of the country and beyond.
“Have you started tutoring yet?” Ami asks.
I shake my head. “No, but soon. Audra and her son are vacationing in the islands. I’ll start when they get back.” I hand Ami the scrap of paper, not quite meeting her eyes. “My mother needs supplies for some work she’s doing.”
Guilt worms through my stomach. Ami is the one person who knows my every secret, the origin of my every tattoo. Like the pink crescent-shaped mark that emerged on my left hip after a gust of wind blew my skirt above my head during a game of Dead Man’s Prisoner; the other children joked about my “blushing cheeks” for weeks afterward. And the tattoo behind my right knee—a flame, tinged with hues of red and orange that blazed onto my skin after the most frightening experience of my life.
Ami has always been the person who listened to my worries and laughed at my jokes. When Gran died, and later Father, Ami was there to help shoulder my grief. Even my mother couldn’t reach me then—her heart was too full of her own suffering to bear mine as well.
It hurts not to tell Ami what happened at the kenning, but I promised I would stay silent. If the town council found out about how my mother had Gran’s bones infused with extra magic, she’d face a tribunal. Still, the secret lodges behind my ribs, an uncomfortable pressure that reminds me that we can’t share everything anymore. The loss stings.
Ami studies the list I gave her. She grabs a basket and mumbles to herself as she collects tiny glass jars and pouches of powder from the drawers behind the counter. She pulls out a tool with a smooth wooden handle and a sharp, pointed end and drops it in the basket.
“What is that?” I ask.
She answers without looking up. “It’s called a pinner. It makes tiny holes in the bones so the preparation solutions can penetrate more easily.”
And then she comes upon an item that makes her pause.
“Master Oskar,” she says, “where do we keep essence of horse hoof?”
For the first time since I got here, the man lifts his head. “Who’s asking?”
Ami’s glance skips from me to him and back again. “They’re for Della Holte …,” she says. “The Bone Charmer.”
He grunts. “I know full well who Della Holte is. What I want to know is what business she has with essence of horse hoof?”
The question hangs in the air. My pulse rushes in my ears.
“I don’t know,” I say finally. “I’m afraid she didn’t say.”
He narrows his eyes, and for a moment I think he’ll refuse me. Then he shoves back from the table, his chair scraping loudly against the wood floor. He fumbles behind the counter, opening and closing a half dozen of the hundreds of small drawers that line the back wall before finally finding what he’s searching for. He deposits a small brown pouch into the basket, along with my other items.
I count out several coins and drop them into his outstretched hand.
He frowns. “I can’t think of what a Bone Charmer would need with that.”
“I wish I knew,” I tell him. And it’s the truth.
“We need to trick the bone into thinking it’s inside a body,” my mother says when I return with the supplies.
I give her a blank stare.
“A living body,” she clarifies, as if that were the source of my confusion.
“And how do you plan to do that?” I fall into the chair beside her.
Bottles and pouches are spread out across the kitchen table. My mother picks up each of them, one by one, and examines the contents.
“I considered implanting the bone in my own abdomen,” she says, “but then we’d have no way to know if it’s healing—the bone, I mean, not my abdomen.”
I gasp. “Mother! You can’t be serious.”
She shrugs as if she finds my squeamishness immature. “Bones have special properties. Inside a living body, they will mend themselves.”
“Well, sure, if someone falls from a tree. But this seems”—I grapple for a way to express myself—“not the same as that.”
She tucks a strand of pale hair behind her ear. “We’re going to make the bone believe it’s the same.”
“So, what is all this for?” I pick up one of the bottles, and the liquid inside sloshes around. “Since we’ve ruled out slicing you open.”