The Mortal Bone (32 page)

Authors: Marjorie M. Liu

Tags: #Fiction, #Fantasy, #General

BOOK: The Mortal Bone

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LATE that night, the boys and I ran away. I did not know where we were going. I let them choose.

It was dark where we landed, except for the stars. I looked up before I looked anywhere else, and the sky was alive, and when I held my breath, and held my heart, I thought perhaps I heard a song, somewhere, in my soul.

The night was spectacularly clear, and the air tasted thin. I looked around, but all I saw were an odd set of ruins where the stonework was precise and seemed to have been part of some odd-looking interlocking structures.

“Where are we?” I asked, as Dek licked the back of my ear, and purred.

“Puma Punku,” Zee rasped. “Ancient city. Built by Aetar when they first come to earth. Home to them, many years.”

Raw and Aaz loped along the ruins, while Mal dropped from my shoulder to explore a nearby hole. I patted Dek’s head and joined Zee on top of a stone block, facing the horizon while the wind blew through my hair.

We were silent, together. That had never been unusual. But now, instead of it being easy, there was tension in the air. I felt . . . vulnerable around him now. Off balance. Power had shifted, then shifted again. Everything was different. It made me sorry and sad.

“Wait,” Zee whispered, and leapt off the stone, bounding across the ruins with his sleek, effortless grace. I touched my chest as he ran, and it took me a moment to remember that I could not hear his heart. I felt empty again, inside.

A short distance away, he stopped—and started digging. Raw and Aaz joined him, all three working together until they pulled a surprisingly small bundle from the dirt. As Zee ran back, parts of his body seemed to melt inside the shadows, distorting his size—and the same was true for Raw and Aaz, who flowed in and out of sight like ghosts.

Zee laid the bundle down at my feet. I heard clicking sounds inside the ragged layers of cloth, which were threadbare, filled with holes and loose fibers. He stepped back and looked at me.

I knelt and pulled apart the bundle. The armor tingled, sinking warmth into my bones—but I did not stop. The boys gathered around, watching. I tried to be gentle, conscious that whatever I was touching was old—but at a certain point, I just had to pull. The fibers split.

I found bones inside. An entire human skeleton, jumbled together in a messy pile. Raw and Aaz sniffed the bones and snarled. Even Dek and Mal backed away, as though uneasy. Purrs fell into silence. I stared into empty eye sockets, and shivered.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“First mother,” rasped Zee. “First heart.”

I sat back, stunned. “Eiame? But . . . why is she here?”

“Know where every mother buried,” rasped Zee, giving those bones a sad look. “Bones, lives, hearts, resting in all four corners. This where we caught and made.”

Caught and made.

Raw pulled a six-pack of beer from the shadows, but no one drank or ate. We just sat, solemn and quiet, looking everywhere but at each other.

“Zee,” I finally said. “Why did you . . . come back to me?”

Dek licked the back of my ear. Raw sighed and shoved a beer down his throat.

“We thought . . . thought we had to be same,” rasped Zee, after a long moment’s silence. “Same as before. Same in heart. Same hunger. Same fire. Same . . . hate.”

He studied the woman’s bones. “Learned we not same. Realized . . . don’t have to
be
same. Were Reaper Kings, but Reaper Kings of
then
, not Kings of
now
. Know what love is now. Ten thousand years taught us human heart. To live with human heart. To
have
heart.”

Zee looked at me. “You, our heart. You, our nest. All, us, together.”

“It’s a prison.”

“Not prison,” he rasped. “Redemption.”

I stared at him. I stared at all of the boys, who gave me sad smiles. I remembered what it felt like to feel their hearts in mine, and so in my heart I poured every warm feeling, all my love, and imagined it trickling inside them like the sun.

Zee’s shoulders sagged, and he crawled into my lap. Raw and Aaz joined him, and, moments later, Mal slithered onto my shoulder beside Dek. I touched my stomach, and imagined a little soul, a lovely little light.

We looked at the stars.

“Where’s your heart?”
my mother once asked me.
“Where’s your heart, baby?”

“Here,” I whispered. “It’s here.”

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