Page 7 of The Scattered Bones

“All who come grant him an offering,” The Stranger speaks in my mind. “He’s not picky. He cares little who’s veins spill in his name. All he demands is a sacrifice of blood. The North is harsh and barren and filled with beasts bred to slaughter. Humanity’s survival rests on their hunters’ shoulders, their skill at shedding blood the only line between life and death. Just as they bleed to feed their families, so must they bleed in service to their god.” He pauses for a moment before continuing. “Do you see how they look at you? All who enter must bleed. It’s blasphemy to ignore the offering.”

“I am blasphemy.”

“No, my child. You are a survivor.”

I hate The Stranger. I hate that he’s right. I hate that blood is the last thing I saw before his breathing stopped.Red. Red. Red.It’s a color I never wish to see again.

“I’ll offer him no prayer,” I whisper defiantly.

“He does not need your prayer. Only your blood… or that of your beast.”

I rest my palm on my horse’s neck. “No. He can’t have him. I’ll do it.”

The Stranger chuckles, but I scowl as I storm to the altar. I slip the blade from my boot and drag it gently over my forearm, where the slice won’t hinder my movements. Crimson beads on my skin, and I tilt my arm, letting the drops roll onto the stained and frozen furs. Only three fall, but that’s all I offer Lovec. I must bleed, and so I do, but he gets nothing more.Red. Red. Red.I hate this color.

* * *

I haveno coin to barter with, but currency is useless here. The North demands blood in all aspects of life, and the only payments those with lodgings and food will accept are that of flesh and bone. If they cannot eat it, carve it, or wear it, they reject its presence. I grind my teeth at their demanded price. It’s much easier to steal gold than it is to hunt a beast. He taught me how to pick both pockets and locks. He did not teach me how to skin a northern elk.

My horse is my only possession of worth, but he isn’t for sale. I’ll make no bargains with my only friend; therefore, I have nothing to trade for a warm bed to survive the oncoming night. I have no food to fill my cramping stomach. No fire to thaw my stiff fingers. Damn Lovec and his blood demands, I’m no safer within the confines of this village than I was outside.

Villagers survey my beast as we wander in search of shelter, and I scowl at them until they look away in discomfort. Almost a cycle with only a white-eyed Stranger and a horse for company has turned me bitter.

My steps falter.It’s been almost a cycle?How is that possible? I only knew him for the same length of time we’ve now been apart. A mere blink of an eye to the universe, yet every second without him is agony. How have so many seasons passed since I heard his voice? Saw his dark eyes? Felt the scar on his lip worship my body? This is why I forgot the deep tenor of his speech. Hundreds of days separate me from the last moment I listened to it. When we promised forever, I never realized the end would come so soon. I say his name.One time. Two times. Ten.Over and over. That I refuse to forget.

Burning orange captures my attention, and my eyes focus on a raging fire in the village square. The wood is piled high, the steepled peak reaching over my head, and it looks as if it has always burned and always will. These flames appear to belong to everyone and no one, so I lead my horse to the heat. The intensity thaws my face, and I realize just how cold I am. The sun’s setting, and the night will only grow more frigid. Without this fire, I would not live to see the sun’s rebirth, but perhaps that’s why Lovec requires you to bleed. Maybe he keeps this blaze alive so that his people won’t freeze. Fuel reserves don’t surround the bonfire, nor do attendants feed its heat. It burns despite the howling wind. It rages in spite of heaven’s frozen tears. None of the villagers turn me away when I sit on the logs before it. No one questions me for pulling my animal close to the warmth. Damn Lovec and his blood demands. I am safer within the confines of this village than I was outside. The Stranger chuckles. I tell him to shut up. He doesn’t listen.

* * *

I jerkawake to the sound of a gut-wrenching scream. I don’t remember falling asleep on the log, but my face is warm, and the fire hasn’t waned despite the moon’s reign. Heartbreaking wails echo off the distant mountains, and I push myself to a seat, my spine protesting from the unforgiving surface. It’s a woman’s voice, and I recognize that breed of sorrow. It’s woven into my muscles, buried in my bones. It’s the anguish of a lover’s death.

I stand, my aching limbs forgotten. Soreness has become my old friend this past cycle, and I’ve learned to live alongside it. I search for signs of a threat, but the only sight that fills my vision is one that roots me in the snow. Suddenly, I’m no longer shivering in a hunting village but kneeling on the temple floor, his blood staining my legs as I scream for a man who can no longer hear me, for a man who was ripped to ruthless shreds. The white world of my present begins to spin.Faster. Faster. Faster.I’m going to be sick. I know this scene. It’s my greatest nightmare. I say his name, but only once this time, because as the procession bearing a dead man’s destroyed body passes me, it’s the face I love—carved to pieces and lifeless—that stares back at me.

“Calm yourself, my child.” The Stranger’s voice slices like a sharpened blade through my panic, and my beloved’s features fade from the corpse, replaced by that of a man twenty cycles my senior. My cheeks sting, and I realize I’m crying. The tears freeze to my skin, and I wipe them away as I weave my fingers through my horse’s mane for comfort.

A group of hunters, armed and savage, carry the mangled hunter through the village toward Lovec’s altar. A woman follows, clinging to his body, and I ache for her. The wife left behind. We are the same in that misery.

She wails as they lay him to rest atop the bloody pile of flesh and bones, and the crowd falls to their knees, praying that Lovec will accept the ultimate sacrifice of one of his fallen. The widow and I are the only two who remain standing. She’s too overcome with grief to pray as she clings to her husband’s brutalized corpse. She hugs his chest with inconsolable anguish, and my eyes flick to the box chained to my cart. There’s a torso locked inside that I once clung to just as fiercely. It took The Stranger’s promise to force my limbs to release it. Without him, I might have never let go, and I see by her distress, she doesn’t intend to either. The eternal blizzard will freeze his body to the altar, forcing her to witness the man who once warmed her bed grow cold and pale. She’ll cling to him until the new offerings bury his face. I don’t know Lovec’s nature. I was pledged to Hreinasta since birth, but I hope he’s a kind god in this harsh place. I offer a half prayer to join my drops of blood. Not for myself, but for the woman who wasn’t alone this morning but is now. I’m well acquainted with her suffering. She’s at least twenty cycles older than me. How long was her husband her entire life? I shudder at the thought. Mine was ripped from my side at our beginning. How much pain would I feel if I’d been allowed to love him for decades?

“What happened?” I ask a young man who wandered beside me as an older woman pulls the widow from her husband’s corpse. Her absence reveals the full extent of the hunter’s injuries, and my stomach cramps at the sight. His flesh has been carved to ribbons, slashed and hacked and obliterated. Something sliced through him as if he was soft snow, the white of his bones and the curl of his intestines pushing through the wounds.

“In the days of old, my people dwelled in the mountains. Homes carved from the stone, they lived in a fortress of wealth,” the man answers in a daze, and it dawns on me how simple and temporary this village appears, all wood and mud and hopelessness.

“Our people were skilled hunters, blessed by Lovec’s presence. He lived among us, choosing to shed blood in the treacherous mountains rather than boast of comfort in Szent with the rest of the gods. Our people were proud. Our city strong. Our hunters brave, but one hundred cycles ago, Lovec fell in love with a human. He bedded her, blessing her with his child, but before she gave birth, hunters found her body ripped to shreds in the snow, the baby carved from her belly. Lovec went mad with despair. He loved her and his unborn son and vowed to avenge her death. He searched for the creatures that murdered his beloved, but what he discovered turned him against us. The city’s chief had a daughter, but when he learned Lovec had wed another in secret, he was infuriated. Lovec’s wife was a servant, a stranger living in our lands, and the North doesn’t accept outsiders as its own. The chief was incensed that such a shamed woman was chosen over his daughter to bear the god’s son, so he called upon the dark magic that lives within the mountain’s beasts. Great white tigers, so pale they disappear in the blizzard, came and butchered Lovec’s wife.

“Enraged by the injustice, Lovec resolved not to destroy the tigers birthed of blood and black magic. Instead, he abandoned the realm of men, retreating to the home of the gods. The creatures, left wild and hungry for human flesh, attacked the city. They slaughtered everyone their claws found, and those that survived fled down the mountain. This village was only supposed to be a temporary haven. Lovec vowed that if we cleansed the mountains of those beasts, he would return to live among us, but for one hundred cycles our hunters have ventured into the snow never to return. Malek was their most recent victim. He won’t be their last.”

The young man falls silent, and my heart thunders. I pray to no god, not after what they did to me, but I understand Lovec. He loved someone others felt he shouldn’t, and now he must live without her. Perhaps he’s a god that does not deserve my hatred. Perhaps he is one that might aid my quest. Our pain is not so different.

I leave the warmth of the flames and walk to the altar. The widow looks up at me in surprise, but her expression softens when she sees my face. It’s as if she reads the loss I wear and understands that we’re the same. Her, me, Lovec. We are all the same. I pull out my blade, and this time, I bleed willingly. I bleed for Lovec’s lover. I bleed for the dead man carved to pieces. I bleed for the one I love most.

Despite the blood loss, I feel strong and warm. I say nothing, my voice still unable to verbalize a prayer, but Lovec knows my thoughts. He knows what my offering is for. The Stranger hums his approval in my mind, and the cold bites less as I return to my horse.

I’m glad Lovec accepted my sacrifice because, as soon as the young man told me of monsters formed by black magic, I knew. Evil always cloaks his body. Darkness always surrounds it, and I know where they hid his bones. I understand why the thread of fate pulled me here. In these mountains, there’s a city ruled by man-hunting creatures. There are ruins guarded by black magic. Another piece of him is up there.

As I leave the village, I say his name five times, ten times, twenty.I’m coming, my love.I will kill those snow tigers, and then I’ll be one step closer to hearing the voice I’ve forgotten.

The Beginning of the End

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