Tamir - The Bone Doll's Twin Part 48

Ajhel had taken Arkoniel back behind the oak some time ago, leaving Tobin alone at the spring. She knelt where they'd left her, staring down at the face in the pool and feeling the world turning upside down around her.

My face, she told herself.

Girl. Lady. Princess.

The world spun again.

Queen.

Me.

She touched her cheek to discover if it felt as different as it looked in the water. Before she could decide, the image burst in a splash that wet her from face to knees.

A cloth sack floated in the spring in front of her.

A flour sack.

'The doll!" she cried, pulling it out before it could sink. She'd forgotten it in Ero. Brother crouched on the far side of the pool, staring at her with his head c.o.c.ked to one side, almost as if he were surprised to see her like this.

'Look Lhel," she called. "Brother brought it all the way from the city."

Lhel and Arkoniel ran to her and pulled her from the spring. The witch wrapped the catamount robearound her like a cloak, pulling it forward over her face.

'No, Brother couldn't have done that. Not by himself," said Arkoniel, scanning the edge of the clearing with frightened eyes.

'Then Brother must have brought Ki," said Tobin, trying to pull away. "I was so scared when I saw the blood that I just ran away and forgot the doll. Brother must have shown it to Ki and told him to bring it."

'Yes, the spirit knows his way," Lhel said, but she was looking at Arkoniel, not at the ghost. "And Ki knew the way to the keep-"

V'he wizard had disappeared into the trees before she could finish. She sent her voice after him, finding his mind with ease.

'No, you must not harm him."

'You know what I have sworn, Lhel."

Lhel almost followed, but knew she couldn't leave Tobin alone like this.

'What's wrong?" Tobin asked, gripping her arm.

'Nothing, keesa. Arkoniel gone to find your friend. We start the healing while he go."

'No, I want to wait for Ki."

Lhel smiled and placed her hand on Tobin's head, then spoke the spell she'd shaped in her mind.

Tobin fell limp in her arms.

Lhel caught her and held her close as she stared into the trees. "Mother, protect him."

'rother kept just ahead of Ki all the way to Lhel's clearing, never close enough to question but never quite out of sight. Then he disappeared, and where he'd stood Ki could see what looked like Tobin through a break in the trees.

He opened his mouth to hail him when Arkoniel suddenly stepped in front of him. Sunlight flashed on something in the wizard's hand and everything went black.

bin woke on a pallet inside the oak. It was hot and his bare skin streamed with sweat. His head felt like it was filled with warm mud, too heavy to lift.

Lhel sat cross-legged beside him, holding the rag doll on her lap.

'You 'wake, keesa?"

A twinge of pain brought Tobin fully awake and he sat up with a cry of dismay. "Ki? Where's Ki?"

There was something wrong with his voice. It was too high. It sounded like- 'No!"

'Yes, daughter."

'Where's Ki?" Tobin asked again.

'He be outside. It's time for the teaching I tell you of all that time ago, when you bring me this hekkamari." She held up the doll. "The Skala moon G.o.d got path set for you. You a girl, but you got to be a boy looking for a time again. We do another binding now."

Tobin looked down and saw that her naked body was still a boy's-lean and angular with a little p.e.n.i.s nestled like a mouse between her thighs. But there were a few smears of fresh blood there, too.

'Why am I bleeding there?"

'Binding got weak when your moon time come on you. Fight with the magic."

'Moon time?" Tobin realized uncomfortably that Lhel must mean the monthly female bleeding Ki had told her about.

'Woman got a tide in her womb like the sea, called by the moon," Lhel told her. "Give you blood and pain. Give you magic to grow baby in your belly. Some get other magic from it too, like me. And you, too. It give you dreams, sometimes, and the eye. Strong magic. Break some of my st.i.tching."

Lhel clucked her tongue against her teeth as she took out a slender silver blade and picked out a few of the st.i.tches on the doll's side. "Never do a binding for so long time. Maybe not meant to hold so long.

Skin strong, but bone stronger. We use bone this time."

'What bone?"

Lhel pulled a handful of yellowed wool and crumbling dried herbs from the body of the doll and felt through it until she found what she wanted. Holding out her hand, she showed Tobin three ivory-colored fragments: a tiny curved splinter of rib, a fragment of skull cupped and thin as eggsh.e.l.l, and one wholebone small and fine as the wing bone of a swallow. "Brother's bone," she said.

Tobin's eyes widened. "His bones are in the doll?"

'Most. Some little bits still be in ground by your mama's house in the city. Under a big tree there, near cooking place."

Tobin reached up for the chain around her neck and showed Lhel the ring. "I found this in a hole under a dead tree by the old summer kitchen. Tharin says it was my mother's. Is that where he was buried?"

Lhel nodded. "I call to bring up bones from earth and flesh. Your mama-" She mimed digging into the earth, fingers bent like claws. "She make them clean and sew into the doll so she can care for the spirit."

Tobin looked at the doll with revulsion. "But why?"

'Brother angry to be dead and still skin bind to you.

His spirit be demon worse than what you know if I didn't teach your mama to make the hekkamari.

We take up his little bones and put them in the doll. I bind her to it, just as I bind you. You remember?"

'With the hair and the blood."

Lhel nodded. "She his blood, too. His mama. When she die it pa.s.s to you. You know the words.

'Blood my blood. Flesh my flesh. Bone my bone.' That's a true thing."

Lhel snapped off a tiny sliver from the broken rib bone and held it up. "I put this in you, you be bind again, have Brother's face until you cut it out and be girl outside. But you know you girl inside now, keesa."

Tobin nodded miserably. "Yes, I know. Just make me look like my old self again, please?"

Lhel pressed Tobin back down on the pallet and placed the doll beside her. Then she began to sing softly under her breath. Tobin felt very sleepy all at once, though her eyes stayed open. Brother came into the oak and lay down where the doll was. His body felt as solid and warm beside her as Ki's ever had. She looked over at him and smiled, but he was staring straight up, his face as rigid as a mask.

Lhel dropped the rough dress from her shoulders. The firelight made the tattoos on her hands, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and belly seem to crawl across her skin as she wove moon white patterns in the air with the silver blade and a needle. A net of light hung over Tobin and Brother when she was done.

Tobin felt the cold touch of metal between her thighs, and a sharp needle p.r.i.c.k under her boy sac.

Then Lhel was painting red on the air, so that the patterns looked like- -blood on river ice Tobin wanted to look away but she couldn't move.

Chanting softly, Lhel balanced the tiny shard of infant bone on the tip of her knife and waved it through the flames beside her until it glowed blue-white. Brother floated up into the air and turned over, so that he hung nose to nose above Tobin. Lhel reached through his luminous body and plunged the hot bone shard into the seeping wound on Tobin's breast.

The flame of the burning bone shot out under her skin, encasing her in heat. She tried to cry out in pain and fear, certain the flesh would boil off her bones, but she was still held tight by Lhel's voice. White light blinded her for a moment, then the pain lifted her off the ground and she and Brother floated together up the smoke hole of the oak, and still higher above the trees. Like a hawk, she could see everything for miles around. She saw Tharin and his men coming on at a gallop from Alestun. She saw Nari and Cook doing the wash in the kitchen yard at the keep. And she saw Arkoniel kneeling over Ki, who lay on his back just outside Lhel's clearing, looking up at the sky with unseeing eyes. The wizard had one hand pressed to Ki's brow, the other over his own eyes as if he were weeping.

Tobin wanted to go closer, see what the matter was, but something lifted her higher, until she was flying west over the mountains to a deep harbor below a cliff. Long arms of rock embraced the mouth of the harbor, and islands guarded it. She could hear the waves breaking against their steep sides now, and the lonely cries of the grey-winged gulls- Here, a voice whispered to her. The white light swelled again, filling her eyes. Then, You must go back, and she was falling, falling back into the oak, into herself.

She opened her eyes. Brother was still hovering over her, but Lhel's chanting had changed. She'd exchanged knife for needle and was st.i.tching up the b.l.o.o.d.y edges of the wound in Tobin's chest as deftly as Nari used to mend the rents in her tunics.

Nari knew all along- But now Tobin was the tunic and had to watch as the silver needle rose and fell in the firelight, drawing a barely visible thread silvery as a snail's trail through the air, through her skin. It didn't hurt, though. With each successive flash and tug of the needle Tobin felt herself being drawn together, made whole again.

Patched, she thought dizzily.

With every st.i.tch Brother shook above her and his face twisted into a mask of true pain. She could see the unhealed wound on his chest again, how the blood fell from it drop by drop with every pa.s.s of the witch's needle through Tobin's living flesh. His lips drew back from his white teeth and b.l.o.o.d.y tears fell from his eyes. Tobin expected to feel them on her face but they disappeared somewhere in the air between them.

Stop it! she tried to cry out to Lhel. You're hurting him. Can't you see you're hurting him?

Brother's eyes flew wide and he stared down at her. Let me go! It was a scream inside her head.

'Be still, keesa. Dead don't know pain," Lhel murmured.

You're wrong! Tobin cried out silently. Brother, I'm sorry!

Lhel pulled the final st.i.tch tight and Brother slowly sank down onto Tobin, then through her, and for an instant she felt the coldness of his presence in every inch of her frame.

You must go back- Then Brother was gone and Tobin was free, curling away from Lhel's stained hands, curling into the sweet-smelling softness of the catamount skin, and sobbing aloud with the hoa.r.s.e, ugly voice of a boy.

.Hbout 'S first novel, Luck in the Shadows, was chosen by Locus as a Recommended First Novel and was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award. Traitor's Moon, the third book in what has become the Nightrunner Series, was a finalist for the 2000 Spectrum Award. The Night-runner books have achieved worldwide popularity and are currently published in eight countries, including Russia and the Czech Republic.

Flewelling currently resides with her family in East Aurora, New York. Her website address is www.sff.net,' people,'Lynn.Flewelling.

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