9. Kit
Kit
I t was a long walk through and around the fields and pasture, so I did indeed end up seeing everything the Oliver family farm had to offer.
Penny narrated as we wandered, telling me about crop rotation and the areas left to founder during his father’s sickness.
He pointed out his favorite cows: the old heifer he and his sister rode around on as children and the orphaned twins they bottle-fed the year before.
The smaller twin was up at the fence line, and I snuck in a few scratches under her chin while Penny wasn’t looking.
As we trekked along, I found I minded his constant chatter less than I had a few days before.
Seeing where he came from, meeting his family, and being on the receiving end of their hospitality—not to mention the entertainment I got from watching Sayla rake him over the coals—finally had me letting down a little of my guard.
Penny wasn’t a threat, even if his arrival had reopened old wounds.
Those had been festering for a long time, and there would be no healing them without giving them space to breathe .
It took almost twenty minutes to reach the woods that flanked the property and navigate through them to the clearing where Penny’s father had been laid to rest. Despite the gloomy weather, it was peaceful there.
Late-season wildflowers dotted the ground, and a few scrubby bushes gave texture to the otherwise flat space.
Penny led the way to where the ground had been dug up and his father’s body carefully interred. A small pile of rocks was the only marker, innocuous enough as to be easily missed unless someone knew what had been buried there.
When Penny stopped at the foot of the grave, it was like seeing him on my porch all over again. His shoulders drew in and his head dipped, and guilt gnawed at the pit of my stomach.
I’d told him this was his fault. I’d said so because, at the time, I wanted to hurt him, to chase him off before he could go waking up old ghosts. But I couldn’t blame him for not putting his father’s body on a pyre.
We weren’t meant to burn our dead. Buried, they gave us a place to go to seek comfort or reminisce.
There, we could say the things we needed our lost loved ones to hear and share the bits of life they were missing.
A grave was a remembrance for everyone who came after.
But if the body was burned instead, those memories no longer lingered.
Time swept them away like the wind took the ashes.
“We buried my mother.” My statement startled Penny from his thoughts.
“Though I can’t be sure she stayed that way after…
” I turned away under the guise of glancing at the trees, but it was really to hide the pain it brought to think of my father going back to dig her up.
“We picked a place a lot like this. Quiet. Secluded. Laid her in the roots of an old willow tree. ”
“That sounds beautiful,” Penny replied. “Serene.”
I kept my eyes on anything but him. “It was.”
He was quiet for a moment before asking, “How old were you when she died?”
Twenty-five years later, talking about her still hurt.
I hadn’t meant to bring her up, especially not to Penny.
He had his own grief, and he didn’t need me to impose mine on the situation.
But when I finally chanced a look over, his face was full of sympathy I wasn’t used to.
He cared for my pain, even while he was feeling his own.
Clearly, he was the better man between us.
“Five,” I finally said. “I hardly remember her anymore.”
He prodded a loose clump of dirt with the toe of his boot.
“That’s very young to be without a mother.
It must have been hard on you and your father.
” His eyes jerked up when he realized he’d broached a potentially unwelcome topic.
Then, he smiled sheepishly and barreled on before I could respond.
“Merrick’s mother died when he was young, too. He’s actually only my half-brother.”
I was rapidly tiring of being compared to the elder Oliver brother. When Penny wasn’t overtly telling me I reminded him of Merrick, he was implying our similarities.
On that note, it struck me as odd that the militia would call up a man whose father had so recently passed rather than letting him stay home to settle affairs. Leave was regularly granted for such things, which led me to wonder how long before or after the body was stolen Merrick had left.
Before I could ask, Penny swung toward me. Concern drew down the corners of his mouth.
“Why take bodies?” he asked.
I blinked for a moment before he rushed to add, “Instead of just… killing people themselves, I mean. ”
It was a fair question for someone who didn’t know the history like I did. The Judgment happened before Penny was even born, and it had been far enough from Eastcliff that I shouldn’t have been surprised that he was unfamiliar with what the cult considered their darkest day.
“Twenty-four years ago, they were performing human sacrifices,” I said. “The Vessel was almost complete, but there were too few bodies left buried. They needed bones faster than people were dying, so they started taking them.”
Penny’s face washed pale as I continued.
“That drew the attention of the wards around them, obviously. People were bound to notice when their neighbors went missing. So, it wasn’t long before the combined might of militia forces from several outposts swept through the original camp and razed the entire place.
They burned everything and destroyed the Vessel. ”
I was too young to remember the direct fallout of the raid, but my father had joined up not long after. Some of my earliest memories were of watching the remnants of the cult build their new settlement from the ground up, and their numbers slowly beginning to swell.
“There weren’t many who got away, but those who did agreed never to resort to sacrifices again,” I said.
Not that they always kept to that agreement.
“It would put the entire organization at risk if they did. They weren’t willing to let the Bone Men die out.
Which is why they’re still working on the Vessel, and why they haunt the province in search of unattended bones. ”
Penny cast his eyes over the gravesite. After several moments of chewing his lip, he spoke again.
“What exactly do they do with the bodies when they take them?”
It was a subject I’d been dreading. For a man who had so many questions, Penny rarely asked the right ones. In that moment, all the lies I’d come up with back in Forstford for when he finally wondered weighed heavy in my mind, but I knew there was no way I could keep the truth from him any longer.
It was probably for the best. He was home now.
I could be on my way the next day and be out of his life forever, and he could settle back into his role on the farm.
I’d seen beyond the stories about cows and idle chatter explaining what vegetables grew best during which seasons; the farm was in a state of struggle.
Fields had been left fallow, and patches of fence were poorly mended or fallen down completely.
Penny was needed here, more than I needed him to smooth my return to the Bone Men.
I’d figure out how to manage without him.
“I’m not entirely sure,” I confessed. I hadn’t been privy to the entire process before I left, just small pieces. “When a body’s brought in, they strip the flesh from the bones and dry them.”
Penny’s expression shifted from disgust to confusion as he puzzled through what I said.
“Then what?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Then they’re given to Eeus.”
“Given how?”
“I don’t know. I never got that far.”
There was a brief silence while he took that information on board. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. “How will we know which bones are my father’s?”
That was the crux of it: all men looked the same when reduced to their most essential parts. Discerning one dismantled skeleton from another was next to impossible.
“We may not be able to,” I said. “I don’t know how they’re stored.”
Based on things my father had told me, I had my suspicions about what happened to the dry bones and how quickly it occurred. Given the weeks since the body had been stolen, it was likely Penny’s father’s bones were already gone. I’d told him as much back in Forstford.
With a sigh, I rubbed a hand over my face. “I know you want to bring your father home, but don’t you think it’s more pressing that you stay here?” I gestured toward the farm. “You’re needed here. Your family needs you.”
“What my family needs ,” Penny said sharply, “is not to languish under a curse that could ruin them faster than I ever could.”
“There’s no curse, Penny. It’s a baseless superstition.”
“You may think that, but Mother believes it. And I can’t…” His eyes swept over the grave. “I can’t tell her that he’s gone. If I stay here, I won’t be able to keep it from her. I’m no kind of liar.”
“And what if you can’t bring him back?” I wasn’t sure how much clearer I could be that this was the reality he was facing. “What then?”
He met my eyes again, squaring his shoulders and letting out a rush of breath.
“At least I can say I tried. That I didn’t accept the curse without a fight.
” A strained smile curled his lips. “Besides, you said you don’t know what actually happens to the bones.
If there’s a chance, it’s a chance I have to take. ”