Chapter One Adela #2
He turns and marches back to his quarters, no doubt eager to get back to the two illicit dragons he keeps as pets.
It breaks the keeper’s code. Creatures are beings of magical, sacred purpose and are not to be coddled—or trusted.
But Bartholomew is not the only one who lives with them in their home, though most choose an adorable, fuzzy jackalope, not two full-grown dragons.
I look longingly toward the village in the far distance, across the meadows.
I want to get out of the hut, to breathe the cold evening air and get home to soak in hot, fragrance-free bathwater until I pickle.
But the phoenix skulls are like an itch I can’t quite scratch. I can’t walk through the door.
He notices I still haven’t followed. He stops marching across the half-frozen ground and turns. His thick white eyebrows are severe across his ivory brow. “Well? Come on.”
I make a flimsy excuse. And yet, I cannot help myself. “The new rosemary and lavender oils will be done infusing soon. I’ll get those decanted and be along shortly.”
He studies me as a herd of jackalopes dances around him, hopping in a chaotic circle. In the sky above, the shadowy figures of two pegasi fly in figure eights, with Bartholomew in the center of one loop and the matching hut in the center of the other.
Since they still have their flesh and their breath, I can’t hear their wants, but their playful exuberance speaks volumes.
The living creatures like matching ceremonies, too, and they especially like Bartholomew and me just after we’ve worked with the bones of their dead ancestors.
Cecelia claims they’re drawn to the magic of their brethren.
I think they’re just macabre little beasts.
“Suit yourself,” Bartholomew says with another shrug, and walks away. “Don’t do anything impulsive.”
“I would never,” I lie.
I lug down first one phoenix and then the other, plopping them onto the workbench and gathering up my supplies. Up on the shelf, they looked plain, old. The bone paler and their beaks duller compared with the sharp, serrated edges of a gryphon’s. Up close, they are breathtaking.
They speak to something deep inside me in a way that makes me wonder, for just a moment, if maybe I am exactly where I’m supposed to be, doing exactly what I was meant to do.
Exactly as I imagine all the other keepers feel when they’re given their calling.
Dad as a head carer, Cecelia as a valley historian, even Bartholomew as a matcher.
For the three of them, who they are and what they do seems to align so perfectly.
As if the goddesses created them specially to fulfill their roles.
But I’ve never felt that.
I’ve only ever felt awkward, inadequate, and vaguely disturbed preparing the bones for matching. All I have are ill-conceived impulses that I follow too often; like polishing the skulls of two phoenixes after being instructed very clearly not to.
And yet.
This feels right. Standing before these phoenix skulls, I feel something subtle, but powerful, shift inside me. For perhaps the first time in my life, everything within me feels aligned.
“You’re magnificent,” I whisper.
The skulls of the phoenixes have a broad, angled brow and distinctly curved beak.
One pierces my thumb as I move it into my lap.
It’s sharper than it looks. Instinctively, I bring my thumb to my mouth to suck away the blood, but my mask is in the way.
I wipe it on my tunic instead—I don’t want to stain the bone.
I turn the one I hold this way and that, examining its unfamiliar shape. There are no living phoenixes, so I struggle to match the arc of the solid skull upon my lap to the graceful, feathered creatures depicted on the tapestries in the great hall or in my childhood storybooks.
Someone long ago had rubbed a thick layer of golden mica across both the exterior and interior of the bone, a costly addition for so much surface area, and no doubt what caused the sun to shine off it so strongly that it caught my eye after seventeen years of being hidden from me in shadow.
Somewhere in our history, a matcher had clearly expected these two phoenix skulls to choose someone important, maybe even future high priestesses.
But now… I hold first one skull, then the next in my bare hands, closing my eyes.
They’re silent.
I try one sample after another on one skull and then the other, to no avail. There is no hint of a hum vibrating across my palms, no preference for saffron or vanilla, safflower oil or beeswax. I could spend the rest of the night preparing them, but it would make no difference.
They are utterly still. “Are you gone? Or just resting?”
I stare down at the beautiful twin skulls and imagine their living calls. Would they have been high and bright like the prairie warbler on springtime mornings or low and forlorn like the yellow-billed cuckoo? I want to awaken them, to hear the echo of their voices in their hum beneath my hands.
The want surprises me. The voices of the dead creatures are the hardest part of my role, the element that most makes me ill at ease. I turn this desire to hear them over and over in my mind and realize, it’s deeper than want. It’s a persistent, urgent need.
When I was first assigned to my role as Bartholomew’s apprentice, I had gobbled up absolutely everything Cecelia could find me on the matchers. There was one whose journal was full of scandalous, bordering on dangerous, methods. But her matches were legendary.
Bartholomew hated her, scoffing when he found me reading her journal with interest and awe at her boldness. Which, honestly, might be all the more reason to try.
I lift my hand to my mask.
Showing your face to the skulls is the most sacred part of the upcoming ceremony, the final determination of a match, and not a risk any keeper, let alone a matcher, would ever take. Magic is reserved for the orders, those who directly serve the Huntress, the Pupil, or the Spinner.
I have my back to all but these two, but still I’m careful to push up the edge of my mask barely enough.
I shouldn’t do this. And yet, once again, I run headlong into foolishness.
Cradling one phoenix skull in the crook of my elbow, I rest my bare cheek against the cool bone. I had hoped to feel the faintest whisper of a hum, but what happens instead is more of a scream or an explosion. Or both.
Sound, light, emotion, heat, all thrust at me with the force of a storm and ripple through the small building like a the force of a pegasus storm.
Nothing moves, and yet it is as if the walls themselves begin to shake.
I think I hear the rattle of the windows, and I hurriedly set the phoenix skull down beside its partner.
I slide my mask firmly back into place when I turn to check the wall of other skulls behind me.
They are exactly as I had left them, pristine and still in the lantern light. And yet.
And yet.
I cover my ears against the cacophony. I’ve never heard their voices so loud, so distinct. They cheer and shriek, swear and celebrate. But their attention is not on me. It is as if every single empty socket looks past me to the two phoenix skulls on the bench.
They wait with vicious anticipation.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glow of light that is a different hue than the lantern’s, and I turn slowly back around to face the phoenix skulls.
They sit side by side on the bench, just as they had moments ago.
But whereas before they looked pale and listless despite their expensive dusting of mica, now they glow from within, as bright and menacing as a dragon’s fiery breath.
The golden mica practically dances across their surface, and I understand now why some matcher long ago had bestowed them with so much.
It suits them perfectly, highlighting the shifting red and coral, orange and yellow of their molten surfaces.
I take an involuntary step back, overwhelmed by their beauty and the worry that I just opened a door to somewhere I have never been, that I cannot close again.
I will clean up, store the supplies, pick up Bartholomew’s discarded things that are no doubt frost-covered by now, and go home. It feels like fleeing, and it is. Something has changed. Something I don’t understand.
Before I can move, I hear a roar outside that freezes me in place. That is the call of a creature hunting, a creature about to kill, to win. The skulls go silent for one long second, and then match the victory screech.
I don’t know what they hunt or what they have caught, but I’m worried it might be me.