Lynn Flewelling - The Bone Doll's Twin

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 stitching up the bloody 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 stitch 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 pass of the witch’s needle through Tobin’s living flesh. His lips drew back from his white teeth and bloody 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 stitch 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 hoarse, ugly voice of a boy.