Bone Crier's Moon (Bone Grace #1)(56)

Jules rolls her eyes. “Bone magic and eternal soulmates are one thing. But ghosts?” She shakes her head. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

I don’t argue her point. “We need to head for the ravine exit.”

“Whoa, hold on.” She grabs my arm as I rush past her. “How exactly are we going to find this mysterious land bridge? There are over a hundred miles of coastline off the Nivous Sea.”

“I have no idea, but if we don’t find Ailesse tonight, we lose her forever.” My neck flushes with a cold sweat.

“You mean we lose our chance for revenge.” Jules scrutinizes me.

I shift away. “Same thing.”

“Actually, the land bridge might not be so hard to find.” Marcel pushes his floppy hair off of his face. “Ailesse mentioned sea stacks and great rocks that prevent ships from sailing nearby. That narrows the location to seventeen miles along the west coast where the rocky water is. That’s also where you’ll find the steepest cliffs: Ailesse said you have to take a hidden stairway to get down to the shore.”

“Seventeen miles?” I turn to consider him. “But it’s over six miles to even get from the ravine to the west coast. That’s too much ground for us to search in one night.”

“Not if you think a little harder.”

“Think for me, Marcel.”

“Well, it stands to reason that Bone Criers ferry somewhere secluded, for instance a small bay or a lagoon. Then you must factor in the complexities of the land bridge itself, which doesn’t emerge at a normal low tide; it emerges twice a month at an extremely low tide—spring tides, they’re called, though that term has nothing to do with the season—and likely due to the shape of the bay. So the most probable place would be a narrow arm-shaped inlet, and I’ve only seen one such inlet on maps of the west coast.”

I’m a little dizzy trying to follow him. “So can you lead us there?” I try my best to have faith in Marcel’s brilliance. He would have had to memorize an ink trail of tiny squiggles to find the place he just described.

He gives me a lopsided grin. “I know I can.”





24


Sabine


AS THE LAND BRIDGE CONTINUES to surface, I have to force myself to breathe. I gaze at the serene beauty before me, the silvery sea in the embrace of the limestone cliffs, the silhouetted sea stacks and large rocks guarding the mouth of the inlet. At the dawn of time, this was the place where the first Leurress was born. Elara gave birth to her in a beam of silver moonlight, but when Tyrus tried to catch his daughter’s fall, he couldn’t reach the Night Heavens from his Underworld kingdom. To save her, he formed a bridge between worlds out of the earth that later became South Galle. The child lived and thrived, and the gods taught her how to open the Gates to their realms and ferry the dead.

The dead. A chill skitters up my spine. I’m about to see their souls for the first time. I glance left, right, and behind me, past the Ferriers pinning me in. I’m not skilled enough for this. I don’t even have a staff to herd souls onto the bridge. My bow and arrows will do me little good if I’m attacked.

Odiva has a word with élodie, and the ash-blond Leurress guides me away from the others to a spot thirty feet from the head of the land bridge. I squirm and wrap my arms around myself. I’m in plain sight on the open beach. “Can’t I watch from the cave?”

“Don’t fret,” élodie tells me. “No soul will bother you here. The siren song will lure the dead onto the bridge; that much they can’t resist. If they put up a fight, they will do it there.”

“What if they aren’t lured?” The hair on the back of my neck rises. “Do you really think the new flute will work?”

“Have faith, Sabine.” élodie squeezes my hand, but her trembling fingers reveal she’s not as certain as she’d like me to believe.

She joins the other Ferriers, and they wade out ankle-deep in the water as the tide slowly recedes from the rocks of the land bridge.

My Leurress sisters look beautiful, all clothed in ceremonial white. Most of them wear the dresses from their rites of passage. I’ve mended holes and torn seams after their ferrying nights. I’ve also watched new Ferriers dry their own tears. These are the same dresses they wore when they ferried their own amourés after killing them. I feel sacrilegious and starkly different in my rough-spun hunting dress, and with two grace bones instead of three. I pray the souls of the dead won’t notice.

I look back to the sea, and an amazed breath escapes me. The land bridge has almost fully emerged. Only a few webs of water spin around the rocks. From where I stand, the path looks like a cobblestone road on a rainy day, cutting through the current. Odiva is the first to set foot on it, and the others follow without beckoning.

The Ferriers spread along the length of the bridge in even intervals and hold their staffs ready. The elders choose the more precarious places—areas where the rocks are more uneven or the twelve-foot width of the path narrows to six feet. Odiva assumes her post at the end of the bridge, at least forty yards away, half the expanse of the inlet. Thanks to my nighthawk grace, which not only gives me better vision in the dark, but also far-reaching sight, I can see her in detail.

The matrone sweeps her raven hair behind her shoulder and lifts the new bone flute to her mouth. An eerie but lovely song rises above the sound of the lapping water. I’ve never heard this melody. It’s different from the one Ailesse learned for her rite of passage. No one practices the song for the soul bridge, I suppose, since Odiva is the only one who plays it.