The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones

Author:Emily Lloyd-Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, azw3
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2019-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

THE MOUNTAIN WAS called Carregdu—the black rock. There were tales that said the mountain had been named for the fire it had once spat into the sky, covering the stars with black clouds. Even after the Otherking left the isles, very few would venture through the forests to the mountains. The trees in those forests had thick roots, and bark that seemed to repel axes; there was no great game to be hunted; even the herbs and berries could be more safely picked elsewhere.

It had only been the copper mine that had drawn humanity through the tangled trees. The promise of wealth within the mountain was a lure, and Ryn wondered if it had been enough for those who had built homes and paths, fought back the creeping undergrowth and the sense of otherness that still lingered in the air.

Ryn walked through puddles of water; rusty sediment had settled in them, and even in the darkness she could see the way the copper had stained the land. This had once been a place where hundreds of men and women had come to eke out a living bringing copper to the surface, the pay keeping food on their tables.

The ground was rocky and sloped upward, the trees thinning out. Abandoned carts were strewn about; they’d been scavenged for metal pieces and useful tools. Remnants of a better time, left to rot where they stood.

She tried not to find any deeper meaning in that.

Her emotions still ran too high; her fingers were numb at the tips and her forehead fevered. She could not close her eyes without seeing Catrin’s mother—those sightless eyes boring into Ryn, as if the dead woman could see through her. And worse, the pleading on Catrin’s face. The woman had begged, and Ryn had understood. If someone had tried to take her own mother away again, Ryn knew she might have done more than tackle a person to the ground and try to talk them out of it.

When she’d decided to end the curse, it had been to save lives. Not to end them a second time.

She closed her eyes and reopened them.

“You don’t have to come with me,” she said. Her voice shook.

She gripped her axe more tightly.

She was a gravedigger. She would bury her fear.

“I believe,” said Ellis mildly, “we are well beyond that decision.” He smiled with the corners of his mouth. “And just because I did not find evidence of my parents at the encampment doesn’t mean I won’t find something in the mine. Or perhaps beyond.” His gaze sharpened, and she felt the full weight of his attention. It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand. “Besides, I have a job to do. Mapmakers have a responsibility to the world to portray it as accurately and carefully as they can. Wars are won with maps. Trade routes are created. And lives can be saved or not—all depending on the stroke of pen across paper. I would be a sorry excuse for a mapmaker,” he said, “if I were to walk away now.

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