The Bone Children & The Darkness
Some subterranean future mythological weird fiction - episode 4
Thank you for joining me for the final episode in this short story, where monsters are lurking!
Read episode 1 here, episode 2 here & episode 3 here. I’d love to know what you think & how many underworlds you spotted in the dark. Please hit subscribe to keep in touch.
They went down, the air growing ancient and the walls dense with handprints, with scour marks carving long wounds into the stone above the height of Theos’ head. He knew the monster, it was as ancient and as brutal as their island, imprisoned for unimaginable centuries; besides, they had all seen Aline’s paintings full of horns and darkness and blood. So he knew full and well what those great gouges were. The knives at his hips and in his boots felt like pins, like toys.
They went down, and the bone children followed them, and Aline whispered to unfamiliar gods who whispered back and ran their nails through the dried blood on Theos’ neck. They went thrice down, and the lamp began to dim, their small circle of light retreating towards them, things breathing at their backs.
“Delam,” Aline whispered. Theos slipped his fingers through hers.
“Yes,” he said. “I am here.”
The light died.
And did not die.
Theos stopped walking. Aline pressing against his side, whispered, “They are calling for their feast. I wish they were quiet, but it will never be quiet in the dark. Never, never, never. I do not wish to hear. I do not wish to see.”
But Theos could see.
Barely. But there were outlines to the tunnel ahead, and the truth made him wild. “Daylight,” he gasped. Aline did not lift her head, so he turned to look down at her and cried aloud.
Blood was spilling from teeth marks on her arm, something was pulling her hair, a long cut was peeling open down the curve from ear to collarbone.
“No!” he shouted, a knife in one hand and Aline pulled behind him, but the darkness was full of scrabblings and whisperings and things were still biting at her, so he dropped the knife and bent, taking her featherlight body in his arms and running towards the faint grey edges that might be salvation.
He ran, and the light grew, his footsteps and his breathing loud, he ran until there was no-where left to run. The tunnel ended in a hollowed space, crystal and moss and dazzling light falling from holes far up the wall. Daylight and silence; silence behind because the voices and the footsteps had fled, and silence in his arms.
“Aline.” He knelt, brushing blood from her skin and heady with relief at the shallowness of the wounds. But her eyes were closed, and she did not answer. “Aline,” he repeated, taking her hand in his, willing his own tarnished strength into her. “Aline, please,” he said, surrounded by shafts of sunlight and a thousand tiny bones. She said that they would take her, she had wanted it, even. Everyone had. Theos thought he might shatter. “Do not leave me alone, ātashé delam. Do not go with them. Please do not go with them.”
To the shadows he shouted, “I will pay for her,” and then to her again, as harsh as a raven, “Ghorbaǹat beram. Aline, I will be your sacrifice. It is right that this is so, I am soiled by death so let mine buy my honour, and your peace.”
A darkness shifted along one wall. A vast shape, a sickle-shade, then the scrape of stone and the smell of old blood and musk. Theos laid Aline down amidst the light, brushing her hair from her forehead before he rose and bowed, fingers to forehead and to his heart. Then he turned towards the tunnel. “I am coming,” he whispered to the nightmares waiting.
“Delam,” Aline murmured, and he was beside her again between two heartbeats. Horns gouged at stone behind him, and the smell grew strong enough to fill his lungs. The monster moaned. “The air will fill with blood,” she said, opening her eyes. “He remembers fields, he dreams of nights that ended. The son of kings must come into the darkness, and they will both wash their eyes in blood.” She turned her face to Theos, and he helped her up so that they knelt facing one another.
“Son of kings,” she whispered, “is the air filled with blood?”
Theos did not look away because there was hot air against his neck, one hand was on a knife-hilt and the light was moving, moving, meaning darkness would come even to this place soon. Ah, he thought, and shuddered, “Not yet,” he said, “but soon.” And then he added, “Say my name.” Wanting to hear it in her voice just once.
She shook her head. “There are so many. Sons of kings and fathers falling and always guilt and monsters and death.”
“Say my name, Aline,” he repeated.
Blinking once, slow as a cat, she touched a fingertip to the centre of his chest. “This one, the one that is mine, is called Theos,” she said, and all the bones of his ribs realigned themselves to encompass a different heart.
Then the light turned red.
All the shafts of sunlight falling across the cavern were carmine, refracting crimson, ruby, scarlet; the whole hollow space filled with blood.
The monster bellowed a challenge, dust and rocks falling around them, and Theos was on his feet, knives in both hands but Aline held him still, her grip impossibly strong.
“I wish they were quiet,” she said, her voice trembling beneath the blow of another roar.
“They will be, once I have paid,” Theos said. “You can find your way out—”
She shook her head, something scraped the floor behind Theos, and Aline’s eyes were so wide that he could see the monster in them, night-black and massive. “It is not quiet in the dark. I thought it would be quiet and I could dream but my bones would not sleep and I would still hear and there would be blood on my teeth…” She was shaking as if she might come apart. “He remembers sunshine too. And he has been so lonely for so very long in the dark, but we are all condemned unless the son of kings sets us free.”
We are all condemned, he thought.
He stared at her and stared at her. Night was coming and they had no other light but each other, and the monster who dreamed of the dawn was done with counting bones. Movement pierced the edge of his vision, sharp-tipped, but the red air slowed them all like water.
Unless the son of kings sets us free.
There might be a way, Theos realised. There was a way, but the cost… His blood faltered in his veins, and he could still choose penance if he just turned and raised his blades, then he would die and the bone children would claim their Oracle, and the world would continue to turn.
Or he could choose Aline.
Fleetingly, Pilar’s face appeared, her hand pressing his against her stomach and there was something there that clawed at Theos’ mind. But then he thought of Nicanor bin Latif and the voices in the square, Pilar’s voice, and whatever that almost-thought had been, it was gone.
Theos’ new heart beat loudly and one million suns revolved in Aline’s eyes. She was worth them all. Without turning his head, Theos spoke above the monster’s hunger, “We can lead you out,” he said. Something sharp as needles scraped across his neck, down one shoulder, breath scalding his skin. “I am the son of kings, and I can set you free.”
The air darkened to vermilion, burgundy, old blood, and Aline held Theos’ gaze unblinking. Her fingers skritched a maze into the dust, laid two finger-bones inside it, a third.
The monster fell silent, that sharp thing unmoving just beneath Theos’ shoulder blade, over his heart. “But this is the bargain,” he waited, the sharp thing pressed harder, and with every breath, he bled.
“You guard us from the old gods and the bone children, and we will guide you and set you free.”
She built houses from knuckle-bones, traced a sun and its rays. Is this what you want? His eyes asked hers. She rested her finger on the sun; broken nails black with dirt or blood.
Theos took a breath. “And when you are free,” he said, “we two shall leave, and you may go to the village and feast.”
Thank you so much for reading!
[This story was first published in Stalking Leviathan, eds J.A. Ironside & Matt Willis, 2016, then reprinted in Noir Fire, The Future Fire, eds Valeria Vitalie & Djibril Al-Ayad, 2022]