The Bone Children & The Darkness
Some subterranean future mythological weird fiction - episode 3
Thank you for joining me for the third episode in this short story, as the Oracle leads us deeper and deeper into the dark.
Read episode 1 here, read episode 2 here & click subscribe to catch the final episode tomorrow.
“Son of kings,” the Oracle whispered when he knelt beside her, counting supplies quietly. “You did not leave me in the darkness.”
Theos sighed. “No, Oracle, I did not leave you.” What had she thought, he wondered, listening to a second betrayal? It seemed she was not quite mad enough to be spared understanding, and he found himself unsurprised.
“The bone children,” she said, pushing herself up to sitting and brushing dust through her hair with both hands. “The ones still with marrow to remember. They are whispering.”
The bone children. It was assuredly too late then. “What are they whispering?” he asked.
She tilted her head up to him and smiled calmly. “That he can see in the dark.”
They ate, she barely, and then they walked. But the mountain had spoken down here, and fissures made rent twistings of the rust-red rails, until from some great paroxysm, the tunnel before them was obliterated by rockfalls. Theos rested his hand on the boulders blocking their way, and saw beside him a larger hand-print, black in the lamplight and each finger tipped with dots. He drew away and thought longingly of the thing called ‘gun’ that Nicanor bin Latif had on his wall. A useless ornament, but if it had not been then what comfort to have that, instead of blades?
“Which way did the boys go, Oracle?” he asked, turning away to look at her bent head. She was tracing something on the wall, her fingers making a faint skritch-skritch sound, like rats’ claws or dead branches.
“We must go down and down,” she said, watching her fingers. “To where the air fills with blood. That is where we must go.”
They could follow the rails back to the village, Theos thought. But then what? For the Oracle, it was her husband, or the monster and the labyrinth; a poor choice and to leave her would make himself as bad as either. His lost honour was down here, in her small hands and the darkness. “What about the boys?” he asked one last time, gently because he did not envy her what she saw. “Aline, where are the boys?”
“Lost boys and broken men and bone children. They all go down to the place where he is counting his bones and dreaming of the sun. Where the air fills with blood. Down and down and down.” She flinched, shaking her head from side to side. “I do not want it,” she said between clenched teeth and there were sobs in her voice suddenly. Theos stepped closer, one hand lifting. “Bloody Teeth licks his teeth. I do not want to drink this. Do not make me taste it. Please. Oh, please, I…”
Theos touched her, his fingers around her thin wrist, skin against skin and them both trembling. “Oracle,” he said. “Aline.” She sagged against the wall, her eyes mercifully closed, her flesh icy.
Even if it were not for penance, he could not leave her to this. To die alone, like this.
“We will go down,” he said. “We will follow the children. I will fight the monster and you will have your peace. Is that what you want?”
“This way and that way and that way and this and down and down and down,” she whispered.
Theos marked the way with white chalk, and they walked, taking the tunnels that lead downwards. Aline scratched her nails against the walls and sometimes he wanted to shout at her to stop, sometimes he wanted to beg her to sing again, like she had done in the dawn. But he could not fathom the horrors she saw and so he let her be. She spoke to things invisible to him, those strange names in her clear voice taking form at the edges of the light so that he began to think he could see them too, could hear them, when he knew that he could not.
Then they came to a crossroads where a vein of rose quartz ran a foot thick across the floor and up one wall, and Theos came to a halt, staring at it.
“We’re going in circles,” he said. It had been to himself, but Aline came away from the wall, brushing filthy fingers against her tunic and looking up into his face with a smile.
“We have been going that way and that way and this,” she said. “No, no, no. The jackal-headed one is laughing.”
“I’m sure he is,” Theos said in disgust. “So is every other god, I would imagine.” He heaved a breath metallic with frustration and the exhaustion of not giving in to fear. “We will sleep here, and I will decide what to do in the morning.”
“Morning!” Aline laughed, the sound of it bouncing away down all four tunnels before coming back to them, murmurously. “Our tiny suns are no morning, son of kings.” She spoke fondly and her face was beautiful in the lamplight. “They are waiting for their feast and my skin makes a map of the darkness,” she added. “You will see.” Then she staggered as if struck, her hands clawing at his arm and her voice brittle. “Hush now. Hush, he is done counting his bones and comes up and up and up. Wing and Packstrap can hear him, and we must hush!”
Theos did not sleep. He sat beside Aline with his two longest knives resting on his thighs and listened to the mountain. He listened until the silence was full of breath, echoes of laughter scraping against the nape of his neck like the tips of horns.
Once, when he rose to send light into the tunnels, one of them had fresh footprints pressed over their own. A man’s bare feet, but larger and ending with scratches that passed through dust and into rock. The next time he rose, a second had these footprints. Hot air pressed against one cheek and Theos flung himself sideways, thrusting blade and light into the emptiness like a shout.
Aline moaned and when he turned there were tears on her dusty cheeks. He returned to her, wrapping his fingers gently around her wrist like he had done before. After a while the tears stopped and he sat with his thumb over her pulse, until she awoke.
He gave her food, his own hunger an irrelevance if he could not find a path. But scanning the tunnels again, tasting the air and feeling it move against his fingers, he still did not know which way to go. Scrubbing one hand across the back of his neck, his palm came away scarlet and wet. Allah, he thought, nausea in his stomach. Perhaps he did not need to find a path. Perhaps he need only wait here, and fight here, and die here. Allah.
Aline rose from drawing in the dust and showed Theos her finger. “I made a map of the darkness,” she said. “You see?”
Theos looked at her delicate, filthy hand, at the outline of the monster by their feet, and shook his head. “I do not see, Aline. Lypāme.”
“Oh, delam,” she said, tilting her head and rendering him speechless, “I made a map so that we might reach the end.” She reached out to tug at his wrist, and his entire body resonated at her touch. Pulling him to one of the corner walls, she pointed. He looked at her, and she pointed again, so he obeyed.
An arrow pointing down. Freshly scratched. Skritch skritch skritch. Theos went to another corner, an arrow pointing up; another beneath his own chalk, an arrow bending round upon itself. He pivoted slowly on one heel to face Aline across the vein of bright crystal, and she watched him steadily. “When I saw my father’s body,” he said, “I knew myself lost forever.” It was not what he wanted to say, but those words did not exist.
Aline smiled. “And now you find me.”
The words did exist, then. Now he found her.
They followed Aline’s arrows, Theos waiting while she drew them. He heard who she spoke to as she drew and realised he would take this from her if he had been able. Instead, he checked the lamp and their water, and felt time weigh heavier with the lightening of his pack. Then he heard footsteps.
First one, then a dozen, hard-tapping rapid steps and Aline grabbed at his hand. “You must not look,” she hissed, her head bent so that her hair made its own nightfall around her. “You must not look at the bone children, otherwise they can eat your eyes. Wing will scratch them out, Son of kings, and Seven Death will gather them, and the bone children will feast and feast and we will scrabble in the darkness with blood on our faces and they will follow our trail, Son of kings, trip-trap trip-trap, until they are thirsty, and—”
“Aline,” Theos said desperately, “Aline, I will not look. It will be well, I will not look.”
“—and Packstrap says they will save nothing for the monster but in the Duat and in the houses of Xibalba they are angry that Minos’ monster steals their dues, and the monster is done counting days on bones, and he—”
Footsteps rattled around them; Theos touched two fingers to her chin and lifted her face to meet his. “Aline,” he said again. “Look at me. Me, Aline. Only me.”
“—and…” she fell silent, her eyes filled with tears and stars before she closed them, her bottom lip trembling like a child. “Delam,” she said, as she had done earlier and something in Theos lurched. My everything. He fought a hopeless urge to tip his head down and rest his grimed forehead against hers. The footsteps circled once more, bone fingers clawing at his trousers sharp as blades, raising welts across his skin. He watched Aline, the shadows around her closed eyes and the flutter of breath in her throat. Bone fingers scratching, whispers of laughter, his skin against hers.
“The tiny suns always die,” she whispered after a lifetime. They were alone again.
“Yes,” Theos said, letting her go. “But not just yet.”
More tomorrow…
[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]