Now, as she sat in the pit of bones, the skeleton cradled against her chest twitched.
“Shhhh…” whispered Marra into the skull’s openings. “Shhhhh…”
Bone dog, stone dog … black dog, white dog …
She heard the footsteps as he approached. Had he seen her?
If he had, then he, too, dismissed it as a trick of the light. The footfalls skirted the edge of the pit, and the sound of breathing faded away.
“Probably harmless,” she murmured to the skull. Even if he were not, she would be a difficult target.
The other, gentler folk in here were uniquely vulnerable. If you had learned not to trust your own senses, you might wait too long to run from an enemy.
Marra was no longer as sure of her own perceptions as she had once been, but the edges of her mind were only slightly frayed, not blasted open by furious spirits.
When the footsteps had been gone for many minutes and the crows had settled, she sat up again. Fog lined the edges of the wood, hanging in low swirls over the meadow. The crows cawed together like a disjointed heartbeat. Nothing else moved.
She bent back over the bone dog again, fingers moving on the wires, hoping to finish her task before darkness fell.
* * *
The bone dog came alive at dusk. It was not quite completed, but it was close. She was bent over the left front paw when the skull’s jaws yawned open and it stretched as if waking from a long slumber.
“Hush,” she told it. “I’m nearly done—”
It sat up. Its mouth opened and the ghost of a wet tongue touched her face like fog.
She scratched the skull where the base of the ears would be. Her nails made a soft scraping sound on the pale surface.
The bone dog wagged its tail, its pelvis, and most of its spine with delight.
“Sit still,” she told it, picking up the front paw. “Sit, and let me finish.”
It sat politely. The hollow eye sockets gazed up at her. Her heart contracted painfully.
The love of a bone dog, she thought, bending her head down over the paw again. All that I am worth these days.
Then again, few humans were truly worth the love of a living dog. Some gifts you could never deserve.
She had to wrap each tiny foot bone in a single twist of wire and bind it to the others, then wrap the entire paw several times, to keep it stable. It should not have held together, and yet it did.
The cloak had gone together the same way. Nettle cords and tattered cloth should have fallen apart, and yet it was far more solid than it looked.
The dog’s claws were ridiculously large without flesh to cloak them. She wrapped each one as if it were an amulet and joined them to the basket of thin wires.
“Bone dog, stone dog,” she whispered. She could see the children in her head, three little girls, chanting to each other. Bone dog, stone dog … black dog, white dog … live dog, dead dog … yellow dog, run!
At run, the little girl in the middle of the rope had jumped out and begun to run back and forth through the swinging rope, the only sound her feet and the slap of the rope in the dust. When she finally tripped up, the two girls on the ends had dropped the rope and they had all begun giggling together.
The bone dog rested his muzzle on her forearm. He had neither ears nor eyebrows, and yet she could practically feel the look he was giving her, tragic and hopeful as dogs often were.
“There,” she said, finally. Her knife was dulled from cutting wire and it took her several tries to hack the last bit apart. She tucked the sharp end underneath the joint where it would not catch on anything. “There you are. I hope that’s enough.”
The bone dog put its paw down and tested it. It stood for a moment, then turned and sprinted into the fog.
Marra’s fist clenched against her stomach. No! It ran—I should have tied it. I should have thought it might run—
The clatter of its paws faded into the whiteness.
I suppose it had another master somewhere, before it died. Perhaps it’s gone to find them.
Her hands ached. Her heart ached. Poor foolish dog. Its first death had not been enough to teach it that not all masters were worthy.
Marra had learned that too late herself.
She looked into the pit of bones. Her fingers throbbed—not in the horrible stinging way they had when she pieced together the nettle cloak, but deeper, in time to her heartbeat. There was redness working its way up her hands. One long line was already snaking through her wrist.
She could not bear the thought of sitting down and sculpting another dog.
She dropped her head into her aching hands. Three tasks the dust-wife had given her. Sew a cloak of owlcloth and nettles, build a dog of cursed bones, and catch moonlight in a jar of clay. She’d failed on the second one, before she’d even had a chance to start the third.