The Bone Doll's Twin (17 page)

“You rub her,” the woman said, showing him how to pat the rabbit. “She like.”

Tobin stroked the rabbit’s back. Its fur was soft and warm under his hand and, like the deer in his dream, it wasn’t the least bit skittish.

“She like you.”

Yes, thought Tobin, this woman didn’t speak like anyone he’d met in Alestun. He was close enough now to tell that she didn’t smell very good, either, but for some reason he wasn’t afraid anymore.

Keeping the doll hidden under his cloak, he knelt and patted the rabbit some more. “She’s soft. Dogs don’t let me pet them.”

The woman clicked her tongue against her teeth. “Dogs don’t understanding.” Before Tobin could ask what she meant, she said, “I waiting for you long time, keesa.”

“My name isn’t Keesa. It’s Prince Tobin. I don’t know you, do I?”

“But I knowing you, keesa called Tobin. Knowing your poor mama, too. You got one was her thing.”

So she had seen the doll. Blushing, Tobin slowly brought it out from under his cloak. She took it and passed him the rabbit to hold.

“I Lhel. You don’t be scared me.” She held the doll on
her lap, smoothing it with her stained fingers. “I know you born. Watch for you.”

Lhel?
He’d heard that name somewhere before. “How come you never come to the keep?”

“I come.” She winked at him. “Not be see.”

“How come you don’t talk right?”

Lhel touched a finger playfully to his nose. “Maybe you teach? I teach, too. I wait be your teaching, all this time out in trees. Lonesome time, but I wait. You ready learn some things?”

“No. I was looking for—for—”

“Mama?”

Tobin nodded. “I saw her in a dream. In a room under the ground.”

Lhel shook her head sadly. “Don’t her. Be me. That mama don’t be need now.”

Sadness overwhelmed Tobin. “I want to go home!”

Lhel patted his cheek. “Not so far. But you don’t come just get lost, no?” She patted the doll. “This give you some troubles.”

“Well—”

“I know. You come, keesa.”

She got up and walked off through the trees with the doll. Tobin had little choice but to follow.

T
he washing didn’t take as long when Rhius and the men were away. With rain threatening, Nari and Cook made quick work of the clothing and linens while Mynir strung lines up in the hall for drying.

They were finished in time to start a proper supper.

“I’ll do the bread,” Nari said, surveying the lines of dripping linen with satisfaction. “Just let me go see if Tobin wants to help.”

The truth was, she didn’t feel easy in her mind leaving the child alone so much, not since the mess in the toy room. It could have been the spirit that tore the room up—the thought of Tobin heaving over that heavy wardrobe
scared the liver out of her—but it had been Tobin she’d seen throwing toys and torn tapestries around, and he who’d attacked her, bloodying her nose before she could hold him. It was getting harder to tell when to blame the spirit, and when Tobin was in one of his fits. He’d been so strange since the death, keeping to himself and always acting as if he had some great secret he was keeping.

Nari sighed as she climbed the stairs. Ariani had never been much use as a mother, except perhaps for those last quiet months. And Rhius? Nari shook her head. She’d never been able to puzzle that one out, and all the more so since his wife’s death. If Tobin was a bit strange—well, who was to blame for that?

She found Tobin kneeling beside his toy city, his black hair hanging in a tangled mess around his face as he worked on a broken ship.

“Would you like to help with the baking, pet?” she asked.

He shook his head, struggling to fit the tiny mast back into place.

“Want some help with that?”

He shook his head again and turned away, reaching for something beside him.

“Suit yourself, then, Master Silence.” Giving him a last, fond look, Nari headed back for the kitchen, already pondering what sort of bread they ought to have tonight.

She didn’t hear the sound of the little ship falling to the floor in the empty room behind her.

T
obin cradled the rabbit in his arms as he followed Lhel deeper into the forest. There was no path that he could see, but she picked her way through the trees as swiftly as if she could see one. The forest grew darker, and the trees here were larger than any Tobin had seen before. Soon they were walking between huge oaks and hemlocks. Wide swaths of yellow lady slippers, wintergreen, and
foul-smelling purple trillium covered the ground like a colorful rag quilt.

Tobin studied Lhel as he followed her. She wasn’t much taller than he was. Her hair was black like his mama’s, but coarse and curly, with thick locks of silver mixed in.

They went on for a very long time. He didn’t want to go this deep in the woods, not with her, but she had the doll and she didn’t even look back to see if he was following. Blinking back fresh tears, he promised himself he would never come out alone again.

She stopped at last by the largest oak tree Tobin had ever seen. It towered over them as high as the tower and its trunk was nearly as thick. It was festooned with animal skulls, antlers, and hides tacked up to cure. A few small fish hung on drying racks beside it, and there were baskets made of woven grass and willow. Just beyond these a spring welled up in a clear, round pool that sent a trickling streamlet down the hill. They drank from their hands at the pool, and then Lhel led him back to the great tree.

“My house,” she said, and vanished into the trunk.

Tobin gaped, wondering if the tree had eaten her, but she peeked out at him from its side and beckoned him to follow.

Coming closer, he saw that there was a crack in the trunk large enough for him to walk through without stooping. Inside the ancient tree was a hollow place almost as big as Tobin’s bedchamber, with a floor of packed, dry earth. The smooth silvery wood of the walls went up into darkness, and a second crack a few yards above the door let in enough light for Tobin to make out a pallet bed piled with furs, a firepit, and a small iron pot beside it. The pot looked just like the ones Cook used.

“Did you make this place?” he asked, forgetting his fear again as he gazed around. This was even better than a room under the ground.

“No. Old grandmother trees open up hearts, make good place inside.” She kissed her palm and pressed it to the wood as if she was thanking the tree.

Lhel settled Tobin on the pallet and kindled a small blaze in the firepit. He put the rabbit down, and it settled beside him and began cleaning its whiskers with its paws. Lhel reached into the shadows near the door and brought out a basket of wild strawberries and a braided loaf of bread.

“That looks like the bread Cook made the other day,” Tobin observed.

“She good maker,” Lhel replied, setting the food down in front of him. “Tell you I go your home.”

“You stole the bread?”

“I earn it, wait for you.”

“How come I’ve never seen you there, then?” Tobin asked again. “How come I’ve never heard of you, living so close?”

The woman scooped a handful of berries into her mouth and shrugged. “I don’t want folks be see me, they don’t see. Now, we fix this
hekka
, yes?”

Before Tobin could object, Lhel drew her knife and cut the shiny black cord from the doll’s neck. Once severed, the cord unwound into a thin hank of black hair.

“Mama’s.” Lhel tickled Tobin’s cheek with it, then cast it into the fire. Using her knife again, she picked open a seam on the doll’s back and shook some brown, crumbling flakes into the fire, then replaced them with sprigs of herbs from a basket. Among them Tobin recognized the spiky tips of rosemary and rue.

Producing a silver needle and some thread from the pouch at her belt, she held out her hand to Tobin. “Need bitty of you red, keesa, hold the charm. Make this you hekka.”

“It’s already mine,” Tobin protested, shrinking back.

Lhel shook her head. “No.”

Not knowing what else to do, Tobin allowed her to prick his finger and squeeze a drop of his blood into the body of the doll. Then she stitched it all up again, set it upright on her knee, and wrinkled her nose into a comic grimace. “Need face, but you maker for that. I done last thing now. Little thing.”

Humming to herself, Lhel cut a lock of Tobin’s hair, rubbed the strands with wax like a bowstring, and twisted them into a new neck cord for the doll. Tobin watched her fingers as she secured it with a fancy knot that seemed to knit the ends of the strand together. “Are you a wizard?”

Lhel snorted and handed him the finished doll. “What you think this be?”

“Just—just a doll?” Tobin replied, already suspecting it wasn’t. “Is it magic now?”

“Always be magic,” Lhel told him. “My folk call this
hekkamari.
Got spirit in it. You know the one.”

“The demon?” Tobin stared down at it.

Lhel gave him a sad smile. “Demon, keesa? No. Spirit. Ghost. This be your brother.”

“I don’t have a brother!”

“You do, keesa. Born with you but die. I teaching your mama be make this for his poor
mari.
He be wait, too. Long time. You say—” She paused, pressing her palms together beneath her chin as she thought. “You say, ‘Blood, my blood. Flesh, my flesh. Bone, my bone.’”

“What will that do?”

“Bind him to you. You see then. He need you. You need him.”

“I don’t want to see it!” Tobin cried, thinking of all the monsters he’d conjured up trying to put a form to the presence that had overshadowed his life.

Lhel reached out and cupped his cheek in her rough palm. “You being scared long enough. Be brave now like warrior. You got things coming of you, you don’t know. You always being brave, all the time.”

Always being brave, like a warrior
, thought Tobin. Feeling anything but brave, he closed his eyes and whispered, “Blood, my blood. Flesh, my flesh …”

“Bone, my bone,” Lhel prompted softly.

“Bone, my bone.”

He felt the demon enter the oak and come so close to him he could reach out and touch it if he dared. Lhel’s cool hand covered his.

“Keesa, see.”

Tobin opened his eyes and gasped. A boy who looked just like him crouched a few feet away. But this boy was dirty and naked, and his dull black hair was tangled around his face in filthy clumps.

I saw him that day when Mama …
Tobin shoved the thought away. He didn’t think of That Day. Not ever.

The other boy glared at Tobin with eyes so black the pupils didn’t show.

“He looks like me,” Tobin whispered.

“He you. You he. Look-likes.”

“Twins, you mean?” Tobin had seen twins in Alestun.

“Twins, yes.”

The demon bared its teeth at Lhel in a soundless hiss, then scuttled to squat on the far side of the fire. The rabbit hopped back into Tobin’s lap beside the doll and went on washing.

“He doesn’t like you,” Tobin told Lhel.

“Hates,” Lhel agreed. “You mama have him. Now you have him. Keep hekkamari safe or he be lost. He need you, help you some.”

Unnerved by the demon’s unblinking glare, Tobin huddled closer to Lhel. “Why did he die?”

Lhel shrugged. “Keesa die sometime.”

The ghost crouched lower, ready to spring at her. She ignored it.

“But—but how come he didn’t go to Bilairy?” Tobin demanded. “Nari says we go to Bilairy at the gates when
we die and he takes us to Astellus, who guides us to the dead lands.”

Lhel shrugged again.

Tobin squirmed in frustration. “Well, what’s its name?”

“Can’t name on dead.”

“I have to call it something!”

“Call him Brother. That he is.”

“Brother?” The ghost just stared at him and Tobin shivered again. This was worse than when it was something he couldn’t see at all. “I don’t want him looking at me all the time. And he hurts me, too. He broke my city!”

“He don’t be do that no more, now you keep hekkamari. You tell him ‘go way!’ he go way. You call him back, too, with words I teaching you. You say, so I know you know them.”

“Blood, my blood. Flesh, my flesh. Bone, my bone.”

The spirit boy flinched, then crept closer to Tobin, who scrambled back, dropping the rabbit.

Lhel hugged him and laughed. “He don’t be hurt you. Tell him go way.”

“Go away, Brother!”

The spirit vanished.

“Can I make him go away forever?”

Lhel gripped his hand, suddenly serious. “No! You need him, I tell you.” She shook her head sadly. “Think how lonesome he be? He miss mama, like you miss. She make this hekka, care for him. She die. No care. You care now.”

Tobin didn’t like the sound of that. “What do I do? Do I have to feed him? Can I give him some clothes?”

“Spirits eat with they eye. Needs be with folk. Way you see him, that’s how your mama keep him. All she could, so sick in the heart. You call him sometime, let him look around with you so he don’t be so lonesome and hungry. You do that, keesa?”

Tobin couldn’t imagine calling a ghost on purpose,
but he understood all too well what Lhel said about Brother being lonesome and lost.

He sighed, then whispered the words again. “Blood, my blood. Flesh, my flesh. Bone, my bone.”

Brother reappeared beside him, still glowering.

“Good!” Lhel said. “You and spirit—” She linked her forefingers together.

Tobin studied the sullen face, so like his own, and yet not. “Will he be my friend?”

“No, just do as he do. Be a lot worse before you mama make hekkamari.” She made the joining sign with her fingers again. “You kin.”

“Will Nari and Father be able to see him when I call him?”

“No, ’less they got eye. Or he want.”

“But you can see him.”

Lhel tapped her forehead. “I got eye. You, too, yes? You see him a little?” Tobin nodded. “They know him, without seeing. Father. Nari. Old man at door. They know.”

Tobin felt like someone had squeezed all the air out of him. “They
know
who the demon is? That I have a brother? Why didn’t they tell me?”

“They don’t be ready. ’Til then, you keep your secret tight.” She tapped him over the heart. “They don’t know hekkamari. Just your mama and me. You keep it tight, just you. Don’t show it no
one!”