Fingerbones

By Erzebet YellowBoy

When rumors of plague swept through the country, pregnant mothers were sent to the island of ghosts, left to give birth and die alone. But not all of their infants perished. Nusht, one of the forgotten survivors, discovers something on the beach that could break the pattern in which she believes the women and children are trapped. Meanwhile, on the mainland, Fairka awaits her fate at the hands of the Ninety-Nine Divines, ideals to which the country's priests pay homage. Soon her life will be entwined with Nusht's in ways neither of them could have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Masque Books
• Release date: May 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781607015147

Book preview

FINGERBONES

ERZEBET YELLOWBOY

Copyright © 2015 by Erzebet YellowBoy.

Cover design by Chris Carr,

with dancer by Spanic, feather by Aleksangel, and background by FrozenStarRo.

Ebook design by Neil Clarke.

ISBN: 978-1-60701-514-7

Masque Books

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Masque Books is an imprint of Prime Books

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Chapter 1

Nusht is walking through the graveyard, thinking about ghosts. She stops at her mother’s grave, three round stones in a circle with a fourth on top, each stone as wide as both of her hands put together. This is where her mother’s head reposes, chin tilted back, eyes closed, mouth curved just there, at the corner, where a dimple used to form when she smiled. When the winds come in the late summer season, heralding the onset of endless winter rain, the sands will shift and a foot, or maybe an arm, will be exposed. The limbs will ask questions. How did we get here? Why are we here? Is there no better place for us to rest? The answers, the facts of them, remain buried. Nusht knows only this: her mother is dead, and she is dying. In a month, maybe two, one of these graves will be hers.

Nusht does not want to die. She is not resigned to it. She does not to want to meekly accept her fate, the fate that coalesced yesterday in the shape of her first boil, in the pain of her first headache. One without the other may have spared her. Together they spell the slow decline, the wasting sickness, the sure inevitability of life on Karbesh, which is not a life, but merely a holding pattern, the pattern of waiting and watching and praying to the Divines who, it is rumored, sent the women to the island in the first place.

This is Karbesh, the island of ghosts, one of a crescent of islands in the Karbashi archipelago, the farthest island from Karbashi itself and the only one inhabited. One large, parabolic dune borders the west-facing beach like the half-hump of a sunken camel. Sparse, brown grass spears through its slip-face; between its horns are the graves. Bones wash out to sea and back again. Some never return. This is freedom. This is what the women want. Wash us away, they sing. Wash us clean.

Nusht does not feel dirty. She cannot even say why any one of the women on the island should feel dirty. This, she believes, is the real illness. Even so, Nusht will die. In a month or two—maybe less—she will lie on her bed with seeping sores and dulled eyes, she will cry out in pain sometimes, and other times her lips will swell so badly she’ll be unable to speak. She has seen it happen too many times to shy away from the visions of her own battered body that keep her awake night after night, when all of the other women and children are sleeping. They do not suffer the same delusion Nusht does, that it doesn’t have to be this way. They sleep soundly, or suffer in their sickness, while Nusht tosses beneath two wool blankets, one hers and one her dead mother’s, sweating as she retraces the pattern of her life, searching for a loophole, for some way out.

It is, perhaps, this delusion that has given Nusht her gift. She discovered it just this morning, on the second day of her plague, when the boil has changed color from red to purple, and the pain in her head has narrowed into one, sharp knifepoint in her left eye. She has, since her mother perished, made this daily pilgrimage to the small pile of stones under which her mother lies. She weaves through the graves, all fifty-four of them, but it is here she stops, beside her mother, gone now these three years. Nusht’s mother had been one of the first plague-mothers; she had arrived on Karbesh with the other firsts, and now she is departed with them. Nusht is a second. There are only seconds and thirds on the island now. Nusht will never give birth to a third, she will never give herself to the mute boatmen, not like some of the other women. Why bring a child into this pattern? The knowledge of its origin died with the firsts. Those remaining, like Nusht, only know they were born of ghosts, on the island of ghosts. Perhaps it is not her delusion, after all, that has given her this gift. Perhaps the ghosts themselves are speaking through Nusht, saying, look, we are not yet done with life.

In Nusht’s pocket is the first of her creations. She can feel it moving, ever so slightly, against her thigh. It is nothing more than two opercles tied by a strand of seaweed to a slender piece of driftwood no longer than her middle finger. Nusht had found the skeleton of the fish on the beach, headless, but with the most of the spine and several of the ribs intact. The operculum had been in excellent condition; the opercles had looked to her like wings. She had never made this association before. It was exciting. It was something new, a loophole, something to break up the pattern. When she had twisted the seaweed around the two bones, affixing them to the driftwood, the thing she’d made came alive in the palm of her hand. She had sat in perfect silence, stunned by her construct. She’d meant it to resemble a dragonfly and indeed, it almost seemed as though it wanted to fly, but could not, because its wings were too heavy.

She wants to know if her mother has ever heard of such a thing, if the first mothers had made such things, if this is yet more of the knowledge lost to those who came after, who were not first on the island, who were not first to become ghosts. She wants to share her excitement with her mother. She wants to see those eyes crinkle with laughter, the way they did even during the height of her mother’s illness, when there was nothing left for her mother to laugh about. Mostly she wants to know if she can share her gift with the others, or if her creation is heretical, not that punishment matters now.

Nusht will find no answers here—the four stones will not talk. If there is an answer, it is already in her pocket. She has nothing to lose. If this is heresy, so be it.

The children are delighted by Nusht’s construct. They touch it with cautious fingers, coo at it, and one of them even offers a rare smile as it flutters in the palm of her hand. This pleases Nusht. Hot, dry summers scorch fragile flesh, boils break and seep, and if the boatmen are blown off course, as they often are in winter, hunger flays the belly and plays tricks on the mind. If the construct has made a child smile, she has done a good thing.

How do you make it move? shy Una says.

I do not know, Nusht says.

The Divines don’t allow magic. Bossy young Shoosha, daughter of the oldest second, knows it all.

This is not magic, Nusht says. It is a gift of the sea and sand.

I want to try! I want to try! Meeshi, four years old, is ever curious.

Nusht gently tips the winged driftwood into Meeshi’s hand. The wings lie still. It does not move. Meeshi’s lower lip swells in a pout.

It’s dead, Meeshi says. We’re all dead. Her eyes are solemn as she hands the construct back.

Shh, Nusht says. Not all of us.

Tell us about the firsts, Una says. They all died. Why did they die?

You know this story, Nusht says. The plague took them.

Your mother was a first, Shoosha says. She’s dead.

Though Shoosha can be a cruel child, Nusht does not fault her for speaking the truth. Yes. My mother was one of the first on the island. There were twenty-six of them, sent by Divine decree to Karbesh to keep Karbashi clean.

Did it work? Una says.

I think so. Nusht doesn’t know if it worked. She cannot even imagine Karbashi, what it looks like, who lives there, what their names might be. The firsts never spoke of the homes they had left behind. Whatever the mute boatmen know or have seen will also die with them. There is no other contact with the mainland. Perhaps Karbashi is only a dream.

Go now. Go to your mothers, Nusht says. She does not want the children to see that she is in pain.

They scatter. Nusht shades her eyes against the late morning sun and looks out across the sea. On the eastern horizon, cirrus clouds hover above the water, gray on white, white on blue, spinning out vaporous wisps from an opaque center. There is where she imagines distant Karbashi to be, its coast hidden from her and she from it. To them, on that side of the tumultuous water, the island must be invisible. Nusht and all the others are invisible.

Nusht is standing on a shelf of soft limestone pocked and pitted by the sea