The Bonehunters

And then there had been a second time, one he was able to imagine distinct, walled on all sides, roofed in black night where stars swam like boatmen spiders across well-water. In this time, this chamber, the boy was entirely alone, woken only by the needs of thirst, finding a bucket beside his bed, filled with silty water, and the wood and horn ladle his mother used only on feast-nights. Waking, conjuring the strength to reach out and collect that ladle, dipping it into the bucket, struggling with the water's weight, drawing the tepid fluid in through cracked lips, to ease a mouth hot and dry as the bowl of a kiln.

One day he awoke yet again, and knew himself in the third time. Though weak, he was able to crawl from the bed, to lift the bucket and drink down the last of the water, coughing at its soupy consistency, tasting the flat grit of the silts. Hunger's nest in his belly was now filled with broken eggs, and tiny claws and beaks nipped at his insides.

A long, exhausting journey brought him outside, blinking in the harsh sunlight – so harsh and bright he could not see. There were voices all around him, filling the street, floating down from the roofs, highpitched and in a language he had never heard before. Laughter, excitement, yet these sounds chilled him.

He needed more water. He needed to defeat this brightness, so that he could see once more. Discover the source of these carnival sounds – had a caravan arrived in the village? A troop of actors, singers and musicians?

Did no-one see him? Here on his hands and knees, the fever gone, his life returned to him?

He was nudged on one side and his groping hand reached out and found the shoulder and nape of a dog. The animal's wet nose slipped along his upper arm. This was one of the healthier dogs, he judged, his hand finding a thick layer of fat over the muscle of the shoulder, then, moving down, the huge swell of the beast's belly. He now heard other dogs, gathering, pressing close, squirming with pleasure at the touch of his hands. They were all fat. Had there been a feast? The slaughter of a herd?

Vision returned, with a clarity he had never before experienced.

Lifting his head, he looked round.

The chorus of voices came from birds. Rooks, pigeons, vultures bounding down the dusty street, screeching at the bluff rushes from the village's dogs, who remained possessive of the remains of bodies here and there, mostly little more than bones and sun-blackened tendons, skulls broken open by canine jaws, the insides licked clean.

The boy rose to his feet, tottering with sudden dizziness that was a long time in passing. Eventually, he was able to turn and look back at his family's house, trying to recall what he had seen when crawling through the rooms. Nothing. No-one.

The dogs circled him, all seeming desperate to make him their master, tails wagging, stepping side to side as their spines twisted back and forth, ears flicking up at his every gesture, noses prodding his hands. They were fat, the boy realized, because they had eaten everyone.

For they had died. His mother, his father, his sisters, everyone else in the village. The dogs, owned by all and by none and living a life of suffering, of vicious hunger and rivalries, had all fed unto indolence. Their joy came from full bellies, all rivalry forgotten now. The boy understood in this something profound. A child's delusions stripped back, revealing the truths of the world.

He began wandering.

Some time later he found himself at the crossroads just beyond the northernmost homestead, standing in the midst of his newly adopted pets. A cairn of stones had been raised in the very centre of the conjoined roads and tracks.

His hunger had passed. Looking down at himself, he saw how thin he had become, and saw too the strange purplish nodules thickening his joints, wrist, elbow, knee and ankle, not in the least painful.

Repositories, it seemed, for some other strength.

The cairn's message was plain to him, for it had been raised by a shepherd and he had tended enough flocks in his day. It told him to go north, up into the hills. It told him that sanctuary awaited him there. There had been survivors, then. That they had left him behind was understandable – against the bluetongue fever nothing could be done. A soul lived or a soul died of its own resolve, or lack thereof.

The boy saw that no herds remained on the hillsides, wolves had come down, perhaps, uncontested; or the other villagers had driven the beasts with them. After all, a sanctuary would have such needs as food and water, milk and cheese.

He set off on the north trail, the dogs accompanying him.

They were happy, he saw. Pleased that he now led them. And the sun overhead, that had been blinding, was blinding no longer. The boy had come to and now crossed a threshold, into the fourth and final time.

He knew not when it would end.