One last elegy for you, dear dead: mage-hunters have long memories. You received one letter from Tatter-cloak, two years out from the queen when you both agreed to not meet again. You stayed a while in the port city your ship arrived in, and a cargo of oversea letters came. One envelope, from the monarch, addressed to one Kaloona "who will be found at the seaside." And you were. The ship runner found you, feet straying from the docks into the lapis-blue water.

The letter told of the Empress's restrictions; the hunt was still strong for anyone "of your abilities" and perhaps it always would be. It always would be. He still fought for the queen's people, he'd managed to undo some laws prohibiting winter ice fishing. Also they were charging you with the former king and queen's murder, which sounded bad he knew.

They wrote some other stuff about towns popping up, the ashes of frost orchards, but your heart stuck at the beginning, like a missing stone in a road tripping you up as you plod in circles.

It always would be. If you returned, more mage-hunters would try to set fire to your home, wherever that was. It always would be. You couldn't show your face in a town, or bring the bird with you. Better to have burners chase you--which they hadn't, for that whole season, so perhaps that made you feel safe--than mage-hunters who could burn some place you actually cared about.

One last elegy, for you. Ripping the letter into shreds you sunk it in the ocean, because forever apart would fall apart one day. You sloshed from the docks with wet boots, not bothering to cry over the bone-white paper fading into the depths. You told yourself, you didn't need scraps of letters to tether you weakly to a continent that was all you remembered.

All you remembered lay faraway, across an ocean, buried by time or ashes or laid to rest beneath an ice table. Out of all you remembered, what remained alive? There, in that present, you carried only your skin, you had a bird, you had one friend who was the steward of a whole continent.

So why did you walk away from them?

So why did you leave the city your ship arrived in, where letters from Tatter-cloak would come? Why didn't you write anything back, or attempt to send the jet bird across the ocean just to let him know you were okay?

Sloshing bootsteps to cobbled streets, perhaps it was easier to run than hold tightly to something that would some day end. Perhaps the two things you possessed outweighed the one, perhaps you were tired of coming to terms with losing everything and everyone.

Who could say?

You still walked away.

***

Twelve bones. I knot the end of the thread, in the child's lap, and speak the curse that mangles the ends of all the bones into a ring. They squeal and crack and I hold hands over my ears, faintly ringing. The child mutters a copy of my curse, but I touch my knee against his and he pauses, meeting my eyes, half-formed curse dissipating weakly in the air. For a heartbeat, I almost believe those eyes hold a flicker of intelligence, an honest answer to my request to wait. Then it dims out. Or it was never there at all.

I loose the blood needle onto my sandy rock, pinprick point melting to plain dribbles. These two rock seats hold mirrored aquamarine blood stains, though one has weeks old smears, and one's still dripping. "Here," I take the melded rib bones from his hands, resting on his thighs. The tallest bones almost touch his chin, nearly they jab his neck since he hardly notices them, peering down at his lap.

I lift the pearly yellow ribs, twist the base around in my fingers. The melded loop contains no weaknesses after two curses; cracks meet other cracks, one opening fits into another. Like two lines of a chipped eggshell meeting up perfectly.

The crown of bones I loft atop the child's head. The twelve spikes curve inward, like the lines of a great globe, lower hemisphere. He could embrace the sky, cut the clouds on pointed ribs.

Yet, the dull yellow bones also blend into the sand of this beach. They're ordinary and drab and clearly from something long dead. Like old teeth. I lower my hands from holding up the bones and sigh. I pictured an elegant crown, like royalty for all the dead. The dead, anointing the mages who rule the flickering graveyards where the silent and unmoving reign.

The child stares down at his hands and the bones slip forward, I catch them before they fall.

In my hands, the crown curves too small. The ring is only twelve ribs, narrow arches curling and pointing back together. It wouldn't belong on my head, I could barely fit it over both fists but not much else.

I stand from the rock and turn to the jet bird's silvery pebble pile. She floats high above, preparing to dive into the waters, fishing for pieces of her home. I set the crown beside her pebbles, a disorganized mound yet to shape into a nest. The yellow bones stand out better here, beside the silver-black. Too bad this crown would be far too large for her, an actual royal.

I step back. I whisper at the bones, silent sounds stretching the curved tips into wicked points. Nothing appears to change, from where I stand above it. But if I were to touch one of the twelve points it would surely cut my finger, take an offering of aquamarine blood.

This beach then, the pebbles. Our odd successor for a crown of fish bones, like we the living could dedicate the land by the underwater dead who went before them.

The child mimics my curse and the bones seem to shiver, cut the air itself to draw invisible blood, textured like snow. The jet bird plummets into the shadow waves. The beach lies still; I'm just standing there. The bones are just old yellow bones unburied from an ocean, named a crown for the sentiments of a wild death mage, dedicated to some common beach by incising curses.

I take a child by the hand. The sun grows high, the sands grow hot, my stomach hungers. Back to a town of cabins I guide him, humming nonsense melodies.