A hollow ache starts in my chest, the reality of her death trumped by the appearance of the velvet pouch on my table. Shame fills me, and I pull in a sharp breath, emotion stinging my eyes. It doesn’t feel real.
My grandmother’s face pops up in my mind. Her lined tan skin and thick gray hair, cut short becausewho can bother to try and tame curls in their old age,she would complain. Her hazel eyes and the way they would flicker from stern seriousness to mischievous to kind glimmer in my memories, her time-thinned lips tilting up in a sassy smile.
I’ll never again walk into her incense-soaked shop to be greeted by her sharp wit and knowing way. Her slender and sinuous arms won’t wrap me up in a strong hug that squeezes all of my problems into nothing. Her sure, comforting voice will never call me on the phone to check in or to ask for help with sourcing ingredients because technology just wasn’t in her bones. Her gumption, her light, her give no fucks way, all...gone.
My Grammy Ruby is no longer in this world, and I’m not sure how to navigate that loss let alone the looming legacy I’ve been bestowed because of it.
Tad’s voice pulls me from my thoughts, and I look down to see the phone still clutched in my palm. I pull it back to my ear, sadness settling like hardening cement in my chest.
“I can’t believe she’s gone,” I whisper hollowly, the truth of it taking root and changing everything. Whatever Tad was rambling about immediately comes to a stop, and he’s quiet for several beats.
“I know. It’s weird to think of a world without her grumpy ass in it.”
I snort out a laugh, not able to help myself. Amusement trickles in to mix with the sorrow I’m wading through, and I cling to it like it’s a life preserver. “I probably shouldn’t be so shocked, she’s been telling us to fuck off and let her die for at least ten years,” I recall with a despondent chuckle.
“The old bat is probably laughing her ass off right now,” Tad teases, but I hear the melancholy saturating his tone.
“Do you think she knew?” I ask him after a weighted moment of silence.
I find myself looking back at all of my interactions with my grandma and analyzing them with a new lens. Every time she smiled at me with an interested glint in her eye or deposited a curious bit of random wisdom, did she know the bones would end up on my dining room table one day?
“Lennox!” Tad shouts at me, his demanding tone pulling me from my thoughts. “Did you hear me?”
“Huh?” I ask, the single syllabic sound requesting him to repeat whatever it was that I missed.
“Have you sealed yourself to them yet?”
“The bones?”
“No, to Stephen James,” he snarks, pausing for dramatic emphasis. “Of course the bones!”
I reluctantly swat away visions of the tattooed model my cousin and I both spend many an hour on Insta drooling over, and focus on his point.
“No. I spotted the pouch, freaked out, watched my life crash and burn like a downed plane, and then called you.”
“Lennox, what the fuck?” he chastises. “Ma, don’t start with that shit,” he defends against my aunt’s squawking in the background. “Leni has unsealed bones sitting in her house,” he rats.
There’s a scuffle on the other end of the phone before my Aunt Hillen’s voice comes screeching through the line. “Lennox Marai Osseous, what in the name of goat balls do you think you’re doing?” she mom-yells at me.
I flinch. She pauses like she actually wants an explanation.
“Um, waiting to see if the bones will choose someone else?” I respond, only half joking.
Aunt Hillen gasps, and I cringe against the sound.
“Leni, it’syou. You’re the next Osteomancer. Stop messing around and take it seriously just like you’ve been taught your whole life to do.” With that, she hangs up on me.
I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at the lit up screen until it blinks black. I set the phone on the table and then stare at the velvet pouch, indecision warring with what I’ve been raised to do in the event that this ever happened. I take a deep fortifying breath and reach for the bag.
Fuck my life...here goes nothing.
2
Voices echo in my mind as I run through every lecture I’ve sat through my entire life about what to do if the bones were to ever choose me. First, immediately seal them to you or risk them falling into the wrong hands and damaging our line of magic to infinity and beyond. Second, bind a familiar to help protect and stabilize any and all abilities that will show up over time. Third...shit, what was the third thing?
I tick off the numbers on my hand over and over as I will my mind to deliver the information I know it has stored somewhere inside of its tangled recesses. Third...add a bone to the pouch that represents me and my reign.
Relief fills me as I remember that step, and then I cringe as understanding sinks in. Yikes, where am I supposed to find a bone to do that? Does it have to be a human bone, or can I hit up my local fried chicken joint, eat a drumstick and call it a day? My stomach rumbles hungrily at the thought, but I dismiss it and focus on the last major task I need to tackle.
