The Bone Houses

by Emily Lloyd-Jones

“Death is not to be feared,” he said. “But nor can it be forsaken. One must be mindful.”

“Release the goat,” she said quietly.

“I’ve been called many things,” he said lightly. “A stranger, an outcast, a cripple, and a nuisance—but I’ve never been accused of being a spy before. Tell me, what gave it away? That I’ve told everyone my name or that I’m walking about in broad daylight?”

Sunset and autumn burnished the forest into something strange and beautiful.

“The bone houses may have killed my goat, but I won’t let them have the chickens, too.”

Perhaps one could become used to loss. Or perhaps the grief went so deep that he could not see it.

Death was quiet and stillness. It was fresh earth and wildflowers.

The gravedigger and the mapmaker, and their dead goat.

“I grew up thinking monsters could be slain.” “Ah,” he said. “And I grew up thinking people were the monsters.”

“Planning to keep you,” she said, “regardless of what state you’re in.”

The anticipation of the loss hurts nearly as much as the loss itself. You find yourself trying to hold on to every detail, because you’ll never have them again.”

Death had taken too much from her—she wouldn’t let it take him.

It was a risk, to love someone. To do so with the full knowledge that they’d leave someday. Then to let go of them, when they did.

And perhaps this was the truth about the dead. You went on. They’d want you to.