Tara Runeweaver's Arc

Chapter 23 of 29

Bjorn came home, but he did not settle. He paced from the tent to the gate and back. He chewed the inside of his cheek. Tara watched him from the doorway and knew the truth. He had returned, but his feet were still running. When labor came, he would bolt again. She needed something to hold him still. She took down the bone tubes and leather cords her hands had been saving for weeks. She tied them to a smoothed branch. The arctic wind caught them at once, and the bones knocked together in a low, steady song. She hung the chime outside the tent flap, where Bjorn could hear it from any path he chose. Then she carved a small rune onto each tube. Not magic for power. Magic for stillness. She found him standing at the tall rune monument past the hall, the one etched with old names and frosted grooves. His shoulders were tight. His breath came fast. Tara did not touch him. She pointed past his boots, to the ancient bedrock ring set into the stone there — a worn metal circle wrapped in old leather straps, fixed deep into the rock. "When the songs start," she said, "you stand here. Hand on this ring. You do not move." He stared at the ring. He knelt and wrapped his fingers around the cold metal. The wind shifted, and the bone chime sang from the tent behind them. His shoulders dropped. "I can hear it from here," he said. Tara nodded. "That is the point. When you hear the bones, I am still breathing. When the bones stop, you come inside." He pressed his palm flat against the ring and did not let go. That night the chime sang through the dark, and Bjorn slept with one hand open on the blanket, as if already holding the ring. Tara closed her journal and set it aside. She had built him a place to stand. Now she only had to wait for the child to come.