By These Ten Bones by Clare B. Dunkle

before. She stared at him, thinking about what he had done. The insults. The hatred. The horror.
    â€œNothing,” she said shortly. Then she realized she should say more. “I did what I was supposed to,” she elaborated, “and when you didn’t come back, I went and fetched you. Father Mac carried you home partway, but nobody knows except me.”
    â€œSo I didn’t do anything? Nothing at all?” he asked, watching her guarded expression. Maddie shook her head. She was telling a lie, and they both knew it. She had told more lies in the last three days than in the three years before them.
    The wood-carver stared at the cobwebbed ceiling with hollow eyes, and Maddie turned to leave. “Wait,” he whispered. “Just a little longer.” She sat down on her mother’s stool and waited.
    â€œI had a name,” he began quietly. “My name used to be Paul. I was a MacLean, from the Island of Trees. Our house stood by a little mill over the water, away from all the other houses. My father was a wood-carver, his father, too, and he taught me and my older brother. I used to follow the cows and stay with them days while I did a bit of carving.
    â€œOne night something happened. Something terrible happened. I woke up, and my sisters were screaming, my mother, too, and I heard my father shouting. I wasn’t very old, only seven or eight, and I didn’t go out to help. I crawled under the box bed, curled up as small as I could. Then no more shouts, just screams, even from my father and my brother. Ripping and crashing and other sounds—I can’t even think about them. Another scream, loud and long, a scream right out of hell. And then silence, except for breathing. My breathing, and something else breathing. And then something in the room began to talk.”
    The wood-carver turned on his pillow, cringing at the memory, and his anxious eyes found her face. “It was talking to me,” he said, almost in a whisper. “It knew where I was hiding. It said—but I can’t tell you what it said. I can’t ever tell you what it said. It dragged me out from under the bed, and I don’t know what it looked like, but it was big, bigger than a man, with big round eyes. It bit me on the shoulder with huge teeth, bit me so deep I thought it would bite me in half.
    â€œI don’t know what happened then. Maybe I fainted. But the next thing I knew, it was morning, and light was coming in through the door. I was lying in a puddle of blood. Not a puddle—a lake of blood. The room around me was torn apart. And my family—they were torn apart, too. Blood splashed up the walls and onto the blankets, it was just like slaughtering day. And next to me was a man I’d never seen, lying there sound asleep. When I moved, he woke and sat up, and his face was covered with blood. He looked at me, all confused, and then he burst into tears. He sobbed out loud like a baby, running his bloody hands through his hair.
    â€œThen Ned came running in, puffing—I’d never seen him before that day. But he burst into tears, too, and he and that man cried and cried, but me, I don’t think I cried at all. They took my shirt off to look at the bite, it was like the teeth of a trap had dug into me. Then Ned found our big butchering knife and gave it to the man, and he crawled off behind the oatmeal chest, and I didn’t see him again. Ned caught me by the arms and helped me out into the yard. He told me we were leaving, so I took my father’s carving tools from his bench by the door. Ned set the house on fire, and we walked away and left it, and I’ve never been back there again.”
    The carver took a deep breath and passed his hands over his face. Then he composed himself again, looking away from her.
    â€œNed has places all over the country, hiding places for me when I change. We never stay anywhere very long so no one takes notice of us. Ned told me