Dawn in the village always began like a held breath being released. Roosters split the air with ragged calls; a thin mist crawled between the silver pines and found the roofs of the orphanage like a shy visitor. The courtyard's flagstone still held last night's chill; dew pearls trembled on the thatch, bright as a scatter of tiny polished moons. In the alleyways, dogs wandered with the slow dignity of those who knew the village well. From the mountain's sentinel ridges to the low, fumy hearths below, the world pulled itself upright and set to work.
At the orphanage, the smell was of cooking grain and tallow, of soot scraped from the teapots, and beneath it everything else — the faint, bracing scent of Aether that clung to the little Echo Stone the branch kept by the altar. The branch sanctuary of the Moon Goddess had long been the village's quiet center: a round-roofed chapel, an echo crystal the size of a child's head, and a small ringing bell whose chime could be heard even when the wind lay still.
A boy's scream — sharp, animal and immediate — cut the morning sweetness like a snapped string. It came from the dormitory for the boys, high-pitched and streaked with that private blend of alarm and indignation that children reserve for affronts to dignity.
"Gao! Gao, what—" Mei's voice from the corridor was a thin thread, part worry, part amusement.
From the dormitory window, the other orphans poked heads out like curious sparrows. Gao, freckled and furious, flailed; his blanket had been tugged, and something insistent pressed at his chest. The sight that met them was at once ridiculous and unnerving: a small, paper-thin skeleton, all rib and knuckle, had wrapped itself about Gao and was hugging him with the kind of possessive affection one might give a prized cabbage. The skeleton's empty skull tilted at an odd, comic angle, like someone who'd misplaced a thought.
A ripple of laughter broke across the yard. Children who had been up to the usual mischief of morning — sweeping, fetching water, stacking the small bowls for porridge — paused and let the sound wash them. Even the matron's steps slowed at the threshold. Lao Ming's shoulders amusedly slouched against the doorway; the old attendant had seen wonder and portent, had seen thunderstorms and living spears birthed by Echo Stones, but there was an absurdity to this that defied solemnity.
Gao's face flushed scarlet. "Get off me, you— you bone-bucket!" He batted at the skeleton with a blanket, voice rising, words slipping into the kind of coarse invective boys learned together and polished for effect.
From the courtyard, a voice — light and entirely unconcerned — called out, "Now, now, Bones, leave the man the dignity of it. He'll need that for telling the story later."
There was a rustle of feet and then cheerfully rising laughter as Bai Yinfeng bounded into view. He leaned on the courtyard wall, coat sleeves swallowing his thin arms, grin bright as a struck flint. Behind him shuffled three small skeletons, one larger than the others and more composed in its creak. They made a ridiculous train: clavicles clinking like a loose beadwork, femurs clicking with every shuffle.
Gao's glare sharpened. He tried to wrench himself free, indignation fueling strength— only to find the larger skeleton's bony hand clamped about his wrist with surprising, if brittle, firmness. The skeleton's joints protested in soft little clicks, as if annoyed to be asked for exertion so early in the morning.
"You little—" Gao barked, but the hard edge in his voice slipped when he saw Bai's face, all smug triumph and disarming amusement. The other boys' laughter swelled; the girls at the window covered mouths and shook their heads as if unable to reconcile outrage and delight.
Bai Yinfeng's eyes gleamed in the way of someone who had never learned to take the world's arrangement of power seriously. He raised a hand and offered a small mock-bow. "Good morning, Gao. The Skeletons vote you the most easily startled man in Lyria Home. Congratulations."
Gao cursed, half-laughed, and flailed. The skeleton — though fragile as old parchment — used the moment of exasperation to sprawl itself over Gao's chest like an over-eager spaniel. That bought Bai two heartbeats. He began to run, laughter in his mouth, feet making small thud-thuds on the flagstones.
"Hey! Come back!" Gao threw his blanket aside and hauled himself free, stumbling as he chased. The three smaller bones trippered behind Bai like an awkward chorus line, their small skulls bobbing as if trying to readjust to the world's new orientation.
Bai ran through a thin gate and up toward the courtyard's rear; his arms were narrow but his stride long with the bravado of someone who held mischief as a kind of currency. He glanced back and called over his shoulder, "You chase me, Gao, and I'll make Bones recite your poetry!"
Gao's shout turned into a squealing rage and chase. The orphanage took on the happy racket of a nest disturbed: slippers scuffed, a matron's half-scolding drifting from the kitchen, Mei laughing in a high, surprised peal.
-
The mango tree stood at the back of the orphanage yard like a lazy guardian. Older than the building, older than the patchwork of memories the children kept, its branches spread wide and low — perfect for a child who liked being off ground but not so high as to be useful for moral lessons. The bark was worn smooth where hands had climbed; the leaves caught the morning light and turned it into a kind of thin green fire. Bai Yinfeng eased himself along a sturdy limb, legs dangling, skulls of shadow and light passing under his feet.
One week had passed since the Miracle of the Echo Crystal — at least that was what some children liked to call it when recounting the day Bai's little column of pale light had opened and offered up a skeleton. For Bai, the week had been a series of private pratfalls and small triumphs: practicing how to tie a skeleton's wrists without their bones collapsing into the wrong configuration, convincing two of the orphanage cat's kittens that skeleton jaws made excellent toys, and discovering that a dry rattle made a particularly satisfying accompaniment to his own off-key singing.
He had also received news, days ago, that scraped like a new seam through his chest. Matron had told him, in tones equal parts pride and pragmatic calculation, that the branch had been offered a place for him at the Academy of the Moon Goddess — they called it the Moon Temple Academy in quieter hours — since he had awakened a Martial Echo. The offer came with supplies, a year's tuition in the academy's preparatory ward, and a promise that his lodging and training would be provided. For most children, such a summons would have been a ticket away from a life that smelled of ash and boiled cabbage. For Bai, it was a case with two faces.
He had wanted to leap at the chance. A new town, new games, new pranks in larger courtyards! Imagine the skeleton dressed in official academy robes — what a splendid jest. But the letter-stiff ache settled when he thought of staying away for seven years: the length of time carved into the word academy like a cold iron stamp. Seven years would mean grown seasons where he would not be there to steal the last dumpling from Gao's hand or to help Mei braid long hair into a crooked plait. Seven years was the span in which children might find new families, or outgrow the shared jokes that had been the day's real bread.
A small, practical voice reminded him of other things. He had no noble blood, no beacon-signet, no chanting line to his name that might give him easy footing. He could feel Aether inside him in small bursts — not the roaring river some in the village boasted of, but a shy stream — and the thought of having to rip souls from beast-echoes to grow stronger felt, in his chest, rather like being asked to pluck out the strings of a small instrument. He could not imagine himself as a devourer of echo beast souls; he had no appetite for that kind of violence, preferring the slower work of clever hands and softer pranks.
Madam Lin — the matron, who had a marrow-deep kindness that smelled faintly of herbal tea and old mending — had watched him with eyes like a woman who had sewn many things and seen some unravel. "The Academy will be good for you, Yinfeng," she had said. Her voice was steady. "They will teach you how to shape your Aether. They will give you tools, and there are other children there who will learn like you. It is not a one-way death. You will come back taller."
Bai had replied with the comfortable language he used to grease the world's edges: sarcasm. "Come back taller with the reputation of a man who wears more robes and less common sense? Sounds delightful. Do they supply a manual titled 'How to Be Taken Seriously When You Are a Skeleton Whisperer'?"
Madam Lin's smile was patient. "You have a way with the world, child. Gifts come in odd wrappings."
So he accepted, in the way one accepts a rainstorm one can see six days off: with a combination of planning and the private belief that he could make it into a joke that would be remembered fondly. He would go. He would stay. He would be at the Academy for seven years. He would be allowed to make Bones recite Gao's poetry if the opportunity arose.
He shifted on the branch, boot tapping an ornamental notch worn into the wood. He scraped the shard of Echo Crystal he had been given — it sat in his palm like a sliver of night — and offered it a private, boyish blessing. The morning smelled of mango and porridge and the faint edge of the Echo Stone down at the chapel. The skeletons, who had climbed the branch with him despite having no real reason to do so, shuffled in a small queue, heads cocked in the way empty sockets will make a face readable.
It was common, almost prescribed by the newness of the world within them, that those who had awakened remembered how to call their Echo. The memory did not come as something one learned; it was handed like an instruction in bone and breath by the echo itself. Bai had found the sensation peculiar — a pressure at the temple, a sense of an instruction planted like a seed in sleep. He closed his eyes now and let the memory take shape: breathe, gather, call, and watch.
His palms warmed. The shard in his hand pulsed faintly, a remembrance of the Echo Crystal's morning glow. A small knot of Aether gathered at his wrist, like a bead of cold silk. For some children, the Aether was a bright flaring and a shout; for Bai it was a polite cough, a thing that wanted to be noticed but did not wish to upset the morning's tea. He thought of fun; he thought of pie; he thought of the absurd dignity of asking a skeleton politely to fetch biscuits. The Aether answered in its shy way.
A form assembled beside him out of light and the scent of old rain: not a full-bodied ghost, but the suggestion of a shape as if a potter had only roughed out a clay figure. The shape clarified and the bones resolved into crisp angles. The primary skeleton slid into being with a sound like dry leaves: joints snapping into place, ribs aligning as if threading together. Bai opened his eyes and the skeleton stood under the mango leaves exactly as it had the morning of Resonance, smaller than a man and respectable in its dry way.
Bai could not help himself. He reached out with a light, practiced flick and — for comic effect, the way boys often do with a cat or a mischievous friend — he slapped the back of the skeleton's skull.
The skull came away.
It was not dramatic. It thunked into the soft, loamy soil of the courtyard with the small, disconcerting dignity of a nut falling. The skeleton's jaw clicked in a sort of surprised complaint. For the barest instant, a rustle like paper being folded passed through its frame. Then, with the stoic decorum of mutineers, the other bones adjusted, and the skeleton's neck presented an empty socket as if this, too, had been part of the plan.
Bai laughed. It was a small, delighted sound, bright as a coin in the dark. The sight of the head lying in the dirt — skull grinning at the sky like an accidental moon — was absurd enough to keep his spirits away from worry for now.
He watched the head, thinking of all the possible uses for a loose skull: as a vessel for storing stolen trinkets, as a prop in his next dramatic prank, perhaps as part of a petition for Gao to compose an ode in its honor. The skeletons shuffled and made small, precise motions. One of the smaller attendants reached out to retrieve the fallen head and, after a moment's deliberation (for the skeletons had a streak of dramatic consideration), set it upon the branch like an offering to the gods of mischief.
"See?" Bai said aloud, addressing the skull and, in a half-jest, the rising sun. "We shall be famous in the Academy. They will remember the boy who could make a skeleton smile."
He set his palm on the Echo Crystal shard, feeling again the faint purr like a cat curled in sleep. He told himself the truth — that he was afraid. Not of the Academy itself, but of leaving: the long years, the new faces, the chance that the warm, ragged bond of Lyria Home might fray. He thought of Gao's terrible poetry and Mei's long braids and Lao Ming's hands steady on the altar. He thought of Madam Lin's smile. But beneath that worry was another strand: a small, stubborn hope that he would go, learn whatever the Moon Temple Academy could teach him, and return with new jokes that would be the envy of the courtyard.
He tapped the skull softly with a knuckle. "First rule of Club Mischief," he said to it, "never let the world make you ordinary. Even if the world insists on calling you modest."
The skeleton's empty sockets caught the filtered light and, in their way, seemed to suggest assent. Bai swung his legs, mind already making a list of the things he would do before the first season ended: teach the skeleton to squeal on command, sneak into the pantry at midnight to borrow extra dumplings, paint Gao's boots with glow-ink and watch the village talk of ghosts for a week. He would learn enough of Aether to make the skeleton less brittle, perhaps, but not so much that the world forgot how to laugh.
A rooster trilled somewhere beyond the fence. From the chapel, the Echo Stone gave a small, answering hum, as if the world itself offered a polite, cautious blessing.
Bai Yinfeng hopped down from the branch, shouldered the light Echo Crystal shard into his coat, and called down to the yard, "Come on, Bones! Show me your most tragic pose! I need inspiration for Gao's ode!"
The skeletons obliged, clicking into exaggerated dignity that would have been pompous if their faces could show expression. Children's laughter rose, as bright and quick as wind over a canyon.
For a moment, sitting on the limb of the mango tree, Bai could feel the village's small orbit hold steady around him — a sphere of jokes and chores and the faint music of the Moon Goddess' bell. He could not promise himself he would not miss it. He could not promise he would not be frightened. But he could promise this: that until the Academy's doors closed behind him, he would spend each day making mischief memorable enough that, when he returned, the courtyard would still be the same ring of warmth and noise he had always known.
He tucked the shard away and marched down to the courtyard, the skeletons clattering after him in a ragged, cheerful procession.