Overview
The Bone-Carry Skeleton is the lean, quick shape of the field — thin through the ribcage, long through the finger-bone, the head a little high on the body, and the whole of it reading as one low line from crown to toe, built to move where the walk-line runs and to spend a nod the size of a whisper. It is the second of the Skeletons a stranger meets in The Bone Fields, and the one the field keeps for the part of the field the Grave-Sense skeleton will not cross.
Habitat
The Bone-Carry Skeleton keeps the deep ground of The Bone Fields, the fields beyond the bone-rings where the cold air runs old and the strength is thinnest. It needs three things: a field old enough to hold the carry, a walk-line long enough to spend the nod, and a grave that is being kept by the Grave-Sense line. The young bones are set into the deep fields, where the cold is oldest, and they learn to carry before they learn to stand, because the carry is the only mother the field has.
Appearance
Males stand 1.80 m, lean through the ribcage, with the finger-bones longer than the mortal ideal; females stand 1.68 m, quicker still, with a longer memory of the field. The base bone is a clean bone-white, the white of the deep field, with a faint sea-black wash along the spine that shows in the cold like a seam of old stone, and the distinguishing mark is the carry-mark, a wash of pale cream at the jaw, the cream being the carry made bone, and the depth of the cream is the length of the walk.
Behaviour
The Bone-Carry Skeleton moves fast and quiet, 5 m/s along the walk-line, and it does not make a sound the cold cannot carry. It reads the field before it moves in it: the shape of a grave by the bone it stirs, the cold of a stranger by the air that goes wrong around them, the fall of a bone that has hit the ground and not been set, all of it arriving before the step is made. It is patient in a different way from the Grave-Sense skeleton, patient in the way a held step is patient, and it will hold a walk in the field for hours before spending the nod, because a nod spent in the field is a nod no one can see being spent.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the carry, and the carry is the promise: the Bone-Carry skeleton holds one walk, and the walk does not come back until the nod is spent, and the nod that is the grave is the last word of the field. The second weapon is the finger-bone, because the carry is not always the nod, and the finger-bone that is a little too long for the body is the word the carry is too quiet for.
Magic Alignment
The Bone-Carry Skeleton stands in the service of Omnath, the Last Memory, the deity of the last remembering, and its magic is the carrying of the walk — the power to make the walk into a thing the bone holds and the holding into a nod. Bone-Carry is the primary gift: the walk held across the field, the nod spent on the stranger, and the pale cream at the jaw that is the carry made bone, because the cream is the walk made visible, and a deep cream is a long walk.
Society
A Bone-Carry Skeleton walks in a deep field of four to eight, and the field is led by the one who has carried the longest walk, because the field is the only ground in the world where the carrying is the law. The hierarchy is by the length of the carry: the one whose walk goes farthest keeps the field's best walk-mouth, and the one whose cream is deepest keeps the bone-ring. The young bones share the walk-line and share the carry, and the carry is the only school the field has, and the school is the field, and the field does not grade, the field only carries.
Culture & Lore
The Bone-Carry Skeleton keeps its lore in the carry, and the carry keeps it better than the grave does, because the carry is the only book in the world that gets longer when someone walks. The old bones say the first Bone-Carry skeleton was a walk that learned to stand, and the field gave it a body because the field had no other way to keep the carrying. They call the strays the carry takes "the ones who were worth the nod," and they keep the best of the walk-mouths — the pale cream of the ones who were quiet enough to be a carry — on the field, which is the finest teaching in the line.
Home
Its home is The Bone Fields, the part of it that is beyond the bone-rings and older than the standing. The Bone-Carry Skeleton is the field's second voice, and the voice is quiet in the way the deep is quiet, and the quiet is the one thing the field cannot lose, because the vigil needs the carry the way the grave needs the walk. The walk-lines are kept quiet by the young, the deep fields are kept old by the line, and the dead are kept where the nod fell, which is the one law the deep does not break.
Relations
The Bone-Carry Skeleton keeps a quiet, walk-kept peace with the Grave-Sense line of The Bone Fields, a peace of the carried walk and the kept grave that has held since the first stranger fell. To Omnath, the Last Memory, the Bone-Carry line is the first remembering made quick, and the line keeps a single pale cream bone at the walk-mouth for the god, which is the one offering the god has asked for and never taken, and the asking is the keeping.
In the Story
In the story of the six who arrived, the Bone-Carry Skeleton is the second cold test the field offers, the carry that asks which of them the walk will keep and which of them the walk must spend. It is the figure that carries the walk-line while the oaths are made above the ground, and the figure whose carrying is the map the war is walked by, because the field has seen every approach, and the field has carried them, and the field is the one page in the world the war cannot set down.