48 pages • 1 hour read
The Bone Season
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Chapters 6-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “Community”
Back in the Warden’s residence, Paige tries to sleep, her spirit drifting through the aether. She wakes but feigns sleep when Warden enters, limping. He falls into bed, and once he is asleep, Paige approaches to find that he is injured, bleeding from a bite wound. Fearing that he might die, she bandages the wound and retires to her bed. Hours later, she wakes up to a room that is empty save for a note that reads, “Tomorrow.”
She dresses and flushes her medicinals down the sink once again, vowing to resist the Rephaite oppression. Out on the street, she encounters another voyant from her cohort: Tilda, a “whisperer” who has an addiction to a substance called aster. Tilda explains the purpose of two of the medicinals—a contraceptive and an iron supplement—but is unfamiliar with the third one that apparently is only given to Paige. She directs Paige to the yard where Julian is training. There, she witnesses Julian being physically abused by his trainer, who eventually leaves him lying dazed on the grass and moves back inside with her group. Julian rouses himself, and he and Paige move outside the gate. Julian explains the testing process. The first test proves a voyant’s ability, and the second proves their loyalty. Just then, they overhear Carl, another voyant, describing to a group of performers how he passed his first test by peering into the aether and seeing a highly-sought “White Binder.” Paige realizes that he is describing Jaxon and wants to warn her former boss before the Rephaim can lay claim to him. She makes plans to meet Julian the next day. She then returns to Amaurotic House to give Seb some food, but his cell is empty. Climbing down from the ledge, she is seized by a Rephaim.
Chapter 7 Summary: “The Bait”
Paige turns and faces Warden, who is accompanied by four other Rephaim, colloquially referred to as “Rephs” in the narration. Cornered, she has no choice but to obey, and her keeper escorts her to the blood-sovereign Nashira to begin her first test. She asks Warden what caused his injuries, but he refuses to answer and orders her to keep it secret as well. They enter an ivy-covered hall where Nashira waits. Her first test is to use her ability to kill Seb, who is now bound to a chair. She refuses, and when one of the Rephs tries to force her, she grabs his knife and slashes his arm. Another Reph—Aldura, Julian’s keeper—attempts to disarm her, but Paige inhales the blood on the knife and uses its life force to draw close to the aether and gain heightened reflexes. When Paige tries to fly into Aldura’s dreamscape, Aldura grabs her and sucks Paige’s aura like a vampire, invading her mind and stunning her temporarily. Although Paige escapes, she has revealed herself as a dreamwalker. Satisfied, Nashira calmly snaps Seb’s neck. Enraged, Paige tries to attack Nashira, but she is thrown to the floor, a burning pain flaring in her shoulder. She is their possession now.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Of My Name”
Paige struggles against the poison in her veins. Later, she wakes up in Magdalen, her body burning. Warden tries to give her an antidote to the poison, but she refuses, too angry to accept his help. Eventually, however, she drinks, fearing the consequences of refusing to have the infection treated. As the swelling in her wounds recedes and she slowly recovers, Warden presents her with a pink tunic. She has passed her first test.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Variety”
Wandering the streets, Paige encounters Liss, who shuts Paige out when she hears of Seb’s death, assuming that Paige is responsible. Paige limps along, finding Tilda, who is intoxicated by aster. She asks Tilda about the third pill, but Tilda can’t identify it. She directs Paige to a “jerryshop,” or apothecary, whose owner tells her that the pill contains a valuable herb. The shop owner strikes a deal with Paige, offering to give her three free items from the shop for every pill she brings him. She chooses her items—aspirin and sterno—and brings them to Liss as a peace offering. Liss accepts the items and invites Paige to spend the night; Julian is also there, recovering from Aldura’s brutal training session. Over food, they discuss the Rephaim’s origins and potential vulnerabilities. Liss cautions them against resistance, recalling a past rebellion in which everyone—humans and voyants—died. Eventually, they doze off but are jolted awake by a siren that indicates an Emim attack. In the ensuing chaos, Liss urges them back to their residences.
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Message”
Paige enters her room, and Warden is furious at her lateness. She remains defiant, but she knows the danger: He can feed on her aura, severing her from the aether, leaving her “dead or insane” (131). Her training begins tomorrow, and he orders her to her quarters, a small room at the top of the tower, and locks her in. As she tries to sleep, she thinks of Ireland, her ancestral homeland, and of her first contact with the aether, which resulted in an injury from an angry poltergeist and rescue by Nick Nygård, a young doctor in training. Wanting to protect her, he told Paige never to talk about the poltergeist, and for years, she has kept that secret.
Warden wakes Paige at dusk and leads her into “unknown territory” for her first training session. They approach and enter a guarded, fenced-in field that is “perfect for spirit combat” (140), and once at the training site, begin to spar. When Paige breaks free and attempts to escape in a weak spot in the fence, the barrier proves to be charged with “ethereal energy,” that disrupts her dreamscape with dark memories. She falls to the ground and vomits. Guards fire poisoned darts at her, driving her back to Warden. She abandons physical attacks and tries to rend his dreamscape, but she cannot breach his psychic defenses despite trying all night long. When she finally collapses from exhaustion, Warden carries her out of the field.
On their way back to Magdalen, they come across a group of red-jackets. One lies bleeding, his hand torn from his arm: the result of an Emim attack. Warden orders him taken for treatment. Back at the residence, they meet the Overseer—the Reph responsible for keeping performers in line—and his charge, an Oracle. The Overseer invites Paige to a “special celebration” in honor of the 20th Bone Season. He wants her to perform, but Warden forbids it. Paige and the Oracle exchange knowing glances, and he leaves with his keeper.
Chapters 6-10 Analysis
In this section, Shannon continues to add new flourishes to her intricate world, creating a barrage of fantastical encounters with such creatures as the carnivorous Emim, which lurk as an unseen but constant threat, and restless spirits in the aether, who wait to be set free or to be used as weapons. Woven throughout the entire landscape are the ruthless Rephaim, who habitually abuse the humans in their charge. However, amidst the ever-shifting tapestry of this otherworldly narrative, Shannon makes it a point to inject real social problems, chief among them being the concept of substance abuse as a coping mechanism for the trauma of captivity. This dynamic is most visibly demonstrated in the character of Tilda, who abuses “aster” in order to drift away from her nightmarish existence on a cloud of smoke.
By creating a number of marginalized groups, Shannon also addresses the pervasive human issue of social and economic inequality. The “Harlies” provide a prime example of this dynamic, and even their name displays Shannon’s predilection for utilizing obscure historical references to enhance the richness of her world-building, for the neologism “Harlies” is itself derived from the real-world term “harlequin,” a comic stock character taken directly from the commedia dell’arte, the 15th-century tradition of Italian street theater. In Shannon’s world, the Harlies must perform upon command for passing Rephs and endure the most squalid of living arrangements as the price for their cowardice or, in Liss’s case, their defiance. Collectively, they represent a marginalized community, and as such, they do not enjoy the privileges of red-jackets (better food, housing, and medical care). Even within the ranks of voyants, however, a hierarchy exists, for “soothsayers [like Liss] were considered the lowest class of voyants” (92), and when a voyant’s identity becomes so entwined with their ability, some immediately fall to the bottom of the pecking order, scorned even by other voyants. With this unspoken social arrangement, Shannon creates a subtext that critiques the interactions of oppressed groups, highlighting the potential for them to turn even on each other when forced to seek the few available scraps of privilege allowed by the ruling classes.
During this section, Paige’s relationship with Warden also takes on greater complexity. She initially sees him solely as her captor, someone to defy despise; and indeed, he can often be abusive, locking her in her room and dictating the terms of her very existence. However, he cannot be classed as a simplistic villain, for he also shows flashes of protectiveness toward her. For example, he refuses to allow her to be paraded around a festival like a common performer, and he clearly sees her as special, implying that his harsh training regimen may turn out to be for her own good. His ultimate plans for her, as well as his relationship with Nashira and the other “Rephs,” continue to remain a mystery, but even in these initial interactions, Warden seems to be more than just a prison boss.
These chapters also raise the issue of resistance against oppression. Paige, Julian, and Liss’s discussion of a past rebellion and its deadly aftermath (the death of every human under Rephaite charge) serves the practical purpose of injecting exposition into the plot in a fairly dynamic way, while foreshadowing the potential consequences of any future rebellions that the captive humans may choose to foment. Although Liss considers resisting, she is a realist and knows that death would be the inevitable outcome. Yet still, she is ashamed of her compliance with the current social order, saying to the others, “I know what you must think of me. You think I’ve got no backbone” (125). Narratives like Shannon’s demand heroes and are thus designed to glorify the resistors, but Liss serves as a necessary anchor of pragmatism in this conversation, and in the story as a whole, for hers is the voice of the vast majority of the oppressed, who keep a low profile in their attempts to survive. She has borne witness to the consequences of defiance, and while she sympathizes with Paige’s anger (and shares it), she does not have the luxury of letting it guide her actions.
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