C.S.E. Cooney - Bone Swans - Stories

“At your convenience, Master Piper,” said she. “Maurice.”

“Dark work? Sad?” I cried. “No such thing! Say, rather, a lark! The old plague days of Doornwold’ll be nothing to it! My Folk scurry at the chance to run amuck. If you hadn’t’ve happened along, Dora Rose, with your great tragedy and all, I’d’ve had to invent an excuse to misbehave. Of such stuff is drama made! Come on, you two. I have a plan.”

We threw Nicolas’s old tattercoat over Dora Rose’s silver gown and urchined up her face with mud. I stuffed her pale-as-lace hair under my wharf boy’s cap and didn’t even mind when she turned and pinched me for pawing at her too ardently. Me in the lead, Dora Rose behind, Nicolas bringing up the rear, we marched into Amandale like three mortal-born bumpkins off for a weekend in the big city.

Dwelling by the Hill, Nicolas had lived as near neighbor to Amandale for I don’t know how many years. But he was so often gone on his tours, in cities under the Hill that made even the Queen’s City seem a hermit’s hovel, that he wandered now through Amandale’s busy gates with widening and wonder-bright eyes. His head swiveled like it sat on an owl’s neck. The woebegone down-bend of his lips began a slow, gladdening, upward trend that was heartbreaking to watch. So I stole only backward glances, sidelong like.

“Maurice.” He hurried to my side as we passed a haberdashery.

“Yes, Nicolas?”

“You really live here?”

“All my life.”

“Does it,” he stooped to speak directly in my ear, “does it ever stop singing ?”

I grinned over at Dora Rose, who turned her face away to smile. “If by singing you mean stinking , then no. This is a typical day in Amandale, my friend. A symphony of odors!” He looked so puzzled that I took pity and explained, “According to the princess over there, I’m one who can only ever hear music through my nose.”

“Ah!” Nicolas’s black eyes beamed. “I see. Yes! You’re a synesthete!”

Before I could reply, a fire-spinner out front of Cobblersawl’s Cakes and Comfits caught his eye, and Nicolas stopped walking to burst into wild applause. The fire-spinner grinned and embarked upon a particularly intricate pattern of choreography.

No one was exempt, I realized. Not me, and not the pretty fire-spinner. Not even Dora Rose. Plainly it was impossible to keep from smiling at Nicolas when Nicolas was pleased about something. I nudged Dora Rose.

“Hear that, Ladybird? I’m a synesthete!”

“Maurice, if you ever met a synesthete, you’d probably try to eat it.”

“Probably. Would it look anything like you?”

Dora Rose did not dignify this with a response but whacked the back of my head, and her tiny smile twisted into something perilously close to a grin. We ducked into the bakery, pulling Nicolas after us so he wouldn’t start piping along to the fire-spinner’s sequences, sending her off to an early death by flaming poi.

One of the elder Cobblersawl children—Ilse, her name was—stood at the bread counter, looking bored but dutiful. A softhearted lass, our Ilse. Good for a scrap of cheese on occasion. Not above saving a poor rodent if said rodent happened to be trapped under her big brother’s boot. She’d not recognize me in this shape, of course, but she might have a friendly feeling for me if I swaggered up to her with a sparkle in my beady little eyes and greeted her with a wheedling, “Hallo, Miss…”

She frowned. “No handouts. Store policy.”

“No, you misunderstand. We’re looking for…for Froggit? Young Master Froggit Cobblersawl? We have business with him.” Dora Rose poked me between my shoulder blades. Her nails were as sharp as mine. “If you please?” I squeaked.

Ilse’s frown deepened to a scowl. “Froggit’s sick.”

I bet he was. I’d be sick too if I’d swallowed half my tongue.

“Sick of…politics maybe?” I waggled my eyebrows.

A smell came off the girl like vaporized cheddar. Fear. Sweaty, stinky, delicious fear.

“If you’re from the Mayor,” Ilse whispered, “tell her that Mama spanked Froggit for not behaving as he ought. We know we’re beholden. We know we owe the fancy new shop to her. And—and our arrangement to provide daily bread to the houses on Merchant Prince Row is entirely due her benevolence. Please, Papa cried so hard when he heard how Froggit failed us. We were so proud when his name came up in the Swan Hunter lottery. Really, it’s such an honor, we know it’s an honor, to work for the Mayor on our very own orchestra, but—it’s just he’s so young. He didn’t understand. Didn’t know, didn’t know better. But I’m to take his place next hunt. I will be the twentieth hunter. I will do what he couldn’t. I promise.” She unfisted her hands and opened both palms in supplication. “Please don’t take him to prison. Don’t disappear him like you did…”

She swallowed whatever she was about to say when Dora Rose stepped forward. Removing my cap, she shook out that uncanny hair of hers and held Ilse’s gaze. Silence swamped the bakery as Ilse realized we weren’t Ulia Gol’s not-so-secret police.

“I want to thank him,” Dora Rose said. “That is all. The last swan they killed was my sister.”

“Oh,” Ilse whimpered. “Oh, you shouldn’t be here. You really shouldn’t be here.”

“Please,” said Dora Rose.

Her shaking fingers glimmering by the light pouring off the swan girl’s hair, Ilse pointed out a back door. We left the bakery as quickly as we could, not wanting to discomfit her further, or incite her to rouse the alarm.

The exit led into a private courtyard behind the bakery. Froggit was back by the whitewashed outhouse, idly sketching cartoons upon it with a stubby bit of charcoal. Most of these involved the Mayor and Hans in various states of decay, although in quite a few of them, the Swan Huntress Ocelot played a putrescent role. Froggit’s shoulder blades scrunched when our shadows fell over him, but he did not turn around.

I opened my mouth to speak, but it was Nicolas who dropped to the ground at Froggit’s side, crossing his legs like a fortune-teller and studying the outhouse wall with rapt interest.

“But this is extraordinary! It must be preserved! They will have to remove this entire apparatus to a museum. What, in the meantime, is to be done about waterproofing?” Nicolas examined the art in minute detail, his nose almost touching the graffitied boards. “What to do, what to do,” he muttered.

Taking his charcoal stub, Froggit scrawled, “BURN IT!” in childish writing over his latest cartoon. Then he scowled at Nicolas, who widened his eyes at him. Nicolas began nodding, at first slowly, then with increasing vigor.

“Oh, yes! Indeed! Yes, of course! Art is best when ephemeral, don’t you think? How your admirers will mourn its destruction. How they will paint their faces with the ashes of your art. And you will stand so”—Nicolas hopped up to demonstrate—“arms crossed, with your glare that is like the glare of a tiger, and they will sob and wail and beg you to draw again— just once more please, Master Froggit —but you shall break your charcoal and their hearts in one snap. Yes! You will take all this beauty from them, as they have taken your tongue. I see. It is stunning. I salute you.”

So saying, Nicolas drew out his pipe and began a dirge.

When he finished many minutes later, me and Dora Rose collapsed on the ground, sweating from the excruciatingly stately waltz we’d endured together. Well, she’d endured. I rather enjoyed it, despite never having waltzed in my life, least of all in a minor key.

Froggit himself, who much to his consternation had started waltzing with an old rake, let it fall against the outhouse wall and eyeballed the lot of us with keen curiosity and not a little apprehension. What did he see when he looked at us, this little boy without a tongue?