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

Tex emerged from his blind, brushing leaves from his hair. Granny rode up on Sal’s back, clutching her fur like a mane. She dismounted beneath the arched entrance of the gravy yard, with its creakily swinging sign that said welcome to hillside in cut out letters.

Having seen what was to come from way back in her gutter, Little Granny Two-Shoes was the only Barka who did not jump when a great voice shattered the silence.

“Good afternoon, children!”

That voice was like a Slinky toy going downhill, like shouting into a well after someone fell in, like a piece of expensive caramel melting in a slant of afternoon sunlight. It was a voice that made Diodiance pirouette, and set a rigid scowl upon Tex’s brow. Sheepdog Sal began to bark. Little Granny Two-Shoes scratched her just beneath the jaw.

“By all the skulls of Arlington National Cemetery!” cried the Flabberghast. “If it isn’t the Barka Gang!”

They all turned to look. Banana-yellow shoes rocked about his feet like dinghies. Up. Legs as long as stilts and thin as straight pins in their loose white silk trousers. Up. Past a coat of sweeping peacock feathers, a vest of red brocade, a fine lawn cravat. Up, and up, and up to his white-painted face, his long black mouth, his long black eyes, those curls of flaming orange hair peeking out from beneath a sequined derby hat.

“And how may I help you?” asked the Flabberghast politely.

“Beatrice is dead,” Tex blurted before Diodiance said something happy and solicitous.

“Ah.”

“We need her stuff for a death rite. We’re pretty sure you have it.”

“I see. Yes. That might prove…problematic.”

Tex stepped forward with fists up, to show the Flabberghast the meaning of problematic , but Diodiance shoved him to the side before he got too close. He fell against Sheepdog Sal’s flank, and Sal turned to lick his wrist. Granny Two-Shoes took his hand in hers, and this more than anything stopped Tex from launching himself at the Flabberghast.

The Flabberghast gave no sign of noticing this altercation. His gaze had meandered beyond the Barka Gang. Beyond the black iron gates, a few of the Tall Ones left off their endless feasting and began to drift curiously toward them. The white lights on their shoulders flickered and burned.

The Flabberghast put a long white hand on top of Diodiance’s head. Blissfully, she leaned in.

“Allow me to offer armistice and hospitality. Come with me into my hut. As per the edicts stipulated in the original bargain between vestigial Homo sapiens and the Tall Ones, I shall not harm a single split hair on any one of your heads till the day you are marked to die. We must speak further of your Beatrice, but the situation is far too complex for casual graveside chatter. While I do not doubt my colleagues would find our forthcoming conversation stimulating, as civilized people, we may exercise the right to exclude whom we will from our private affairs. Do not you agree?”

“Ain’t goin’ in your stinky old house,” Tex muttered.

“Fine,” Diodiance snapped at him. “Stay outside, you cowardbaby. That’ll get Queen B her death rite quick enough.”

“Aw, Di!”

Granny Two-Shoes, who still held his hand, now squeezed with intent. Tex allowed her to tug him into the cardboard hut after Diodiance, with Sheepdog Sal trotting behind, and the Flabberghast following last.

The first thing they saw, after the marble-floored foyer itself, was her skin.

It hung from one blank wall, stretched out and tacked there with silver nails. They knew the skin belonged to Beatrice because her hair was red. Not orange-red like the Flabberghast’s. Red like when a fire dies.

“Beatrice!” Diodiance screamed. This time Tex did punch the Flabberghast. Right in the knee.

The Flabberghast stumbled against a small table that held, among other things, a flensing tool and a familiar brown loafer (a scuffed size six, women’s) all under the coating of gray dust that comes from crunching bones. He hit the table’s edge and his peacock coat snarled him. Searching for purchase, his hands closed on air. This close up, he was not graceful. Not like he’d always seemed, sitting out in his blue lawn chair with his legs stretched before him like unfurled fire hoses.

Diodiance flinched against the wall, shielding Granny Two-Shoes with her body, Tex at her side, Beatrice’s skin at her back. Granny Two-Shoes saw something on the floor and bent to pick it up. Beatrice’s slingshot.

This put the Flabberghast between them and the door. He stood very still now, arms hanging loosely at his sides.

“You killed her!” Diodiance said. It wasn’t a sob, and it wasn’t a growl, but it was something like both.

“I do not eat the living,” said the Flabberghast.

“You killed her and stripped her flesh and ate her bones.”

The Flabberghast splayed one hand over his stomach. His diamond teeth gleamed and glinted, as if a spotlight in his belly shone up and out his throat, through his lips, casting rainbows all around him.

“She died at my feet,” he said. “She was in the final stages when I found her. The slaprash marked her face, all down one side. Nothing to save. She was just that age.” He shrugged, as if to say, “The rest you know. I am what I am.”

Tex gnawed his lip to keep back a wail.

“I wish your Beatrice had come to me earlier,” reflected the Flabberghast. “Those underground have informed us here of a matter in the deadlands that needs our immediate attention. Not being bound by the black iron gates, I am the only Tall One at liberty to perform the task. However. To do so, I shall need the help of a living child. Willing help, I should say. Otherwise, the door to the deadlands opens only one way, and I have no particular desire to be stuck on the far side of it. Had your Beatrice trusted me more, or perhaps loved you less, she would have done splendidly. She was so strong. Not fearless, but not one to fear foolishly. This journey would have prepared her for the one she now must undergo. Alas, she died too soon. I liked her. I might have used her to better purpose than as a lunchbox.” He paused. “I don’t suppose any of you might volunteer to be of assis—”

“Never!” spat Diodiance through her tears. “Never, until the end of the end of the world! I’d sooner slap myself right now and bleed out bawlin’ murder!”

Hearing the quaver in her voice, Tex slung an arm around her, and stated, “Me, neither!”

His free hand grasped a stone in his pocket. He was already gauging distance, velocity, angle, wondering if Tall Ones felt pain like humans, if they had brains to concuss, if the great holes that were their eyes could be put out…

The Flabberghast turned those black-dark eyes on him. Tex’s hand went numb.

“A pity.” The Flabberghast’s long fingers drummed the silver buttons on his red brocade vest. “For, in return for your ready collaboration, I would offer my brave adventurer a chance to see Beatrice again. I need to travel to a certain level of the deadlands, to the place she now resides. Only a child may bring me there. And only a living child may bring me out again.”

A bark, and Tex and Diodiance sprang apart. Granny Two-Shoes, once again mounted like a maharani atop Sheepdog Sal, came forward. Her thin blond hair had not been combed in two days. There was chocolate on her face from the icing she’d eaten for breakfast, a cut on her knee where she’d fallen that morning. But her eyes were steady, blue as the Flabberghast’s were black, and she held out her hand. He stared down at her.

“Even in an epoch that deplores such conventions,” said he, “and though you are by far the most superior three-year-old representative of your species I have ever come across, I cannot help but feel that you are not quite of an age to consent.” His long black mouth twisted a little as if he wanted to say something more. Instead he flipped his palm like a playing card. When Granny laid her own hand there, he bowed over it.