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

Rosie Rightly no longer danced. She stared at the balloons with an expression of abject misery. But she did not move.

Beatrice stumbled back from the bright melee, dragging Rosie Rightly by her pink chiffon princess sleeve.

“Let’s go, Rosie. Show me the way out of Chuckle City. You can come, too. I’ll take care of you, I—”

“Too late.” Rosie Rightly’s tinsel-lashed eyes were bright with tears she could no longer cry, but her never-ending smile showed a full crescent of teeth. “It’s the Big Bah-Ha for me and for you, lambikin, unless—”

A balloon aminal loomed too close, leering. Beatrice batted at it with a fist and pulled Rosie Rightly out of range behind a charred building. Rosie Rightly began to slump against the wall, but Beatrice took her blue head between her hands and pressed their foreheads together.

“Focus. We have to stay in the Big Bah-Ha, you said, unless…?”

Rosie Rightly fiddled with her gloves. They had torn in the scuffle. Beatrice saw her wrists through the pink net, where two large wounds glowed as red as coals. Seeing her look, Rosie Rightly clasped her hands behind her.

“Unless,” she stammered, “the—the Gray Harlequin releases you. There’s a place beyond the mirror, but—but it’s so hard. Hard to get there. Too hard.”

They stared at each other, clown and girl. Beatrice tried to interpret Rosie Rightly’s expression. The shine of her very-nearly-tears had already vanished. Her smile was fixed. She tore her puffy pink sleeve from Beatrice’s grip and fluffed it up again.

“Poor Bee-Bee,” she giggled. “So serious all the time! If you want, I’ll take you to the Gray Harlequin. He’s probably by the mirror. Always looking into it, and no wonder, for he’s the prettiest clown of all. He wears the August Crown. I think he’s been here forever. Or at least,” she added, “since I arrived. Same thing.”

“This is where dead kids have to go? The Big Bah-Ha?” Diodiance scanned the lay of the land, her round brown eyes skeptical. “Maybe I’ll just become a Tall One instead. Wear a white light on my shoulder. Eat some bones. I tell ya, Tex, our good ol’ gravy yard is lookin’ like a big bucketful of screamin’ monkey-fun from where I’m standin’.”

Tex scratched under his left arm. “Look there.” He pointed to a sunken gray groove where an empty sock ringed in rusty lace lay. Picking it up, he put it in his pocket.

“Very astute,” breathed the Flabberghast. “What keen eyes you have, Young Texas! Like the Prince of Peregrines, you watch the world below.”

“Shut up, Flabby,” said Tex.

The Flabberghast crossed his arms, portraying nonchalance not very well at all. The corner of his mouth got up a tic. His peacock coat swung with the force of his shrug. All the Tall Ones wore white lights upon their shoulders, but the top of the Flabberghast’s coat sleeve carried only a scorch mark. The Barka Gang used to spend whole nights speculating where that light had gone.

“Children,” he observed in a hurt voice, “too often take the aggressive myth of the Napoleon complex to an unbecoming extreme.”

Granny Two-Shoes cleared her throat. It made a sound in the dead gray air like a wooden spoon banged with no particular rhythm against a plastic bucket. She put her hand over her heart. Had it missed a beat? Was this dying? Was she dead?

The Flabberghast’s painted-on creases softened when he gazed at her. “No. Not yet, Miss Granny. But our time here must perforce be limited, for these are the deadlands, and you must not lavish them too long with the extravagance of your living youth. Perhaps in the past, you might have stayed a trifle longer, but the very equivalence of air here seems sucked dry. This land,” he sighed, “is too much changed from what it was.”

Granny Two-Shoes paused to nuzzle her face against Sheepdog Sal’s brown fur. In return for this she received a reassuring lick. It cleared her head.

In these deadlands , thought Granny Two-Shoes, might merely being alive mean being too alive? Are we flaunting our liveliness to these dead gray skies? Are we attracting the attention of the dead? Can the dead harm the living? What does harm mean here, where hurt doesn’t necessarily stop with the cessation of a heartbeat? Where there is no hope of healing?

The Flabberghast caught her eye and held a finger to his lips. Hush was implied, but all he said aloud was, “Check your cuts, children,” in a voice that even Tex obeyed.

Diodiance dabbed at her wrist, at the place she had torn it against the Flabberghast’s fingernail. “Still bleedin’.”

“Good,” said the Flabberghast. “We can stay here until your scab forms and closes. Keep a lively eye upon it. And another on the sky.”

Tex’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What’re we lookin’ for?”

For answer, Granny Two-Shoes threw out her arms and flapped so vigorously she almost fell off of Sheepdog Sal. Sal turned around in circles, trying to keep her rider astride.

“Bad birds?” Diodiance guessed.

“Sad birds,” Tex corrected.

“Not birds at all,” said the Flabberghast. “But”—he bowed to Granny Two-Shoes—“I am impressed.”

Nothing more was said on the subject. The Flabberghast unfurled his hands in a herding gesture and once more they all started moving along the gray groove. Tex and Diodiance marched at the vanguard, taking inventory of their pockets, swapping out what they didn’t want with each other. PayDay candy bars for watermelon-flavored Jolly Ranchers, bullet casings for smooth pebbles, bones for crayons. A happy breeze riffled their hair like a mother’s fingers, conveying sunshine and safety and the promise of joyful rest. Gone too soon.

The Flabberghast, taking up the rear, sniffed for traces of that breeze when it departed. He frowned at what lingered.

Equidistant between them, Granny Two-Shoes rode Sheepdog Sal at a pleasant trot. She didn’t bother listening in on Tex’s and Diodiance’s conversation, which she generally considered comfortable white noise to stimulate her own ruminations. She didn’t look over her shoulder to see what shenanigans the Flabberghast got up to; he had his own agenda, and it was not hers. But she did check the twin holsters she wore beneath her nightgown. One for her switchblade. One for Beatrice’s slingshot. She was ready for anything.

Rosie Rightly led Beatrice away from the burning buildings. They passed a dusty little market square with tattered awnings over abandoned booths that read, “tender leonard’s jokes and gags!” and “solomon sot’s society of carefree kiddies!” and “frabjous the fool’s popular puppets!”

“Where is everyone?”

Rosie Rightly shrugged. “Those’re the clowns that did their job. Made the kids laugh, helped ’em move on. When the kids moved on, so did they. That’s why the Big Bah-Ha’s here—’cause it’s never funny when a kid dies. We have to learn to laugh again, before we can go through…to whatever’s next.”

“That’s what all the clowns are for?” asked Beatrice.

Rosie Rightly nodded. “That’s what they were for, way back before I got here. I think the Big Bah-Ha was different then. But that’s done with. The Gray Harlequin says we’re all clowns now.”

Beatrice tugged one of her braids. One of her ribbons was missing, and another had gone all loosey-goosey. The thought of losing another ribbon gave her a sick jolt of panic. She tightened it fiercely. The panic receded.

“Were you always a clown, Rosie?”

“No,” Rosie Rightly sighed. “I just…never learned to laugh.” She touched her painted face.

“Oh.”