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

The other boys looked past the gate with longing, but some dread gripped them still. They turned their backs on the great elephants, and trudged away into the low hills of the Big Bah-Ha.

“Don’t they want outta here?” asked Diodiance.

“Not ready yet,” said Beatrice. “Maybe they still see a mirror. Or think they don’t deserve to laugh. I dunno. But give ’em time. They got all the time in forever.”

When one way or another the Gacy Boys were gone, a few children crept down the hill from Chuckle City. Rosie Rightly led three rustics, four grotesques, and a tramp riding an old white tiger from the Big Top. Pacing them, a contingent of eleven beautiful women, whose four arms and four legs apiece were clear like crystal and flute-thin. Their red hair blew around them like the flames of Chuckle City. The red hourglasses of their eyes shone.

“Those’re the Emilies,” Beatrice explained to the Barka Gang. “They guard the Elephant Gate.”

Granny Two-Shoes, still hanging tightly onto Beatrice’s neck, strained to see. Beatrice swung her onto her shoulders for a better view. Rosie Rightly came bounding up to them.

“Hi, Bee-Bee! Bee-Bee! Hi! Hello! Is it true? The Gray Harlequin is dead?”

“Done to death by Granny here.” Beatrice patted Granny Two-Shoes’s knee. Rosie Rightly took one of Granny’s pink Mary Janes and kissed the toe of it.

“Thank you, girlington!” she breathed. “Oh, thanks ever so. He made me bring him here, you see. Back at the end of days. No one came home that night. The other houses in my neighborhood were all on fire, and the Tall Ones marched through town toward Hillside Cemetery, wearing white lights on their shoulders. My house was dark, and I was hiding, but the Gray Harlequin knocked on my front door anyway. He saw me through the screen and came right in. He tore my wrists on his teeth and painted me with my own blood. Then he bit his mouth and bled on me from the wound, and walked right through my skin to the deadlands, taking my soul along with him.”

She showed her glowing wounds. Before Beatrice could say anything—and what could she say but “I’m sorry?” Too paltry and lacking by half—a wind from the Elephant Gate rushed upon them, bathing Rosie Rightly in light, turning her wounds to gold.

“Oh!” Rosie Rightly clapped delighted hands to her mouth and bounced. “Look! Look! Look! Big brother, and little brother, and baby brother, too! And Papa, and Mama, and puppy, and kitty, and Grandma, and Cousin Albert, and…” Her laughter pealed out. She bounced right past the huge stone elephants and into somewhere else.

There, too, went the rustics, the grotesques, the tramp, and the tiger. But the Eleven Lovely Emilies stayed. They settled near the gate and set to spinning. Something silver and flowing. Something fine, of silk.

Beatrice looked toward Chuckle City, frowning. “There should be more. There were hundreds of clowns—kids—back there.”

“It never happens all at once,” the Flabberghast told her. All this time, he had been sitting on the ground quietly chewing bits of the Gray Harlequin until the corpse was riddled. For the first time since dying, Beatrice was glad she didn’t have a stomach.

“Oh,” he exclaimed. “Look at this! I had all but forgotten!”

Bending at the waist, he reached out and swiped a glinting object from the gray dust. It was the August Crown. In his hands it twinkled and fluttered, shimmered and rang as if asking him a question.

The Flabberghast laughed in answer and told the chiming crown, “Me? Oh, no. You are quite mistaken if you think that.” He shook his curly orange head and popped another of the Gray Harlequin’s fingers into his mouth. He glanced up at Beatrice with his strange black eyes, but aimed his chatter at the crown.

“Despite present evidence to the contrary,” he said around his mouthful, “I really do prefer bones. I like my cardboard hut out front of the gravy yard. I even find it enjoyable to keep up with the kiddy gangs, and learn their rhymes, and bear witness to their final wars. And, no offense”—Beatrice wondered who he thought would take offense; the August Crown wasn’t the world’s liveliest conversationalist—“I just hate babysitting. Really, this entire venture stretched even my illustrious ambassadorial tolerance to its absolute limit, and this with the Barka Gang being doubtless the least vexing specimens of their species. I chalk that up to the benefits of strong leadership, you know. Nothing like discipline, and cleverness, and kindness in a leader to create harmonious cohesion in the underlings.”

He eyed Beatrice. He twirled the August Crown in his long white hands.

Startled, she took a step backward. “I don’t think…”

But the Flabberghast spun up from the ground like a motley tornado, a bone sticking out of his mouth like a cigarette, his long, oddly jointed hands extended, and plopped the August Crown upon her head. Granny Two-Shoes patted it and laughed. The sound was rare and small. Barely a breath.

“There!” cried the Flabberghast. “Three cheers for Beatrice, Queen of the Big Bah-Ha!”

No one cheered, but Diodiance did stretch to her tiptoes to ding one of the August Crown’s bells.

“Ha! Look atcha, Queen B! Ain’t you just like one of those ladygods your Dad used to whopper on about? Not Durga. One of the others. Those deadland queens. Remember all those stories you told us, B? ’Bout Hel and Ereshkigoogle and Pursopoly?”

“Persephone,” Beatrice murmured. Then, with longing, “Dad.”

She could feel him right behind her, so near, just beyond the stone elephants and the warm golden splash of light. She wanted to go to him, go right now, tell him how she’d lived, how she’d died, everything that had happened since, ask him what came next, and if they’d ever have to part ways again.

Beatrice sighed, and turned away from the Elephant Gate. “All right. I’ll wear your August Crown.”

The Flabberghast’s voice was gentle. “It is not mine, Beatrice. It is yours—very simply, because it needs you. And it is only for a little while, after all.”

“I know.” Beatrice laughed a little. “Ten years, right? Give or take.”

Granny Two-Shoes climbed down from her shoulders and into her arms again, and Beatrice clasped her close and looked over at Tex and Diodiance. “What do you think, Barkas dear? Figure I can sort out this here Big Bah-Ha in ten years or so?”

Tex blew a raspberry. “B, you’ll have it spick-and-span by the time I get slapped up. That’s what? Four years? Three if my growth spurt comes young. Whaddya think, Di?”

Diodiance shrugged. “Two years tops, she’s whupped this place to shape. After that, you ’n’ me, Tex, we’ll get here in no time flat. But I’m thinking, Queen B, we’d best not pass the Elephant Gate ourselves till Granny Two-Shoes joins us. No fair tryin’ to make us laugh for joy before then. We all go in together or not at all.”

“I will wait,” Beatrice promised. “We will all wait.”

The Flabberghast took Granny Two-Shoes’ hand in his and squinted to inspect her wrist. “Hark, friends. Our time draws to an end. Your scabs are almost completely formed.”

Granny Two-Shoes tugged her hand free and pressed it to her heart. Yes, she noticed. It was squeezing. Had been feeling strained for some time. Her ears made a noise like being born.

She remembered. Granny Two-Shoes remembered everything.

Beatrice helped her up onto Sheepdog Sal’s back and tousled her tangled hair. “See you later, kiddo. In every pinch, just ask yourself, ‘what would Durga do?’ Keep that knife sharp. Serve those Rubberbabies ding-danged tarnation in a soup tureen whenever you can.”

Granny Two-Shoes nodded. Looked down. Blinked and blinked at Sal’s flopsy ears so as not to cry. It was not yet night. She only cried at night.