Devon Monk - Magic to the Bone

“Allie girl. Who does this to you?” Mama strode over to me. She reached up and gripped my face, her small, cool fingers on either side of my jaw. “This bad. A hit? Someone hit you?”

“It’s my fault,” I said. “I need a place to sleep. I can’t go home.”

She gave me a long, steady stare. I wondered what she was looking for in my eyes. Didn’t know if it was there. Didn’t much care. The room was going black, the tadpoles well on their way to full frogdom, and the pain in my head and bones sort of rattled through me in waves.

Mama’s touch was like a cool rag on a fever. Like Zayvion’s fingers. No, not like that, more like what I’d always hoped my own mother would do for me—be caring and soft and make the pain go away when I hurt. Mama’s hands created a wall between me and the pain, and I wondered if the pain wouldn’t mind staying away for a while so I could get a little shut-eye.

Before I actually dozed off, Mama got tired of looking in my eyes. She lifted her hands from my face and nodded. “You hurt. Stay here. Upstairs. You think you can go upstairs, Allie girl?”

“Sure,” I said. It came out a little slurred and slow, but true to my word, I pushed off the counter and let Mama, and her strong hand on my elbow, then her strong arm around my waist, lead me across the room and through the door to a narrow hallway where a zag of wooden stairs laddered up.

I remember taking the first step. The rest of the climb got fuzzy after that, and the next thing I saw was Boy—the one with the beard and ponytail who is usually in the kitchen—looking down at me. I was apparently flat on my back, and I hoped I was in a bed.

“What?” I said. Then Boy moved back and Mama was there. For reasons I didn’t really want to analyze, I was really glad she was around right now.

She looked down toward my feet, which I thought rather odd; then she was back in my line of vision and something thick and soft was pulled up over me. A quilt. Oh, loves. It was almost enough to make a distrustful, jaded girl like me weep. Almost.

“You sleep now, Allie girl,” Mama said firmly. “You sleep. Mama’s here.”

I had never been so happy in all my life to do exactly what someone told me to do.

Happy Birthday to me.

Cody used to like rocking best of all, but now he liked sitting very still and watching Kitten play. Kitten wasn’t very good at walking yet, but she could find the plate of water Cody put on the floor for her, and could stay quiet when the guard came by to look inside his room every day and night. She slept under his chin, and he liked that. She was warm, and good, and fun. She was the best friend ever.

Cody didn’t know how long he and Kitten had been friends, but the cut on his stomach still hurt and, if he moved the wrong way, it felt hot and stiff like maybe it would bleed again. It didn’t feel like it was getting better, and that worried him. But he was shy, so the guard didn’t care that he undressed all by himself before taking a shower, and the guard didn’t mind when he took a little extra meat from lunch or dinner and hid it in his pocket for Kitten.

Except that he still missed the sun and sky and his friends back at the home, things were really good.

Kitten was sniffing at the bottom of the door that would not open while Cody sat in the middle of the floor, holding very still, watching her. She mewed and ran across the floor to Cody. She still wasn’t very good at running, and she tripped and slid.

Cody laughed.

Then he stopped laughing. The lock on the door that would not open clicked, and the doorknob moved. Someone was coming. Not a guard. Not a friend.

The Snake man, the older, smarter part of him said. Hide Kitten. Hold still.

Cody scooped Kitten off the floor and put her inside his shirt. She wriggled and poked him with her claws, but Cody bit his lip and did not move.

The Snake man was coming. Coming to get him.

The door opened and the Snake man walked in. He smiled and his dark snake eyes were shiny. He looked happy on the outside, but inside he was excited. Excited to kill.

Cody wanted to cry.

Oh, the older, smarter part of him said. Go away, Cody. Fast. Think about the sunshine. Think about the sky.

And Cody tried to. He tried to think about how nice the sunshine was, how warm and pretty. He thought about how it was yellow sometimes, and orange, and red, and white. He thought about the sky, but couldn’t remember if it was blue or white or gray. He was scared. Really scared. He held his arm over Kitten, who was under his shirt. She stopped squirming.

The Snake man didn’t say anything. He didn’t lock the door behind him. Cody knew why. Someone was in the doorway. A big man, bigger than Cody had ever seen.

Death, the older, smarter part of him said.

And Cody knew he was right. That man, that big man was death. And in his pocket were bones, little children’s bones full of bad magic. Bones like the one Snake man had used to hurt him.

Cody whimpered.

The big man walked into the room. Just one step. Just one. He looked at Cody for so long that Cody started crying. The big man did not come any closer, but Cody could feel the big man’s hands move over his skin, squeezing him to see if he was ripe.

“Well?” Snake man asked without looking away from Cody.

“No,” the big man said. “Broken as a shattered jug. Won’t be nothing left in him to use. That’s a shame. A damn shame. You were someone once, boy. Someone.” Then the big man turned and walked away.

But the Snake man did not turn. The Snake man did not walk away. He came closer. And he was smiling.

He pulled a coin out of his pocket—a magic coin—and a little bone. He had something shiny in his other hand too, but it was not a coin. It was a knife.

The Snake man smiled more. “Good-bye, Cody. It’s been nice doing business with you.”

Cody didn’t know which thing would hurt him more, the knife or the magic in the coin or the magic in the bone.

All of it, the older, smarter part of him said. Reach for me.

But it was hard to reach to the older, smarter part of him. He had tried to do it a lot before, and never did it right.

The knife flashed up, the Snake man intoned a mantra that was so bad, so very bad. The coin filled the Snake man’s words with power and the bone changed it into something worse. Into death. Cody knew he was going to die. In the dark, without sunshine.

No! The older, smarter part of him said. Reach for the coin, for the magic in the coin.

Cody was crying now. He didn’t want to die. Didn’t want Kitten to die. So he reached for the coin, for the warm, pretty magic there. And he took some of it. He took it and the older, smarter part of him reached out for it too, and reached out for him.

Hang on, the older, smarter part of him said. Don’t let go, no matter what.

Cody held on. Held on while the Snake man finished the angry, bad magic. Held on while the knife came down. Held on while the pain shot through him and made him scream. Held on to the older, smarter part of him, while the older, smarter part of him held on to him and to something else—the magic in the coin. Cody wished he could have said good-bye to Kitten.

The knife pushed under his skin again.

He wanted to scream, but couldn’t hear anything except the older, smarter part of him chanting soft words that moved the magic in a different way, painting a picture of sunshine and sky. Then the pain was so big that it covered up the sunshine, it blacked out the sky, and Cody was squished into a dark box where he couldn’t see or hear anything anymore, not even the older, smarter part of himself.