The Bone Garden

by Heather Kassner

  They waited for the creaking of the door, for Miss Vesper to investigate, for an opportunity to grab Guy and run off into the night, anywhere else, whether they belonged or not. The Hand, Irréelle was quite sure, would have no problem finding them afterward.

  And with Dr. Hauser’s journal secure in the pocket of Lass’s coat, they still had a chance of understanding his magic.

  Irréelle tingled with impatience. She peeked around the corner again. Miss Vesper still faced away, poking at the fire with a stick. Guy, however, happened to look up just then and catch Irréelle’s eye. He made the slightest movement, more a tic of his head than anything else, a signal that told her no.

  At the same time, Miss Vesper snapped her head toward the house. The back door swung open. “Don’t move,” she said to Guy, and then took one step after another across the patio. She slipped out of sight into the house.

  “Now,” Irréelle whispered to Lass.

  They crept through the grass to Guy. As they drew closer, Irréelle realized his ankles and wrists were bound with twine, and she broke into a run.

  “You’ve got to go. You’ve got to get out of here,” he said, but Irréelle bent to untie him.

  “Not without you,” she said.

  “We are all in this together.” Lass crouched beside Irréelle and did what she could to undo the knots one-handed. Guy’s eyes widened. “We won’t leave anyone behind. Including the Hand, which I think you have already met. My other hand, that is.”

  “It’s yours?” Guy raised his eyebrow. “We really aren’t on the best terms, but I won’t hold it against you.”

  Irréelle could not believe it, but Guy grinned. Sweat dripped down his face, fire roared at his back, Miss Vesper would return any moment, and still he teased. Maybe that was why he seemed so real to her, and Lass too. They saw darkness, just as Irréelle did, but they brought their own light into it. They gave her hope, and maybe she offered them the same, which was almost like being real.

  Somehow, Lass managed to untie the knots on his ankles while Irréelle was still fumbling with the twine on his wrists. “Do you need some help?”

  “Yes, yes,” Irréelle said.

  Beside them, the fire crackled. They were standing much too close for her liking. It licked at their heels as if it wanted to drag them in, crisp them up, and burn their bones. She redoubled her efforts and tugged out the knots.

  Moments later the twine around Guy’s wrists fell to the ground. Irréelle grabbed one arm, Lass took the other, and they pulled him upright. They wasted no time and tore across the patio, circling toward the side yard.

  Irréelle’s chest expanded with hope at the sight of the fence. Beyond it, the landscape stretched in all directions. In a world so large, there had to be someplace where the three of them would belong.

  A firefly sparked past, fast and bright. A warm light leading them away from the house. Another one flew over their heads.

  Their eyes (one pair very dark, one pair gray, and one pair muddled), lifted at the same time, drawn by the light. Fireflies dotted the sky like fiery stars.

  And then they fell in a single rapid motion.

  “Ouch,” Guy said. He slapped at his arm. A tiny singed hole dotted the sleeve of his shirt.

  “That stings,” Lass said, swatting at her bare leg.

  The fireflies gathered before them. They flashed orange. They flickered.

  Guy and Lass stopped dead. Irréelle kept going. She was so close, so close. The gate was right there, just past the fireflies.

  She stared at their small bodies. Only then did she realize they were not insects at all, but tiny flying embers of fire.

  And they surrounded her, blocking the way to the front yard.

  30

  Into the Grave

  Fire sparked around her.

  Irréelle could neither advance nor retreat. The glowing embers burned too hot, they pressed too close. The air hissed.

  She lashed out, for all the good it did. The specks of fire danced out of reach, slipping between her fingers and around her ankles, stinging her wherever they touched. It would be a slow end, to be burned up bit by bit. Of all the ways to go, she might have feared this most of all.

  Sparks alighted on her dress and her arms. They scorched pinprick holes in the fabric and singed the hair from her skin. Irréelle shrieked and shouted, patting down her skirt.

  A dark figure leapt through the sparks. Something swept protectively around her shoulders.

  “Come on,” Guy said, huddled under the coat beside her.

  Heads down, they burst past the embers burning in the air. The sparks snapped and sputtered, chasing them away from the gate. Lass hollered at them to hurry, and they followed her around the side of the house, into the backyard once again.

  They stopped short. Guy dropped Lass’s coat. Irréelle’s knees knocked unevenly.

  Miss Vesper stood in the center of the patio, her face rage-red. She snapped her fingers, and the sparks of fire flared. They swirled once, like a galaxy burning, and then smashed into the fire pit.

  Miss Vesper leveled her eyes at each of them in turn, first Irréelle, then Guy, and last Lass. They edged backward, but it only brought them closer to the fire pit, their heels nudging against the stones. The skin on the back of Irréelle’s legs warmed unpleasantly.

  Miss Vesper’s gaze lingered on Lass. “So you’ve already determined to disappoint me. After only a few days’ breath. And your Hand behaves no better.”

  Irréelle looked toward the house, hoping to catch sight of the Hand. She did not see it sneaking across the patio or scampering in the grass. She did not hear its fingertips scuttling.

  “I see how you are,” Lass said. Her fingers went to the smooth skin on her arm.

  It had taken Irréelle months and months to see so clearly. But now her eyes were truly open.

  “And to think, I would have spared you. At least for a time,” Miss Vesper said.

  “Spare her still,” Irréelle pleaded. “I will do anything you wish.” Such was the love she held for her friends, a love that burned brighter than any bonfire Miss Vesper could build.

  Three swift strides and Miss Vesper stood directly before her, pushing Guy and Lass out of her way. The tips of her shoes touched the toes of Irréelle’s boots. Up close, the tiny veins on each of her cheeks appeared darker, irregular lines like cracked glass. Dried blood ringed her nostril.

  Irréelle leaned away, listing toward the fire. One shove from Miss Vesper and she would land in the blaze. Cut the tether. Burn your bones. Be no more. The words came back to her like a struck match suddenly aflame.

  “I will spare none of you.”

  Behind Irréelle, the logs shifted in the fire pit. Blackened pieces of wood broke in two, and the structure collapsed. The fire hissed and smoked, stinging her eyes.

  “Please. Please not the fire.” Already, it felt like she was roasting.

  “You have proven much too noisy,” Miss Vesper said. The fire reflected in her eyes. She stepped back. “I would not want to disturb the neighbors with your screaming.”

  Irréelle flinched.

  Guy thrust out his chin and straightened to his full height. He was almost as tall as Miss Vesper. “You can’t say such horrible things to us. You can’t speak that way.”

  With a flick of her wrist, Miss Vesper called to the dirt. It swirled up in a cloud, gathered from the cracks between the stones in the patio. It arced in the air and funneled toward Guy. He edged back, leading it away from Lass. It circled around him.

  He swatted at the dirt, but it pressed closer, worming past his arms. He slapped his hands over his lips, but the dirt slipped between his fingers and filled his mouth completely.

  “No, it is you who cannot speak.” Miss Vesper brushed her palms together, though she had not touched the dirt.

  Eyes wide, Guy coughed and gagged.

  Miss Vesper was not through. She threw out her hands, and the ground shuddered. Beneath their feet, the individua
l patio stones shifted. Some sank into the earth. Others angled upward. The fire pit cracked, and embers and wood, still aflame, spilled onto the patio.

  “Look out!” Lass cried.

  Miss Vesper lifted her arms higher still. Everything trembled, the ground, the air, their bones.

  Irréelle watched the yard transform.

  The grass rippled, like some horrible monster was pushing up from beneath. The earth groaned, and then it split open.

  A fountain of dirt erupted from the ground. The air smelled of soil and grass. Another explosion of dirt followed, and then one more. Until there were three deep holes in the ground, three mounds of dirt in the grass beside them. The holes were long and narrow, and rectangular in shape.

  Miss Vesper had dug three graves.

  She went for Guy first, wresting him away from Lass and dragging him toward an open grave. He barely struggled, hands to his throat, eyes flicking from Irréelle to the grave to Miss Vesper. Unable to speak, he grunted and moaned.

  Irréelle flew at Miss Vesper. She had no time to consider the boldness of her actions.

  Without even looking, Miss Vesper raised her palm. Dirt shifted, and Irréelle’s foot sank into the ground as if she had stepped into quicksand. When she set down her other foot, the dirt parted in the same way and then sealed around her ankle. She tugged at her legs and wiggled her feet, but she could not move.

  Guy looked back at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “No need to be sorry,” Miss Vesper said. “You will be resting beside him soon enough.”

  And with that, she pushed Guy into the grave.

  “No!” Irréelle cried. She knew nothing could be worse for him than to be buried again. She strained to lift her feet, but the ground held her firm.

  Lass sprang forward. She was fast, and though the ground sucked at her feet under Miss Vesper’s command, she avoided falling to the same fate as Irréelle. Her boots set down and then lifted again before they could sink. With her one hand raised, Lass ran toward Miss Vesper.

  But Miss Vesper was taller and stronger and faster still. She stepped out of the way. Lass wobbled at the edge of the hole, the toes of her boots standing on nothing more than air. And then the dirt under her heels shifted. (It may have been Miss Vesper’s doing, or the dirt may have crumbled all on its own, Irréelle could not tell.) Lass’s feet slipped out from under her, and she tumbled headfirst into the grave.

  Miss Vesper put her fingers to her neck, perhaps remembering the way it had snapped after tumbling down the staircase. One misstep, one push, and she would have fallen into the grave instead of Lass.

  Irréelle bit her lip to keep from calling out. With Miss Vesper’s attention elsewhere, she bent closer to her boots, the very tops of which protruded from the ground.

  “I dug a separate grave for each of you, but it seems you would rather have the same one. I’m certainly not going to fish one of you out of there just to toss you into another.” She kicked a clot of dirt down into the hole.

  “Stop it! Stop it!” Lass’s voice rose up from the grave, and Irréelle was glad to hear it, hoping it meant Lass was uninjured.

  Irréelle yanked at the knots in her laces. They were tight and covered in dirt, but they were not as troublesome as the twine binding Guy’s wrists and ankles had been. She untied the laces and pulled as hard as she could on her right leg. Her foot popped out of the boot. She did the same with her left.

  In stocking feet, she tiptoed away from Miss Vesper. There was nothing she could do about her creaking bones.

  Near the patio, she trod carefully to avoid stepping on a glowing ember. She leaned over the fire pit where the logs, in their disarray, still burned. Heat rushed across her skin. A few thick sticks burned on only one end, and she grabbed hold of one of these, lifting it out of the fire like a sword she had forged.

  “Whatever will you do with that?” Miss Vesper said from behind her.

  Irréelle spun around. She waved the burning stick in front of her. “Let them out or I will burn you to your bones.”

  Miss Vesper eyed the flame warily. “Put that down.”

  “I won’t.” She stabbed the stick forward. The flame flared, illuminating Miss Vesper’s face and all the thin, twisting spider veins chasing each other across her cheeks.

  Irréelle took a step forward, and another and another, slashing the flaming stick through the air and pushing Miss Vesper backward, toward the three graves. She brought her to the very edge of the first gaping hole.

  Miss Vesper called a handful of dirt and sent it forward. It swirled around Irréelle’s small torch, like black-winged moths to a flame. The dirt gathered closer, a dark swarm that smothered the fire.

  Around the stick, her fingers went slack. It fell from her hand.

  Miss Vesper loomed over her, a billow of skirts and hair caught in the wind. The oak tree’s branches shook. “Can you feel it in your bones? Your grave awaits you.”

  The words sank into her mind like heat set to a wrinkle, the jumble of her thoughts ironing out smooth. “Wait!” Irréelle cried.

  Miss Vesper reached forward, hands latching on like cuffs. She forced Irréelle backward and held her over the open grave. It seemed a very long way down.

  “Wait.” Her feet slid on the dirt, and her bones tingled. Irréelle spoke in a rush.

  “I know how to find the unmarked grave.”

  31

  The Hawthorn

  The night was creeping away, yesterday tumbling into today. Above them spread an in-between sky, the last glimmer of stars edged by the glow of the just-rising sun. A clash of deep purple and gold.

  The bottom of the grave yawned up at Irréelle. She felt herself tipping, tipping, tipping, and at the very last moment, Miss Vesper yanked her onto steadier ground. She gulped in a breath. The air hung thick with dew and ash. It settled in her lungs.

  She had barely regained her footing when Miss Vesper shook her by the arms. “Tell me. Tell me now. Where is the unmarked grave?”

  “Let me go.” Irréelle wriggled in her grip.

  Miss Vesper uncurled her fingers from Irréelle’s arms, but her eyes hooked into her just as sharply. “Go on, then. Tell me what you know, what you’ve been keeping from me.”

  “I’ve kept nothing from you.” Irréelle backed out of reach, slowly, though she wanted to scramble away. “Can’t you feel it?” If she paid careful attention, she detected sounds and vibrations in the night. Not the ones she could hear with her ears or touch with her hands, but the ones that buzzed in her bones.

  The bone garden was not so very far away, and she had always assumed those were the bones she felt each time she stepped outside. She had not suspected that another set of bones rested much closer.

  Ones that belonged to N.M.H.

  “I feel him. Everywhere. No matter where I am. Yet still, he is lost to me.” Miss Vesper’s voice was laced with cracks and pits. “Don’t play games or twist words. Lead me to the grave before I silence you forever.”

  Irréelle glanced over her shoulder. The oak tree stood tall behind her. She raced for it. Miss Vesper took her time, stalking after Irréelle like cornering prey.

  Irréelle was so used to the skeletons in the underside of the graveyard, how gently they hummed and tugged at her heart. She was so used to listening. But now she reached out, feeling for the silent bones of N.M.H.

  Just as Lass had explained when searching for the locksmith, Irréelle thought of all the things she knew of Dr. Hauser—someone who studied bones and crafted magic, someone who marked the world with hearts and loved nothing more than Miss Vesper.

  Only it was very hard to concentrate with Miss Vesper going on and on.

  “He’s gone,” she said, as if she still could not believe it. “He traded his life for mine, but I don’t want it.” Her voice rang hollow in the dawn. “I woke up beneath our tree as if I had only risen from a nap, not from death. I stretched my arms overhead. The sky had never looked so blue.”


  The words blurred. All Irréelle heard was our tree. Like the blackened oak in the graveyard, inscribed with their love. Like the branches entwined on the band of Miss Vesper’s engagement ring. Like the sapling the Hand pointed to over and over again in the faded photograph. The tree must be here in the yard, only grown so much bigger now.

  Irréelle reached the oak and circled it once, hands over the bark, eyes squinted and searching in the shadows where the sunlight, still thin and pale, did not touch. Unwanted, Guy’s words haunted her like the ghosts she did not believe in. What if you find what she wants? What will she need you for then?

  She had only moments before Miss Vesper reached her, but she pushed away those thoughts and called to the bones. Irréelle could not worry about herself. Guy and Lass needed her.

  Miss Vesper’s voice curled through the overhanging branches. “And then I saw all the cracks in the world. Everything rushed back. Every detail. I remembered how careless I had been, hurrying down the spiral staircase when he called to me. I had wanted to see him so desperately.”

  The more Miss Vesper spoke of the past, the more Irréelle’s bones whispered. N.M.H. must have been listening too. She warmed all over, drawn forward by his interest.

  Miss Vesper stepped into her path. She touched her neck, long and graceful as if it had never been broken by the fall. “And it’s what I want still. To see him. To be with him.”

  Irréelle huddled close to the tree, keeping it between them. “You searched the graveyard because you thought he’d be there.”

  “No. I created you little creatures to search the graveyard.” Miss Vesper’s voice rose in pitch.

  “But he was never there.” Flushed with the lightest tugging on her bones, Irréelle was certain of it, and not just because the watchman had told her so. Just like the headstones tilted toward each other in the cemetery, Irréelle had guessed N.M.H. would not want to be far from Miss Vesper.

  But they had not been looking close enough. He would not watch over her empty grave; he would rest where she lived, right by her side.