The Kneebone Boy

by Ellen Potter

  “Well, what do you want?” He swung his knife by its leather strap and tucked it in his back pocket, which thrilled Lucia, since it made him look more like a Viking than ever. Otto and Max, however, had stepped back a pace when he swung the knife.

  “My brother was just admiring your cat,” Lucia said, nodding toward Otto.

  “My cat?” he said, perplexed.

  “The one in the window,” Lucia said.

  The man looked. “Oh, him.” His expression softened a little, which only meant that he looked slightly less likely to smash someone on the head with a crowbar. “You in the market for a cat, mate?” he asked Otto.

  Otto blinked and looked away.

  “Doesn’t he talk?” the man asked Lucia.

  “No,” Lucia said.

  “Good. I reckon most people have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”

  “He was admiring his toes, really,” Lucia said.

  “Yeah? Well, he ought to!” the man nodded. “He’s got twenty-five of them.”

  “Twenty-one,” Max corrected.

  The man cocked his massive head to one side and surveyed Max contemptuously. “What are you, an accountant?”

  “Eight on the right front, five on the left, and four each on the back. That’s twenty-one,” Max said.

  “Yeah? And what about the fifth leg?” the man said.

  The Hardscrabbles eyed the man with disappointment. They never enjoyed it when adults playfully lied to them. The adults always think they’re being amusing and imaginative, just like children. But kids never lie playfully. They lie as if their lives depended on it.

  “Thank you, good night,” Lucia said, and they began to turn away.

  “Hang on,” the man said, and he ducked back into the store. They watched as he reached into the window and roughly scooped up the cat, who responded to the treatment with a yowl of reproach. The man reappeared at the door and held the cat out, one thick butcher hand cupping the cat’s armpits.

  “What do you call this then?” He flicked two fingers at a strange appendage hanging off of the cat’s left hind leg. The children stepped in closer for a better look. Indeed, it did appear to be the bottom portion of a cat’s leg, claws and all. A price tag had been ignominiously attached to the thing by a string, with twenty pounds scrawled on it.

  Lucia snorted, her nostrils flaring out especially wide. “It’s a trick,” she said. “You’ve attached it.”

  “Damn you for saying so!!” he cried (in your head, those words sounded very fierce, didn’t they? On account of the double exclamation points and the “damn.” But really, he said them with less anger than you just imagined).

  “Actually, Lucia, it’s real,” Max said, his fingers examining the cat’s appendage.

  “Of course it’s real! Why wouldn’t it be?” the man said.

  “The wild boar’s tusks aren’t,” Lucia said.

  Here, the man (his name is Saint George, so let’s just call him that. I don’t want to keep saying “the man” when I know he will be in this book for a while). Here, Saint George realized he was dealing with some shrewd children. He didn’t bother denying the wild boar’s tusks. Instead, he pointed up at the sign in front of the store.

  “It says taxidermy and curiosities, doesn’t it?” he said. “Well, that’s one of the curiosities. This here cat with five legs is another.” He turned his attention to Otto who was staring at the cat’s fifth leg with particular interest.

  “A connoisseur of the curious, are you?” Saint George nodded approvingly. “Tell you what. Ten pounds and she’s yours. I’ll even throw in the collar.”

  “We’ve got dozens of cats at home,” Max said very sensibly.

  “But they don’t have five legs,” Otto said dreamily.

  “I said no,” Max stated firmly, just as though he were the boss of Otto.

  This annoyed Lucia, who was the actual boss of Otto, so she said to Saint George, “Five pounds, we don’t care about the collar. Plus you tell us how to get to Haddie Piggit’s house.”

  “Haddie Piggit? What do you want with her?” Saint George said. There was something about the way he said “Haddie Piggit” that interested Lucia. There was a hint of nervousness. What sort of old lady could make a Viking nervous? Lucia wondered.

  “We’ve come to visit her,” Max said to Saint George, and to Lucia he said, “Five pounds? We’re not wasting what little money we have on a cat.”

  “You’ve come to visit and she hasn’t told you where she lives?” Saint George said.

  “It’s a surprise visit,” Max said truthfully.

  “Do you know her well?” Lucia said.

  “No,” Saint George said. “She hasn’t lived here very long. Came in my shop to ask for some marshmallow rubbish. To spread on bread. Fluffie-something. Said she thought it might count as a curiosity, since no one in this bloody country seems to eat it.” Saint George shook his head for a moment, a half smirk on his face. Then his face grew severe again. “You sure she’ll want to see you lot?”

  “Of course she will,” Max said. “She’s our great-aunt.”

  “Really?” He looked at them with confusion. Then he shrugged his enormous shoulders. “All right, if you say so. Let’s see the seven pounds—”

  “Five,” Lucia corrected.

  “Seven, and I’ll haul you over to her place myself.”

  “Deal,” Lucia said.

  Otto dug the notes out of his wallet and handed them to Saint George. Saint George put the notes in his apron pocket, then handed the cat over to Otto.

  “Wait here,” he ordered them.

  The cat adjusted himself in Otto’s arms, settling in as though he were curling into a favorite spot on the sofa. His fifth leg draped over the crook of Otto’s arm in such a limp, trusting way that Otto made a humming sound, not unlike the satisfied purr of a mother cat.

  They waited and waited for Saint George to reappear. While they waited, they listened to the sound of bugs plinking against the streetlight. Then they shared a stick of Such Fun Peppermint gum that Max found in the back pocket of his jeans. Then they spit the gum out because a stick of gum split three ways is worse than no gum at all. They waited and waited, until it became clear that they had been tricked in some way. Saint George must have had a good laugh at their expense and gone to bed. They were just beginning to feel awkward and stupid, which made them cross their arms over their chests, when they heard a tip-top-tip-top coupled with a fearsome metallic rattle. They kept very still, listening, and wondering that the entire town hadn’t jumped out of their beds and into the street to see what was happening. In a minute, two small, stout white ponies appeared on the side street, pulling a peculiar long rectangular carriage. The carriage was so low to the ground that it almost looked like an elaborate play carriage. It had long panes of glass on either side, on which was painted, in gold letters, SAINT GEORGE’S TAXIDERMY & CURIOSITIES, along with an address and phone number, and below that the words GET STUFFED!

  Perched on the driver’s box seat and holding the reins was Saint George himself. He halted the ponies with a flick of his wrist and ordered the Hardscrabbles to “Pile in the back and be quick.” So the children opened a small door in the back of the carriage and scrambled in. There were no seats in the little carriage. They had to sit on the floor, their backs against the long glass panes. They had barely settled in when the carriage lurched forward and the ponies set off at a frantic trot. They passed through the streets, clattering and tip-topping, and in a few minutes they had left the town entirely and were once again on a country road. The moon had slid out from beneath the clouds, casting gloomy shadows across the fields.

  “Strange that there are no seats in this old thing, don’t you think?” Lucia said.

  “It’s not meant for people to sit in,” Max said. “It’s meant for people to lie down in.”

  “Nonsense,” Lucia said.

  “You’re nonsense,” Max said.

  “That’s a stupid thing to say! Some
times you act like such an infant.” She snorted and things might have gotten ugly but Otto’s hands were moving, so Lucia and Max stopped arguing to see what he was saying.

  “Who would want to lie down in a carriage?” Otto asked.

  “Yes, that’s what I’d like to know,” Lucia said, looking back at Max.

  “A dead person would,” Max said.

  There was a long pause during which Lucia and Otto took in this information. They gazed around at the low-ceilinged carriage and at the heavy black drapes on the two side windowpanes. Max waited.

  “It’s a funeral carriage?” Lucia said.

  “Obviously,” Max said, which was obnoxious and he knew it.

  You would think that since Lucia loved adventures and Otto loved curiosities, riding in a funeral carriage would have made them ecstatic. But actually it made them very squeamish. To make matters worse, the carriage suddenly picked up speed and they were all violently jostled in a very humiliating way.

  “Don’t you think it’s cruel to make those little ponies pull us along?” Otto said, staring out the front window, past Saint George’s back and at the trotting ponies.

  “Not as cruel as killing one and stuffing it to make it look like a miniature zebra,” Max said, watching the ponies thoughtfully.

  “No! He wouldn’t have!” Lucia cried. But even as she said it, she realized that it might be true. The ponies did look exactly like that zebra, only without the stripes. And stripes could always be painted on.

  “Do you think he planned on killing the cat as well?” Otto asked, holding him a little tighter in his arms.

  “I guess a stuffed curiosity is no different from a live one,” Max said. “And you wouldn’t have to feed it or change the litter.”

  “That’s fiendish!” Lucia cried.

  The carriage ride now took on a whole different aspect for the Hardscrabbles. Each one considered how idiotic they had been in accepting a ride from a stranger, especially a stranger who didn’t even bother to hide the fact that he was a nasty brute. He had even come to the door with a knife in his hand, hadn’t he? What on earth had they been thinking!?

  It was Lucia, though, who had suggested they stay and talk to him. And it was Lucia who had agreed to let him take them to their great-aunt Haddie. All three Hardscrabbles remembered this at the same time. Max and Otto turned to glare at their sister, while Lucia flared her nostrils very extravagantly to show that she would not accept the blame for this catastrophe. But secretly she felt awful and her mind was full of grisly visions of three hastily dug graves.

  The moon slipped back behind the clouds and the trees on the edge of the road grew taller and pressed together more closely, blotting out the view on either side. Up ahead, the frantic hoofbeats of the white ponies seemed to be rushing the Hardscrabbles to their doom.

  Adventures work in peculiar ways, Lucia now thought. You wished and wished for one, then suddenly, without even knowing how, you were in one. It was just as exhilarating as you imagined it would be from the novels. Until something happened, like a nighttime ride in a funeral carriage and the murder of a little white pony. Then you forgot all about the novels, and instead remembered the news stories about unfortunate kids who ended up decapitated in the woods.

  “Do you think we could jump?” Lucia asked Max.

  He shook his head decisively, as though he’d already considered it. “Too dangerous.”

  So they once again felt stupid, as well as in terrible danger.

  Suddenly, the road dipped down sharply and they slid forward along the black varnished floor. The ponies picked up their pace, and the Hardscrabbles braced their trainers against the floor to keep themselves steady. Even the cat, which had been sleeping soundly through much of the ride, raised its head from the crook of Otto’s arm and gazed out at the black blur of trees on either side. It seemed like a ride the cat had been accustomed to taking, or else he had seen such strange, wild things while in the company of Saint George that nothing surprised him anymore. He sneezed, flicked his tail, and then tucked his head back into Otto’s arm.

  After a while the road levelled out. The air seeping through the vent at the front of the carriage smelled slightly different. More complicated, like a cool brew of soil and sky and dusky faraway places. The trees thinned out and now they could see a formidable dark shape in the distance. It was too lumpy and large to be a house, yet it wasn’t a hill either.

  “What do you think it is?” Lucia asked.

  “It looks like something that’s gone all wrong,” Otto said.

  Lucia knew exactly what he meant. It had bumps in the wrong places and tilted in odd ways. If it was a house, Lucia thought, it must have been built by a madman.

  With a twitch of the reins, Saint George drove the ponies into a sharp left turn and the carriage wheels were now crunching across a rough gravel road. The road wound its way between the trees and in a few minutes it became clear that they were headed directly for the large lumpish thing. At that moment, Lucia did a most uncharacteristic thing. She reached out her arms on either side and wrapped them protectively around the shoulders of her brothers.

  Chapter 7

  In which the Hardscrabbles discover a Tyrolean traverse, meet Great-aunt Haddie, and get spat upon

  Even the ponies seemed to want to avoid the huge structure. As the carriage approached it, the ponies suddenly swerved off the gravel path and onto a broad meadow, but Saint George set them straight with a sharp yank on their reins. Lucia supposed that was a lucky thing too, since the meadow ended abruptly at what she could only imagine was a deep cliff. Far below and off in the distance, she could make out the indolent waves of the sea, churning up that strange odor she’d detected earlier. Close to, the odor was sharper and she couldn’t decide if it was a good smell or a foul one, sort of like the smell in a barn.

  The shifty moon emerged from under clouds again, casting a dirty yellow light on the landscape. The large lumpish thing could now be seen for what it was: a castle of some sort, though it was nothing like the castles you see in book illustrations or in the movies. Yes, it had all the parts of a castle, like towers and turrets and a curtain wall that surrounded it, but they were sloppily formed and slapped together. It seemed incredible that such a thing could even stand on its own, but there it was. Even more incredibly, someone was living in it. Lights could be seen in some of the pinchy-narrow windows, mostly on the upper floors.

  It was Max who suddenly crawled over to the back of the carriage and swung open the door.

  “What are you doing?” Lucia called to him, but he ignored her. Crouching at the edge of the open door, he reached up and grabbed the railing along the roof of the carriage. Then he pulled himself up and stood on the back step so that he was riding outside.

  “Excuse me,” Max called out to Saint George, “but do you really know where Haddie Piggit lives?”

  “You’re looking at it,” Saint George called back without turning his head.

  “There?” Max exclaimed. “No, no, I don’t think so. Look, why not leave us off right here and we’ll find her ourselves.”

  “Yes! Leave us off!” Lucia screamed. She had scooched up to the back and poked her head out.

  “Go back inside before you get tossed on your loaf,” Saint George yelled. He then yanked the reins, making the ponies turn to the right so suddenly that Max would have been tossed on his loaf if Lucia hadn’t grabbed his legs just in time. She hauled him back inside, leaving the back door open and flapping wildly. They were approaching the front of the castle now. Across the castle moat, they could see the great misshapen lumps of stone. They looked damp, as though they were in a cold sweat. A light from one of the tower rooms flicked off, and there was the distinct sound of a wail, short and high-pitched. Then silence, except for the slap of waves against the cliff and the snorting of the ponies, and finally the thud of the carriage’s back door as it slammed shut once again.

  “I wish we were back in Little Tunks,” Otto said.

>   In certain novels with eerie castles, they might have suddenly been whisked back to Little Tunks at that very moment, and found themselves snug in their own beds. In fact, at Otto’s words, Lucia closed her eyes tightly and on opening them again half-expected to see the face of the Sultan of Juwi staring back at her from his place on her bedroom wall.

  Instead, when she opened her eyes, she saw something quite remarkable. In fact, she thought she was seeing magic. The huge, lumpy castle had quite suddenly shrunk. It was all there—the towers, the turrets, the curtain wall. Except that it was now the size of one of those fake castles that you find in theme parks.

  This book is not about magic, however. When Lucia got her bearings she saw that the real castle was behind them and they were facing a replica, almost like the original castle had given birth to a baby version of itself.

  “It’s a castle folly,” cried Max.

  “No, it’s not,” Lucia said, because she counted herself the authority on castles, since she read about them so often, and she’d never heard of a castle folly.

  The reins were pulled taut and the ponies slowed to a stop.

  “Right, out you go!” Saint George called back to them.

  Out they went.

  For a moment, all they felt was relief at not being murdered.

  “Mind the moat,” was all Saint George said before he flicked the reins against the ponies’ backs and drove off.

  They stood there for a moment, looking baffled.

  “Well, this was a brilliant idea,” Lucia said to Max.

  “Would you rather be at home with Mrs. Carnival’s cyst?” Max replied.

  “It doesn’t bother me,” Lucia said.

  “Good. Then next time I’ll tell her that you want to be the one who drains it.”