Fat & Bones
Page 5
The cat sat by Mrs. Bald and gave Dog Alfred a dirty look.
Dog Alfred moved on. His cold had begun to make his head hurt. A sudden thirst overtook him.
He sneezed.
His sneeze, a blithe little thing, blew across the field, where someone shouted.
Dog Alfred lifted his head to see what was happening, but the wheat stood too high.
He gave up and wandered back to Bald’s grave and lay down. Maybe when Mrs. Bald came down from the clothesline, she would tell him what to do.
He sniffed. Even through a stuffed nose, he thought he smelled garbage. Or was it eggs?
Meanwhile, Dog Alfred’s sneeze flew around the farm, then into the sky.
The man in the moon was just beginning to yellow up for the night. The sneeze snuggled against the man and whispered in his ear. The man in the moon frowned, inspecting the trodden field. Fixing this would take time.
Below, on the farm, in front of the clothesline, Bones knelt before his mother, his hands outstretched, his head bowed. Fat pumped his arms as though he had conquered the world. And the cat turned toward Fat.
I’ve always loved the texture of fairies. They crunch so wonderfully. Better than mice. And their wings, so airy and light, taste a bit like cotton candy. You may not have known that cats like cotton candy, but we do. We like it almost as much as we like fairies.
After swallowing Fat, I smiled innocently at Mrs. Bald and backed up against Bones’s face. I stuffed what was left of my tail up his nose and closed his mouth with my paws. He was too beat down at that point to put up much of a fuss. He jerked once or twice, then lay still.
All was quiet.
With the sounds of war gone, Mrs. Bald’s tear ducts dammed up. Little by little, water filled her skin, and it didn’t take more than two hours for her to be just as she had been. I licked her hands. She always liked it when I did that.
The first thing Mrs. Bald did when she unpinned herself from the clotheslines was to fill my shiny red food dish with a fresh batch of pig foot stew.
Like most cats, I’m a philosopher. Like most philosophers, I try to make sense of chaos. Some moments of this tale are conjecture, I admit, but of this I am certain— with Mrs. Bald as flat as one of those pancakes Bones loved so well, my shiny red food dish would have remained empty. And I know from experience, an empty food dish means chaos. By getting rid of Fat and Bones, I restored order. I restored peace. Not bad for a tailless cat, if I do say so myself.
Author Acknowledgments
This is the part of the book I was most looking forward to writing, the part where I can thank the many people who have been patient and kind during this story’s journey to publication.
Mom and Dad, thank you for being exemplary parents and teachers, for living with conviction, and teaching us kids that love will make a difference. My siblings, Shaelyn, Shannon, Luke, and Josh—thank you for all the Dutch rubs and ribbing. I owe you one. Jane, Uma, Shelley, and Rita—you are gifted teachers with wide-open hearts; thank you for freely sharing your wisdom and taking the time. My intrepid agent, Linda Pratt—you took a chance—thank you, thank you for knowing where this book needed to be. My thanks also to my super-smart editor Greg Hunter, who guided the many strands of this story into a coherent whole. And to the entire team at Lerner, most especially to Andrew Karre, who welcomes the unusual. To the Super Secret Society of Quirk and Quill; my peeps, you are true friends. Adam Doyle, you found just the right tone; thank you. Edit Ford, I’m so grateful for your humor and encouragement. Bear and Boo—my peanuts, I love you. And Philip, you know all of it—thank you.
About the Author
Having recently returned to the United States after living six years in China, Larissa Theule resides in Pasadena, CA, with her family and dog. Once a barista, a billing assistant, and a high school teacher, she now devotes her time to writing stories and growing a rambling garden, where no fairies have been sighted—at least not yet. Fat & Bones is her first book.
About the Illustrator
Adam S. Doyle grew up in Boston and later earned his BFA from The Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from The School of Visual Arts in New York City. So far he’s also lived in Los Angeles, Rome, Auckland, and Hong Kong.
Adam draws inspiration from nature, mythology, the human condition, and the magic of creation—the way a splatter of paint transforms the blank page into a living being or vast landscape. Between these two worlds, the real and the imagined, he keeps the window partly open. In addition to picture books, Adam’s work appears in galleries, on cards, on bodies, on trucks, and on book covers, including Maggie Stiefvater’s bestselling Raven Cycle. You can see more at adamsdoyle.com.