Bone Swans: Stories

by C. S. E. Cooney

  Now it burned. But it wouldn’t budge.

  I almost wept with frustration, but the little crooked man took hold of my hand and I quieted right down. Just like Annat, I thought, when she is upset and I scratch behind her ears.

  And then he bent his head and kissed the fiery opal. Kissed that part of my hand when fingers met knuckle. Kissed me a third time on my palm where I was most astonishingly sensitive. His tongue flicked out and loosened everything. Before I knew it, the ring was in his hand.

  “You are bold. But you are innocent.” He looked at me. Had Mam bequeathed me jewels enough to deck all my fingers and toes, I’d have handed them over that instant.

  He slipped the silver ring onto his thumb.

  “What comes next, you may not see. Dream sweet, Miss Oakhewn,” said the little crooked man, and rubbed the opal once, as if for luck.

  The stone responded with a sound like a thunderclap. A flash there came like a star falling, followed by a green-drenched darkness.

  I know what that is, I had time to think, that’s the sound of a Gentry grass-trap.

  He’s opened one up to swallow me down, and will I sleep now a hundred years the way they do in stories when mortals fall through grass-traps into the Valwode, and will a ring of mushrooms sprout up all around me, followed by a ring of fire, and will he be there to pull me out when at last I wake…

  * * *

  “Tar his limbs and boil his skin

  Carve his skull for dipping in

  Acid piss and stony stool

  Wrack his eyeballs, rot his rule

  All hail Jadio! Let him hang!

  Long his rope and brief his reign!”

  My rhymes were improving. With no one to talk to in this vast, dusty room but myself, all standard imprecations swiftly palled.

  I stomped around Jadio’s warehouse. Slogged, more like. Not an inch of floor to be seen under all that straw, and I was knee-deep in it, not to mention hampered by satin skirts. I’d lost one pearl-studded slipper already while pretending one of those straw heaps was a recumbent Jadio (sleeping peacefully and off his guard), and subsequently kicking him to death. I did not mind the slipper’s loss, but I think I pulled a muscle in my enthusiasm.

  It had been an eventful month. The Kingless Armies finally had their king. With the golden skeins he had found piled high in the silo the morning after he’d set me to spinning, General Jadio had bought himself Leressa’s crown and the Archabbot’s blessing with it. (Or the appearance of a blessing. Remembering the Archabbot’s sweating red pate, his furious grip on my elbow, I was not convinced.)

  King Jadio decided not to take up residence where old King Lorez’s palace lay in ruins. Lirhu is a city of ghosts, a drowned city. They say one of the Deep Lords of the ocean destroyed it with a great wave after the First Invasion, when the Crown Prince was enchanted into bear-shape and his sister sent into a hundred-year sleep, and King Lorez lured by a Will-o’-Wispy off his road, bogged in a marsh, and drowned dead.

  Whether the Deep Lord had sent the wave out of solidarity with his landed Gentry-kin or out of pique because Lorez, being dead, did not tithe to the tides at the usual time and place, no one knew.

  No, Jadio was too canny to repeat Old Ironshod’s mistakes. He had built his grand house inland, in a very settled city, far from any wilderness, where even the river ran tame. There he brought me, across the wide waters and away from the island where I had been born, under full guard and in chains, but dressed up in such gowns and choked with such jewels that I was the envy of all who looked on me. Plenty did. Jadio liked a good parade.

  I’d glared back at every crowd he set me against. My face froze into an expression of bitter unfriendliness. Before the Pricksters had invaded my cottage, I was perhaps a bit brusque by temperament, but I’d harbored goodwill to my neighbors, and smiled, and sang, proud of being Mam’s daughter and wishing to do well by her name.

  Now my name might have been Stonehewn, my heart was that cold. I wished that instead of eyes, I looked with mounted cannons on the world, to blast all gawping bystanders to the other side of the Veil.

  But I wasn’t quite alone. They say beggars can’t be choosy, and as Jadio’s slave, I was less than a beggar. But even they (whoever they are) would’ve blinked at my choice for a friend. Indeed, he was the only friend I had at Jadio House—if a milkmaid might call a fox “friend” and keep her throat untorn.

  Jadio’s young page Sebastian, twin to the Archabbot’s novice, sometimes came to my cell to slip me news of the outside. If he felt generous, he’d bring a bit of fruit, or bread and cheese, along with his gossip. Jadio insisted I sup on the rarest steaks and richest wines, but I had no stomach for these victuals.

  “His Majesty’ll soon have you spin again,” Sebastian had told me at his last visit.

  I’d been startled. “By rights last batch should’ve lasted him three lifetimes!”

  Sebastian enjoyed riling me, friend or not. He grinned, sharp-toothed. He tapped out a tattoo with his strangely jointed fingers on the bars of my door. “I’ve met some ignorant peasants in my life, but you sure do take the dunce cap, my milksop maid. Don’t you know anything? His Majesty’s been selling off yon goldie skeins like he’s afeared they’ll fall to ash.”

  My eyebrows sprang high. “If the Gentry ore were going to go bad, would it not have done so overnight? I thought those were the rules.”

  Sebastian shrugged. He had bony elbows and skin so clear it was like looking into a pail of skimmed milk. His rusty hair smudged his forehead like a fringe of embers.

  “Depends on your enchanter. Some Gentry tricks don’t last an hour. Some last a year. Some last the life of the enchanter. Hard to say.” His forehead scrunched. In so many ways he was still a child, but creased up like that, his expression went deep and devious.

  “What’s that look for?” I asked. “Is there something else?”

  He nodded. “Gossip goes you must be Gentry, no matter how loudly the Archabbot proclaims you gods-gifted. Folks want you quartered in the square and all your witchy bits exposed on the Four Tors. I never did see a dead witch in pieces. Promise I can watch while they kill you?”

  “Bloody-brained child!” said I, approaching the bars and prying his tapping fingers free. “You’ve lived among soldiers too long. Even your sister Candia insists I’m mortal.”

  He tweaked a lock of my ash-brown hair, but I pulled away before he could kip a strand.

  When young Sebastian grinned, the fox flashed out in his face. Oh, in a couple of years, give this page boy a velvet suit and silver swordstick and let him loose upon the town. Won’t be a maid within miles not pining for those sharp white teeth to bite the plumpness of her thigh.

  “What Candy says and Candy thinks are as different as cat’s purr from catamount’s hunting cough. She lies all the time, for spite or jest, and ’specially when the Archabbot tugs her hair. She hates that, always has. Might even have lied for the sheer wanton pleasure of it. Never can tell. Not even me.”

  “Do you lie as well as your sister, Sebastian?”

  “His Majesty does not let me lie.” The foxboy showed me a thin ring of iron welded about his left wrist. I had one like it, but of gold. A braid of the gold thread I had ostensibly spun for him, to remind me of my place.

  “Nor may I change my shape, nor pierce the Veil between worlds with my Gentry sight. He’ll have his cub to heel, he says.”

  Sebastian’s yellow eyes with their thin, vertical pupils warned me not to put my trust in him. That though he may like and pity me, he was treacherous by nature. And had been a prisoner longer.

  “What do you think I am?” I asked him.

  “I know what you are,” the foxboy answered with a gods-may-care shrug. “Fair warning, Gordie. You’ll be put to spinning soon.”

  He’d been right. Not three days after that conversation, here I was. A warehouse stuffed with straw and my ears stuffed with dire death threats if I didn’t do something about it. Gold was wanted. Mounds of g
old. Pounds of gold. Gold to rival a field of daffodils on a sunny day.

  My lot hadn’t notably improved since the last time I’d been locked up with enough straw to make a giant’s mattress tick, though I was perhaps cleaner as I paced and sneezed, lavished with lavender soap as I was, my hair braided with ropes of pearls, half a pair of useless slippers on my feet. This time, the spinning wheel squatting in the middle of the warehouse was made of solid silver. None of it helped me. I was still going to die at dawn.

  All I could do was invent couplets to curse my captor with.

  “All hail Jadio: let him hang

  Long his rope and brief his reign

  Yank his innards, chop his head…”

  A voice I had not heard in a whole month finished: “Grind his bones to make your bread!”

  Unthinking, I laughed, spinning on my heel all the way around. Haste lost me my battle for balance. From a heap of satin and straw, I sat up again and craned for the voice—there he was! My hunch-backed goblin wreathed in smiles, straddling the spinning wheel’s stool, with his arms draped over the machine and his head resting on crossed wrists.

  He, too, looked less raggedy than last time. Perhaps he had combed his hair once or twice in the days since I met him. My opal still flickered on his finger.

  “You! How did you find me? I was afraid, when they took me from the island you wouldn’t—I mean, did you traipse all this way? The roads are so dangerous for Gentry…”

  A torque of his crooked shoulders. I winced, but he did not.

  “I did not take the roads. I took the Ways. Time is different in the Veil. It did not seem a month to me.”

  I humphed. No better reply came to mind than, I hope it felt a full year then, you flame-crowned bugaboo, for that’s how it did to me, which would not have been at all prudent to speak aloud.

  He spun the silver wheel with a lazy finger.

  “So,” he observed, “another room.”

  “Yes.”

  “Mmn. Bigger.”

  “Much.”

  “Still sneezing?”

  “Aye. Enough to cause typhoons in Leech. Also, I have new rashes.”

  “Rashes even?”

  “Rashes in places no rash e’er ventured yet.”

  “My condolences.”

  “Ah, stick ’em where they’ll do most good.”

  We lapsed. He spun the empty wheel. I drew my knees up, wrapped my arms about them, and thought of all the questions I did not dare ask. What were the Ways like? Did he walk them alone? Had he many friends in the Veil? Did he drink nectar with them in Gentry pubs, dance barefoot when the sweetness went to his head? Did any raucous movement jar his crooked back—or did his body only hurt him in the mortal realm? What had his life been like all this while I’d never known him, and what would it be like when I was dead and gone?

  He seemed to have been thinking along some of these same lines. Or at least the part about my corpse.

  “What will happen to you tomorrow, milkmaid, if this straw is not spun to gold?”

  I related Sebastian’s jolly vision of my witchy bits exposed on the Four Tors.

  “Not,” I added, “that I have any witchy bits. Not real ones, anyway.”

  “Not a one,” he concurred, looking deeply at all of me with his thorn-black eyes. “Though what bits you have are better clad than last I saw them.”

  “Yes,” said I, “a pretty shroud to wrap my pieces in.”

  “Pearls do not suit you.”

  “No—I prefer opals.”

  “A healthy milkmaid needs no adornment.”

  “Doesn’t mean we won’t prize a trinket if it comes our way.”

  “What good are trinkets to you, lady? You’ll die tomorrow.”

  “Maybe so, mister,” I huffed, “but it’s rightly rude to mention it out loud like that.”

  He scratched his nose. It was not so blade-thin as the foxboy’s, but it was harder, more imposing, with a definite downward hook like a gyrfalcon’s beak. Such a nose would look fine with a ring through the septum, like my good bull Manu had. A silver ring, I thought, to match the one on his finger, and when I wanted him to follow me—wherever—I’d need only slip my pinkie through it and tug a little.

  My blush incinerated that train of thought when his eyes, which seemed to read words I did not speak aloud as written scrip upon my face, widened with surprise. The instant he laughed, green flames danced up from his hair and swirled about his skull.

  “Come, milkmaid!” he cried, standing up not-quite-straight from his stool. “Do not be so melancholy, pray! Am I not here, merchant and laborer? Is this warehouse not our private marketplace? Your life is not yet forfeit. What have you to trade?”

  I laughed at his ribbing but shook my head. “Not a thing that is my own, sir!”

  “I have it from my usual source—”

  “ —‘Regular if reliably suspicious’?”

  “Yes, of course—that you wear a fine ivory locket on a black ribbon ’round your neck.”

  The locket was hidden now beneath layers of silk. I clutched it through the cloth and shook my head.

  “Mister, you can have any pearl that pleases you. You can have my braided hair with it! Take my gown, my slippers, see? Gifts from a king! But do not take my locket…”

  “It belonged to your mother?” His voice was gentle.

  “Aye.” I scowled at him. “And I suppose it belonged to your mother before her?”

  “Aye,” he mocked me, glare for glare. You quite forgot he was an ugly creature while his shining eyes dissected you. “Your mam, may I remind you, never cared for worldly treasures.”

  “Unlike yours?” I asked.

  “My mother is made of treasure, though decidedly unworldly. Opal and ivory, silver and gold. If you ever meet her, you will understand.”

  “If I die tomorrow, I’ll never meet her,” I growled.

  “Just so.” His smile became a coax. Almost a wheedle. “Give over, milkmaid, and you’ll live another day in hope.”

  “Who says I want to meet your mother?”

  “Is the friend of your mam not your friend, too? Have you so many friends in this world?”

  There he had a point. Back at Feisty Wold, our neighbors had liked Mam well enough, but during the Invasions, as illness queered her and fever weakened her, they dropped out of her life. Sometimes one would leave a basket of jams or new baked bread at our doorstep, but not a one wished speech with a sick woman who only ever whispered, and never of safe or comfortable topics. The memory stung my eyes. My hands flew up to unknot the ribbon. That little ivory locket hung around my neck with the weight of a dead heart. I could almost feel it bleeding into my lap.

  “I can’t!” I cried. “It’s stuck!”

  Then he stood before me, his nearness calming my struggles. My hands fell to my sides. He seized my wrists, squeezed once, then inched his grasp upward, my arms the purchase his arms needed to attain any height above that of his chest. The crease of pain between his eyes deepened to agony. The hump on his back shuddered. The gesture I took for granted while combing hair or brushing teeth cost him ease of breath, grace, comfort of movement.

  By the time his hands had gained my shoulders, he was gasping. His head bent heavily before me, and his whole body sagged, but his grip on me only tightened. I placed my hands lightly on either side of his rib cage, hoping to support him if he should collapse. His flames were utterly damped by the sweaty dark tangle of his hair, which smelled of sweetgrass and salt sea. A few strands of shining green twined with the black. I pressed a brief kiss to the crown of his head.

  “Mister,” I told him, “take the locket quickly. You look pale and weary.”

  He wheezed a laugh and loosed the knotted ribbon at my neck with a touch. The ivory locket fell into his palm. He pressed it hard against his heart.

  “Let me,” I whispered. “Let me.”

  He did not relinquish it, but allowed me the ribbon’s slack. I tied it around his neck, smoothing his
wild hair down over the knot. He shivered.

  “Are you very hurt?”

  “No.” His voice was almost as gruff as the foxgirl’s. “Where did you learn to be kind?”

  I shook my head and turned away. “You saved my life. Twice if we include tonight.”

  “You paid that debt. Twice if we include tonight. You did not, do not have to—to…”

  I wished he would not speak so, not in those tones, not brokenly. My heart was on the verge, if not of explosion than of collapse, hurtling to an inward oblivion, sucking down with it the very ground I stood on. For a moment I believed my bones were Gentry bones, hollow as a bird’s. I was that light. I missed the locket’s weight around my neck. I missed my mother.

  Without turning back to him, I confessed, “There is no one here who cares for me. For me to care for. I feel like I’m dying. The parts of me that matter. If you save my life a thousand times it won’t mean anything unless I—unless I can still…feel something. Tenderness.”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “That is it exactly.”

  I covered my face with both hands, unwilling to sob in front of him.

  “Put me out!” I begged. “Now! Please. Like you did before. I am so tired.”

  This time his grass-trap was less like a thunder tunnel, all green flash and brash spectacle, and more like a hammock of spider silk and flower petal rocking, rocking, rocking me to slumber on a dozy summer evening. I swear I heard him singing lullabies all the way down.

  * * *

  Another month went by, much like the last: too much satin, too little hope, and only intermittent visits from my friend the foxboy to alleviate the tedium of despair.

  It was early morning—not Sebastian’s usual hour for visiting—when I woke to footsteps outside my door. The king strode into my cell, his gold-braided crown bright upon his pale hair, his long red cloak sweeping the tiles of turquoise and lapis lazuli. He leaned one hip against my pillow, stroked a single fingernail down my face, and when I flinched fully awake, smiled.