The Bone Garden

by Heather Kassner

  Although Miss Vesper did not so much as flinch when she drank it, Irréelle gagged on the chalky grains of bone dust. She had never tasted anything so horrible. Even the mint could not mask the bitterness, but she forced herself to swallow it.

  And then she waited and waited for something to happen.

  Besides the grittiness on her tongue, she felt no different. Her arms and legs did not correct themselves. Her long strands of hair did not flood with color. And when she opened her fist and focused on the dirt and dust, she still could not move the tiniest piece of it.

  Instead of feeling discouraged, Irréelle only felt more determined. This blend of bone dust was specially made for Miss Vesper. Somehow, Irréelle would have to convince Miss Vesper to create one just for her.

  * * *

  Irréelle spent the rest of the day in the underside of the graveyard. This task was more delicate than most, as Miss Vesper was quite particular about the type of dust she took with tea. Irréelle knew the measurements exactly but referred to the list she had written out previously to ensure she made no errors.

  MISS VESPER’S BONE DUST BLEND

  for luster and longevity

  Jawbone—one thimbleful

  Hipbone (extract borrow from two skeletons)—one vial each, full to the brim

  Rib cage—half a dash

  Ring-finger bone (from the left hand only, for extra sweetness)—a single twist

  Thighbone—one vial

  Cinnamon—one-fourth teaspoon

  When she finally crept out of the basement that afternoon, pockets clinking with vials, she cleaned the bone borrower most thoroughly and then went to deliver the bones. Footsteps came from three flights up. Miss Vesper was at work in the attic.

  A spiral staircase, made of wrought iron, led up to the highest room in the house. Irréelle had always thought it beautiful, all of the detailed leaf-work like the lace on her best dress, until Miss Vesper told her the tale of a clumsy girl who did not watch her step and tumbled the entire way down, snapping her neck in her carelessness.

  At hearing this horrible story, which Miss Vesper relayed matter-of-factly and without showing a hint of emotion or an ounce of sympathy, Irréelle went cold. Sure enough, she spent many a day beneath the graveyard, but that was somehow different from this long-ago tragedy that had occurred just down the hall from where she slept.

  She hopped over the floorboards so as not to step upon the place she imagined the poor girl had fallen. Once she reached the top of the staircase, she knocked on the closed wooden door. Just once. Just a tap.

  Moments later, the door swung open. Miss Vesper was already walking away from it, back toward the center of the room and the long wooden table that took up so much space. Across its top rested a small notebook (one Miss Vesper always kept with her), a pencil, and dozens of jars and bowls of varying sizes, holding all manner of liquid and powder. Long rows of shelves lined the attic walls, and on them sat racks of vials and old journals written in a different hand than Miss Vesper’s.

  Soft light filtered through the skylight. It reflected off the many glass jars.

  “Put everything away,” Miss Vesper directed. “I will make it later.” She selected several vials and tipped them over a large bowl all at once. The contents braided around each other as they fell. “Did you see him this time? The boy?” The question seemed an afterthought, but it was one she had been asking more and more frequently.

  “I saw no one,” Irréelle said, just as she had the day before (and the day before that as well), with no more understanding of who this boy might be, unless one of the skeletons finally decided to address her or a ghost materialized before her.

  When Miss Vesper did not respond, Irréelle went to the shelf beside the door. She set each of the vials she had gathered on one of the racks. As she went to place the last one, her hand froze midair.

  The vial was empty. Of all the things to forget, the one ingredient she simply needed to find in the cupboard and measure out with a little spoon.

  Before she turned toward Miss Vesper, she smoothed her hair and straightened her skirt. “I seem to have forgotten the cinnamon,” she said, not wanting to interrupt Miss Vesper in the middle of her work, but speaking up before she lost her nerve.

  Miss Vesper lifted her head, finger to the page to hold her place. “The cinnamon? Well, you are in luck. I needed it for something else and brought it upstairs already.” Miss Vesper pointed to one of the stubby jars in front of her.

  Irréelle leapt forward. In her haste, her longer leg did not wait for the shorter one, and she staggered about in just the manner Miss Vesper despised. Worse yet, when she saw Miss Vesper’s lips press into a thin line, she faltered. The empty vial slipped through her fingertips and shattered into a thousand fragments across the hardwood floor.

  5

  Breathe

  It sparkled like sugar. Irréelle stood perfectly still amid the broken glass. Sweat beaded on her forehead.

  Miss Vesper let out an inaudible sigh, her chest rising and then falling its only evidence. She set a black ribbon between the pages of her notebook and closed it. She touched two fingers to the corner of her mouth, as if to stay the words sitting on the tip of her tongue, and then tucked her honey-brown hair behind one ear. Each movement was slow and deliberate. Miss Vesper was nothing if not poised.

  “What a terrible mess,” she said. “One I cannot imagine away as I could imagine you away.”

  Irréelle found her mouth too dry to speak. Her legs, which had been in such a rush to carry her forward, now betrayed her again, only in quite the opposite manner. They would not move a muscle, not even to retreat. She did not want Miss Vesper to imagine her away, but she desperately wanted to disappear.

  “Now I see why you are always so dreadfully slow,” Miss Vesper said, pouring cinnamon into a vial. “It is all you can do to stay on your own two feet.”

  Miss Vesper came around the table, heels crunching over the glass, grinding it into smaller and smaller pieces. She put the vial away beside the others and looked over each one Irréelle had so recently filled, tapping the corks to settle the bone dust, as if to catch some small error in measurement.

  Although she had been very careful, Irréelle shrank into herself, rounding her shoulders though she usually worked so hard to straighten them. What if she had mixed up the ingredients and instead of gathering one thimbleful of jawbone and half a dash of rib cage, she had instead collected it the other way around? That combination would have been absurd.

  However, all must have been in order, as Miss Vesper walked back to the table and opened her notebook. On a blank page, she jotted down a brief notation and then glanced up. “Must I instruct you on how to clean up?”

  Miss Vesper did not need to ask her twice. Irréelle shook herself out of the stupor. “I’m sorry. I need no instruction.” Her voice came out as a squeak.

  She did not know where to place her feet, but stepped as cautiously as she could around the glass and slipped out the door. It took all her willpower to go slowly down the spiral staircase. Now that she was moving, she wanted to run.

  From the closet in the hall she grabbed a broom and a dustbin. In the bathroom, she wet an old hand towel. (She knew better than to use one initialed with N.M.H.) She lugged everything up to the attic.

  Miss Vesper did not give the slightest impression that she noticed Irréelle’s return and continued with whatever it was she was doing, which involved mashing a chalky gray substance with a mortar and pestle. It smelled like black licorice.

  Irréelle began to sweep up the glass. It had scattered to the far corners of the room and had broken into such fine pieces that she had to go over the entire floor three times with the broom. Even then, she could not be sure she had gotten it all, so she went to her knees and wiped the floor by hand, plank by plank, reaching beneath the cabinets and cleaning under the table, her hand dodging here and there to avoid having her fingers caught under Miss Vesper’s toes whenever she took a step.


  From the corner of her eye, she watched Miss Vesper. She was no longer stirring or measuring. Instead, she had plopped a ball of gray clay (or something that looked like clay) onto the table and was rolling it out on a layer of bone dust, much as she would roll out cookie dough on a sprinkling of flour. When it was even and flat, she picked up a scalpel and sliced into it.

  Without meaning to, Irréelle stopped sweeping. She leaned against the broom, amazed at each intricate cut of Miss Vesper’s blade. Whatever she was making, the pieces were small. As she finished shaping them, she placed them on a silver tray, a deliberate arrangement that began to look more and more familiar as each piece was added.

  All at once, Irréelle realized what she was looking at. The reconstructed bones of a hand. All twenty-seven of them.

  Miss Vesper tipped one of the glass jars and shook out a thin line of cinnamon along the length of each bone-dust finger. Next, she took in her hand something that looked very much like a paintbrush. With it, she dabbed the chalky mixture she had made earlier, and then she touched brush to bone and coated each finger with the thick paste.

  “You seem very interested in what I’m doing here. You may as well stop sweeping,” Miss Vesper said.

  Irréelle looked down at her boots. She had not meant to be so obvious in her curiosity.

  “I created you in just this manner, although I will be sure to take more care this time, as I did all the times before you. Now that I have a sufficient amount of bone dust.”

  Irréelle flinched.

  “You must know you are not the first. Had you no idea?” Miss Vesper’s blue eyes widened. She added another coat of paste to the bones.

  Irréelle had some idea but did not want to voice it and make it true, so all she said was, “I’m not sure I understand.”

  Miss Vesper laughed. A quiet laugh, covered with the back of her hand. “Who do you think helped create the tunnels? I could not call all that dirt myself.”

  She had not thought of it. It seemed an underworld that had always existed.

  “Who do you think gathered the bone dust before you?”

  Irréelle shook her head. In her trembling hand the broom juddered. She gripped it more firmly to keep it still.

  “Who do you think gathered the bone dust that created you?”

  “Someone else, I suppose.” It was not a specific answer, but Irréelle felt the need to say something. However, as soon as the words left her mouth, another thought came to mind. “You asked if I’d seen him. A boy.”

  “Yes.”

  Irréelle did not know what had happened to him but suspected it was nothing good if Miss Vesper had been forced to design someone as mismatched as her. She wanted to hear no more lest she end up like him.

  Miss Vesper set down the brush only to pick up a pair of scissors with exceptionally long blades. “Come over here.”

  Dragging the broom behind her, Irréelle did as she was told. She faced Miss Vesper across the table. Without a word, Miss Vesper reached forward. She snipped off a lock of Irréelle’s long white hair, which had been very straight across the bottom and was now as uneven as all the rest of her. Her hand went automatically to the ragged ends.

  Miss Vesper laid Irréelle’s just-cut hair across the repurposed bones. At first nothing happened, but then the strands began to lengthen. They wove and twined together, moving faster and faster, as if invisible hands stitched thread, until the hair completely covered the bones with what looked to be skin.

  “As I said, you are not the first, nor will you be the last.” Miss Vesper offered these words like a warning.

  The threat jabbed Irréelle in the chest and she took a step back. She did not want to be replaced like the unnamed boy and become an unnamed girl.

  Miss Vesper leaned closer to the table, her mouth only inches from the hand. She looked thoughtful, as if she were digging up her darkest imaginings. “Breathe,” she whispered.

  The index finger twitched.

  6

  The Dust-and-Bone Hand

  Irréelle gasped. The Hand looked so lifelike, so much like her own, only it was not attached to any other body parts, of course. Yet still it moved. What was once dust was now bone, what was once cinnamon was now blood, what was once hair (her hair) was now skin. It was translucent at first, and then deepened in color like a loaf of bread browning in the oven. The Hand was perfectly formed.

  “Hmm.” Miss Vesper watched the Hand intently.

  It was an appraising look, as if she were only waiting to be disappointed. Irréelle knew that look all too well but was not used to seeing it directed at anyone, or anything, other than her.

  The finger twitched again, an awkward movement, like its joints were stiff and rusty with disuse. It seemed disoriented, as could be expected when it had no eyes to see with. (Although somehow it heard Miss Vesper’s command without any ears, which made little sense to Irréelle but she accepted anyway, because really, if she thought too hard about the many peculiar things in the world, she would have no time for anything else.)

  The other fingers began to jerk, each in turn. Knuckles cracked, skin stretched over bone. Then the Hand gained more coordination and the spasms eased. The index finger settled beside the others on the table. It touched the wooden surface, sliding the pad of the finger against the grain, perhaps finding a sensation that it could comprehend.

  It stroked the table several more times. Irréelle leaned a tiny bit closer. A floorboard creaked.

  Then all at once the Hand rose to the tips of its fingers. It reminded her of a spider seeking its prey (a rather large spider, no doubt, and one with five legs instead of eight, but just as creepy). It crawled to the very edge of the table. When the first finger touched air instead of wood, it paused.

  But not for long.

  The Hand sprang forward. It landed with a thud upon the floor and shot out with unexpected speed, nimble and light, and aimed straight for Irréelle. She scampered away from it. She was not frightened of it, exactly; only she did not want it to touch her, as if it planned to snatch her body for itself.

  “Stop,” she said, hoping it would take a command from her the way it had from Miss Vesper. It continued to advance. “Stay,” she tried, with no better luck.

  The Hand stalked her.

  She tried to hop out of its way, but it changed course when she did, drawing all the closer. It was almost on top of her. She stumbled backward. Her elbows banged against the cabinet behind her. The racks and the vials within them rattled and clanked, but somehow they did not fall.

  Miss Vesper, who had simply been watching this interaction the way one might observe a cat chasing a mouse, now hurried forward. Her eyebrows pinched together. “Careful.”

  The Hand sidled closer. Irréelle was cornered.

  It made a grab for her ankles, but she kicked it away. Not hard, just enough to keep it from getting hold of her.

  The Hand crouched low, poised to jump, and then pushed off from the floor. It smacked into her arm before she could move out of the way. It grabbed at her with searching fingers, snatching the ends of her hair and tugging at the sleeve of her dress. She squirmed and shook until it lost its grip and slid down her side. Instead of falling to the floor, it managed to catch hold of her skirt. It clung to the hem and began to inch upward again.

  Frantic, she slapped at the Hand and pried at its fingers. Anything to get it away from her.

  “Careful,” Miss Vesper said again, her voice an octave higher.

  Although Irréelle heard the warning, she was single-minded in her actions and took little care as she swatted at the Hand. “Get off! Get off!” she cried. She yanked the Hand from her skirt and flung it to the ground, but it only popped right back up to the tips of its fingers and angled for another attack.

  She lifted the broom just as Miss Vesper said, “Be still.”

  Instantly, the Hand stopped moving, gone limp in the blink of an eye, but Irréelle was already bringing down the broom. It landed with a crunch a
nd a snap. Bones cracked. She pulled back the broom. The Hand lay broken on the floor.

  “How dare you. How dare you.” Miss Vesper stood stock-still, arms straight at her sides, hands clenched. She never raised her voice, and this time was no exception. If anything, it only grew softer.

  Irréelle knew she had made a mistake, one she could not take back, but it was the complete calm in Miss Vesper’s voice that told her this mistake was much worse than all her other misbehaviors combined. She might have been forgiven when Irréelle was too slow coming back from the tunnels or when she was forgetful of her tasks. Perhaps her clumsiness and crooked bones could be excused. But not this offense.

  She looked up into Miss Vesper’s eyes. The blue irises frosted over like ice across a dark lake. Heat bloomed pink on both cheeks. “I did not mean to smash it,” Irréelle said. She had only wanted to stop it.

  She dropped the broom and sank to her knees. No longer afraid of it, she lifted the Hand, so small like her own. It probably weighed less than a pound. She did not know how she had thought it could have hurt her. Its nails (so very newly grown) were not even long enough to scratch her.

  “Your intentions mean little when your actions are so careless. It is why I have never trusted you with what I need most. You would expose yourself and your unnatural form. You would bring unwanted attention to me. I cannot let that happen. Little use you have been to me.” Miss Vesper twisted the ring on her finger.

  The words would have crushed Irréelle if she did not accept them so completely.

  She prodded the Hand with one finger, but it lay there motionless. “Is it dead?” She could not bear the thought that she might have killed it. She would not even harm a bug.

  “How silly you are. It was never alive,” Miss Vesper said. She plucked the Hand from Irréelle’s palm and carried it back to the silver tray, tossing it down none too gently. “It was never real. Just a temporary pile of bone dust and imagination.”