Saskia's Skeleton

by Lily Markova

  The Skeleton’s bird whistled like a sports referee, and the Skeleton himself clapped his hands to the earless sides of his skull. Saskia blushed.

  “Oh, sorry! Franz taught me that word.”

  But Charlie didn’t seem to mind. “Cowardly jerks,” he added. The bird gave a whistle again, a longer and angrier one this time.

  “Oh, the Princess would never say something like this,” said Saskia, feeling both giggly and guilty. “She’d say proper children are not evil”—Saskia imitated the Princess’s patient tone—“it’s just that their proper parents haven’t taught them to be curious about, and not frightened of, that which is different, and the proper parents aren’t to blame, either, it’s just that their parents—Only she’d drop the word ‘proper.’ She only uses it when she thinks I can’t hear.”

  “Well, she must be older and wiser,” said Charlie, “but we are children. We don’t have to understand that just yet.”

  “You never told me what had happened to your princess?” Saskia reminded him.

  Charlie sighed.

  “She’s gone to some foreign land called Côte d'Au Revoir, or so I’ve been told. Where everyone can enter—”

  “—but not many can come back,” said Saskia. It was part of a verse she’d heard the circus musicians sing. “The Princess says that’s where our Jack went, too.”

  After that, neither of them said another word for a few minutes.

  Then Saskia remembered something. “Oh, my manners! I forgot to introduce you to my friend!” She nodded at the Skeleton and, feeling a little nervous, asked Charlie, “You can see him, can’t you?”

  Charlie looked in the direction she had indicated, visibly straining his eyes. “Could you tell me what your friend looks like, just so I’m sure I’m seeing correctly?”

  Saskia had to strain her eye too in order not to miss any niceties as she described the Skeleton’s appearance to Charlie: his blue eye-flowers, violin bows for arms, red bird for a heart, green grassy veins, purple tailcoat, and legs like a grasshopper only bending the right way.

  “Now I can see him!” said Charlie, to Saskia’s great relief. “Hang on.”

  Charlie took a notebook and a pack of colored pencils from his nightstand and, a few minutes later, showed Saskia a portrait of the Skeleton that looked exactly like the real Skeleton, only smaller. Charlie jumped off his bed, went over to the Skeleton, and showed him the portrait, too. The Skeleton’s eye flowers started out the better to see, then rolled over in their sockets, and Saskia could tell he was swooning over the result.

  Charlie returned to his bed and picked up the old stuffed dog from his nightstand.

  “And I only have this,” he sighed. “Archie gave it to me. Must have found him in some junkyard.”

  Charlie spoke in an offhand tone, but Saskia didn’t doubt for a moment that he had a lot of affection for this toy. Charlie petted the dog on the head the way Saskia had petted Franz when he had been a cat.

  “Wonder where he is now, Archie,” Charlie said distractedly.

  “You miss him?” said Saskia.

  Charlie gave one short nod and hugged the dog closer.

  “I had Jack,” said Saskia. “He’s gone, too. Only I don’t miss him all that much.”

  Chapter Eight. A Visitor

  Days in the Prison for Children Who Did Something Wrong were as unremarkable, endless, and unvaried as its corridors. Nights were empty of dreams and seemed to last no longer than a tired blink of Saskia’s eye. Each new “today” blended so seamlessly into another “tomorrow” that soon Saskia wasn’t able to tell where one day expired and the next one began. It wasn’t long (or maybe it was—Saskia couldn’t be certain anymore) before she started to feel as though her castle were nothing more than a distant nice fantasy that had never truly happened, and that she had always been here, living the same routine over and over, without a break.

  For her second and all the following nights in the Prison, Saskia had been moved to a different bedroom, which she shared with four other girls. Since the Gray Fiends (so Saskia had decided to call the gray-uniformed grown-ups) hadn’t managed to find Saskia a vacant bed in a dormitory with her peers, she had been given a place in a teenagers’. Despite the sense of foreboding that had swept over Saskia upon her receiving the news, her roommates had taken little interest in Saskia’s arrival and didn’t bully her; they only warned her not to come near their nightstands.

  Indeed, it was hard to believe that her life had ever been anything else. Already a thousand times she must have been shaken half-awake by the Gray Fiends’ hurried hands. A thousand times she, still half asleep, had taken a quick, scant trickle of a shower, and a thousand times she had been to the spoon-clanging canteen for breakfast (sticky porridge and a glass of warm milk—Saskia hated both substances dearly). From the canteen she had gone, what felt like a thousand times, to the study room, where for hours she languished over her Numbing Numbers (Saskia wasn’t allowed to stand on her head while she did them, or, for that matter, at all). Then, back to the canteen for a thousand lunchtimes (soup and a viscous fruit drink, either of which Saskia loathed only a little bit less than the breakfast).

  After lunch, the schedule drove Saskia outside for an hour, during which time, under the close watch of a Fiend or two, the kids wandered around the front yard. Saskia made the most of those opportunities to furtively investigate the surroundings, but there wasn’t a gap or a crack in the fence, and the moat was as seething and the drawbridge as hefty as ever. One day, she noticed something that made her situation seem still more hopeless: The Prison’s exterior walls had eyes. Numerous, black, protruding, they turned back and forth as they spied on the children, zooming in on anyone who dared stray too close to the locked gate.

  Once they returned to the fortress, Saskia’s age group had free time, which didn’t feel all that free, since they weren’t allowed to while it away anywhere but in the playroom. During these hours, some of the kids were one by one summoned to Madam Horridan’s lair.

  If Saskia wasn’t summoned, she and Charlie sat in a far corner, chatting in hushed tones, until the Fiends supervising them had to leave the playroom—they had to leave the playroom a lot and, in their haste, often forgot to lock the door. (Saskia had overhead from snatches of their frustrated conversations that there weren’t enough Fiends in the Prison, and those who dealt with toddlers and teenagers could always use an extra dozen pairs of hands.) As soon as the Fiends were out of sight, the proper kids turned on Charlie and Saskia, so the two of them were forced to run for it and hide (the proper children never attacked the Skeleton, but he kept Saskia and Charlie company just the same).

  Sometimes they found shelter in the laundry room, which the washing machines filled with helicopter-like droning and chopping noises. Other times, they took cover in the milk-smelling kitchen, or in one of the deserted bedrooms. Until the Fiends located them, Saskia and Charlie could finally have some fun. Saskia borrowed crayons from Charlie and painted the Skeleton’s face white, copying her favorite acrobat’s stage makeup. Then they played charades—the Skeleton was a natural for miming.

  On the days when their hideout was so lucky they still had some time left after charades, the Skeleton fluttered his eye-flowers, wheedling a fairy tale out of Saskia. Happy to oblige, she acted out little stories, which Charlie then turned into comic strips: about the Princess, the Skeleton, Saskia, Jack, and Franz. Once or twice, Saskia asked Charlie to draw something about his own princess and Archie, too, but he shook his head and became sad, so she didn’t insist.

  Perhaps because Saskia was new, or maybe because she was suspected of greater misdoings, the wicked hag called for her more often than any of the other kids—every couple of days. Usually, the conversation began with Madam Horridan rebuking Saskia for running away from the playroom.

  “You need to stop acting as though we’re your enemies, Saskia,” the wicked hag kept saying. “The staff have got enough on their plates without having to turn the hou
se upside down in order to find you!”

  Saskia tried to explain to Madam Horridan that she and Charlie hid only because they didn’t fancy receiving a beating from the proper kids.

  “You’re making things up again,” replied Madam Horridan. “I saw you all play very peacefully. If truth be told, I’m so proud of you children—such unfortunate backgrounds, but your hearts haven’t hardened.”

  Madam Horridan had made it clear during their previous meetings that Saskia’s return to the castle depended greatly on her behaving properly, which meant never inventing any stories. Saskia didn’t want the wicked hag to think she was lying, so she refrained from further attempts to help Madam Horridan see things Saskia’s way (which was that the other kids’ hearts hadn’t hardened only because they had none).

  “How is it going with your friend, um, the Skeleton?” the wicked hag would then ask, with an innocent smile.

  Saskia was fooled by neither the smile, nor Madam Horridan’s casual tone, so she didn’t say anything to that, but she never let go of the Skeleton’s hand.

  Madam Horridan’s smile disappeared, and she said things like, “It’s time to grow out of this,” and “Look the truth in the eye,” and “You have to be careful, or you’ll get sick like your mother.” Saskia didn’t get what half of that meant—the Skeleton didn’t hurt anyone, after all, so why did the wicked hag claim he was dangerous?

  At the end of these meetings, Madam Horridan mentioned that the Princess had been taking her metal pills very responsibly, and that her Fever was almost over, and now she only had to battle a severe Common Cold.

  Saskia pictured her Princess lying somewhere in a Prison for Grown-ups Who Did Something Wrong, with her green eyes blue and staring through the ceiling, and eventually, these thoughts caused Saskia to catch a slight Cold herself.

  She was allowed not to study or go to the playroom until her Cold was over, and Saskia spent most of the time in her bedroom. The teenagers returned to the dormitory only after dinner, so for much of the day, she and the Skeleton had the whole room to themselves. Saskia rarely got out of bed. The Skeleton combed her hair with his fingers so often it now looked almost as smooth as Charlie’s. His bird sang her songs that, at least for a while, made Saskia’s eye grow a little less blue. Sometimes, Charlie managed to sneak out of the playroom, too, and he brought Saskia new comics, in which the Princess got well and took Saskia back to the castle.

  Then, one night, something extraordinary finally happened. Saskia awoke because someone was tapping her cheek. At first she decided it must be Franz—he often did this, both as a cat and a human, when he was bored and wanted somebody’s unobtrusive but wakeful presence. As her mind caught up with what her eye perceived—the dark shapes of the four occupied beds around hers—Saskia remembered she wasn’t in her tower.

  The one tapping her on the cheek turned out to be the Skeleton. Saskia couldn’t discern whether he was silently screaming or smiling, but his mouth was wide—no, long—open, and he was jabbing his finger toward one of the windows.

  Carefully, so as not to wake the teenagers, Saskia made her way between their beds to the window, and climbed onto one of the girls’ nightstand, casting apprehensive glances down at the motionless silhouette it belonged to. Then she looked up and saw—

  “Franz!”

  As quietly as possible, Saskia rose on tiptoe and opened the window—she could only just reach the latch.

  Franz scrambled in onto the narrow, angular windowsill. Moonlight pierced through his nearly transparent whiskers, eyebrows, and ear hair, so it seemed as though he himself were giving off a soft glow. He was a cat now, which could mean only one thing: The Princess didn’t have the strength to think about him much anymore.

  “Franz!” breathed Saskia, making to stroke his paw. Franz jerked it away instantly, so Saskia had to content herself with “looking-but-not-touching.”

  “How did you—?” she whispered. “There are moats and fences everywhere, and the walls have eyes! How did you get here?”

  Either Franz still retained the power of speech, or Saskia could somehow speak Cat now, or maybe she just knew Franz so well—whatever the reason was, when Franz opened his mouth, she understood what he said.

  And what he said was: “Like a bird.”

  “You can FLY?”

  Saskia forgot to keep her voice down and almost toppled off the nightstand, she was so impressed. The girl in the nearest bed, who had recently reminded Saskia not to come near her nightstand, and on top of whose nightstand there were currently Saskia’s feet, stirred. Franz, Saskia, and the Skeleton, who was looming behind her, froze. The teenage girl rolled over onto her other side and stopped moving, too. After a few more moments of outward stillness and mental skedaddling, Saskia felt it was safe to start breathing again.

  “Listen to me, Saskia, I think the Princess might be in serious danger!” whispered, or maybe hissed, Franz. “I don’t know the details, but I came to visit her in the hospital, and I saw her sign so many papers! Something terrible is happening, Saskia. . . .”

  Saskia opened her eye and let out a particularly despairing morning groan. Was it time to get up already? The Gray Fiend who had been shaking her moved away to wake the other girls. It wasn’t immediately that Saskia remembered she had seen Franz at night, and when she did remember, Saskia realized she had just had her first dream in the Prison. It would have been nice to let herself fantasize for a little while that Franz had really come here, but, most uncharacteristically, Saskia didn’t feel like pretending. She just missed Franz and worried about the Princess, and a silly false hope that she’d heard from them wouldn’t make the dream any truer. Besides, the very idea was simply ridiculous: If Franz could fly, Saskia would have known that.

  As dispiriting as the unreality of Franz’s visit was, it had succeeded in bringing Saskia’s mind out of its Cold. She pined for neither Numbing Numbers nor the spiteful playroom but wouldn’t mind spending more time with Charlie (the Gray Fiends had finally cottoned on to the fact that, lately, every time Charlie had escaped from the playroom, he’d headed straight to Saskia’s dormitory. It didn’t take the Fiends long to find him anymore, so Saskia and Charlie didn’t see much of each other these days).

  After breakfast, Saskia asked a Gray Fiend to take her to Madam Horridan, whom the girl then informed that she was “feeling all better.”

  “I’m very glad to hear this, Saskia. I’ve got good news for you, too!” said the wicked hag, with an expression of feigned excitement. “Unfortunately, the metal pills no longer improve your mother’s condition, so yesterday, she agreed to Extra Painful, Ultra Dangerous, and Occasionally Effective Lightning Treatment she had been refusing to undergo before. But now, to help speed her recovery, she has signed the consent form—I’m sure she’ll be allowed to take you back home very soon.”

  Saskia swayed, and would have fallen if the Skeleton hadn’t supported her. So it was true! Franz really had flown over to see her last night, this was what he had been trying to warn her about. . . .

  “You know, I think I’m still sick,” said Saskia dully, and she felt the bridge of her nose, which was beginning to sting.

  “Of course, my dear, of course,” said Madam Horridan, wrinkling her sympathetic brow, and Saskia was sent back to her bedroom.

  There, Saskia sat on her bed and cried with fear for the Princess. She didn’t know exactly what that Lightning Treatment was like, but in her imagination it was torturous. Saskia could almost see the Princess chained between two tall trees, as trident after white-hot trident of lightning struck and jolted through her shuddering body. Saskia could almost hear the Princess scream and a horde of proper people around her laugh. . . .

  The bedroom was empty except for the girl. The teenagers were always in the study room at this time of day, and even the Skeleton wasn’t around. Where had he got to?

  Saskia stopped crying for the Princess and started worrying about the Skeleton instead. She hopped off the bed and checked un
derneath it, but the Skeleton wasn’t there, either. Saskia stared around the dormitory, starting to panic. Had she been so distracted she hadn’t noticed him disappear completely?

  The Skeleton soon returned, however. His bones hadn’t begun to fade, as Saskia was afraid they would if she and the Skeleton didn’t stay close together. Better still, he didn’t come back alone—he brought Charlie. Both of them were grinning (although Saskia could never be sure with the Skeleton).

  “Saskia, the Skeleton broke a window in a dorm upstairs and our Fiends ran out of the playroom to see what’s going on—it was wicked!” said Charlie, laughing and high-fiving the Skeleton, who took a few moments to figure out what he was supposed to do with Charlie’s waiting hand.

  “Skeleton! Charlie!”

  Saskia dashed across the room and gave them each a hug so mighty that the Skeleton’s ribs creaked and his bird had to issue a warning chirrup.

  “Dear Charlie, you have to help us escape, I need to rescue my Princess!”

  Charlie’s grin waned, but he pulled from under his arm his notebook, which, like his stuffed dog, he rarely parted with, and which was full of wonderful comics. He and Saskia sat on her bed, and some ten minutes later, Charlie handed her the notebook. He had drawn her a detailed plan of all the corridors and stairs, and outlined the places Saskia needed to avoid outside so that the eyes on the walls wouldn’t detect her.

  “Thank you, Charlie!”

  Charlie nodded wordlessly and clutched his stuffed dog tighter to his chest. Saskia noticed that his eyes had gone bluer.

  “Come with us,” she suggested. “Our castle’s so big, the Princess won’t mind at all.”

  The Skeleton nodded vigorously, but Charlie shook his head. “I can’t. I’m waiting for Archie. What if he won’t know how to find me if I run away?”