by Lily Markova
“I will look for Archie when I get out of here,” promised Saskia. “I will find him and tell him where you are.”
“Here.” Charlie extended his arm sideways and dropped the stuffed dog onto the open notebook in Saskia’s lap, looking anywhere but at the toy.
“No, Charlie, I can’t take—”
“It’s so that Archie believes you.”
“I will come visit you,” said Saskia, wishing desperately she knew what to say to cheer Charlie up. “I will come visit very often. I can fly over on Franz.”
They hugged again and said their good-byes and good-lucks—just in time, because two Gray Fiends burst into the room, scolded Charlie, and led him away to the playroom.
Chapter Nine. Good-bye
Saskia couldn’t bring herself to touch her dinner that night, even though dinner was the nicest mealtime in the Prison. (The rice pilaf was only borderline edible, but there were also a cup of tea, one of the only things Saskia liked proper, and a green apple, which reminded the girl of the Princess’s packed lunches and which she usually shared with the Skeleton’s bird.)
By now, her brain was used to falling asleep immediately after Gray Fiends checked that all the children were in their beds and turned off the lights. Struggling to stay awake, Saskia counted the minutes until the teenage girls would stop whispering to one another about their stupid teenage problems, which mostly revolved around other teenagers and math.
At last they stopped talking and tossing. Saskia lay still for a while longer, feeling less drowsy now that their sleep-inducing discussion was over and the images of a suffering Princess took advantage of the silence and flooded Saskia’s mind again.
Finally, unable to bear another second of this internal turmoil unsupported by physical action, Saskia ventured out of bed and over to the door. She looked back at the teenage girls, her heart beating Feverishly, but not one of them moved or said anything. Saskia tightened her grip on Charlie’s notebook and stuffed dog, exchanged bracing looks with the Skeleton, and slipped into the corridor. Following Charlie’s drawing, the two of them made it, rather faster than Saskia had expected, to the first floor, without running into any Gray Fiends on their way.
But right before the front door, they encountered an obstacle in the person of a sleeping guard, an elephantine Fiend, who in the dimmed corridor appeared like a snoring boulder. The boulder, whether snoring or not, wasn’t on the map; Charlie must have never wandered around the Prison at night.
The Skeleton didn’t seem to fancy the idea of sneaking past the guard. He started to rattle, and Saskia had to steer him back around a corner, mouthing at him to stop being nervous, please, or at least stop being nervous so loudly. After the Skeleton pulled his bones together, Saskia poked her head around the corner, weighing their chances of not getting caught. The door was locked with a bolt, which looked rusty and heavy and would positively make a good deal of noise when disturbed. Even if that didn’t wake the guard, outside the door she and the Skeleton would be faced with another challenge: the drawbridge. Saskia remembered, from her outdoor-time explorations, where the lever to lower it was, but the drawbridge was so creaky it would probably rouse not only the guard but also Madam Horridan in her lair. (Provided, of course, that the hag slept at all, and not circled above the Prison grounds on a broom or a vacuum cleaner.)
There wasn’t much else to be done. Saskia returned to her bedroom, ready to burst into tears again. The Princess might be preparing to receive Lightning Treatment right at this moment, and Saskia could do nothing to save her.
The Skeleton patted her on the back, more and more insistently, and soon Saskia understood that he wasn’t trying to console her—he was trying to get her to look at the windows. Just like on the night she had spent in a single bedroom, bird-shaped silhouettes were strolling there along the wires and clotheslines.
“Like a bird!” half-whispered, half-shouted Saskia, leaping to her feet. “Franz didn’t fly—he came here like a bird!”
The Skeleton bobbed his grinning skull. Apparently, he had worked it out before she had.
Once more, Saskia slunk over to the nightstand of one of the older girls. The Skeleton climbed up first, his feet clunk, clunk-ing on the polished top of the wooden nightstand. He then gave Saskia a leg-up, and she pulled herself onto the windowsill. Making sure the teenager in the bed below was still asleep, Saskia lifted the latch and pushed open the window.
As a cool night breeze tickled her neck, ruffled her hair, and sent shivers down her arms, Saskia felt a thrill of excitement tainted with trepidation. She was itching to look down but, clinging to the Princess’s words at their last dinner together, resisted the urge. Instead, she screwed up her imagination and made herself forget where and who she was. She pictured herself in the circus, high above the arena floor; she was not the little wide-eyed Saskia, she was the virtuoso Acrobat, who had done this so many times she could dance along the thinnest of tightropes with her eye closed. It didn’t matter whether there was a trampoline or a bubbling acid moat below, because she wasn’t going to fall.
Saskia the Acrobat stepped forward onto one of the clotheslines and heard the Skeleton scramble onto the windowsill behind her. She turned back. While the Skeleton kept his head up, his flowers slid almost completely out of their sockets and stared at the ground, growing larger. The right one had even developed a tic. The Skeleton’s mouth extended in what (Saskia was pretty certain this time) wasn’t a grin.
Out of the corner of her eye, Saskia could see that some of the diamond-shaped windows were still lit and the front yard was illuminated by the street lamps, almost like the circus stage. She smiled at the Skeleton, gave him her hand, and together with the hook-beaked birds they walked: Saskia along the clothesline; the Skeleton, an electric wire beside her. In that manner, they reached the very fence surrounding the grounds, unnoticed by the walls, whose protruding eyes were scanning the yard below.
The Skeleton thudded onto the ground on the other side of the fence in a tangle of spindly limbs. One of his arms reached out from the middle of the heap, groping around the grass for his lower jaw. He inserted the jaw back in his skull, adjusted it with a snap, and assembled the rest of his bones into their usual configuration. He made sure the bird in his ribcage was cheeping in anger at him and not in pain, then, as Saskia jumped down, too, he caught her, so they weren’t stalled by having to search for her jaw. They took each other’s hands again, and ran.
On the rare occasions that they heard an approaching car rumble on the gravel, the pair of them hid, trembling, in the roadside bushes, but for the most part, the dark road was deserted and quiet but for their own crunching footfalls. It didn’t take long for Saskia’s shoeless feet to start hurting, so they had to slow down to a walk.
Saskia had never traveled such a long way on foot before. The distance they had already covered must be three times as great as the length of Saskia’s trips from the castle to Bastilly’s, but the school was still nowhere in sight. They needed to hurry. If they didn’t reach home by morning, the Gray Fiends would notice Saskia’s absence and seize them before they could get to Franz, who alone knew where the Princess was held.
But neither of them could move any faster. The Skeleton dragged his feet, too, and Saskia’s heels were smarting, while her toes were growing numb with the cold. The tedious walk, worrying about the Princess, and staying vigilant for any Gray Fiends that might pursue them had depleted Saskia’s energy, and her stomach ached, demanding some fuel. Now she felt inexcusably shortsighted for having skipped dinner. A juicy green apple would come in so handy now, and even the rice pilaf didn’t seem as liable to taste like rubber anymore.
Eventually, they had to admit that a short stop for some rest was unavoidable if they wanted to make it to the castle in full consciousness. They sat down by the side of the road. Saskia rubbed her shoulders and tried to pull the legs of her ghost’s pajamas down over her feet. Noticing that, the Skeleton clapped himself on the forehead. He disentan
gled himself from his tailcoat, wrapped it around the girl, and hugged her. His bird, which the journey had rocked to sleep, ruffled its feathers without waking up; it appeared to have grown a lot since the Skeleton had first shown it to Saskia in the Spooky Woods. That seemed like such a long time ago. . . .
Saskia could see the Skeleton’s eye flowers recede deeper and deeper into their sockets, and, without quite registering it, she fell asleep herself.
When she opened her eye, the night had already passed. The sky above her was dirty-white, one smooth, vast cloud, without a single blue splotch or a glint of sunlight to enliven it. Saskia blinked and looked harder. This unnaturally even sky was not the sky at all; it was a ceiling.
She had fallen asleep last night, she had dreamed their escape! Saskia sat up and spun around but saw neither her roommates nor any nightstands. She was once again in a single bedroom, the Skeleton at the foot of her bed with his spine slumped against the wall. He had reclaimed his tailcoat, which was covered in grass blades and bush leaves, but his eye flowers were still dormant deep inside their sockets.
Before Saskia could think of a story that would explain how they had ended up back in the Prison, the bedroom door opened, and Madam Horridan stepped inside. Her face seemed saggier than usual, as though its grim expression were weighing it down.
“You’re up,” she said flatly. “I brought you some food.”
She bent down and put a plate of sticky porridge and a glass of milk on the floor next to Saskia’s bed.
“We had to remove your nightstand, you see, to prevent any more flights.” Madam Horridan’s eyes flicked up to the window, and Saskia looked back at it instinctively, too. Without the nightstand to add to her height, there was no way she could get onto the windowsill, not even with the Skeleton’s help.
“Although I can’t for the life of me imagine,” added the wicked hag, “how you managed to pull that off without breaking your neck.”
She waited, but Saskia wasn’t going to tell her how. Madam Horridan sat beside Saskia onto her bed, right where the Skeleton’s hand was. He leaped to his feet, jerked his hand from under Madam Horridan, and backed into a corner, massaging his eye sockets and pulling the flowers’ heads closer to their rims.
Not in the least bit concerned about having nearly broken someone’s fingers, the wicked hag spoke again. “We want what’s best for you, Saskia, we really do. But considering what an unruly, ungrateful child you’ve been, we think that right now, it’s best for you to spend some time alone and think about your behavior.”
Madam Horridan gave Saskia a stern look but, apparently (and rightly), didn’t find the girl’s expression to be apologetic enough, because she decided to press the point.
“Just consider what a disruptive influence you’ve been on the other children.”
As Madam Horridan reached into her bag and pulled out Charlie’s notebook and stuffed dog, Saskia’s insides went cold. Now she had landed Charlie in trouble, too.
“These were on you when we found you by the road. Do you even realize how lucky you are that a draught from the window you’d left open woke one of your roommates and she noticed that you were missing? We had to rouse everyone to find you! What were you thinking? You could have frozen to death! Alone, at night, in the middle of nowhere, God knows what else could have happened!”
Madam Horridan had almost screamed the last words, and had to pause to steady her breath.
“Will you give those back to Charlie?” said Saskia timidly. She wanted to ask Madam Horridan not to punish him, tell her that she had drawn the map herself, but was afraid her plea might achieve the opposite effect and make things worse for Charlie.
“Of course I will,” said Madam Horridan, her tone calmer now. “We had to tell the other children that something dreadful had happened to you after you’d run away so that nobody else would be tempted to follow in your footsteps.”
It took Saskia a few moments to realize what that meant for her.
“You’re going to keep me here alone until I’m old?”
Madam Horridan raised her eyebrows and shook her head. This strange amused look suited her better; somehow, she seemed suddenly younger, less worn out and haggish.
“It’s amazing how evil you think we are. Of course we won’t keep you here that long,” she explained, meeting Saskia’s wary gaze. “Yesterday, your mother received her first Lightning Treatment. It seems to be working for her, she’s doing better already.”
“She is?” asked Saskia, and, though she didn’t understand exactly why, she felt like crying again, for a long, long time.
“We’re also willing to offer her a job when she recovers completely. Lord knows we need all the help we can get with you troublemakers. The job’s hard and not pretty, but at least you won’t have to do your homework by candlelight. You’ll go home very soon,” said Madam Horridan, smiling at the disbelieving expression on Saskia’s crumpled face. “You just need to make an effort, too.”
“An effort?”
Madam Horridan reached into her bag again.
“We took this from your house, with your mother’s permission. Could you please tell me who this is?”
Hesitantly, Saskia accepted the photograph from Madam Horridan. It was frameless and frayed, as though someone had held it, wrung and twisted it in their hands many, many times. Saskia looked away, returning the picture to Madam Horridan.
“Saskia, before I can let your mother take you home, I need to know your mind is in a good place. Make an effort, remember? Talk to me. Now, please, tell me who this is.”
“It’s me, the Princess, Franz”—Saskia’s voice cracked—“and Jack.”
“Very good. Where is Jack now?”
“He went to Côte d'Au Revoir,” said Saskia, louder than she had intended, and she looked at Madam Horridan defiantly in case she was going to argue with that.
It looked as though Madam Horridan was indeed dissatisfied with Saskia’s answer, but argue she didn’t. Her expression became gentler still.
“You must miss him very much.”
“Not at all,” said Saskia, scowling.
“All right. Could you describe to me, please, what Jack looks like in the photograph? Why is he dressed so peculiarly?”
Saskia felt the heat rising in her cheeks. Yet again, something lurked behind Madam Horridan’s words, some insinuation—Jack wasn’t a weirdo!
“Jack’s not peculiar, the photo’s from Halloween!”
Madam Horridan nodded, riffled through Charlie’s notebook, and opened it to the page with the Skeleton’s portrait.
“This is your friend, the one you brought here with you, isn’t it?”
At first, Saskia decided it was safer not to reply, but then she thought about the Princess, about how much she must have suffered through in her attempts to get Saskia back. The least Saskia could do was be honest with Madam Horridan and hope she would appreciate it rather than get angry.
“Yes, it’s him,” Saskia said finally, with a guilty glance at the corner where the Skeleton appeared to be trying to blend in with the walls.
“Don’t you find it a little bit strange that the Skeleton’s clothing looks very much like Jack’s Halloween costume?”
What did Madam Horridan mean by that? Saskia knew by now that grown-ups often asked one thing when what they really wanted was an answer to an entirely different question. Was Madam Horridan trying to suggest that the Skeleton had done something to Jack and taken this tailcoat from him? But her Skeleton would never hurt anyone, even if he might not look it to some.
“Saskia, it’s okay if you miss Jack,” Madam Horridan went on, sounding as though she had abandoned all pretense and was saying what she meant this time. “You’re too young, you shouldn’t have to be going through all these terrible things. People much, much older than you turn to illusions to fence themselves off against emotions that scare them. But you need to be braver now, for your mother. You need to look at the truth and choose to see it the way
it is, without dressing it in convenient fairy tales. We’re not your enemies, Saskia! We’re not demons, not witches, not child kidnappers. We’re trying to help you. This isn’t a prison. As much as you love your mother, she isn’t a princess. You might think of Franz as your friend, but that doesn’t make him as complex as a human.”
Saskia couldn’t bear any more of it. Why did Madam Horridan have to say all that, why did she want to steal everything away from her? Saskia pressed her hands over her ears, shut her eye, and tossed her head from side to side. “No, no, no, you’re lying!”
Madam Horridan sighed. She put the photograph and Charlie’s things back into her bag and cast a sad glance at the cold food on the floor.
“If you want to go home, you have to say good-bye to your skeletons,” she said before leaving, but Saskia kept her ears covered and didn’t hear her.
Once the door closed behind Madam Horridan with a muffled scrape of the bolt, the Skeleton edged across to Saskia and touched her hand with one fingertip. Saskia opened her eye, uncovered her ears, and threw herself into the Skeleton’s arms, sniffling and shuddering.
Time in the single bedroom ticked away even more slowly than anywhere else within the Prison’s walls, but at least, she and the Skeleton had been left alone. Gray Fiends only came by to bring Saskia food three times a day, and occasionally, they brought her some toys and books, too, but neither games nor reading did the trick of distracting her thoughts. Saskia couldn’t stop brooding over what Madam Horridan had said, and try as she might not to let them, the words had slithered their way underneath her skin, crawling there and hissing the lies over and over. She knew Madam Horridan’s cruel suggestions weren’t true, but why did they fill Saskia with so much terror and sadness every time she replayed them in her mind?
The sun sank below the windowsill and reemerged somewhere on the other side of the fortress, unseen but casting a pale light on the birds that marched along the clotheslines, making their feathers gleam. After the sun sank and rose again fourteen times, Saskia was finally sent for.