Bone Swans: Stories

by C. S. E. Cooney

  Enough.

  She gripped the slingshot Granny Two-Shoes had slid her. Swiped from the dirt the bullet casing that had spared her the red nose. Wriggled onto her back. Slid out of range of that crushing foot. And took her shot.

  BING!

  She couldn’t throw like Tex, but she was still the best shot in Hillside.

  Knocked askew by the flying missile, the August Crown went hurtling from the Gray Harlequin’s head. It spun, it glistened, the wings that grew from it seemed to flap and fly. Bald as a vulture, the Gray Harlequin dove for it, but the Flabberghast caught him by the folds of his saffron robe and ripped him away from his goal.

  In thew and sinew, the Gray Harlequin was stronger than the Flabberghast, who, though taller, was thinner, too, almost frail. Perhaps old bones were not as nourishing as young souls. When the Gray Harlequin fisted the lapels of the Flabberghast’s red brocade vest, he lifted him out of his shoes. His ruby mouth yawned open. Black gums studded with diamond fangs shone with saliva. A black tongue flicked out, split like a snake’s.

  “How passing sweet will a living Tall One taste, after all these years of eating death? Do you remember the old days, Flabberghast, when we had only each other to devour under the hills? How thin we grew then. But we always had enough, you and I.”

  The Flabberghast said a word that Beatrice did not know. She thought it was not a human word.

  In answer, the Gray Harlequin slammed him into the mirror. Not once, not twice, not thrice, but over and over again, and each time the Flabberghast’s body against the glass made a sound like lightning striking cathedral bells.

  Beatrice turned to the other members of her Barka Gang, who watched the scene with wide, frightened eyes. Could the Flabberghast fall? Fail? Would he be ate up, and they in their turn? Beatrice snapped her fingers. Their focus shifted. Their faces cleared.

  “We got this, Barkas,” she whispered with a cheerful grin. “Won’t cost us more sweat than can make a salt lick. Remember the Battle of the Baseball Diamond? How we brung Big Johnny low?”

  “Like yesterday, Queen B!” Diodiance said happily.

  “Go on, then!”

  Diodiance and Tex dashed forward to grasp hands. Granny Two-Shoes slung herself from Sal’s back into the stirrup they made of their fingers. They heaved her into the air, and she flew like a Gacy Boy, high and higher, until she landed on the Gray Harlequin’s saffron-swathed shoulders. Her switchblade was ready. A snick. A plunge. A sideswipe. Black blood gushed from his throat in geysers, spraying the Flabberghast and the silver mirror behind him.

  As it had before, upon Beatrice’s flayed skin, the black bloodstain with its tiny white lights began to spread in all directions. There came a mighty crack. And the Flabberghast, against a rain of stained shards, laughed as the Gray Harlequin crumpled to the ground. Before he hit, Granny Two-Shoes jumped clear of him. Beatrice embraced the little girl out of the air, and spun her three times, and cradled her close like she used to do every night, when she and Granny were the only Barkas left awake.

  “You’re the world’s last wonder, Granny Two-Shoes!” Beatrice murmured into her ear. “I wish you’d live forever.”

  Granny Two-Shoes buried her head in Beatrice’s shoulder and let her switchblade fall.

  Diodiance and Tex, still holding hands, leapt about, whooping the Barka victory song. The Flabberghast shook the last of the glass splinters from the cuffs of his sleeves. He crouched over the bald corpse of the Gray Harlequin and said in a low voice, “You were a bad clown. You couldn’t make a jackal laugh.”

  With that, he stripped the black velvet ribbon from the Gray Harlequin’s face, dug one long finger deep into the single central socket there, lifted out a round white thing like a great, blind eyeball, and popped it into his mouth. A shudder shook him, as though the pleasure of it were more than he could bear.

  * * *

  Twelve of the Gacy Boys left the Big Bah-Ha forever that day. The smallest went first, the golden wind from the newly opened Elephant Gate burning away the chains and gaffer’s tape, the cap and bells, the hangman’s hood, until he was simply dressed in playclothes, his face clean and calm and unafraid. He cried out, “Oh! I see her! I see her!” and ran ahead of the rest, laughing.

  The other boys looked past the gate with longing, but some dread gripped them still. They turned their backs on the great elephants, and trudged away into the low hills of the Big Bah-Ha.

  “Don’t they want outta here?” asked Diodiance.

  “Not ready yet,” said Beatrice. “Maybe they still see a mirror. Or think they don’t deserve to laugh. I dunno. But give ’em time. They got all the time in forever.”

  When one way or another the Gacy Boys were gone, a few children crept down the hill from Chuckle City. Rosie Rightly led three rustics, four grotesques, and a tramp riding an old white tiger from the Big Top. Pacing them, a contingent of eleven beautiful women, whose four arms and four legs apiece were clear like crystal and flute-thin. Their red hair blew around them like the flames of Chuckle City. The red hourglasses of their eyes shone.

  “Those’re the Emilies,” Beatrice explained to the Barka Gang. “They guard the Elephant Gate.”

  Granny Two-Shoes, still hanging tightly onto Beatrice’s neck, strained to see. Beatrice swung her onto her shoulders for a better view. Rosie Rightly came bounding up to them.

  “Hi, Bee-Bee! Bee-Bee! Hi! Hello! Is it true? The Gray Harlequin is dead?”

  “Done to death by Granny here.” Beatrice patted Granny Two-Shoes’s knee. Rosie Rightly took one of Granny’s pink Mary Janes and kissed the toe of it.

  “Thank you, girlington!” she breathed. “Oh, thanks ever so. He made me bring him here, you see. Back at the end of days. No one came home that night. The other houses in my neighborhood were all on fire, and the Tall Ones marched through town toward Hillside Cemetery, wearing white lights on their shoulders. My house was dark, and I was hiding, but the Gray Harlequin knocked on my front door anyway. He saw me through the screen and came right in. He tore my wrists on his teeth and painted me with my own blood. Then he bit his mouth and bled on me from the wound, and walked right through my skin to the deadlands, taking my soul along with him.”

  She showed her glowing wounds. Before Beatrice could say anything—and what could she say but “I’m sorry?” Too paltry and lacking by half—a wind from the Elephant Gate rushed upon them, bathing Rosie Rightly in light, turning her wounds to gold.

  “Oh!” Rosie Rightly clapped delighted hands to her mouth and bounced. “Look! Look! Look! Big brother, and little brother, and baby brother, too! And Papa, and Mama, and puppy, and kitty, and Grandma, and Cousin Albert, and…” Her laughter pealed out. She bounced right past the huge stone elephants and into somewhere else.

  There, too, went the rustics, the grotesques, the tramp, and the tiger. But the Eleven Lovely Emilies stayed. They settled near the gate and set to spinning. Something silver and flowing. Something fine, of silk.

  Beatrice looked toward Chuckle City, frowning. “There should be more. There were hundreds of clowns—kids—back there.”

  “It never happens all at once,” the Flabberghast told her. All this time, he had been sitting on the ground quietly chewing bits of the Gray Harlequin until the corpse was riddled. For the first time since dying, Beatrice was glad she didn’t have a stomach.

  “Oh,” he exclaimed. “Look at this! I had all but forgotten!”

  Bending at the waist, he reached out and swiped a glinting object from the gray dust. It was the August Crown. In his hands it twinkled and fluttered, shimmered and rang as if asking him a question.

  The Flabberghast laughed in answer and told the chiming crown, “Me? Oh, no. You are quite mistaken if you think that.” He shook his curly orange head and popped another of the Gray Harlequin’s fingers into his mouth. He glanced up at Beatrice with his strange black eyes, but aimed his chatter at the crown.

  “Despite present evidence to the contrary,” he said around his mo
uthful, “I really do prefer bones. I like my cardboard hut out front of the gravy yard. I even find it enjoyable to keep up with the kiddy gangs, and learn their rhymes, and bear witness to their final wars. And, no offense”—Beatrice wondered who he thought would take offense; the August Crown wasn’t the world’s liveliest conversationalist—“I just hate babysitting. Really, this entire venture stretched even my illustrious ambassadorial tolerance to its absolute limit, and this with the Barka Gang being doubtless the least vexing specimens of their species. I chalk that up to the benefits of strong leadership, you know. Nothing like discipline, and cleverness, and kindness in a leader to create harmonious cohesion in the underlings.”

  He eyed Beatrice. He twirled the August Crown in his long white hands.

  Startled, she took a step backward. “I don’t think…”

  But the Flabberghast spun up from the ground like a motley tornado, a bone sticking out of his mouth like a cigarette, his long, oddly jointed hands extended, and plopped the August Crown upon her head. Granny Two-Shoes patted it and laughed. The sound was rare and small. Barely a breath.

  “There!” cried the Flabberghast. “Three cheers for Beatrice, Queen of the Big Bah-Ha!”

  No one cheered, but Diodiance did stretch to her tiptoes to ding one of the August Crown’s bells.

  “Ha! Look atcha, Queen B! Ain’t you just like one of those ladygods your Dad used to whopper on about? Not Durga. One of the others. Those deadland queens. Remember all those stories you told us, B? ’Bout Hel and Ereshkigoogle and Pursopoly?”

  “Persephone,” Beatrice murmured. Then, with longing, “Dad.”

  She could feel him right behind her, so near, just beyond the stone elephants and the warm golden splash of light. She wanted to go to him, go right now, tell him how she’d lived, how she’d died, everything that had happened since, ask him what came next, and if they’d ever have to part ways again.

  Beatrice sighed, and turned away from the Elephant Gate. “All right. I’ll wear your August Crown.”

  The Flabberghast’s voice was gentle. “It is not mine, Beatrice. It is yours—very simply, because it needs you. And it is only for a little while, after all.”

  “I know.” Beatrice laughed a little. “Ten years, right? Give or take.”

  Granny Two-Shoes climbed down from her shoulders and into her arms again, and Beatrice clasped her close and looked over at Tex and Diodiance. “What do you think, Barkas dear? Figure I can sort out this here Big Bah-Ha in ten years or so?”

  Tex blew a raspberry. “B, you’ll have it spick-and-span by the time I get slapped up. That’s what? Four years? Three if my growth spurt comes young. Whaddya think, Di?”

  Diodiance shrugged. “Two years tops, she’s whupped this place to shape. After that, you ’n’ me, Tex, we’ll get here in no time flat. But I’m thinking, Queen B, we’d best not pass the Elephant Gate ourselves till Granny Two-Shoes joins us. No fair tryin’ to make us laugh for joy before then. We all go in together or not at all.”

  “I will wait,” Beatrice promised. “We will all wait.”

  The Flabberghast took Granny Two-Shoes’ hand in his and squinted to inspect her wrist. “Hark, friends. Our time draws to an end. Your scabs are almost completely formed.”

  Granny Two-Shoes tugged her hand free and pressed it to her heart. Yes, she noticed. It was squeezing. Had been feeling strained for some time. Her ears made a noise like being born.

  She remembered. Granny Two-Shoes remembered everything.

  Beatrice helped her up onto Sheepdog Sal’s back and tousled her tangled hair. “See you later, kiddo. In every pinch, just ask yourself, ‘what would Durga do?’ Keep that knife sharp. Serve those Rubberbabies ding-danged tarnation in a soup tureen whenever you can.”

  Granny Two-Shoes nodded. Looked down. Blinked and blinked at Sal’s flopsy ears so as not to cry. It was not yet night. She only cried at night.

  Beatrice tossed her slingshot to Tex. “Yours, my man.”

  “Thanks, Beatrice,” he mumbled. His tears fell into the gray dust, hot and living. The water welled up, sparkled, began to form a stream.

  The first of seven rivers, Beatrice thought.

  She unwound a blue ribbon from her hair and dropped it into Diodiance’s outstretched palm. Diodiance wrapped it twice around her arm and tied it off with her teeth. Her lips trembled.

  Drip. Drip. Splash.

  Another river.

  “Quickly now, children,” said the Flabberghast. “Not through the arch, but through the elephant’s legs. The left elephant, mind. The one on the right takes you to a far different place.” He winked a long black eye and lifted his slender wrist. “Ah, speaking of which, before you go...Might you spare me those last precious dewdrops of your wet blood? That I may myself get back through, you understand. The doors to the deadlands are tricky and likely to lock behind one.”

  Tex hesitated, but Diodiance whacked him on the arm. Granny Two-Shoes acquiesced before either of them, anointing him with the sticky remnant of her wound. Tex and Diodiance followed suit, then slung their arms around each other and disappeared between the stone legs. Sheepdog Sal licked Beatrice’s hand and bounded away with Granny Two-Shoes clinging tightly to her fur. Lastly, the Flabberghast shouldered what was left of the Gray Harlequin like a sack of presents. He turned his stagger into a bow for Beatrice.

  “I apologize,” he said, “for flensing your skin before you were quite dead all the way through, then stretching it upon my wall. But I needed a doorway. And your skin was so very, very clear.”

  Bent low like that, he came face-to-face with her. In the blackness of his eyes, stars.

  Beatrice asked softly, “We’ll never know, will we? Whatever it is you are.”

  “I,” he answered, laughing, “am the Flabberghast!”

  Then off he danced with that weight on his back, awkward as tumbleweed. Only Beatrice noticed he did not leave through the left set of stone legs. He’d taken the ones on the right. Went elsewhere. Where the Tall Ones go.

  Resolutely, Beatrice turned her back again on the Elephant Gate. A golden wind warmed her neck. A rent in the gray sky showed a gleam of blue.

  Eleven Lovely Emilies smiled down at her.

  I should begin, as this book begins, with Gene Wolfe. As he mentioned, my father introduced us when I was eighteen. Quite unrelated to this life-changing event, I had just read my first Gene Wolfe novel, The Shadow of the Torturer. Kismet? You bet. In Gene I found a mentor and correspondent, a kindred spirit who brought me to my first convention (it was actually World Horror in Chicago, where he and Neil Gaiman were the Guests of Honor; Readercon and the ostensible witch coven came a bit later), gave me my first graphic novel (Sandman: Fables and Reflections), and critiqued my first short stories. He’s the one who told me to write short stories in the first place. He said that’s how writers begin. Then they work their way up to novels after they had some credits to their byline. He taught me how to write a cover letter, and the proper format for a manuscript. He taught me everything I know. One of the brightest moments of our friendship for me came when he introduced me to the waitress at his favorite restaurant as “my honorary granddaughter.” If ever an apprentice earned her journeyman papers through the kindness and acuity of a true master, I am that apprentice, and my undisputed master is Gene Wolfe.

  I have dedicated this collection to John O’Neill and Tina Jens. From the earliest years of my would-be career, these two have been my champions and friends. They are tireless advocates for any new writers they meet, canny editors, and brilliant writers in their own right. Some of my first publication-worthy short stories wouldn’t have been without them. Through Tina Jens and Twilight Tales, I met a bevy of Chicago horror writers. Through John O’Neill and Black Gate, the rich world of sword and sorcery, along with its finest swashbuckling scriveners, like James Enge, Martha Wells, and Howard Andrew Jones, opened its ruby-crusted dungeon doors to me. It was John O’Neill who published “Life on the Sun” in Black Gate,
as a sequel to my novella “Godmother Lizard,” also set in the Bellisaar Wasteland, and my first Black Gate sale.

  For “The Bone Swans of Amandale,” I must thank (or perhaps blame) the erstwhile Injustice League: Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner, Cat Valente, Lev Grossman, Kat Howard, and particularly Doctor Theodora Goss. It is to them I owe my brief taste of a for-real-and-true New York City writing group. In Ellen’s and Delia’s living room, between clothing swaps and writing critiques, I happened to be flipping through Mercer Mayer’s The Pied Piper and grew particularly enamored of his little illustrated rats. Sometime in an idle moment, Theodora Goss mentioned that she’d love to have a rose named after her. The name “Dora Rose” sprang to mind, along with the image of a swan princess. I defy you to spend any amount of time around Theodora Goss and not start hallucinating about swan princesses. That, and my innate obsession with the Grimms’ tale of “The Juniper Tree” was what got me to my own Pied Piper retelling.

  The genesis of “Martyr’s Gem” came from a dream, but the daytime writing was aided by so many: Ann Leckie, who first published it in GigaNotoSaurus, and whose keen editorial eye only improved it. My beautiful mother Sita, who has listened to every draft. Amal El-Mohtar and her parents Leila and Oussama, at whose house I took up the story thread after neglecting it for many months. With Amal, I must also mention our Caitlyn Paxson; as the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours, we three have performed the storytelling scene from “Martyr’s Gem” at several conventions and concert venues, which is always thrilling. Janelle McHugh, who strung me a necklace like the one Shursta made for Hyrryai. Erik Amundsen, Magill Foote, and Grant Jeffery, together with drummer Will Sergiy IV and several actors of Flock Theatre, who helped me put together an animated short of that same scene. Rich Horton for selecting it for his Year’s Best anthology. Geoff Leatham, Ben Leatham, and my friend Eric Michaelian, who gave me a rare and beautiful few minutes of hearing three readers discuss my story unabashedly right in front of me, as I grinned and glowed at them and occasionally spun pirouettes for pure joy.