by James Comins
“Ooo!” said Koszonom. “Tell us the story about treasure hunters in ze forest and za magic candle zhat leads to the haunted buried jewels.”
“Nici, nici,” said Tessek. “Tell us the one about a zmeu who refuses to disobey his mother and has to ride back from the dead with his sister.”
“Or ze one about the woodcutter haunted by the last spirit of za forest.”
“Linistit!” snapped Piros. “Both of you, linistit. Young weasel lady--”
“Lenna.”
“Lenna. Tell us a story of Ootland.”
“About me, or about fairies or gods or, or something?”
“Your choice,” said Piros.
Hm. She could tell the story of Krampus and the Christmas lads. They probably wouldn’t have heard it. They probably didn’t even have Christmas down here. Hm. She could retell the story of Baldur and Thor and ugh, Loki. But she was still mad at him for killing Thor and Odin and trapping her down here. It was too fresh. She could tell the story of Little Cinders, forbidden to go to the Prince’s fancy ball until she picked all the seeds from the fireplace ...
“Once, long ago and far away,” she began, “there was a girl. Two girls, and they lived on a farm all clad in snow.”
“Vhat were their names?” asked Koszonom.
“Um, Penelope and and and Buttercup. One of them was very tall with rosy cheeks, and one of them was little and very pale.”
“As white as snow,” said Piros regally.
“No, as pale as us!” said Tessek.
“As pale as snow on top of wampires.”
“Zat’s pretty pale,” agreed Koszonom.
Lenna nodded and continued. “And they lived with an ...”
“An evil stepmuzzer?” asked Koszonom.
“Yyyy ... kind of. She wasn’t evil, and she had what was best for the girls at heart, but she was very strict and she would hit them if they did wrong.”
“Ah. Ze harsh soacra,” said Piros. “We understand. Go on.”
“And they raised dragons together--”
“Zat doesn’t make sense. Dragons are alvays bad,” said Tessek. “Dragons are zere to be defeated.”
“Hm,” said Lenna. “It was a pig farm that had gotten invaded by dragons. And the dragons stayed and you could ride them ...” She put her paws out and swooped around under the glowing pulsing red trees, whooosh. The mouse put her paws out, too. Drips of blood dripped down onto them from the dead canopy like rain. It got into her fur, but she was caught up remembering the wonderful draglets.
“Zen what happened?” asked Koszonom. “Somesing must happen. Vhat went wrong?”
“Right. So there was an evil sorcerer who owned the biggest and worst ... est dragon of all the dragons in the whole world. He thought it was the worst dragon. Only he didn’t know, but he thought it was. And he looked into his magic crystal--no, it must not have been a crystal ...”
“Magic mirror,” stated Piros.
“Yes! He looked into his magic mirror, covered with sparkly sorcering sparklies, and he asked the mirror where the worst dragon was, because he wanted to be sure that he had it. And the mirror had a mouth and it said that all the worst dragons were at Lady Joukka Pelata’s dragon farm.”
“Who is she?” asked Tessek.
“Za harsh soacra, obviously,” Piros replied.
“No--” Lenna said.
“But vhy would a soacra be a Lady?” Tessek interrupted.
The passage of bleeding trees merged into what seemed like a dead end, but instead dove into the crusted brown earth. Woven branches closed off every other pathway. Lenna and the mouse and the wampires descended down into the catacombs. Cracked hollow bones stuck out from the wall.
“The harsh duchess, Lady Joukka Pelata, had all the worst dragons.”
“Ohhhhh,” they all sighed.
“But she didn’t know her dragons were the worst, because they hadn’t grown up yet. And so the evil sorcerer--”
“Vhat vas the sorcerer’s name?” asked Koszonom.
“Koszonom! Shush. Linistit,” said Piros. “Let her tell za story.”
“I believe he was only some old sorcerer,” said Lenna. “Anyway, he sent his bad dragon to go to the pig farm and kill all the baby dragons. Oh! But the sorcerer’s dragon was cleverer than the sorcerer and instead of killing the baby dragons, he kidnapped one of the girls instead.”
“Vich one?” asked Koszonom.
“Ze pretty one, obviously. So the little pale one can rescue her,” Piros told him.
“No! It was the pale one who got kidnapped.”
“Nici. That isn’t fair,” said Piros. “You can’t make one of the girls both the pretty one and the heroine. Ze pale one has to have inner goodness, ez minoség, to make up for the looks. Not zat zere’s anything wrong with pale girls.” She smoothed her shiny eyebrows with her thumb and forefinger.
The tunnel was lit by glowing lungs that wove around the ceiling, shining with an eerie yellow-white shine, dangling from bronchial tubes. Lenna climbed over giant yellow femurs that lay across the winding, dividing trail like fallen trees. Piros led the way.
“Pretty girls can so have inner goodness. Izz meenoshake,” Lenna said, adjusting her hair.
“Nici. Tell the story properly,” Piros said sternly.
“But it’s true!”
“A true story?” said Tessek. “Nem hiszek. They don’t exist.”
“Ya. A story is only a story. Alvays,” added Koszonom.
Lenna growled. “Yip. If you don’t like my story, then you make one up.”
Chapter Seventeen
The Story of Anna and the Stranger
or, Zis Time She Had Guts
A pair of moths with ragged claws and tattered wings chased each other around a low-hanging intestine. Lenna ducked under it. The path split, and Piros tapped a finger against her very red lips: tap, tap, trying to decide which way to go. They went left.
“I vill tell a story, then. Here is one called ‘The Serpent Prince,’” began Koszonom.
“Tzt!” hissed Tessek. “Not that vunn.”
“Vhy not? She isn’t little,” said Koszonom.
“Am so,” said Lenna.
“Nici,” said Piros. “She is too young for that story, I believe. Listen to this story: In Eastern Deathvorld there vas a village called Roszbones. There vas a circle of skeleton maidens who would rise from their graves every new moon and gather in a red cottage in the voods, to knit and gossip. Their beaus would gather with them to chatter and help pass the eternity.”
“Bows?” asked Lenna suspiciously.
“Sveethearts,” said Piros with a meaningful look. The mouse looked at Lenna, who nodded quickly.
“But,” Piros went on, “zere was one uff the skeletons without a sveetheart. Her name was Anna. She had neither the worst-looking skull, nor perhaps the best-looking. But she had no confidence. She refused to wind the most beautiful nightshade vines across her collarbone, like all the vain girls, choosing instead plainer vines that she liked better. Neither would she wear a hat with the finest raven feather atop it, choosing instead to wear a plain hat. She thought everything was plain about herself. And she had found no sveetheart.
“One evening of the new moon, all the skeleton girls rose from their graves and gathered in the red cottage in the voods, gossiping and knitting. Some uff their sveethearts stood beside them, ready to catch a fallen bobbin--”
“What’s a bobbin?” Lenna asked.
“Yeah, Piros. Vhat’s a bobbin?” asked Koszonom.
“A spool for knitting. Ze girls with sveethearts would drop them, ze sveetheart picks it up and demands a teeth in exchange for it.”
“A teeth?” Lenna asked.
“A skeleton kiss, of course. Mostly teeth. Zey skritch incisors. So the bobbin drops, sometimes not so much by accident, and ze boy gets a teeth. That is what they would do. The whole evening Anna sat quietly and knitted and went home alone. For seven new moons in a row zhey gathered to knit in this fashion. On the eig
hth a stranger was in town. He vore a jacket of diamond and rode a horse vith a diamond mane. He rode it straight to the red cottage in the woods, dismounted and went in. Not even a knock on the door. And just zhen, Anna had dropped her bobbin, not on purpose, you understand.”
“I understand,” said Lenna. “Do you?” she asked her shoulder. The mouse nodded.
Piros led them under a row of gasping throats. “The stranger picked it up and demanded a teeth from Anna. She was shy, but all the other girls whispered that the stranger must be a very rich skeleton to have such a jacket. A good catch. So Anna gave the stranger a teeth, he gave back the bobbin, and she went on knitting vith the stranger standing beside her. When the evening was over, the stranger left. But everyone saw at once that zhere was something funny.”
“Why?” Lenna asked.
“Zhere was something red in Anna’s chest,” said Piros.
“A heart?”
“Zhat’s what it vas. She was becoming a little bit alive.”
Koszonom shivered. Tessek frowned nervously.
“But no one said anything about it to her. Anna went back to her grave, feeling funny. No vunn felt like telling her. But she knew zhere was something funny.
“Za next dark night, again zhey gathered to knit at the red cottage in the voods, sittingk in wooden chairs and gossiping. Anna had today put a raven feather in her hat, and wore the fancy nightshade twirled into her collarbone. Srough the big window they saw the stranger arrive on his horse vith the diamond mane. Zis time, when the bobbin was dropped, it vas not so much by accident. You understand?” said Piros.
Lenna nodded. The bony tunnel they walked through dug deeper into the ground in a series of switchbacks. She and the wampires had to jump down the vertical bends, falling deeper and deeper into the ground each time. The air was stuffy and was filled with tiny gnats that floated in clouds and got into her nose. She looked up at one of the jump-downs, wondering if there was a way back up.
Piros went on: “At the end of this night, when the rich stranger went off to wherever he lived, Anna was even more alive. Zis time she had guts.”
Tessek gasped.
“And the night of za full moon after that, it vas skin.”
“Oh no,” murmured Koszonom, putting his pale hands to his mouth.
The mouse leaned forward on Lenna’s brown fuzzy shoulder to listen better. Its eyebrow bones were sky-high.
“So Anna went to the voman of the willage and asked her--”
“What voman?” asked Lenna.
“In every willage, there would be a voman you go to with all your troubles,” Piros said.
“A witch?” asked Lenna.
“Just a voman. So Anna, who now looked nearly as alive as you do, vith skin and guts and real feelings, she was scared. Vorried. Now she was really different. She vasn’t going to be dett forever. No longer could she twine black climbing roses into her armbones and orange deadly nightshade berries across her shoulders.”
Unthinking, Lenna pulled at the two climbing roses from Tibert’s manor house that she had been wearing behind her ear. They were reflective black stone petals on a hard green stem. Frowning, she put them back in place behind her ear. They walked around an illuminated waterfall of blood, flowing backward up an alcove in the wall, going tzzzit tzzzzit like a backward record and bubbling red.
“So the voman told her what she had to do,” Piros went on. “ ‘Take a threaded needle,’ the voman told Anna, ‘and the next time the stranger teeths you, stab the cloth collar uff his diamond jacket. When the spool--”
“Bobbin,” said Lenna automatically.
“Nici, bobbin is for yarn. Spool is for thread. You should know this. Yarn would be too obvious. Anyway, this is what she did. The next night, the bobbin drops, they teeth, and she stabs his collar. When he leaves, she lets the spool unwind with her fleshy fleshy skin fingers.
Tessek made a puky sound. Piros smiled.
“And so Anna followed the thread from a good distance. The handsome stranger never saw her. Zhey went srough the woods to a little reverse graveyard--”
“A what?” Lenna said. The mouse nodded.
“Reverse graveyard,” said Tessek. “That’s where alive people are put.”
“Oh.”
“How many alive people are zhere in a reverse graveyard?” asked Koszonom with a huge foolish smile. He looked around. “All of zhem!”
“A-ha,” said Lenna, unimpressed at the joke.
“Don’t laugh at zings that aren’t funny,” said Piros. “Not even pretend. So. Za stranger’s reverse grave had food and drink and flowers made from plants, that grew.”
“You couldn’t have flowers made from plants,” said Tessek. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It’s part of the story. The stranger was a reverse wampire. Anna ran back to the willage voman and asked her what to do next. The voman told her this: wait until the next time he teeths you, tell him it is the last time, then go home and bury yourself. Wait seven years, until the reverse wampire’s spell is broken, then claw your vay oot of the grave. Zis is what she went to do the next night. After the stranger teethed her, she grew wings. She told him she vouldn’t see him anymore. He got wery angry, and chased her oot of the red cottage, but she hid in the voods and he didn’t find her. He called and called, saying, ‘My dear angel, let me make you alive. Come oot, my dear angel.’ But she wouldn’t come oot.”
The tunnel went nearly straight up, now. The three wampires were able to walk up the side of the tube, sticking out of the wall perpendicularly, stepping over glowing livers and pancreases without climbing or using their hands, but Lenna had to scramble up the scattered bones. Weasels could jump really far, she found. The mouse clung to her fur with tiny fingerbones.
“Venn the stranger had gone, Anna dug her grave, seven feet down, covered herself up and lay there and lay there. But she had feelings now, and it vas hard to lay still for seven years. She felt love now--”
Tessek gasped.
“--and zere was a beating heart inside uff her. She waited six years like zis, and then she started to dig herself oot. And she climbed out vunn week and vunn day and vunn hour and vunn minute and vunn second too early. And she had not broken the curse.”
“Yeee,” Lenna yeee’d.
“Eee,” said the mouse in agreement.
“And because she would not wait for the spell to be broken, she still had wings, and the second she reached the surface the wings flapped and flapped to Ootland. She flew away.”
Chapter Eighteen
The Opening of the Mouth
or, I Am Llenowyn Dinas Emrys
Lenna and the wampires climbed up a wrinkled ladder, over a dry rough reddish surface and emerged at ...
A dead end.
A complete dead end.
There was a jagged half-circle of white candles on the floor and another sticking out of the ceiling, their flames perfectly, perfectly still. In the middle was a shallow clay bucket stained brown with blood.
“Omigoodness.”
“Eek!”
“We are arrived,” whispered Piros slinkily. She pushed Lenna hard toward the basin and took out a knife.
“What’s going on?” said Lenna smallly from the ground.
“Ve are not your friends,” said Tessek, taking out a matching knife.
Koszonom twisted and wriggled into a six-foot-wide shrieking bat. Its ribcage was all sunken and stretched with sallow black skin. His face was teeth like cat claws, a piggy blistered nose, black eyes like sewing basket beads and a dripping slavering pointed tongue. He dove at her, herding her toward the bloodbucket.
“You can change size?” Lenna said. She frowned as she huddled back away from him. “You could have picked me up and taken me to the head wamp!” She put her fuzzy paws over her face as batwings smacked her.
“Zhere is no ‘head wamp,’ laughed Tessek. “I made it up.”
“No!”
“Eeeeee!” shouted the mousebones. She
leapt off Lenna’s shoulder and fastened herself onto the bat’s left wing with her claws. The bat grew larger, filling up the round room, sweeping its arms in rapid figure eights, but the mousebones clung on, pulling herself up the loose fur like a mountain climber. The wing spun and swooped and folded and unfolded, but the mousebones held on. When Koszonom’s frantic flapping paused for a second, the mouse leaped from the wingtip to the bat’s leathery back and sunk its incisors into the wampire’s neck. Blood, thick and black and steaming, spurted from the wound. The mouse ducked to avoid the spray.
Terrified, sprawled on the floor beside the crusted basin, Lenna screamed, “Indaell! Help her!”
The mousebones let go, climbed further up, and bit the hissing, dragon-sized bat again.
Fear, real fear, rushed around Lenna as Piros and Tessek folded their arms smugly and stood to either side to watch the fight. They didn’t even care enough to join in. They were sure who was going to win.
The winds of fear rose up behind Lenna like great thrashing sea-serpents, roils of fear curling and uncurling. She could feel it rushing around her, not a gale but a tornado, a waterspout, a hurricane, turning above her like a Turkish dervish, tight spirals of force assembling. Gradually she gathered herself to her feet.
With strength and strength and strength, she stood her ground, letting the fear build up and build up.
She stood her ground. The tower of fear gathered behind her, silent, spinning, dark.
The mousebones kept her grip on the screaming bat. Indaell was nowhere. Piros and Tessek gloated.
Lenna stood her ground as the towering column of fear swayed.
It balanced on a pinpoint on her back.
She stood her ground.
She let it fall.
Thunder.
A falling.
A crescendo.
The three wampires and the mousebones were hit by fear and were thrown away and swallowed by the strange tube they had climbed up. Lenna heard Piros screaming swears at her as the three shrouded people and the mouse fell.
“Little Mousebones!” Lenna called, crouching beside the dried bloodbath, huddled, too afraid to creep forward and lean over the pit and look.