Bone Swans: Stories Read online

  Unlike Rat Folk, whose emotions could still get the better of them after fifteen years...

  “What are you doing in the Maze Wood?” The snootiness I’d missed was back in her voice. Fabulous.

  “Is that what this is?” I peered around, scratching behind my ear. She always hated when I scratched. “I thought it was the theater. The Tragedy of the Bonny Swans. The Ballad of the Two Sisters...”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Maurice, of all the times to crack your tasteless jokes!”

  Aaaarooooo! The ivory horn again. This time Dora Rose heard it, too. Her blue eyes flashed black with fury and terror. She hesitated, frozen between flesh and feather, fight and flight. I figured I’d help her out. Just this once. For old time’s sake.

  “Up the tree,” I suggested. “I’ll give you a boost.”

  She cast a perturbed look at dead Elinore, grief flickering briefly across her face. Rolling my eyes, I snapped, “Up, Princess! Unless you want to end the same, here and now.”

  “Won’t the hounds scent me there?”

  Dora Rose, good girl, was already moving toward me as she asked the question. Thank the Captured God. Start arguing with a swan girl, and you’ll not only find yourself staying up all night, you’ll also suffer all the symptoms of a bad hangover in the morning—with none of the fun parts between.

  “This old tree’s wily enough to mask your scent, my plume. If you ask nicely. We’re good friends, the juniper and I.”

  I’d seen enough Swan Folk slaughtered beneath this tree to keep me tethered to it by curiosity alone. All right, so maybe I stayed with the mildly interested and not at all pathological hope of meeting Dora Rose again, in some situation not unlike this one, perhaps to rescue her from the ignominy of such a death. But I didn’t tell her that. Not while her twin sister lay dead on the ground, her blood seeping into the juniper’s roots. By the time Elinore had gotten to the tree, it’d’ve been too late for me to attempt anything, anyway. Even had I been so inclined.

  And then, Dora Rose’s hand on my shoulder. Her bare heel in my palm. And it was like little silver bells ringing under my skin where she touched me.

  Easy, Maurice. Easy, you sleek and savvy rat, you. Bide.

  Up she went, and I after her, furring and furling myself into my more compact but no less natty shape. We were both safe and shadow-whelmed in the bent old branches by the time Mayor Ulia Gol and her Swan Hunters arrived on the scene.

  If someone held a piece of cheese to my head and told me to describe Ulia Gol in one word or starve, I’d choose, magnificent. I like cheese too much to dither.

  At a guess, I’d say Ulia Gol’s ancestry wasn’t human. Ogre on her mama’s side. Giant on her daddy’s. She was taller than Dora Rose, who herself would tower over most mortal men, though Dora Rose was long-lined and lean of limb whereas Ulia Gol was a brawny woman. Her skin was gold as a glazed chicken, her head full of candy-pink curls as was the current fashion. Her breasts were like two mozzarella balls ripe for the gnawing, with hips like two smoked hams. A one-woman banquet, that Ulia Gol, and she knew it, too. The way to a mortal’s heart is through its appetite, and Ulia Gol prided herself on collecting mortal hearts. It was a kind of a game with her. Her specialty. Her sorcery.

  She had a laugh that reached right out and tickled your belly. They say it was her laugh that won her the last election in Amandale. It wasn’t. More like a mob-wide love spell she cast on her constituents. I don’t know much about magic, but I know the smell of it. Amandale stinks of Ulia Gol. Its citizens accepted her rule with wretched adoration, wondering why they often woke of a night in a cold sweat from foul dreams of their Mayor feasting on the flesh of their children.

  On the surface, she was terrifyingly jovial. She liked hearty dining and a good, hard day at the hunt. Was known for her fine whiskey, exotic lovers, intricate calligraphy, and dabbling in small—totally harmless, it was said—magics, mostly in the realm of the Performing Arts. Was a little too enthusiastic about taxes, everyone thought, but mostly used them to keep Amandale in good order. Streets, bridges, schools, secret police. That sort of thing.

  Mortal politics was the idlest of my hobbies, but Ulia Gol had become a right danger to the local Folk, and that directly affected me. Swans weren’t the only magic creatures she’d hunted to extinction in the Maze Wood. Before this latest kick, Ulia Gol had ferreted out the Fox Folk, those that fleshed to mortal shape, with tails tucked up under their clothes. Decimated the population in this area. You might ask how I know—after all, Fox Folk don’t commune with Rat Folk any more than Swan Folk do. We just don’t really talk to each other.

  But then, I always was extraordinary. And really nosy.

  Me, I suspected Ulia Gol’s little hunting parties had a quite specific purpose. I think she knew the Folk could recognize her as inhuman. Mortals, of course, had no idea what she was. What mortals might do if they discovered their Mayor manipulated magic to make the ballot box come out in her favor? Who knew? Mortals in general are content to remain divinely stupid and bovinely docile for long periods of time, but when their ire’s roused, there is no creature cleverer in matters of torture and revenge.

  Ulia Gol adjusted her collar of rusty fox fur. It clashed terribly with her pink-and-purple riding habit, but she pulled it off with panache. Her slanted beaver hat dripped half a dozen black-tipped tails, which bounced as she strode into the juniper tree’s clearing. Two huge-jowled hounds flanked her. She caught her long train up over her arm, her free hand clasping her crossbow with loose proficiency.

  “Ha!” shouted Ulia Gol over her shoulder to someone out of my sightlines. “I thought I got her.” She squatted over dead Elinore, studying her. “What do you think of this one, Hans? Too delicate for the glockenspiel, I reckon. Too tiny for the tuba. The cygnets completed our wind and percussion sections. Those two cobs and yesterday’s pen did for the brass. We might as well finish up the strings here.”

  A man emerged from a corridor in the Maze Wood. He led Ulia Gol’s tall roan mare and his own gray gelding, and looked with interest on the dead swan girl.

  “A pretty one,” he observed. “She’ll make a fine harp, Madame Mayor, unless I miss my guess.”

  “Outstanding! I love a good harp song. But I always found the going rates too dear; harpists are so full of themselves.” Her purple grin widened. “Get the kids in here.”

  The rest of her Swan Hunters began trotting into the Heart Glade on their plump little ponies. Many corridors, as you’d expect in a Maze Wood of this size, dead-ended in thorn, stone, waterfall, hedge, cliff edge. But Ulia Gol’s child army must’ve had the key to unlocking the maze’s secrets, for they came unhesitatingly into the glade and stood in the shadow of the juniper tree where we hid.

  Aw, the sweetums. Pink-cheeked they were, the little killers, green-caped, and all of them wearing the famous multicolored, beaked masks of Amandale. Mortals are always fixed in their flesh, like my rat cousins who remain rats no matter what. Can’t do furrings, downings, or scalings like the Folk can. So they make do with elaborate costumes, body paint, millinery, and mass exterminations of our kind. Kind of adorable, really.

  Ulia Gol clapped her hands. Her pink curls bounced and jounced. The foxtails on her beaver hat swung blithely.

  “Dismount!” Her Hunters did so. “Whose turn is it, my little wretches?” she bawled at them. “Has to be someone fresh! Someone who’s bathed in mare’s milk by moonlight since yesterday’s hunt. Now—who’s clean? Who’s my pure and pretty chanticleer today? Come, don’t make me pick one of you!”

  Oh, the awkward silence of children called upon to volunteer. A few heads bowed. Other masks lifted and looked elsewhere as if that act rendered them invisible. Presently one of the number was pushed to the forefront, so vehemently it fell and scraped its dimpled knees. I couldn’t help noticing that this child had been standing at the very back of the crowd, hugging itself and hoping to escape observation.

  Fat chance, kiddling. I licked my lips. I knew what c
ame next. I’d been watching this death dance from the juniper tree for weeks now.

  Ulia Gol grinned horribly at the fallen child. “Tag!” she boomed. “You’re it.” Her heavy hand fell across the child’s shoulders, scooting it closer to the dead swan girl. “Dig. Dig her a grave fit for a princess.”

  The child trembled in its bright green hunter’s cape. Its jaunty red mask was tied askew, like a deformed cardinal’s head stitched atop a rag doll. The quick desperation of its breath was audible even from the heights where we perched, me sweating and twitching, Dora Rose tense and pale, glistening faintly in the dimness of the canopy.

  Dora Rose lay on her belly, arms and legs wrapped around the branch, leaning as far forward as she dared. She watched the scene with avid eyes, and I watched her. She wouldn’t have known why her people had been hunted all up and down the lake this autumn. Even when the swans began disappearing a few weeks ago, the survivors hadn’t moved on. Swan Folk were big on tradition; Lake Serenus was where they wintered, and that was that. To establish a new migratory pattern would’ve been tantamount to blasphemy. That’s swans for you.

  I might have gone to warn them, I guess. Except that the last time she’d seen me, Dora Rose made it pretty clear that she’d rather wear a gown of graveyard nettles and pluck out her own feathers for fletching than have to endure two minutes more in my company. Of course, we were just teenagers then.

  I gave the old juniper tree a pat, muttering a soundless prayer for keepsafe and concealment. Just in case Dora Rose’d forgotten to do as much in that first furious climb. Then I saw her lips move, saw her silver fingers stroking the shaggy branch. Good. So she, too, kept up a running stream of supplication. I’d no doubt she knew all the proper formulae; Swan Folk are as religious as they are royal. Maybe because they figure they’re the closest things to gods as may still be cut and bleed.

  “WHY AREN’T YOU DIGGING YET?” bellowed Ulia Gol, hooking my attention downward.

  A masterful woman, and so well coiffed! How fun it was to watch her make those children jump. In my present shape, I can scare grown men out of their boots, they’re that afraid of plague-carriers in these parts. The Folk are immune to plague, but mortals can’t tell a fixed rat from one of us to save their lives.

  Amandale itself was mostly spared a few years back when things got really bad and the plague bells ringing death tolls in distant towns at last fell silent. Ulia Gol spread the rumor abroad that it was her mayoral prowess that got her town through unscathed. Another debt Amandale owed her.

  How she loomed.

  “Please, Madame Mayor, please!” piped the piccolo voice from behind the cardinal mask. It fair vibrated with apprehension. “I—I cannot dig. I have no shovel!”

  “Is that all? Hans! A shovel for our shy red bird!”

  Hans of the gray gelding trudged forward with amiable alacrity. I liked his style. Reminded me of me. He was not tall, but he had a dapper air. One of your blonds was Hans, high-colored, with a crooked but entirely proportionate nose, a gold-goateed chin, and boots up to the thigh. He dressed all in red, except for his green cape, and he wore a knife on his belt. A fine big knife, with one edge curved and outrageously serrated.

  I shuddered deliciously, deciding right there and then that I would follow him home tonight and steal his things while he slept.

  The shovel presented, the little one was bid a third time to dig.

  The grave needed only be a shallow one for Ulia Gol’s purposes. This I had apprehended in my weeks of study. The earth hardly needed a scratch in its surface. Then the Swan Princess (or Prince, or heap of stiffening cygnets, as was the case yesterday) was rolled in the turned dirt and partially covered. Then Ulia Gol, towering over her small trooper with the blistered hands, would rip the mask off its face and roar, “Weep! If you love your life weep, or I’ll give you something to weep about!”

  Unmasked, this afternoon’s child proved to be a young boy. One of the innumerable Cobblersawl brood unless I missed my guess. Baker’s children. The proverbial dozen, give or take a miscarriage. Always carried a slight smell of yeast about them.

  Froggit, I think this little one’s name was. The seven-year-old. After the twins but before the toddlers and the infant.

  I was quite fond of the Cobblersawls. Kids are so messy, you know, strewing crumbs everywhere. Bakers’ kids have the best crumbs. Their poor mother was often too harried to sweep up after the lot of them until bedtime. Well after the gleanings had been got.

  Right now, dreamy little Froggit looked sick. His hands begrimed with dirt and Elinore’s blood, his brown hair matted with sweat, he covered her corpse well and good. Now, on cue, he started sobbing. Truth be told, he hadn’t needed Ulia Gol’s shouting to do so. His tears spattered the dirt, turning spots of it to mud.

  Ulia Gol raised her arms like a conductor. Her big, shapely hands swooped through the air like kestrels.

  “Sing, my children! You know the ditty well enough by now, I trust! This one’s female; make sure you alter the lyrics accordingly. One-two-three and—”

  One in obedience, twenty young Swan Hunters lifted up their voices in wobbly chorus. The hounds bayed mournfully along. I hummed, too, under my breath.

  When they’d started the Swan Hunt a few weeks ago, the kids used to join hands and gambol around the juniper tree all maypole-like at Ulia Gol’s urging. But the Mayor since discovered that her transformation spell worked just as well if they all stood still. Pity. I missed the dancing. Used to give the whole scene a nice theatrical flair.

  “Poor little swan girl

  Heart pierced through

  Buried ’neath the moss and dew

  Restless in your grave you’ll be

  At the foot of the juniper tree

  But your bones shall sing your song

  Morn and noon and all night long!”

  The music cut off with an abrupt slash of Ulia Gol’s hands. She nodded once in curt approval. “Go on!” she told Froggit Cobblersawl. “Dig her back up again!”

  But here Froggit’s courage failed him. Or perhaps found him. For he scrubbed his naked face of tears, smearing worse things there, and stared up with big brown eyes that hated only one thing worse than himself, and that was Ulia Gol.

  “No,” he said.

  “Hans,” said Ulia Gol, “we have another rebel on our hands.”

  Hans stepped forward and drew from its sheath that swell knife I’d be stealing later. Ulia Gol beamed down at Froggit, foxtails falling to frame her face.

  “Master Cobblersawl.” She clucked her tongue. “Last week, we put out little Miss Possum’s eyes when she refused to sing up the bones. Four weeks before that, we lamed the legs of young Miss Greenpea. A cousin of yours, I think? On our first hunt, she threw that shovel right at Hans and tried to run away. But we took that shovel and we made her pay, didn’t we, Master Cobblersawl? And with whom did we replace her to make my hunters twenty strong again? Why, yourself, Master Cobblersawl. Now what, pray, Master Cobblersawl, do you think we’ll do to you?”

  Froggit did not answer, not then. Not ever. The next sound he made was a wail, which turned into a shriek, which turned into a swoon. “No” was the last word Froggit Cobblersawl ever spoke, for Hans put his tongue to the knife.

  After this, they corked up the swooning boy with moss to soak the blood, and called upon young Ocelot to dig the bones. They’d have to replace the boy later, as they’d replaced Greenpea and Possum. Ulia Gol needed twenty for her sorceries. A solid twenty. No more, no less.

  Good old Ocelot. The sort of girl who, as exigency demanded, bathed in mare’s milk every night there was a bit of purifying moonlight handy. Her father was Chief Gravedigger in Amandale. She, at the age of thirteen and a half, was his apprentice. Of all her fellow Swan Hunters, Ocelot had the cleanest and most callused hands. Ulia Gol’s favorite.

  She never flinched. Her shovel scraped once, clearing some of the carelessly spattered dirt from the corpse. The juniper tree glowed silver.
/>   Scraped twice. The green ground roiled white as boiling milk.

  Scraped thrice.

  It was not a dead girl Ocelot freed from the dirt, after all. Not even a dead swan.

  I glanced at Dora Rose to see how she was taking it. Her blue eyes were wide, her gaze fixed. No expression showed upon it, though. No sorrow or astonishment or rage. Nothing in her face was worth neglecting the show below us for, except the face itself. I could drink my fill of that pool and still die of thirst.

  But I’d gone down that road once already. What separated us rats from other Folk was our ability to learn.

  I returned my attention to the scene. When Ocelot stepped back to dust off her hands on her green cape, the exhumed thing that had been Elinore flashed into view.

  It was, as Hans had earlier predicted, a harp.

  And a large harp it was, of shining white bone, strung with black strings fine as hair, which Ulia Gol bent to breathe upon lightly. Shimmering, shuddering, the harp repeated back a refrain of Elinore’s last song.

  “It works,” Ulia Gol announced with tolling satisfaction. “Load it up on the cart, and we’ll take it back to Orchestra Hall. A few more birds in the bag and my automatized orchestra will be complete!”

  * * *

  Back in our budding teens, I’d elected to miss a three-day banquet spree with my rat buddies in post-plague Doornwold, Queen’s City. (A dead city now, like the Queen herself.) Why? To attend instead at Dora Rose’s invitation a water ballet put on by the Swan Folk of Lake Serenus.

  I know, right? The whole affair was dull as a tidy pantry, lemme tell you. When I tried to liven things up with Dora Rose a little later, just a bit of flirt and fondle on the silver docks of Lake Serenus, I got myself soundly slapped. Then the Swan Princess of my dreams told me that my attentions were not only unsolicited and unwelcome but grossly, criminally, heinously repellent—her very words—and sent me back to sulk in my nest in Amandale.