Saskia's Skeleton Read online

  No one was following her, so at last she slowed down, gazing about her and gasping for breath. It was the first time the girl had been here alone. (Either the Princess or Jack walked her to school every morning, and after classes, Saskia waited around until one of them took her home.) As with any story about a girl and a skeleton, the woods were by all means very spooky. They were filled with a hooting and howling and crisply snapping silence, and they were also filled with a whooshing and prowling and crawling immobility. Each time Saskia stumbled to a halt or shot a sudden glance over her shoulder, the woods became rooted to the spot and pretended to be a most average and ungifted assemblage of trees, but once she started to move again, so did the landscape. She could sense it—shadows coming alive behind her, owls awaking, orange bulbs of alert eyes lighting up among the dark trunks, branches weaving themselves into threatening figures. . . .

  Saskia held the back of her hand to her nose. Although the woods did frighten her, the bleeding had stopped. From her zoology lessons, Saskia remembered that some beasts could scent blood from many miles away. What if the smell of her blood had already attracted the interest of something truly vicious? Saskia turned around anxiously and weighed for a while whether it was best she go back to the school. Miserable though she often was there, and while it didn’t make her feel protected from the world the way her castle did, the school was well fortified, and closer than her home so far.

  Then she reminded herself, with a shrinking stomach, of the way her classmates had stared at her—not just earlier on this afternoon, but any time she’d said or done something other than what had been expected of her. How sweet would it have been, sighed Saskia inwardly, if the blue-eyed Elizabeth had spoken to her just the same. If any one of the children had noticed that her costume was not only flouting the dress code but also true-to-life and terrific, or that what she’d told today in class was as inventive as it was ridiculous. . . . No, Saskia wasn’t going back to the school. Better she be torn apart by monsters than swallow metal pills or have the children taunt her again!

  It was then, as Saskia made her choice in favor of this questionable option, that she saw it. A little way ahead, by the trail she was following, there lay a fallen tree with enormous dry roots, which stuck out in all directions and looked like a giant dark mouth fixed in a wide roar of rage. On the trunk, as though on a bench, sat a tall human skeleton, its lower jaw propped up on its hand, and its elbow on its knee. It was tapping its fingertips on its cheekbone, which produced a curious hollow sound, as if someone insisted on dropping several dice to a wooden desktop, and the dice bounced off and thumped back down. The skeleton seemed to be contemplating something exceptionally dreary, like school.

  This was a fine, handsome skeleton, too. It wore a dark purple tailcoat, and its sleeves were rolled up so Saskia could see that the skeleton’s forearms were like two violin bows. Clearly, it didn’t find a lower garment as necessary; Saskia could also make out that its legs were thin and long, and they reminded her of a grasshopper’s. Why that was, Saskia didn’t really know, for unlike a grasshopper’s, the skeleton’s knees did not bend backward.

  Having finished surveying the monster’s anatomical particulars, Saskia gave a deep sigh, hung her head, and shook it. A thing like this would never happen to a proper child! To get to the castle, she needed to walk past the skeleton—right under the scary upside-down heart-shaped hole that was its nose!—or else veer off the trail and bypass it through the thicket. Any child in their right mind will tell you that the woods are acrawl with hungry beasts and evil spirits just waiting for you to step off the safe path, and—who knows?—other monsters may not be as sleekly clothed.

  Saskia tried to imagine what she would do if the skeleton ate her. The prospect upset her, but there was no help for it.

  As the girl edged closer and closer, thoughts bustled around her head like tiny hyperactive people, scurrying in circles, falling over one another, fumbling about for ways to convince the skeleton she wouldn’t make the most nutritious of lunches. She even pulled a green apple out of her backpack to try and tempt the skeleton with that instead—the Princess had mentioned something about apples being good for bone-building. (Surely they were better than little girls?)

  The monster still didn’t react to Saskia’s presence, although she’d drawn almost level with the fallen tree’s roots. The girl summoned all the courage she could find in her (feigning some more), which evidently wasn’t much: While she had brought herself to sprint headlong past the tree, her eye in the process was squeezed shut so tightly it was a miracle it hadn’t got crushed under the eyelid. It wasn’t helping Saskia’s heroic image, either, that she was shrieking as though falling off the tallest bridge.

  Still shrieking, Saskia opened her eye a slit and looked back. To her surprise, relief, and to some extent, disappointment, the skeleton hadn’t even moved a bone—hadn’t even snapped its teeth at her for the sake of decorum. It was sitting there as it had before, slouching and drumming on its cheekbone. Nonplussed, Saskia stopped both running and screaming. She had come up with so many nice arguments that could change the skeleton’s mind were it to charge at her that she felt a tad let down.

  Forgetting how she had nearly fainted from panic the moment before, the girl wheeled around and marched back up the trail in front of the skeleton, this time making sure not to hasten, and not to take her eye off it.

  No response came.

  More annoyed by the minute, Saskia stomped beside the tree one more time, drawing her knees nearly up to her chin, like an overly diligent soldier.

  Nothing.

  She went jumping in the opposite direction, now on one leg, now on two, as if playing hopscotch, her neck narrowly unscrewing itself as she craned and twisted it to keep an eye on the jaded-looking monster at all times.

  No use. The hard-headed skeleton refused to attempt to eat her.

  When she had exhausted most of her physical strength, Saskia backed away a yard or two. She tarried there for a good two minutes, examining her unwilling opponent in a calculating, deciphering manner, her lips pursed and her eye narrowed. Then, another bright idea sprang into her little, disarrayed, black-haired head: What if she sent a pine cone the skeleton’s way?

  Never mind; Saskia recalled at once that proper children sometimes pelted Franz with all sorts of things, pine cones, sticks, and even stones, and that it offended Franz greatly. Her spirits, she realized, would rather plummet if it were the skeleton who decided to chuck things at her, however kindly its intentions. At school, when the teachers couldn’t see, the boys often bombarded her and other girls with erasers or crumpled pieces of paper, and those occasions, though not very damaging, did vex Saskia. The girl flushed, growing ashamed of her malevolent impulse and stingingly sorry for the skeleton. True: If it weren’t for the wretched creature’s Halloweenish looks, she never would have thought to assail it in any way.

  The Princess had warned Saskia repeatedly not to talk to strangers, but she had not once given any precise instructions as to what not to do when it came to strangers’ bones. At any rate, it was decidedly impossible for someone bad to wear a tailcoat, of that Saskia was sure. The only person she’d ever seen in one was anything but evil.

  “Sorry I wanted to throw a cone at you,” said Saskia in a small voice, slinking nearer. “That wasn’t very thoughtful of me. Ah, this seat looks untaken—you don’t mind, do you?” She indicated the part of the trunk that wasn’t occupied by the skeleton, which was certainly rather roomy, as skeletons tend not to take up much space when they’re seated.

  The skeleton quit drumming and turned to look at her, slowly and in a strange way: First, he inclined his head to the opposite side, as if to get water out of the ear he did not have, and only then did he proceed to face the girl, with his skull still positioned horizontally. Inside his eye sockets, Saskia could discern green stalks and blue flowers, and for a moment she even thought their petals had twitched, as through the skeleton had blinked in surprise. F
inally, just as unhurriedly, the skeleton raised his head back into an upright position and waved his arm, allowing Saskia to sit beside him. After that, he turned away and placed his hands stiffly on his knees. The skeleton must be feeling slightly awkward, Saskia understood—it couldn’t be too often that somebody tried to strike up a conversation with him.

  Saskia clambered onto the tree, feeling glad for yet another time today that she wasn’t wearing her blue uniform, because her pirate pants became instantly black and slimily wet in the knees (the back of her pants was unlikely to be getting any cleaner either as Saskia fidgeted in attempts to make herself comfortable on the trunk’s coarse and lumpy bark). She clapped and rubbed her hands together and then smeared the last of the sticky, honey-colored resin on her vest.

  “Oh,” said Saskia, suddenly aware that her hoodlum looks and manners might alarm a creature of such a refined taste in clothing. “Please don’t mind my pirateness. I’m just dressed up as an acrobat who’s dressed up as a pirate, so it’s all right. It’s for a school thing,” she explained.

  The skeleton continued to look straight ahead of him. For some time, they sat in silence, until Saskia blurted out cheerfully, “My name is Saskia, I live in the castle at the other end of the woods, that’s where I’m going now.”

  With a lot of grinding, cracking, and popping noises, the skeleton turned to her again—this time with his entire torso, too—and blinked twice with his flower petals. He didn’t introduce himself in response, didn’t say anything at all, and Saskia figured that he might be inconvenienced by the lack of vocal cords.

  “May I simply call you the Skeleton? You could simply call me the Girl, in return,” suggested Saskia, but then she remembered the skeleton couldn’t call anyone the Girl due to his lack of vocal cords, so she corrected herself. “I mean, you could call me that in your head.”

  Saskia’s gaze lingered upon the skeleton’s forehead, behind which there was probably nothing but a few blades of grass. She felt her ears ignite.

  “Oh.”

  How insensitive! The Princess wouldn’t be too happy about her social skills. And Franz, that one would downright snort if he heard her now. The skeleton’s tailcoat, though, Franz would adore. The last time Franz had seen a tailcoat, he had rolled around on it, sheeting it with hairs in delight.

  “I apologize,” said Saskia sheepishly. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I’ve never talked to a skeleton before.”

  She held out her hand, and the Skeleton stared at it with his dark eye sockets (for his flowers had shrunk back inside them); then he stared at his own hand resting on his kneecap, and then at the girl’s again. At last he reached out and gave Saskia’s hand a quick, tentative shake, barely touching it at all, after which he snatched back his bony fingers and pivoted away.

  It looked as though he’d never talked to a girl before, either.

  Saskia would love to stay and chat some more with him, but conversation pieces in the vicinity were scarce, and she couldn’t think of anything to say that would be of any interest to a skeleton. She slid off the trunk and was just about to say her good-byes when, much to her amazement, the Skeleton made a sound. It wasn’t like a human voice, but rather a chirrup, as if his stomach had given a small rumble—except he wasn’t supposed to have a stomach! The girl couldn’t tell for sure whether he did, because of the tailcoat. She felt the strongest urge to ask the Skeleton what and how he ate, but she was, after all, well brought up so she never asked people when they were going to have a baby, or how they managed to eat without internal organs.

  Even without her asking questions, the Skeleton seemed discomfited. His head had drooped forward; Saskia thought it was so he could avoid looking her in the eye, but he didn’t stop angling his head downward until his flowery gaze had arrived at his own chest. The Skeleton peered at it for a time, then unbuttoned his tailcoat and resumed the examination of whatever was demanding his attention so in there. Saskia, too, tried to peek in a couple of times, but the Skeleton kept a side of his tailcoat up so that she couldn’t get a glimpse without her nose poking too obviously into the Skeleton’s business.

  When eventually the Skeleton’s attention did return to Saskia, she pretended to be enthralled by an iridescent bluish-green beetle scrambling up the trunk. The Skeleton cast another glance at his chest, and another glance at Saskia, and finally, after some indecisive clacking of teeth, he made up his mind. Slowly, he drew the left front of his tailcoat aside so Saskia could have a look, and her mask of disinterest peeled off on the instant.

  “Aaah,” breathed Saskia, the unpatched half of her face becoming one giant glittering pupil. Inside the Skeleton’s chest, there was a ruffled bird, whose peppercorn eyes were squinting against the intrusive daylight. Saskia didn’t know what kind of bird this was, except that it was a very small, very red, and very sleepy-looking bird. Now Saskia saw where all the plants twining around the Skeleton’s bones, and the flowers in his eye sockets, were coming from—they grew out of the nest that the bird had built inside his rib cage.

  “Aaah,” repeated Saskia.

  With one last, expectant look at his chest (perhaps to check that the bird was settling itself down to sleep again), the Skeleton pulled the front of his tailcoat back closed and fastened the buttons.

  Saskia got a feeling she had just been let in on something well-guarded and personal (not to mention incredible!), which was a thrilling feeling to get.

  “Thank you for showing me your bird,” she said, her voice a little too solemn because of a pleasant agitation that had also given her cheeks a pink tint. “I don’t think anybody’s shared a secret with me before. People aren’t quick to trust you when you look a bit. . .out of the way, you know what I mean?” she added in a whisper, blushing even harder.

  The Skeleton stared himself up and down. Then he granted Saskia a prolonged oblique look, blinked, and spread his arms out to his sides, as if to say, “Well, I am a skeleton.”

  “Oh, right.” There was no room for further blushing on Saskia’s face, so she could only bite her lip as her memory flashed back to her original impression of “the monster” and the concern that he was going to eat her.

  The Skeleton wouldn’t like it at Bastilly’s at all, she thought. The children would probably scream and scatter at the sight of him, without caring to get a deeper understanding of the situation first, and the adults would call the police. . . . While the girl pictured the furor a skeleton’s arrival could cause in a proper place like that, her eyebrows crawled up and toward each other, as though they had arranged a meeting at the center of her forehead. That made for a rather sorrowful look on her face, but thinking about school again had replenished Saskia’s sadness. The Skeleton, unlike her, didn’t have to go to Bastilly’s every day. He didn’t have to worry about having the scars the others didn’t, or saying the wrong thing all the time.

  “I wonder how much longer they’re going to be mad at me,” she sighed—not to herself but, unwittingly, quite aloud. “Everyone’s mad at me now because of the fairy tale,” the girl explained to the Skeleton (who hadn’t really asked her anything), as she climbed back onto the tree.

  Now the Skeleton appeared interested, swiveling his creaky corpus around and batting the petals of his staring flowers like big, blue, coaxing eyelashes. And he looked it, of course: Some people have it manifested in their air that theirs is a mind that’s tuned to fairy tales. If, say, a bird nests in a person’s chest, and the person doesn’t seem to mind, it is a sure sign they are a fairy tale enthusiast. The only exception Saskia knew to this observation was Franz. Impossibly fluffy, impossibly white; ears and nose pink like a rabbit; a pink lining around the mint-green, slit-pupiled eyes; Harem pants of fur around the hind legs that turned his gait into a kind of rolling waddle—everything about Franz screamed, to Saskia at least, that he must enjoy fairy tales. But for some reason he just couldn’t stand them. Saskia suspected it was only an act, to maintain his reputation as a sophisticated longhair, but she hadn’
t any proof yet.

  “We had to tell the class about our families today,” said Saskia. “What they do for a living, how much they make a year, which I think you’ll agree with me is all very boring, so I decided to tell them a fairy tale instead, about the Princess.

  “Once upon a time. . . .”

  Chapter Three. Saskia’s Fairy Tale

  “Once upon a time,” Saskia began in tones of mysteriousness, her high childish voice ascending even higher with excitement, “there was a princess, and all about her was brilliant and alight: her heart, and her mind, and her face, and her hair.”

  The Skeleton lifted his chin slightly, in an inquiring way.

  “Of course not!” said Saskia, offended by his assumption that she was talking about herself. “I’m only a girl. Sometimes I can be a little wolf, or an acrobat in a pirate costume, but most of the time I’m merely a girl. By the way, the Princess had a girl, a very niminy-piminy cat, and Jack.”

  Once more, the Skeleton’s chin rose in a silent question.

  “No, Jack’s not a prince, just Jack,” said Saskia, getting impatient. She was flattered the skeleton had come to be so engaged with her fairy tale already that he wanted to analyze the details, but she wouldn’t be able to sustain any semblance of a magical atmosphere if she had to stop and clarify things all the time. “So, the four of them had such fun times together. They went to the circus almost every weekend. Sometimes they would buy a cake as big as—”

  Saskia hesitated for an impressive simile. “—as a dinosaur!” she exclaimed, and the Skeleton’s mouth hung open. He threw back his head as if there were conveniently a stray dinosaur in front of them to help him envisage the size of that cake.