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ANTON
Anton had lost track of how long he’d spent sitting and carving objects. It could have been days, weeks, months, years. Realistically, it had to have been only a few days. He’d been closed off to everything. The only activities that consumed his days were carving and sleeping, besides sifting through the closet to find a pair of trousers and tunic to wear. The clothing made him feel more comfortable, not having to see himself as only bones.
Before him in a cluster was a carved dragon to represent Tasha’s favorite book, various animals, and a chicken that somehow made him think of the thief who’d run away with his clothing while carrying the feathered creature.
Setting down the knife and peering at the bones of his hand, he was no longer dismayed at seeing the alabaster skeleton parts of himself.
The thing was, Anton had never minded being alone. Rather than feeling lonely, it recharged him, helped him to find himself. But then there would always be someone to talk to or to interrupt him. And now there was no one.
No one. Only him.
Anton had a decision to make—remain in the colorless home or explore more of what was outside. After losing track of time on the former, he reluctantly decided to try the latter.
Leaving what he could only describe as comfort, Anton stepped outside into the vacant valley. Bones rained down in the distance as a crackle came from above. The bright orb in the sky hovered, guiding Anton’s way while he walked in between the rounded hills of bones. He wondered about their past owners and how they would feel to be scattered about like this. If he so chose, there was enough time to see how far the Bone Valley stretched and find out if it was larger than Kedaf.
Beyond a winding path, Anton caught sight of a garden filled with flowers shaped by chalky-pale bones of all sizes, sprouting from the soil. He plucked what looked to be a rose from the dirt, brought it to his skull, and inhaled. There was nothing to smell, only the flutter of a breath against the part of his skull where his nose should have been. That was his reality now, an existence spent impersonating a human.
Tossing the flower back into the garden, he sat down on the pebbled ground even though a bench made of various sizes of bones blocked his full view. A pile of skeletal pieces rested not far away from him. It felt wrong, after dying, for them to have to stay and be a fraction of what they’d once been. He wasn’t sure if it was better than what he’d become, though.
His bones made a scratchy crack as he stood from the ground and went to the nearest pile of remains.
As King of the Bone Valley, the only company you will have is bones. Maryska’s insulting words echoed through Anton’s thoughts. Perhaps he would put a person back together just to spite her. If anything, it might help him feel less lonely.
Examining the white skull with specks of dirt, he found the ivory hair to be pleated in a long braid. All the skulls he passed displayed white hair, the life being sucked from that as well. By the shape of the rounded pelvis, he could tell this one was female.
Anton practically knew the names of every bone, mainly from Tasha teaching him from one of her books. Perhaps his youngest sister would be a healer one day.
“All right, my queen,” he mocked aloud. “Let me bring you back to life.” He knew she wouldn’t be able to walk as he did or move the way he could, but at least she would be whole and not a pile of forgotten pieces in a lonely, dead garden.
Anton loathed solving problems more than anything and that was what this felt like, building a frustrating puzzle. Holding four phalanges in his hand, he already wanted to give up. But when he found the right piece that connected to them, the bones molded together with a soft sizzle, as if by magic.
Many attempts ended in failure as he made his way to the femur. But when the pile of bones lessened, the picture became clearer, and his determination stayed true.
As he reached the pelvic area of his project, he knew if he still had his skin it would have flushed a blazing red, even though a woman’s body had never unnerved him. But the thought of being so many layers deeper into the place that was truly untouchable to another human, made it feel all that more vulnerable.
Proceeding on, Anton finished the spine after attaching the rib cage. Not exhausted in the slightest, but wanting to take a break anyway, he admired the beauty and curve of each bone of the skeletal body standing before him.
His attention wavered to the glowing orb in the sky as he lay on the pebbled ground and placed his hands behind his skull.
The sky had altered to a darker shade of gray than earlier, almost a slate. A hazy fog formed around the valley, coming out to play, even without a single cloud in sight. It was haunting, breathtaking, though Anton still longed for the colorful world where his family was.
Closing the blazing flames where his eyes had once been, he thought of home—living trees filled with apples, dances with breathing villagers on special days in the market, working with real women or men, feeling his slick skin against theirs, and pleasuring the part of himself that was now missing.
He opened his flames and turned back to the female who was still incomplete, her skull on the ground watching him with an empty stare. “I know, I know. You want me to finish building. I promise I’ll sit here for as long as it takes until you’re restored.”
The clavicle and scapula came next. Things were moving along quite well when he made it to the radius and ulna, until the pile of phalanges and metacarpals came upon him.
He sang a made-up song to keep himself calm and occupied as he fit the pieces together. When all he had left was to connect the skull to the vertebrae, he sighed in satisfaction.
Kneeling, Anton placed the female’s skull in between his hands and studied it for several moments. “You didn’t deserve to end up this way.” He placed the skull on the tip of her spine to complete her skeleton. Anton didn’t know until that moment how much he’d hoped she would magically come to life. But her eye sockets remained empty.
For two days, Anton ventured into the garden, spending most of his time there. It had become easier for him to know how much time had passed based on the fog. During the earlier parts of the day there would be little to none, but as the day grew, the heavier the fog became.
At night, he tried to rest on the settee inside the cottage, but he couldn’t stay asleep. He knew he was mad for conversing with a skeleton who couldn’t move or talk back, but he did it nonetheless. He’d wondered who the clothing inside the cottage had belonged to, but whoever it was must have been scattered somewhere out in the Bone Valley.
From one of the closets, he took a velvet ebony dress accented with embroidered white flowers at the hem. Pearls and lace stitched the neckline and cuffs at the sleeves.
After Anton adjusted the dress on the skeleton, it molded to her body, falling right at her ankles. She looked positively enchanting. And he was delirious just thinking about what he was doing.
Plucking several bone flowers from the garden, he placed the smaller ones into the braid of her hair for decoration. He lifted her hand in between his, staring into her empty eye sockets. “Awake, my queen,” he murmured with mockery. “Would you like to dance?”
He released her delicate fingers and spun around in a circle before stopping to face her once more.
And his jaw fell open.
Two white flames matching his burned brightly inside her eye sockets, the light lengthening when she stared at him. Her lower jaw fluttered, and she stumbled backward.
Anton reached forward to grab her as she fell, but missed. The female struck her arm against a stone at the edge of the garden. She howled in agony as Anton rushed to her side, pulling her into his arms.
“Are you all right?” he asked, noticing the small hairline crack at her ulna.
Ripping herself from his arms, she scooted back. “Does it look like I’m all right?”
“I suppose not.” He watched her jaw chatter from fright.
“You’re—you’re made of bones, and you’re talking,” she whimpered. “How’s this possible?”
Anton winced, knowing what was to come, but not wanting to leave her in the dark. “Have you looked at yourself yet?”
Shakily, she brought a skeletal hand to her face. The female stared at it for several moments before releasing an ear-shattering scream.
He covered the sides of his skull, where his ears should have been, and it muffled the wretched sound. Anton wasn’t sure why or how he’d handled the situation better than her. Perhaps not better, but more quietly.
The girl peered down at herself then back at him, flames wide. “What am I wearing?”
“I dressed you.”
“Like a doll?” she asked, agitated.
“Better than leaving you without any clothing on, isn’t it?”
Anton studied his own trousers held up with a belt. He’d added an extra notch in the leather to prevent the pants from falling. Shiny gray buttons lined the center of the white shirt he had on today, which his finger was absently rubbing.
She didn’t answer. The female’s hands drifted up to her skull and her flames disappeared before widening again. “I died.”
“As did I.” He had tried to do everything in his power to avoid thinking about what Maryska had done, but there it was.
The female’s arms fell back to her sides. “I remember being stabbed in the chest, followed by what felt like parts of my body ripping away.”
Anton remembered that, too, about himself. The unbearable pain that had occurred, then vanished as if it had never happened.
“Did Maryska do this to you too?” he asked.
“Maryska? No, it was a woman named Boda who stabbed me,” she ground out.
That was a name that wasn’t common in Kedaf. “Boda who works for Daryna?”
Her flames blazed harder and lengthened. “Yes.”
He had never seen Daryna, or at least he didn’t think so, but his father would sell stolen goods to her. “And your name?”
She didn’t answer at first, and he thought she never would. “Nahli.”
Inhaling sharply, bewildered, he blinked his flames. This couldn’t be the same girl he’d seen at the market and by the lake. Could it? “Are you a thief?”
She again took a long time to answer, but her flames narrowed. “What’s it to you?”
His bones raked with laughter and a rare deep sound escaped past his teeth. It wasn’t humorous how things had ended, but he couldn’t contain himself. Because out of everyone in the Bone Valley he could have brought back to life, he’d chosen this girl.
“Apparently, you’re my queen.” The sentence would have tasted sour if he’d had a tongue and could have truly felt the words.
She crossed her arms over her rib cage. “I am no one’s queen.”
“It was only something that appeared to have brought you back. I didn’t mean it figuratively.” He paused. “It’s me, Anton. Remember, you tried to steal from me at the market?”
Her jaw opened and closed, then she took a step away. “And then I took your clothing beside the lake.”
“While running away with a chicken in your other hand.”
“That I gave to your family.” She moved toward him.
“What?” Nahli had given the chicken to his family?
“I didn’t know it was your family when I gave it to them.” She pointed at him. “I met your younger sister outside and then handed the hen to your brother.”
Anton held up his hands and shrugged. “How quaint. Now we’re the best of acquaintances. You’ve met my family, and now we can live in the Bone Valley together forever and discuss our two meetings over and over.”
He didn’t know what he was expecting when he’d built the skeleton. It sure wasn’t her being able to come to life, and it sure wasn’t that she would have been Nahli. His emotions of pity for the nameless skeleton withered and died.
“I’m not staying here with you,” she spouted. “I’ll find someone else to talk to or some way to get out of here alone.”
“You say that only because you don’t know where you are. I’m not really sure you can traipse out of here, unless you find a way to open the tree with the door, then head straight to Maryska.”
“What’s so bad about Maryska? Who is she?”
“Did you not hear about her in Kedaf? Always overdressed when out and about, had one of the nicest cottages in the village?”
“Wait. She died, too?” Nahli blurted.
“No, she did not die too,” he ground out slowly. “Maryska is the ruler of this afterlife known as Torlarah and where we are is the Bone Valley. She murdered me out of jealousy in an attempt to make me her king.”
“And?”
And Anton decided to tell her the whole story from the beginning. For one thing, there had been no one else to talk with in days, so it was liberating. He started from when Maryska had poisoned him and continued with the liquid of different skin and bodily organs known as the Lake of Flesh, the throne room, and the ruler’s obsession of making him her king.
“Why didn’t you go? It sounds as though she would have returned the rest of your body if you had left.”
He couldn’t tell if she was ridiculing him or being serious. “I would rather remain like this.” It would be his preference to stay a pile of broken bones mixed into one of the mountains rather than be Maryska’s lover for all eternity.
Sighing, Nahli’s shoulders dropped, seeming to understand. “Perhaps we can find another way out of here and get to the skin lake.”
“The Lake of Flesh? What is that going to do?”
“Well, if you say your skin, muscles, and organs are in there, perhaps mine are too.”
Anton didn’t want to go on some endless journey to where Maryska could be. He would rather head back inside the cottage where he’d been staying and carve something. But what would happen when he ran out of wood? He looked out toward the lifeless trees that were all bone, twisted limbs. They offered nothing. Tearing his gaze from the trunks, he turned his attention to Nahli, and studied her white braid hitting the middle of her spinal cord.
Without her olive skin, she didn’t seem like herself. The dimples were gone, but the stubborn curve to her jaw was the same as that day in the market. Perhaps there was a reason he’d found her.
“All right, you may have a point. We should have a look farther out,” he decided.
Her flames fell to the rows of bone cottages. “Are there any weapons inside there?”
“Most likely. But I also have this, which may work,” he said, holding up his hand. “Light.” When he murmured the last word, a glowing white orb with a black center appeared.
