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ANTON
“Try piecing her back together again.” Maryska’s words repeated in Anton’s head as he stared at the empty spot behind him for several long seconds. Nahli had been there one moment and gone the next.
“I doubt you will ever find her.” Maryska’s defiant voice pulled Anton away from his trance.
“Where is she?” he growled.
Frantic, he scanned the garden, then toward the trees and hills of the Bone Valley. Everything appeared the same, bones piled high, more bones descending from the sky. Bones, bones, bones, and no Nahli.
“She’s scattered in pieces across the valley,” Maryska mused, her tone scathing.
Anton’s gaze drifted up to the floating orbs above him. There weren’t two moving around each other any longer. Only one—his—was left, spinning in a lonely circle. Frustration and anger pulsed through him. He held up his hand and let the orb drop into his palm, then seethed, “Flame.”
The ball turned to a giant black flame, burning with an intensity that spoke of the way he felt. Without one more thought, he threw the dark fire at Maryska, hoping she would burn to ash.
She blew out a puff of air from her pouty lips, and the flame changed into a cloudy smoke. Anton’s shoulders slumped with defeat. If he could do the things she could, he would turn her into bones and scatter them across the land.
Swiping her tongue across her charcoal-colored lips, she sauntered toward him. “My sweetest Anton, have you not learned that it is better to do what I want?”
“I refused you before, and I’ll do the same a thousand times over,” he ground out. “I will not be your king.”
“Then stay here and look for your pathetic skeletal queen.” She paused, rubbing the crown cuff bracelet on her wrist. “And when you decide you’ve had enough and are ready to be my king, then you will come and search for me. The door will be unlocked this time,” she cooed, flicking her hand in the direction of the shriveled, twisted tree.
He would not go out that door to be hers—ever.
As she walked away, swaying her hips, she turned her head to look one more time over her shoulder. “Oh, and by the way, your female is not asleep like she was before. There might be some demons in her head haunting her.” Her high-pitched laughter rumbled throughout the Bone Valley.
With that, Maryska vanished into the fog, a loud shutting of a door reminding him of what he must do.
He stood still, frozen, panicked. His skeleton trembled as he spun around, seeing nothing but the bones he and Nahli had put together, now scattered across the ground.
It was only him once more, as though Nahli had never been there. Everything was back to how it had been when Maryska had first thrown him into the Bone Valley. As if Nahli had never built the row of skeletons by herself, and then with him, nor brought Roka to life.
Roka.
“Roka,” Anton roared, growing anxious. “Roka!” Maryska must have broken him into scattered remains, too.
“Anton?” Roka asked, protruding from the fog so Anton could see him better.
Relieved, his stiffened shoulders dropped a little at the sight of the bone meerkat. Anton knelt toward him. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”
Roka’s head drooped, his chin nearly touching his ribs. “I ran inside like a coward. When the female with antlers came, I ... I felt something. I’m not sure what it was, but I remember her here in the Bone Valley, stripping the flesh away from the humans. Some instinct told me to hide, so I went back to the cottage until I heard you shout my name.”
Anton should have been angry with Roka for fleeing, but his decision to run had saved his life, leaving Anton someone to keep him sane while he figured out how to find Nahli. He’d told Nahli to run and hide if Maryska ever came, but they’d both been taken by surprise, unprepared.
“Maryska... She broke Nahli into pieces and scattered her all over the Bone Valley. How am I going to find her?” he whispered, looking out at the thousands upon thousands of bones.
“It seems you have all the time in the world, Anton. You cannot have these negative thoughts.” Roka patted Anton’s leg. “Search for her, then rebuild her.”
Anton let Roka’s words sink in. The thought of Nahli not being able to move, and knowing that she couldn’t, ate at him even more. He needed to find her as soon as possible.
“All right, I’m going to begin now.” Anton didn’t care how thick the fog was this time of day—he didn’t dare think about anything except uncovering her.
He rushed to the bones before him that he’d built with Nahli, and sifted through them on the ground, confirming that there was no sign of her there. But did he really know? All these bones looked the same now that he could barely focus with his trembling fingers.
A crumbling hill piled with remains lay before him. “Light,” he demanded, holding out his hand for the orb to appear. The lighted orb illuminated all the ivory-colored bones. As he dug in and tossed skeletal parts aside, Anton apologized silently—to whom, he didn’t know—but he was desperate. Each time he made a larger hole, bones collapsed, and he’d have to dig again. The search was an endless, impossible quest.
Anton thought about the way he and Nahli had danced together earlier. He remembered the times that she’d infuriated him—both in life, and in death—but he had discovered that she had been worth knowing more about. That she was a person he was lucky to know, no matter that she'd been the only other person alive in this tragic land of bones.
She’d opened up to him with what he hoped and believed to be trust. Learning what a childhood friend had done to her riled him. He would never have done that to anyone, and he would never falsely claim love to someone, either. With his customers, he never once told them that strong word which could lead to so many things. He stayed truthful with them, no matter the price.
Nahli might have been in the wrong for attempting to steal from his sister’s booth, but he understood her now. Her parents had been trying to sell her off like an unwanted mare.
While dancing, his mind had shifted to different things, possibly pulling down the sleeve of her dress to study her exposed shoulder. He knew what her skeleton had looked like from when he’d built her, but with her dancing under the lit orbs, and moving and being alive, how he’d yearned for a moment to brush his fingers along her bare shoulder and down to her hip bone.
Anton shook his head from the thoughts because he wouldn’t even know what to do with her in that way if he found her. But he would figure it out, with or without skin. He had started to feel something, and he thought that maybe she had too.
With more precision, he examined each bone he came across to make sure they weren’t hers. Then he would second guess himself and have to inspect the bones again.
Raking his hands through his hair, he yanked his locks free from the low ponytail. Searching and searching, he continued to come up empty. The one thought he desperately wanted to push away, refused to leave his skull. He might never find Nahli.
