Mousebones
or, I’m Not Wampire Food
For the first time ever, Indaell wasn’t smiling. His torso and robe stretched out, bringing him like a self-stretching rubber band toward the place the door had been. The dark angel swung his fists at the empty doorless air. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” he said to the nothing that was left behind. He twirled like a pig tail to Lenna. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” he told her.
“Mr. Bad Angel, I’m also trapped.”
Indaell kept screaming “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ...”
“Where are you going to?” Lenna asked him. She waited awhile, hoping the screaming would stop. A skeleton mouse looked up at the toga-wrapped angel and began saying “eeee” along with him. Lenna picked the little bones up and set the mouse on her narrow fuzzy weasel shoulder.
“... aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ...”
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
“Hush now, both of you,” Lenna scolded. “Mr. Indaell, where are you going to? What will you do?”
“... aaaaa.” Indaell’s thin lips snapped shut. He stayed very still, frowning like a very stupid person trying to remember where he had left something.
Finally, he decided. “I’m going to follow you,” he said.
Lenna frowned at the thought. “Why?” she asked.
“It’s what I’ve been doing,” he said, “and I don’t feel like stopping now.” His voice was plaintive. No longer did it make her feel like a bell being hit with hammers, the way it had in the Nupsstaður chapel. His voice had shrunk, as if he were smaller and less powerful than he had been. Or as if she were bigger. But probably not.
She looked at the mouse on her shoulder. “I want to eat you,” she told the mouse, “except that you’re only bones.”
“Cheep.”
“But I won’t eat you. Unless I’m very hungry.”
“Eee.” The mouse ducked her skull, hiding her face in her tiny paws.
“Mr. Indaell, why were you following me?”
Indaell’s piggy black-irised eyes looked down. “I’m not allowed in heaven,” he said, toeing the ground.
“Why don’t you go back to Hell?” Lenna asked.
“She’s scary,” said Indaell.
“But why follow me? I’m just a girl. Weasel. Weasel girl. Aaa!”
“Eee!” the mouse echoed.
“I want to be a person again!” Lenna yelled to no one in particular, trying to ball her fuzzy fists and finding she didn’t have thumbs. “I don’t want to bite necks like a, a wampire!”
Whooosh. It came down from above.
“You called?”
A trio of shadows shot down from the sky and flooomph’ed into pale pale people shrouded in shadowy black cloaks. There were two men and a woman with purple eyeshadow. They all had very nice hair. She turned from them to Indaell and back to them.
“Blah,” one of the wampires said.
“I’m not wampire food,” she informed them. The mouse cheeped protectively.
“Vouldn’t you like to be one of us?” said the taller wampire man. “Ve can give you the power to transvorm into a bat.” He raised his eyebrows and went “ooo” with his lips.
“Can you show me how to transform into a girl?” she asked him.
“No,” said the other wampire-man, “it vould hav to be veasel to bat and bat to veasel.”
“No thanks.”
“Rats,” said the wampire-voman, snapping her fingers.
“Cheep?” said the mouse.
“No, not you,” she replied.
“Misters and miss wampire, do you know how to find the door to the real world?”
“Zis is the ‘real vorld,’ ” said the voman narcissistically. “Vhat other vorld is there?”
“The, the other vorld. World,” Lenna said. “The one where the magic actually is.”
“Ah, yis. I know of vhat you speak. You mean the Ootland. Vhen people go oot the door, zey vind up there.”
“Yeah. How do we get there?” Lenna asked.
“I uff no idea,” said the voman. “You, Tessek?”
“Vell, Piros, if it vas me, lookingk for Ootland, I vould ask the head wampire. Vouldn’t you, Koszonom?”
“Oh, ya, ya, who vouldn’t?”
“Where can we find the head wamp?” Lenna asked.
“The middle,” said Tessek. “Duh.”
The lady wampire leaned over Lenna and sniffed into her crooked Roman nose. “Hey,” she said, “you aren’t dett.”
“Nope,” said Lenna.
“Neither is he!” shrieked Koszonom, pointing to Indaell, who bowed.
“We’re both alive. Well,” she said, looking at Indaell, “I’m alive and he’s an angel. We’re from Ootland. Is it oot or out?”
“Oot, definitely,” said Koszonom, the shorter wampire.
“Ootland, and he--” She was pointing at Indaell with her paw when something occurred to her. “How did you get into the Verdance of Verdandi, anyways?” she asked Indaell with her paws on her weasel hips. “The rules said that only one person could go through the door.”
Indaell buzzed his lips at her: brrrrrrrr. “I walked into a tree,” he added.
“Yes, but--nevermind. I’m still mad at you for putting that curse on me. And I’ll never never never trust you.”
“You helped rescue me from Bres,” Indaell said, looking at his splayed sandalled feet.
“Yes!” she shouted. “Talvi set you free and I was there and then you went away and then came back and you tricked me again.” She hopped forward and bared her pointy weasel teeth. “Why?”
Indaell was smiling again.
“You’re here to trick me into doing something even worse!” she told him.
Indaell swung his body back and forth like a metronome hand, bracing his arms behind him. Tick ... tock. Smile.
Lenna frowned. “I don’t want you coming with me,” she said with her paws clenched. “I’m going to see the head wamp, and you’re not.” She hmfd.
“Do you remember your parents?” he asked quietly.
She froze. “My--my realreal parents? Not Joukka Pelata?”
“Mm.” He swung back and forth above his sandals, a thin grin dimpling his strange timeless smooth-flat face. “I remember them,” said Indaell. “I remember all the decisions they made. Every one. Where they were going on that airplane. Why they were running away.”
Lenna sighed hard. She knew, knew, knew he was lying, but all sorts of pleasantly threatening ideas crept into her head.
“Mr. Indaell, I know you’re a liar. Even if I can’t see the color of lies anymore, I’m not so stupid that I’d believe what you say.”
Indaell cleared his throat.
“Airplanes to dragons
Dragons to clocks
Fire to forest
And forest to fox.
A tower for flying
A tower of fire
A tower of suede
A beanstalk spire.
A piglet for dragons
A telephone stew
A hundred-year cookie
And coffee for you.
A fall in the water
A kantele’s song
A thousand dead ducklings
A fisherman’s gong.
Lightning, cannons,
Angels, knives.
Don’t we lead
Such exciting lives?”
murmled the angel.
“Vhy is he poetting, Piros?” asked Tessek.
“Shoosh. Zey are haffing a moment.”
Lenna bounced up to Indaell indignantly. “Lying lying pants on fying. Mr. Indaell, my mouse and I are all alone in a big big world. We don’t want some old monster cat French badangel sneak following us around like a stray monster. You should find your own door. You’ve tricked me at least too often.”
Indaell stood there, maneuvering his smile around on his face as if he wasn’t sure about it anymore.
“How would you like to have a servant?” he said.
“No!” she exclaimed.
“A bodyguard?”
“Mr. Indaell. Find your own door.”
Lenna and the mousebones approached the wampires.
“Can you show me the way to the head wamp?” she asked them.
They looked at each other. Piros smiled with her fangs. She elbowed Tessek. “Ve could do that. I’m sure he vouldn’t mind.”
“Ya, vhy not? Ve can take you straight there.” Tessek shrank and mutated into a tiny bat about three inches across, flapped to Lenna’s head and started tugging at her brown and pink ear.
“Eek.” Lenna hopped as her ear got pinched and stretched.
“Eee?” said the mousebones.
“Zat isn’t working, Tessek,” said Piros. “Stop it at vunce.”
With a squirm he transformed back into a thin pale person in black shrouds.
“Vhy didn’t you join in?” he asked her. “Ve could at least uff gotten her off the ground.”
“No. It must be srough Deadvood,” Piros replied. “Zat is the way to za head wamp.”
The three wampires led Lenna and her mouse toward a red forest. Indaell stood where he was, his feet planted on the dirt, his body rocking back and forth like a dead tree, smiling sadly into the barren plain.