The Chronicles of Fone Bone Oathbreaker

D. G. D. Davidson

BONE is © 2006 by Jeff Smith.

Chapter 3: The Courtship of Thorn Harvestar

How it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential disclosures between friends.

--Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

They were broke, but at least they had a roof over their heads. The first time the bones ran Phoney out of Boneville, they had confiscated his property along with his liquid assets, so when he returned and reacquired the mansion, he placed it in a trust to ensure that it, at least, would be untouchable. He stood now in the copious library and ran his hands over the various books on the shelves. The books were actually Fone Bone’s, bought with whatever cash Fone Bone could scrounge. Fone always insisted that Phoney fill that huge library, but Phoney didn’t care for books: Fone Bone’s collection was only enough for a couple of shelves, so the rest were empty and gathering dust.

Phoney had never had any interest in the musty second-hand volumes before, but now he traced his fingers over the flaked gold lettering on the spines and contemplated the titles: The Complete William Shakespeare, The Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe, The Iliad, Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy, the King James Bible, A Tale of Two Cities, Josephus’ Complete Works, Herodotus’ Histories, Spencer’s Faerie Queene, The Canterbury Tales, Faust, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. If it was boring, Fone Bone would read it. Phoney had always known that, but now he realized something else.

All these books had human authors. Phoney had never noticed and never cared before.

He grabbed a book. It was The Iliad. He flipped it open and began reading:

With streaming blood the slippery fields are dyed,

And slaughter’d heroes swell the dreadful tide.

O’er heaven’s clear azure spread the sacred light,

Communal death the fate of war confounds,

Each adverse battle gored with equal wounds.

That was more than enough for Phoney. He slammed the thick tome shut and stuck it back on the shelf. He didn’t understand it very well, but could tell it was about violence. Was that all humans cared about? Blood and death? And why did Fone Bone read such things?

Phoney looked to the center of the room. Sitting there was the large steel cage left over from his failed combination slaughterhouse and petting zoo. Phoney had meant to sell the cage years ago, but had never gotten around to it. Now it served another purpose.

At the table nearby, Smiley was eating takeout from Corn Dog Hut™. Corn Dog Hut™ was Smiley’s favorite restaurant because he liked to play with the corn dog sticks after he finished eating, but now Smiley was sullen, bending over his side dish of coleslaw and chewing on it with unusual determination.

“It just isn’t right,” Smiley started again. “Bartleby would never hurt anybody. Why put him in that cage?”

“It’s just for a while,” Phoney reminded him. “’Til the townsfolk get used to ‘im. Besides, Bartleby doesn’t mind. Do ya, Bartleby?”

Bartleby was lying near the cage, looking as dejected as Smiley. He raised his head, shook it, and lay it back down.

“Ya see?” Phoney said.

Actually, Bartleby did mind the cage, but he got in it anyway. Every night now, the bones came to gawk at him while Phoney charged them steep admission prices and lectured for hours on the terrors of the “human valley across the desert.” Bartleby stared at the bones staring at him, and inside he felt fear--fear that if the cage weren’t there, he might do something terrible.

When he tasted the blood of the cow in the desert, something awoke in him. Raw flesh and sweet, sticky blood filled his maw and drained down his gullet. He had never tasted its like before. He knew then what it was to be a rat creature: he gorged and gorged until it seemed his abdomen would burst, and even then, he wanted more. When he turned his orb-like eyes toward Phoney and Smiley, he felt the saliva building in his mouth.

No, no. Not Smiley. Not even Phoney. They were his pals.

Yet when they walked at night under the stars, Bartleby felt his instincts awaken, for he was a nocturnal creature. It would be so easy to pounce, rend, and tear the warm, quivering flesh from either of his companions. In his dreams, he saw Smiley as small as a mouse, with his face contorted in fear as he ran. Bartleby always caught him and batted him back and forth between his claws--and then Bartleby awoke, guilty and afraid.

When they left him behind the interpretive center, Bartleby crawled into one of the dumpsters to hide. It seemed so natural, when that bone opened the dumpster, to grab him and pull him inside. After all, it wasn’t Phoney or Smiley. Bartleby didn’t even think.

He’d eaten most of his prey before he realized what he’d done. After that, he made short work of the bone and hid the evidence. Now guilt was his constant companion, but he still couldn’t forget the taste of that sweet, succulent, aromatic flesh. He was afraid for his friends. He was afraid of what he might do.

So he got in the cage.

Nightly, the bones came. They pointed, poked, mocked. Bartleby bore the treatment with silent resolve. It was his penance. One of them was now dead by his doing, life crushed out between his scissors-like teeth, and none of them knew.

Above the gawking spectators, the diminutive Phoney strode back and forth like a pacing giant. With each presentation, he added new lurid details to the wonders and terrors of the Human Valley. With breathless aplomb, he recounted the awful battle that led to the capture of this savage rat creature. The bones gasped in fright. Women clutched their children.

Smiley stood by and watched with tears in his eyes. He would have done something, would have said something, if only Bartleby asked. But Bartleby only shook his head, glowing eyes downcast.

“Why?” Smiley would whisper after the crowds had dispersed. “Why let Phoney do this? You’re my pal. You’re not a...a monster!”

I am a monster, Bartleby thought, but he wouldn’t say it aloud. Smiley wouldn’t--couldn’t--understand. Some people are born monsters.

His eyes moved toward Phoney, who stood in the dark corner, counting his money.

And some are monsters by choice.

“There is no place for me,” Bartleby murmured with a high, raspy voice grown dry and cold in the dust-tinged emptiness of the library. “I have no place with my own people, and I have no place with the bones. I should have known that, but I was too young to understand.”

“You’re still young, Bartleby.”

“I grow older by the day.”

“You’re so young!” Smiley protested. “Don’t spend your life in a cage!”

Phoney stood across the room, thumbing through the cash from admissions. His sarcastic voice cut through the conversation. “It’s temporary, Smiley Bone! Soon enough, they’ll get tired of ‘im. They always get tired. Then we’ll tell ever’body he’s tamed and they’ll see what a gentle rat he is and then everything’s aces--and we got the saps’ money. Relax. Nothing’ll go wrong.”

Smiley remained silent.

He chewed his coleslaw and cleared away the remains of his meal as the bones filed in to perform their nightly ritual of gawking and gossip. Phoney gave them the biggest, toothiest smile he could muster as he fingered their proffered cash.

That night, Smiley almost spoke out, almost protested, when Miss Twyla Bone, cringing in terror from Bartleby’s docile stare, turned her pouty, dew-eyed face to Phoney and asked, “Phoney Bone, whatever happened to that cousin of yours--whazzisname? The cute one.”

“’E was kinda cute,” Twyla’s friend Jeanne Bone said, patting her frizzy hair, “but boring. I dated him once and all he could talk about was some book about a whale.”

Phoney, standing on his platform, hung his head. Melodramatically, he sighed and wiped at a tear (he had long ago learned to produce tears on demand). “Oh, you mean our dear, dear Fone Bone. I’m afraid...I’m afraid he didn’t make it back from the Human Valley.”

The ladies gasped. “You mean,” Twyla asked with a tremor in her voice, “you mean...the rats an’ humans got ‘im?”

“You could say that,” Phoney agreed, nodding.

“Oh!” Jeanne Bone cried. “If only I had treated him better!” She buried her face in her kerchief while Twyla patted her back.

Smiley, behind the crowd, stood with his teeth clenched in a rage. This was the last straw. Phoney might use Bartleby this way, but he would not use their cousin.

Smiley almost never got angry, but when he did, his outbursts were terrifying. He would throw furniture and punch through walls. For a bone, Smiley was enormous, with strength to match his stature. Now he saw red, and his misting vision focused on his cousin standing above the crowd of gaping idiots, waving a ridiculous pointer at the caged Bartleby, telling them lies about Fone Bone...

Smiley didn’t move fast enough. His rage ebbed as the pompous mayor, Rictus Bone, shoved his way to the front of the crowd and leapt onto the platform beside Phoney.

“Stop!” Rictus shouted, clutching his high silk hat. “Stop this nonsense! This has gone far enough!” He adjusted his monocle, and then he used his gentle, fatherly voice, the one that had gotten him repeatedly elected as the city’s premier community leader.

“My friends,” Rictus said, “my brothers, my sisters, my constituency.” He picked out bones who didn’t vote for him and looked each in the eye. “Dear, dear bones. You, Lunate Bone. You, Frank Bone. You, Delilah Bone. You must know--all of you--that the humans are not our enemies any more.” He sighed, shaking his head. “It is so terrible, the things that happened between our two peoples in the past. So many opportunities missed. Humans and bones could have enlightened each other, learned from each other. Instead, they killed each other. Yes, we may argue that we had reason. After all, it was self-defense. The humans skinned us for clothing. But we must acknowledge that we, too, committed atrocities. Shall we forget the Darton Massacre, when fifty bones slaughtered a human mission full of women and children in retaliation for a single bone killed outside Portsmouth? Shall we forget that our own town of Boneville, when it was still Fort Bone, displayed human heads and scalps on its gates? Shall we forget that not but five years ago, we threatened a new war on Portsmouth when we discovered that the humans had acquired modern firearms?”

A murmur ran through the crowd. Though most of Rictus’s examples were events of history known only from textbooks, everyone still remembered the heated debates over the human acquisition of bone hunting rifles and assault weapons, and many still felt a “cleansing” of Portsmouth would have been the best solution. Lucky for Phoney Bone, no one knew he was the one who had smuggled guns to the humans. Phoney had turned around and sold guns to his fellow bones as well, playing on their paranoia and insisting they must arm themselves against humans if they were to protect their families. That had been one of his most profitable ventures.

“Now, now,” Rictus said, raising his hands to quell the rising dissent. “Were not the people of Portsmouth patient and understanding? Did they not emphasize their remorse over the actions of their ancestors? Did they not, in the end, turn over the assault rifles and handguns and keep only the hunting rifles and shotguns? They did. No longer must we fear them. They do not hunt us for skins anymore. In fact, the only boneskin in all Portsmouth--”

The crowd booed. Everyone knew about the boneskin in the Portsmouth History Museum. Its interpretive plaque bemoaned the past treatment of bones and expressed hope for a cooperative future, but still the bones condemned the display as disgusting and demanded that the museum hand the skin over to Boneville for internment. The museum refused.

Rictus had made a mistake.

“Now, now!” Rictus said again, but it was too late. The booing and hissing drowned his voice.

Phoney smiled. When Rictus had climbed onto the platform, Phoney had been pleased. To his surprise, Rictus had done much to harm himself with his unusually clumsy lecture, but Phoney had the means to destroy him, and it was time to use it.

Phoney stood next to Rictus and, contorting his face with false compassion, raised a hand for silence. The crowd quieted immediately.

“Friends, fellow Bonevillians,” Phoney said, “I regret that I must do this, but I must. This information--I had no intention of bringing it forward. I was too...ashamed. I meant to take it to my grave, but I’m afraid our mayor has left me no choice.”

Rictus stared at Phoney with hard eyes, and Phoney returned the stare, unblinking. Phoney had been saving this bombshell for the mayoral campaign, but the bones had run him out of town before he could use it. But it wouldn’t go to waste.

Out of the pocket of his shirt, Phoney pulled a folded sheet of paper. “In my hand,” he said to the bones, “in my hand I have a notarized confession from Mammon Bone, our former city treasurer who, as you all know, disappeared mysteriously over a year ago.” Phoney unfolded the letter and displayed it. “In here, he chronicles the transfer of funds from the public treasury to the private account of Rictus Bone, our mayor, and adds that he is leaving town for parts unknown because he believes Rictus will retaliate if and when this information becomes public.”

The bones raised their fists and shouted in indignation. They yelled, they screamed. A voice carried over the throng: “String ‘im up!”

“No!” another cried. “Run ‘im out! Run ‘im out just like he ran out our beloved Phoney!”

Rictus glared at Phoney Bone. He placed his cigarette holder in his mouth but clenched his teeth so hard he broke it.

“You--” Rictus hissed.

“No,” Phoney whispered, shaking his head. “You.”

The townspeople grabbed Rictus Bone. They ripped the hat from his head and the monocle and golden watch from his vest. They stripped him of his fine clothes and hauled him into the street. A barrel of tar, a bag of feathers, and a rail appeared. The townspeople put them to good use, and after a long procession with much whooping and carrying-on, they dumped a very sticky and very ruffled Rictus Bone in the Rolling Bone River.

When it was over, the bones gathered around Phoney. Night after night, he had played on their fears. They would follow Phoney Bone because he had used the most powerful weapon at his disposal, the one he had honed so well in Barrelhaven when for a short while he was the Dragonslayer. He worked their prejudice and molded it to his liking.

Phoney Bone knows the way.

Phoney Bone can help you.

Phoney Bone can make all your nightmares come true.

“We’re so sorry about your cousin,” Twyla Bone said.

“Damn humans,” Jeanne Bone said, tears tracing down her cheeks.

Phoney heard their words as if from a great distance. The sound of rushing water grew in his ears until it was all. Was the river flooding? No, the sound was in his mind.

An idea flashed in the darkness. It stood before Phoney’s vision as if emblazoned in neon. It was nothing he would have thought of by himself, but as he saw it hovering there, he knew he would go through with it.

He stood tall and gave a small smile. “Fone Bone is not dead,” he whispered. His voice was barely audible, but still it carried.

The bones gasped.

“Fone Bone is not dead!” Phoney shouted. “The humans did not kill him. They bewitched him. You all know my cousin. You all know the books he read--human books.”

Murmurs. Nods. Yes, they knew. Yes, it all made sense now.

“He swore a solemn oath,” Phoney said, voice choking. “He swore a solemn oath to come back with us, but he would not. He loved humanity more than bones.” He looked each of them in the eye again. “But we can save him if you come with me.”

“To the Human Valley?” someone gasped.

Phoney Bone nodded. Yes. To the Human Valley.

Fear. Shrinking. Holding back. Phoney could not ask this much of the bones, even when he had them in his clutches. It would take a true leader to bring them together, to bring them to this.

Head and shoulders above his fellow bones, wild hair waving like the aura of some otherworldly demon, the barber Floyd Bone strode forward. Bones stepped aside in awe as the venerable hairdresser, eleventh in a long line of venerable hairdressers, walked with ponderous, plodding steps until he stood beside Phoney Bone on the bank of the Rolling Bone River. He turned his terrible, bright eyes on the townspeople. When he spoke, his deep voice rumbled and blended with the rushing water, and it carried their hearts as if they were all floating together downstream.

“My pappy always said,” Floyd Bone intoned, and the bones leaned forward to hear, “my pappy always said, the only good human is a dead human.”

The bones clapped. They stomped. They cheered. The voice of wisdom had spoken. They organized. They chose leaders. They made plans. Gofers rushed off to begin the stockpiles necessary for the long journey.

Why am I doing this? Phoney asked himself, but the question did not linger long.

Smiley sat by the riverbank and wept. Phoney placed his hands on Smiley’s shoulders.

“Y-you’ll start a war,” Smiley whispered.

“Sssshhhhh,” Phoney said. “No one will get hurt. The talk of dead humans--it’s only to get them across the desert. When we’re in the Valley again, we’ll find Fone Bone. With an army of bones behind us, we’ll make him come back.”

“But Phoney--”

“Sssshhhhh. Don’t you want to see Fone? Don’t you want us to be together again?”

Smiley’s shoulders trembled under Phoney’s palms. “Yes,” Smiley whispered.

“No one will get hurt,” Phoney said. “We’ll just get Fone Bone, that’s all. And we’ll be a family again.” He kissed the top of Smiley’s head, just as he used to when they were children. Smiley always liked that; he would close his eyes and pretend he had a mother.

“Who takes care of you?” Phoney whispered. “Who watches out for you?”

Smiley wiped at his face. “Y-you always have, Phoney Bone.”

“And I always will,” said Phoney.

88888

Tarsil’s tower had a small, enclosed courtyard. The smell of freshly clipped grass rose to the high porch on which Fone Bone sat. He wrote lines on the paper before him and then angrily crossed them out.

He stopped writing love poetry when he and Smiley returned from the Eastern Mountains. After they wandered in the cold, rainy forest, Thorn appeared and saved them from a band of marauding rat creatures. Fone Bone was so relieved that he leapt at her, and they hugged each other and told each other how happy they were to be together again. Only later, when Bone reflected on that moment, did he realize it was the first time he had touched her, really touched her. Thorn had often touched him, holding his hand or hugging him, but he had never before dared display his own affection. After that, he hadn’t felt the need to write poetry.

But the need was back.

As Thorn’s duties--and Fone Bone’s own--grew numerous and wearisome, the pair saw less of each other in private. As Bone’s private life languished, his public life became more difficult. Bone had the task of upbraiding the Veni-yan general for the embarrassing affair with the assassin Erasmus. Since that time, Thorn traveled everywhere with a hand-selected Veni-yan guard, and an inquiry was underway to root out sedition in the military--and Fone Bone headed the inquiry. He discovered that, while loyalty to Tarsil himself was forgotten, bigotry against dragons and other non-humans ran deep. As Bone monitored the gossip among the soldiers and aristocrats, he heard more and more disturbing rumors and whispered accusations about himself:

“Who does that pale little thing think he is, lording over us?”

“Maybe Erasmus was right--humans should be ruled by humans.”

“She always asks his advice. He overrules her wisest advisors.”

“Now he’s searching for spies, I hear, and he’s incompetent.”

“He has no experience.”

“Neither does she.”

“I hear the bone sleeps in the queen’s bedchamber.”

“I hear the bone does more than that in the queen’s bedchamber.”

“It’s obvious from the way they look at each other that something’s going on.”

“That’s sick.”

“Why doesn’t the queen mother put a stop to it?”

“What could she do?”

“Why doesn’t Queen Thorn take a husband?”

Husband.

Husband.

Bone’s pencil snapped, jarring him back to the present. He realized he’d been gouging it into the paper. He looked down at what he had written:

Hair not quite the color of corn,

My dearest darling, my Thorn.

More comfortable in my arms than old clothes I’ve worn,

My dearest darling, my Thorn.

I really wish I weren’t so forlorn,

Dearest, dearest, dearest Thorn.

“Drat,” Fone Bone mumbled. “Not much rhymes with ‘Thorn.’”

He looked out into the sun-drenched courtyard. Queen Thorn herself, wearing her royal regalia, was strolling across the grass. She had her back to him, and he was surprised to see that her hair was down, for she normally wore it up when formally dressed. Unbidden, the words of Dryden’s Virgil surfaced in his memory:

Thus having said, she turn’d and made appear

Her neck refulgent and dishevell’d hair,

Which, flowing from her shoulders, reach’d the ground,

And widely spread ambrosial scents around.

In length of train descends her sweeping gown:

And, by her graceful walk, the queen of love is known.

That was good. He moved to write it down and realized his pencil was broken. He grabbed a knife and whittled the point, mumbling the words to himself over and over. As he whittled, the words in his mind seemed to liquefy and run until he lost them. The tip was sharp, but as he placed it to the paper, he tried in vain to utter the lines. “Refulgent,” he muttered. “Refulgent...darn.”

How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.

Fone Bone was immersed in the literature of humanity.

Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies.

Over many years now, the image had grown firm in his mind, born of his reading. The paragon of femininity and beauty must be human.

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.

Yearning ran over him like a flood. Page upon page of Arthurian romance, classical poetry, and great drama had come together in his mind to form one image, one type (one Platonic Form, Bone thought, his reading mocking him as he considered)--the Woman, the perfect Woman. No bone female could compare to the goddess in his head.

This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.

This private goddess had been just that--private--until he saw Thorn. No, she wasn’t an exact match, especially after she put on so much muscle and lost so much weight, but she was very close. Very, very close.

How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!

He threw down the pencil in frustration and grabbed up the paper, crumpling it. The words faded from his mind as quickly as they came. He couldn’t even plagiarize good poetry.

He looked into the courtyard again. So focused had he been on Thorn that he hadn’t noticed the others with her. Veni-yan guards flanked her, as always, but she was meeting a gentleman with a heavy beard tied at the end in the manner of the Pawans. He was dressed in decorative armor and held a tall helmet under his arm.

“Strange,” Fone Bone muttered, “to receive a Pawan ambassador so informally.”

The Pawan knelt and kissed Thorn’s hand. Then, delicately holding her fingertips, he walked with her around the courtyard as the Veni-yan followed at a respectful distance. Thorn and the Pawan smiled at each other and seemed to be holding a conversation, though Bone couldn’t hear what they said.

“Why doesn’t Queen Thorn take a husband?”

He didn’t realize he was again holding what was left of his pencil until he again snapped it. He looked down at the two small, useless nubs in his hands and threw them away in disgust.

It was clear what was going on. The Pawan soldier, whoever he was, was a suitor. She was...she was dating.

She was dating someone else.

And she hadn’t even told him.

He didn’t feel any satisfaction that it wasn’t Tom. He wanted to run into the courtyard, barge between them, and drill the guy: “Who are you?” “Where are you from?” “How old are you?” “Can you look me in the eye?” “Are you polite to women?” “And be sure you have her home by ten o’clock sharp!”

Instead, he clenched the edge of the table as his frustration boiled up and gelled into despair. He felt tears moving toward his eyes, so he headed them off.

Drat! He should have known! She’s a queen. She has to get married. There have to be future queens! And he should have known it would make him jealous. He should have prepared. He should have...he should have...

He should have left.

His fingers slid off the table and into his lap. He looked again out the window at Thorn and the soldier. They had stopped by the flowerbed, where the man was picking her some violets.

A memory interposed in Bone’s vision and it was as if he were there again, stepping out of the forest onto the fairground. The underside of his right arm from pit to fingertips was coated with thick honey, which was also running down his leg as he lugged the enormous honeycomb out of the woods, only to see Thorn and Tom seated together--alone--behind a clump of trees, talking pleasantly. He saw Tom lean toward her, and then Bone couldn’t watch anymore. He stumbled back into the woods, losing the hard-won honeycomb somewhere along the way.

Fone Bone didn’t know who the Pawan soldier was, but at that moment, whoever he was, Fone Bone hated that bastard, and he hated him with a passion.

88888

Sometime later, Thorn swept onto the porch, cheeks lightly flushed. She saw Bone and sat across from him.

“Hey, Fone Bone,” she said.

“Who was that?” Fone Bone asked, sounding grumpier than he meant to sound.

“My, aren’t we pleasant today,” Thorn replied, but she was still grinning. “That was General Thintook of Pawa. Gran’ma’s sort of hoping we’ll marry to cement the new alliance.”

“What do you think of him?” Fone Bone asked, feeling dreadful.

“Hairy,” she answered.

“Is that all?”

“And genteel. Genteel and hairy.”

“Seems like you were being awful friendly to him if that’s your whole impression.”

She knitted her eyebrows and brushed a clump of hair behind her ear. “I was being polite, Fone Bone. You should try it sometime.”

He looked down and nodded. “Sorry,” he whispered.

Thorn took a deep breath, sucked in her lip for a moment, and said, “Fone Bone?”

“Yes, Thorn?”

“Are you as stressed out as I am?”

He nodded.

She placed a hand on his. It did not have the effect she wanted. He wasn’t comforted or reassured. He was both aroused and irritated, and he squirmed on his chair as he stared at her delicate fingers resting on his thick, clumsy digits.

“Take a walk with me, Prime Minister,” Thorn said. “Let’s take a short break.” She whistled between her teeth. “Guards!”

88888

Atheia’s acropolis rang with the sound of hammers. Quarries had been opened, labor crews hired, and the new palace begun. As Thorn wanted, it would be modest. As Gran’ma wanted, it could be expanded later. Thorn and Bone walked about the worksite, observing the laborers as they hauled limestone blocks, gave the finishing touches with chisels, and moved them into place with ropes, ramps, and muscle.

Fone Bone broke into a sweat when he realized he had left his love poem, crumpled, on the table by the window where anyone could pick it up. So distracted was he by this thought that he could hardly keep his eyes on his surroundings, let alone enjoy his time with Thorn, so they were already walking toward Tom before Fone Bone had time to realize where they were going and steer Thorn in a different direction. When Bone saw his old rival, his mood got worse.

“There he is,” Fone Bone whispered through gritted teeth so Thorn couldn’t hear, “the shirtless wonder.”

Tom, indeed shirtless, was hauling a block up a ramp, assisted by five other men. He had joined the labor crew when heralds announced the reconstruction of the palace. As it turned out, he was not only a honey-gatherer but a jack-of-all-trades with more than a little experience in manual labor, and he even boasted some skill at carpentry. After securing the stone, he ran down to greet the queen and prime minister. His tight muscles rippled under his tawny skin as he doffed his ratty, nearly shapeless hat.

“Your Highness,” he said, “and Prime Minister. What an honor it is to see you.” He gave an additional, nervous nod to the four Veni-yan who stood behind.

“Rrrrr,” growled Fone Bone.

“Hello, Tom,” Thorn said, curtsying. She was new to the curtsy but was practicing. “Are you terribly busy? Perhaps you would like to take a brief respite and show your queen and minister the progress on the construction?”

“I’d be honored, milady,” Tom answered, bowing deeply and laying it on thick.

One of the Veni-yan accosted Tom and patted him down. After the guard nodded to the queen and returned to his place, Tom began strutting and gesticulating grandly while Thorn and Bone walked alongside.

“I’ve seen all the plans,” Tom said as he waved a hand. “I even revised some of them. Limestone façade with a rubble fill simply wouldn’t do. Mudbrick, that’s the ticket. Not rubble. The structure will be much more sound this way. I argued with the chief architect until he relented.”

“I’ve seen and approved the new plans,” Thorn said.

“I argued with the chief architect,” Bone mimicked under his breath.

“Tho...er, Your Majesty,” Tom said, turning to her and taking her hand.

He didn’t quite finish his sentence because one of the Veni-yan snatched his hand away. When Thorn gave the guard a private signal, the guard stepped back.

“Sorry,” Tom said, shocked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Thorn answered. “What were you going to say?”

He scratched at the back of his neck. “Well...I know this is a bit forward, but...I’m really sorry about that whole thing with Jasmine. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s all right, Tom,” Thorn said.

“Is it? I mean...” He looked down, appearing guilty. “You were so beautiful that day at the fair. I just...I just felt I...didn’t deserve you.” He glanced up and a small tear was glistening in the corner of one eye.

Thorn placed a hand to her heart, taken aback. Fone Bone placed a hand to his forehead, feeling a headache coming on. Jeez, this guy is something else, he thought.

“Oh, Tom, I...I don’t know what to say,” Thorn gasped.

Tom raised a finger to his lips. “Don’t say anything now, my queen,” he whispered. “But,” and he looked down again, bashfully, “it’s not...unusual, I hear, for the Harvestars to court commoners.”

“We sort of have to,” Thorn answered, raising an eyebrow, “since we’re the only royalty in the vicinity.”

Fone Bone’s heart slammed slowly and steadily against the inside of his chest. He was dizzy.

“Would you consider...?” Tom asked.

“I will consider,” Thorn answered.

Bone’s pounding heart burst.

88888

They made their way back through Queen’s Square to reach the tower, and people bowed and saluted as they went by. The guards kept the people at a distance, but no one was likely to approach the queen; they had seen what she could do to a potential assassin.

As Fone Bone eyed the crowd, he noticed several dark glares, and they were aimed at him.

To Bone’s embarrassment, Thorn stopped by Taneal’s collection of shrines. Since the outer town had burned, Taneal had moved to Queen’s Square where she ran a prestigious operation. The largest of her sculptures depicted Bone and Bartleby, and Bone winced whenever he saw it.

“She made my nose so huge,” he whispered.

Taneal, sitting beside the shrine, grinned. “Your Highness,” she said, “and Mister Bone.”

“Hello, Taneal,” Thorn answered. “How did you enjoy those sweetmeats I brought you from the north?”

“They were quite good,” Taneal said, “though I’m afraid most of them ended up in the stomach of my brother.”

Her brother Adrian poked his head out from behind the Bone statue. “They were excellent.” He belched.

Thorn grinned.

Taneal looked at Fone Bone. She smiled, but her eyes fogged and her gaze grew distant. Then her body went rigid and her eyes rolled into her head.

“Taneal!” Bone shouted. He ran to her, but Adrian jumped out from behind the sculpture and pushed him away.

“Don’t touch her!” Adrian warned. “It’s one of her fits.”

“Fits?” Thorn asked, kneeling beside Taneal with worry on her face.

“She’s all right,” Adrian said. “Ever since the death of the Locust, she’s had the fits from time to time.”

“What sort of fits?” Fone Bone asked.

Adrian gave him a small, mysterious smile. “She prophesies,” he said.

Behind Thorn and Fone Bone, the Veni-yan guards exchanged glances through their hoods.

Taneal sat upright, her back painfully straight. Her pupils dilated, her eyes bulged, and her teeth clenched as the muscles in her cheeks twitched. She shuddered and raised one finger, pointing it around the square. People stopped to gawk and a crowd assembled.

Taneal’s finger settled on Fone Bone. “You,” Taneal said in a loud voice.

“Me?” Bone asked.

Taneal snarled like an animal and shrieked, “Oath breaker! Oath breaker! Your doom is pronounced and its fulfillment is coming!” Her eyes rolled into her head again and she gurgled as she went limp.

“Ohmygosh! She’s choking!” Bone cried.

“Taneal!” Adrian gasped. He grabbed his sister and held her. Her head lolled back over his shoulder as painful, wet retching noises rose from her throat.

“Heimlich!” Bone shouted. He grabbed Taneal away from the startled Adrian and rammed his fists under her ribcage.

“Fone Bone!” Thorn admonished. “What are you doing?”

Taneal coughed and fell forward out of Fone Bone’s grasp. She vomited water onto the cobbles, fell on her face, and rolled over. Her eyes were still glazed, but she was breathing. She coughed several times and then rasped in a tortured voice barely above a whisper--

“Evil is upon us and it will not delay:

The one who bears the star shall bear the star away.

Two shall do that which nature would despise,

And out from the unnatural a new Locust will arise.

The seal is set and the doom is now spoken,

And avenged shall be two promises broken.”

“And they say my poetry’s bad,” Bone said.

Thorn touched Taneal’s head. “Taneal, can you hear me?” she asked.

“Th-Thorn?” Taneal said as her eyes returned to normal. “I...I mean, Your Highness.”

“It’s all right, Taneal. Can you sit up?” Thorn helped the girl upright. Taneal was weak in the knees, so they set her down next to her shrines.

Adrian took her into his arms. He looked at Fone Bone and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Bone answered. He looked up to see the people crowding in close. The dark glares he had noticed earlier were now darker. Bone waved at them. “All right, all right!” he shouted. “Break it up!”

The crowd dispersed. The Veni-yan gathered around Thorn and Fone Bone and hustled them back to the tower. Once there, Thorn dismissed the guards, grabbed Bone’s hand, hauled him to her room, and shut the door.

Thorn paced, alternately tugging and biting her lower lip. “Jeez, Fone Bone,” she said.

“Yeah,” he answered. “Jeez.”

They looked at each other in silence.

“Did you pick that up from me or what?” Bone asked.

Thorn looked confused. “Pick up what?”

“Jeez.”

Thorn blinked a few times, put a hand over her mouth, and laughed. “Oh! I think I must have.” The humor faded from her eyes and she knelt next to Fone Bone.

“So what are we going to do?” she asked.

“I dunno,” Bone answered, scowling. “I guess you could tell Tom you’re dating this Thintook guy.”

Thorn raised an eyebrow. “I...meant about Taneal’s prophecy.”

Fone Bone felt red flushing into his cheeks.

“You’re blushing,” Thorn said.

“So?” Fone Bone said, taking a few steps back. “Can’t a guy blush if he’s of a mind to?”

Thorn looked simultaneously sympathetic and as if she was trying to suppress a smile. Bone didn’t like that look. Thorn sat next to him on the floor and put an arm around his shoulders. For a few moments, neither spoke.

“What promises have you broken?” Thorn asked.

Bone shrugged. “I dunno. What’s it matter? It’s probably nothing. She’s...she’s epileptic or something.”

“What?”

“You know. Seizures.”

“Seizures that make you prophesy?”

Bone shrugged again. “I don’t know. I promised Phoney I’d go back to Boneville, I guess. But she said two promises. I haven’t made two promises, not that I can remember. But I mean, all that stuff about a new Locust and the one who bears the star--that’s what the Hooded One called Phoney, but Phoney’s back in Boneville. It’s nothing.”

Thorn tugged at her lip. “Mmm. Maybe you’re right. Still...I think we should keep it in mind. We need to be careful.”

Fone Bone scrunched his mouth. “Yeah,” he said. “Jeez, Locust. I don’t wanna hear anything more about the Lord of the Locusts. I’ve had enough of him.”

“Yeah,” Thorn whispered, her mind far away. “Growing up...I always figured I’d marry Jonathan.”

Fone Bone’s stomach churned. “Jon Oaks?” he asked.

“Yeah. I mean, he was about the only guy my age around Barrelhaven. We sort of grew up together after Gran’ma brought me there. Lucius took Jon under his wing, and Lucius and Gran’ma saw a lot of each other. Jon and I played together as kids. We could both talk to animals. It was our special thing. I guess it wasn’t that special, since Gran’ma and Lucius could do it, but they didn’t do it much. It was like the four of us were special that way. I guess that means Jon was a gifted dreamer.” Thorn pushed some of her voluminous hair behind her ear.

“I guess he must have been,” Bone whispered.

“I guess it means you’re a gifted dreamer, Fone Bone.”

“Huh?” Bone asked. “Oh, all bones can talk to animals. That’s no big deal.”

“Still,” Thorn said, “when I found out you could do it, I thought you were really special.”

“Thanks, Thorn,” Bone said, looking away. When he looked in her face again, he was surprised to see she was crying.

“Thorn?”

“Jonathan,” she said, wiping her face with her sleeve. “And Mr. Down. And everybody.” She tried in vain to dry her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’s all over, but it isn’t. Do you ever feel it, Fone Bone? Do you ever just feel the weight of the war and all the dead and everything bad that happened?”

“A little, sometimes,” Fone Bone lied. He put his hand on her back and she leaned against him. It was uncomfortable, since he was so much shorter than she, but neither complained.

“Jonathan and I...drifted apart as we grew older,” Thorn said. “I think he spoke less to the animals as he grew up. I’m pretty sure he never met Ted.”

This was not going at all how Fone Bone wanted. He wanted to talk about the situation now. He wanted to get rid of Thintook and he wanted to get rid of that jerk Tom and he wanted Thorn to himself. He wanted to tell Thorn how he really felt and tell her plain instead of letting it out in little hints. He wanted to admit to Thorn that now that the Dragon wasn’t invading his dreams, all he dreamed about was her.

Fone Bone was brave enough to face rat creature armies, but he wasn’t brave enough for that.

“I wonder if Thintook and I could get along,” Thorn mused.

“Jeez, Thorn,” Fone Bone said, his eyebrows connected together in a glower, “ya don’t have to marry Thintook. You’re th’ queen, fer cryin’ out loud.”

Thorn let go of Bone and edged away. “Don’t get upset, Fone Bone. I just said I wondered if we’d get along. What is it with you?”

“What is what with me?” Bone demanded. “What is it with you?”

Thorn rose to her knees and glared at him. “Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“Me?”

“You! Hand-holding, touching, bathing for cripes’ sake, and then you run off after the first muscle-bound moron you spot at a fair.”

“Excuse me?”

“In fact,” Bone continued, too mad to stop in spite of his better judgment, “you ditched me just so you could run back and pick Tom up, didn’t you? You used our fight as an excuse to ditch me!”

Unbelief filled Thorn’s face. “Fone Bone! What brought this up? I...I...” She breathed hard and looked away from him.

Fone Bone crossed his arms, waiting.

“Stars,” Thorn muttered. “Yes, alright?”

Bone uncrossed his arms, but he didn’t look any happier.

Thorn sighed. “You know, Fone Bone, if you hadn’t picked that fight, the three of us could’ve walked around the fair together.”

“Jeez, Thorn, he didn’t wanna walk around with me. He told you to lose me so he could brag about his tree-climbing, and that was before I started talking back.”

“He didn’t say that,” Thorn argued.

“I remember th’ whole conversation, Thorn. And while he spent the next day in your arms or whatever, I spent it outrunning the stupid rat creatures!”

Thorn straightened her back and crossed her own arms. “Bone! I gave him one little hug goodnight, okay? And the next day he was in some other girl’s arms, not mine! I spent the day of the Cow Race looking for you because I was worried sick!”

Bone perked up. “Really?”

“Yes!”

“Then how come you’re so nice to him?” Bone asked.

“How come I’m so nice to you when you’re acting like a world-class jerk, Fone Bone? Maybe I don’t hold grudges or get jealous every chance I get!”

“Ha! Who hid in a tree for a week to avoid her grandmother?”

“Oh, Fone Bone, you’re impossible!”

They turned their backs on each other and fumed.

After a few long, silent minutes, Thorn turned around and hugged him. “Oh, Fone Bone! This is silly. Why are we fighting? I can’t stay mad at you!”

He returned her hug and they held each other. Then Fone Bone asked sheepishly, “Thorn...how come you never call me Fone?”

“What?”

“It’s always Fone Bone or Bone. How come you don’t call me Fone?”

“Was I s’posed to?”

“It’s what my friends call me. ‘Bone’ isn’t my name.”

She held him out and looked in his face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize...Fone.”

When she said his name, his anger drained away and he felt tired, but also peaceful. He tested his heart and realized, for just this moment, he was brave enough.

Heart pounding, he spoke. “Thorn,” he said, “I have to tell you something. I...I love you.”

Their eyes met. As Bone watched, Thorn’s lower lip trembled. Then her mouth opened, and--

She laughed in his face.

Thorn clapped her hands over her mouth, but the damage was done. She stood and backed away from him, horrified at her own reaction, as Fone Bone, heart terribly bruised, ran from the room with tears streaming down his face.

“I’m sorry, Fone Bone,” Thorn choked. “I didn’t mean it!”

The door slammed and Fone Bone was gone.

Thorn threw herself on her bed and cried.

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Wiping his eyes with his wrist so he could see, Fone Bone sprinted back to his own chamber. He dug out his musty knapsack and crammed his papers and his old blanket into it. He wanted as far away from this Valley as he could get. There were many times he felt he didn’t belong here, but he never felt it as strongly as now. His loneliness had grown into a monster hunting him, fiercer than any rat creature. At last, it had caught him and was now sitting on his chest, heavier and more oppressive than Tarsil’s dark and drafty tower.

He dug through the room until he found his well-worn copy of Moby Dick. As he looked at the frayed cover, his vision blurred, and he collapsed, hugging the book to his chest while he sat on the floor and sobbed.

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Thorn cried from time to time, but she never cried for long. The tears dried and the light outside her window faded as the sun set over the western mountains. She lay facedown on her bed, idly kicking her foot and watching the room grow dim as she thought back to how she had treated Fone Bone, and she realized how this might have happened. She had, at every opportunity, hugged him or touched him. It seemed natural to her; they were friends, and in addition to that, she was curious about him. She wondered at the way those two lines floated off his head or pulled tight over his eyes or disappeared altogether depending on his mood. She wondered at his simple body and its large, bulbous feet with no toes, or its melon-like nose with no nostrils. How did he smell or hear or do a hundred other things? When she touched him, his white skin was soft and smooth without hairs, moles, scars, or even pores. When she hugged him, he smelled sweet like cinnamon and peppermint. She could feel firm yet pliable muscle--or some sort of tissue--just under the surface of his remarkable flesh, yet it seemed he had no bones (ironically) except at his knees and elbows. She caught a glimpse of the elasticity of his structure when her stolen apple pie jutted from his face or when he flexed his bicep and inflated his arm until it was thicker than his head. She had no doubt that if she grabbed that arm and pulled hard it would stretch with little more resistance than warm taffy.

She touched and she hugged, but what she really wanted to do was poke, pry, or even knead at his hapless body until she had satisfied her curiosity. She had sent the wrong signals. He was thinking love while she was thinking vivisection.

And to her shame, she realized she had known all along how he felt. It was obvious in the way he looked at her. It was clear in the terrible love poem he gave Gran’ma by accident--the poem Thorn had decided to assume was for a girl back in Boneville. It was clear as could be when Fone Bone slipped and called her “my girl” while defying the Hooded One. Even then, when she could no longer pretend she didn’t know, she ignored it, and she hadn’t distanced herself from him, and she knew why.

She liked having him in love with her. It made her feel good, even powerful, to be the object of unreciprocated love. And maybe, just maybe, somewhere deep inside, she felt something...

No. Not that.

Guilt burned in her chest. She raised herself from the bed and wiped her face.

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In time, Fone Bone cried himself out. He was still sitting there, holding the book, numb all over, when a timid knock came at the door, and Thorn’s voice drifted in after it. “Fone?”

He tried to wipe the dried salt off his face, to no avail. When he spoke, his voice sounded nasal and clogged. “Yes?”

She opened the door a little and peeked in. Her own face was flushed and dried tears were glazed on her cheeks. She slipped in and closed the door behind her.

She knelt beside him. “Fone?”

He stopped hugging the book. “It’s--it’s okay, Thorn. Don’t worry about it. I mean, I understand and all.” He looked in her face and his eyes filled again. “You’re a beautiful woman,” he said. His tears dropped onto Moby Dick as he looked down and forced the book into the overfull pack. “And I’m just a bone.”

She touched his head, running her fingers along his smooth scalp. He shuddered. He stopped packing and his shoulders drooped. “Why did you ask me to stay, Thorn?”

“Because you’re my friend, Fone.”

“Is that all?”

She closed her eyes and bit her lip. She was afraid to lose him, afraid to rule the kingdom without him. She relied on him. They had been through so much together, and she didn’t know if she could do it alone.

Fear overrode guilt.

She reached out to him. “Come here, Fone Bone.” She wrapped him in her arms and drew him close. She was still pretending, still toying with him to keep him by her side, and she knew it. But she couldn’t lose him. Not now.

Fone Bone didn’t resist. So many affectionate hugs and caresses, and he had read into all of them more than was there, but even now that he knew they were empty, he still didn’t resist. Frustration coursed anew in his blood. His skin felt hot, itchy, and tight all over.

Thorn’s heart pounded against his head as they held each other. Her mind had reached a decision and she was steeling herself to go through with it. She knew it was foolish, but she also knew she couldn’t lose him.

She pushed a hand against his forehead to tip his head back, and she kissed him.

It was awkward. Even when Thorn was kneeling, Fone Bone was shorter than she was. His nose was in the way and his mouth was difficult to find since it was tucked under his nose and could disappear completely when he wasn’t speaking. But after a few false starts, they managed to work it out.

Fone Bone knew it was wrong. He knew he should stop her. He knew it was meaningless. He knew they were using each other.

But he didn’t stop.

Fone Bone tangled his fingers in Thorn’s thick, auburn tresses. Since he had first seen her, he had longed to run his hands through her hair. Now he did so with abandon as his tongue explored her mouth. The world outside faded. The room faded. Time faded. Everything disappeared except this moment, this kiss. A hard nail driven into the universe; everything before and after it changed.

Bone’s neck was craned and he tried to readjust. When he did, his teeth clacked against hers. The last two shards of the destroyed Crown of Horns, one in each of their mouths, struck against one another. As the Crown attracted and neutralized the Locust, so its fragments tried to repel each other. But though their mouths went numb for a moment from the contact, the repelling force of their teeth was too weak to stop the fateful kiss.

As Fone Bone and Thorn gave way to lust and fear, in the distant Eastern Mountains, the carcass of a dead locust twitched its legs and fluttered its wings.

Gran’ma Ben, alone in her room, tumbled out of bed. She was dizzy, weak, and sick. She gasped aloud to the blank walls, “The Gitchy Feelin’! It’s never been so bad!”

At the same time, miles away in Boneville, Floyd Bone spoke these fateful words: “The only good human is a dead human.”

And Taneal, on her straw beside her brother in their dingy one-room hut, opened unseeing eyes and said in an eerie voice, “It has begun.” Adrian, lying still in the dark, heard her and his heart filled with ice.

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Fone Bone sat on the edge of his bed and watched the steady rise and fall of Thorn’s shoulder and back as she slept. After the kissing had exhausted itself, they had held each other so they wouldn’t have to talk, and Thorn eventually drifted off to sleep.

Fone Bone was wide awake.

He slipped out and walked onto the balcony. It was a clear night and warm, and the stars overhead faded in and out as high, icy clouds moved over them.

Fone Bone took a long, deep breath.

“Hello, Bone.”

Bone jumped. The Great Red Dragon was clinging to the tower wall next to his balcony.

“Sorry,” the Dragon said.

Bone grabbed his heart. “Jeez, don’t do that.” He calmed and admired the Dragon’s position. “I didn’t know you could stand on walls.”

“Oh, sure,” the Dragon said. “It’s a dragon thing, clinging to towers.”

“You got a smoke on ya?” Bone asked.

“You don’t smoke.”

“I could use one now.”

The Dragon produced two cigarettes. One he stuck in his own mouth and the other he gave to Bone. They both lit up.

Bone coughed. Oh man, that stuff was awful, and it tasted like something suspiciously different from tobacco.

“So, what’s up?” the Dragon asked.

“Huh?” Fone Bone said, startled. “Oh, nothin’. Nothin’. Just wanted a smoke, that’s all.”

“Uh huh,” the Dragon said, sounding suspicious.

But Fone Bone wasn’t talking. Instead, he leaned against the rail and looked out over the blackness of Atheia. The only lights were the stars, the moon, and the watchers’ fires on the walls. The tip of Bone’s cigarette shone crimson and then faded as he inhaled, exhaled. His fantasies had come true, but not in the way he had wanted. He knew she didn’t feel for him what he felt. Yet he was powerless. He couldn’t tell her no. Instead, he wanted to wake her up and kiss her again.

He stubbed out the cigarette. He looked over to the Dragon, but the Dragon had gone. Bone crept back into his room and lay down beside Thorn, gazing at the back of her head until he drifted into sleep.

It would be his last easy night.

Next: Birth