Graveyard of Lullabies

Chapter 1 (her, alone)

Aquamarine blood drips off the contours of my face, the scent like salt, like ash, joining the trickles of bright ink in the sink. From the bandages in the cupboard--darkly matching my skin and jaw--I squeal a wide roll between my fingers. Rip the strip off. Plaster it to my cheeks, my chin, all above my mouth where the blood breaks out of my body. Nostrils flaring, I set the bandages back in the wood cabinet, at my side.

Then I check the broken mirror, fragments of my eyes and nose and bandages over my mouth glimmering back. Too many sticky ridges stand out like hills on my skin so my fingers flatten them as hard as quakes--but they rise back up. Defying me. Decrying me in this bathroom where I and my reflection war, this blood an incurable truce between our deadly mouths.

I retreat, over the floorboards, to the bed, tiptoed feet stepping just close enough to the trail of blood spatters to make the liquid bend toward my weight.

I stop beside the bed frame. On the pillow, an aquamarine spiral's staining the pale cover. My fingers curl into claws, and magic draws the blood up into the air, pulling it clean from the pillow, erasing the evidence of this lost battle.

The blood ribbon dances after me down the creaky wood steps, to the kitchen. I stream the liquid down this sink, far away from a mirror my hands have cracked too many times.

The Skeleton Cook clanks up behind me, rising from the tile by the fridge. He tilts wide eyes at me, asking if I will eat today, and I don't have to muffle a word for him to tilt his head the other way, all concerned like I'm eating enough.

Of course I'm not. I shudder at the prospect of food flavored with the tang of my leaking blood. I squeeze around him to bend over the metal stove frame with the old rock in the depressed tile floor. And I pat the air radiating with heat from the old rock, a thank you for keeping me from making fires, filled with haunting figures, even if I'm not eating today.

I dismiss the Skeleton Cook, think of him as the ice-white skeleton decorating the fine fronts of the cupboards. He deserves a rest day; dishes are the worst, after all. Terrible for your skin.

I tiptoe past him, catching my breath under the cold kitchen archway, swaying.

Dear brain, let's just be upfront about something. You killed them all. Buried their bones in the blue, lost them to the bitter winter waves. You killed them all, you didn't care about keeping those bones. You knew they'd torment you, no matter that bones are the most important tool. You killed them, and you left their skeletons forever, even though their dead whispers still try to haunt you.

I don't eat today, but I do go out into the garden. For the clear skies, the paltry heat of the red sun hanging low on the horizon. I bring the backpack, too, even though it will make my shoulders ache.

The garden isn't that far; out the hinging door, it takes one-hundred and two steps to go there, on the beaten trail through the snow, glittering white. I blame the extra twelve on the aching weight of my face.

The garden isn't that far, but my body still aches when I get there. From the cold. From the siren song of flee-berries, the intoxicating scent of ember moss. I cut the maroon flee-berries first, silence their song in the pouch of my backpack, third from the top, lined with cat-fur. They shiver like that, I would mutter if the Skeleton Cook were here, because they're terrified of cats. And he'd believe me.

I sheath the knife in the second pouch, the fluffy ember blossoms go in the first one, lined with fat thread. Skeleton Cook has yet to figure out how ember blossoms actually survive the winter, waving warm petals in the pitch dark. Hopes and dreams, I think. Skeleton Cook would disagree, though never say why.