Graveyard of Lullabies

Chapter 38 (after party)

Dear brain, the glowing frost orchards were kind of nice. You let yourself believe that. You left halfway into the morning though, because your stomach was complaining and the babbling of voices was growing louder like the crowds of people might tour the entire frost orchards. Like one part would look distinctly different than another. Like they could actually tour the entire frost orchards in a day.

You left halfway into the morning because the cyan lights on your cloak stared kind of eerily, and telling yourself they only stared kind of eerily still couldn't make you wear it, so you shivered in a knitted shawl, and frost was forming at the fringed ends of that too.

You wished Skeleton Cook could have been there to see it, if only so he could have danced with you; but then, the girl screaming ghost might've screamed skeleton instead. And those were definitely real.

Which reminded you. As much as you didn't want it to. Another set of bones, in the cave you barely finished. (You had barely finished it many times. This time, you'd barely finished with the shelves for the jars of blood. You'd been keeping the jars in the cupboards under the counter, but that reminded you too much of Kolariq keeping bones and diagrams in a kitchen to keep them there for long.)

You promised never to touch those bones. But the eyes on your cloak stared too eerily not to think of him here, dancing with you, not jangling for one thing, having real eyes for another, unlike a skeleton cook. Maybe the girl screaming ghost would have screamed two ghosts if he were there, and you could've laughed about that. Or, maybe she would have screamed none, and screamed people instead.

You walked back to the house between the two white hills, around the cracked boulder, bundled in your cloak that had stopped glowing with the last line of trees. When you looked back, the forest emanated, like a bonfire, almost yellow, only without any smoke. And you really wished he could have seen that.

***

Tatter-cloak insists we see the town. They insist we see the town after we stop for a meal, which is more sipping water than eating any bread, except for the jet bird tearing meat in stringy strips from Skeleton Cook's palm.

The cannon booms stop some time near noon. I pretend to sleep, my arm going numb under my head, the army's violent texture drifting away. The jet bird actually sleeps, her blood the texture of feathery clouds. I open my eyes at this thought. If she has real feathers, am I allowed to describe these clouds as feathery?

Tatter-cloak walks past so I shut my eyes again. I think they're washing out the pan we used as a plate to divide the bread loaf full of seeds.

I lie there, on the ground, thoughts occupied by how the grasses itch my wrist. But something crunches and I jolt and roll away, maybe the shadow of a body above me unsettles me with that town, that army, close enough to keep me awake.

"Sorry," Tatter-cloak says, halfway bent over where I used to be lying, "didn't mean to startle you." They point to the town, and I sit and rub my eyes to look. "I think the army's gone."

"I think so too," I mutter. I think pretending to sleep has only made me more tired. "Do you still want to go there?"

"Yes," they nod. The pan hangs in their hand, dripping water.

"Why?" I ask.

Tatter-cloak looks pained. Like someone's stabbed their wrist. "I think they deserve better, don't you?"

I stare.

"Maybe we could"--they shrug--"bury the people?"

"That'll take forever," I say, shivering and rising to my feet. Skeleton Cook jangles toward us, the jet bird watching him from her perch on the meat box.