Down Among the Sticks and Bones Read online

  As always at the Sign of the Hind and Hare, the food was simple and plentiful, and reminded Jack uncomfortably of the rabbit and root vegetables she’d eaten on her one night with the Master. He took what he wanted from the village stores for the people who lived under his roof: she had no doubt that her very first meal had been prepared by Ms. Chopper’s loving hand. Maybe Alexis had eaten the same thing that night. Maybe they had started her tenure in the Moors by sharing a meal, all unaware of what lay ahead of them.

  She hoped so. It made the bread taste better, and the milk seem sweeter, to think they’d been eating together for as long as that.

  Ms. Chopper was passing the potatoes around the table one more time when the kitchen door blew open, shuddering in its frame like it had been caught in a heavy wind. Alexis jumped. Mr. Chopper tensed, hand going to his side like he expected to find his axe hanging there, ready to be swung. Ms. Chopper froze, her hands clenching around the edges of her tray.

  Jack sat quietly, her eyes on her food, trying to look as if she thought stewed mushrooms and roast rabbit was the most fascinating thing in the entire world.

  “You could at least say hello, sister,” hissed Jill, and her voice was poisonously sweet, like something that had been allowed to sit too long in the sun and had spoiled from the heat.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Jack raised her head, reaching up to adjust her glasses as she did. “I thought it was a stray dog knocking the door open. Where I come from, people knock.”

  “You come from the same place I do,” said Jill.

  “Yes, and people knocked.”

  Jill glared at her. Jack looked impassively back.

  Their faces were identical: there was no denying that. All the time in the world wouldn’t change the shape of their lips or the angle of their eyes. They could dye their hair, style themselves entirely differently, but they would always be cast from the same mold. But that was where the resemblance ended.

  Jill was dressed in a gown of purple so pale that it might as well have been white, if not set against the pallor of her skin and the icy blonde of her hair. It was cut straight across her chest in a style that was modest now, although it wouldn’t be for much longer; it was a little girl’s dress, and she, like Jack, was well on her way to womanhood. Her skirt was long enough to trail on the ground. The bottom six inches or so were gray with dirt. Jack shuddered slightly, hoping her sister wouldn’t see.

  No such luck. While Jack had been living in a windmill, learning the secrets of science and how to raise the dead, Jill had been living in a castle, learning the secrets of survival and how to serve the dead. Her eyes saw all. Slowly, she smiled.

  “Aw, I’m sorry, sister,” she said. “Am I dirty? Does that bother you, that I’m a dirty girl? The Master doesn’t mind if I spoil my dresses. I can always get another.”

  “How nice for you,” said Jack, through gritted teeth. “Why are you here?”

  “I saw you come through the gates. I thought surely you must be coming up to the castle to see me, since I’m your sister, after all, and it’s been so long since you last came to visit. Imagine my surprise when you followed your little fat girl to the inn to stuff your face.” Jill’s nose wrinkled. “Really, it’s bestial. Is this the way you want to spend your youth? With pigs and peasants?”

  Jack started to stand. Alexis grabbed her wrist, pulling her back down.

  “It’s not worth it,” she said, voice low. “Please, it’s not worth it.”

  Jill laughed. “See? Everyone here knows their place except for you. Is it because you’re jealous? Because you could have had what I have, and you didn’t move fast enough? Or is it because you miss me?”

  “I never knew my sister well enough to miss her, and with the way you behave, I’m not sure I’d want you for my sister,” said Jack. “As for having what you have … you have a dress that shows every speck of dust that lands on it. You have hands so pale that they can never look clean. I don’t want what you have. What you have is terrible. Leave me alone.”

  “Is that any way to talk to your family? Blood of your blood?”

  Jack sneered. “Last time I checked, you were planning to get rid of your blood as soon as the Master was willing to take it. Or did you change your mind? Are you going to stick around and try living for a little while? I recommend it. Maybe get some more sun. You’re clearly vitamin D–deficient.”

  “Jack, please,” whispered Alexis.

  Jill was still smiling. Jack went cold.

  The Sign of the Hind and Hare was the only inn the village had. That didn’t make it indispensable. If something should happen to it—if it burned to the ground in the middle of the night, say, or if its owners were found with all the blood drained from their bodies—well, that would just be too bad. Another inn would open before the next full moon, equipped with a new family, eager to serve without breaking the rules.

  Like everyone who lived under the grace of the Master, the Choppers obeyed his rules. They did as they were told. They went where they were bid. And they didn’t fight, ever, not with him, and not with the girl he’d chosen as his heir.

  Jack swallowed. Jack smoothed her vest with the heels of her gloved hands and stood, leaving her plate behind. Alexis let go of her arm. The moment of absence, when the pressure of Alexis’s hand was first removed, was somehow worse than the surrender.

  “I’m … so sorry, Jillian,” said Jack, in a careful, measured voice. “I was hungry. You know how cranky I get when I’m hungry.”

  Jill giggled. “You’re the worst when you haven’t eaten. So did you come to visit me, really?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.” Jack didn’t need to turn to know that Alexis was trembling, or that her parents were fighting not to rush to her. They hadn’t been expecting her to bring danger to their door. They should have been. They should have known. She should have known. She’d been a fool, and now they were paying the price. “Dr. Bleak expects me back by midnight, but I have shopping to do in the square before then. Would you like to come with me? I think I have enough coin that I could buy you something nice. Candied ginger, or a ribbon for your hair.”

  Jill’s gaze sharpened. “If you’d really come to see me, you’d know whether you had enough coin to get me a present.”

  “Dr. Bleak controls the money. I’m just his apprentice.” Jack spread her hands, trying to look contrite without seeming overly eager. Jill seemed to believe her—or maybe Jill just didn’t care, as long as she got her own way in the end. We’re strangers now, she thought, and mourned. “I’m learning a lot, but that doesn’t mean he trusts me with more than he has to.”

  “The Master trusts me with everything,” said Jill, and skipped—skipped!—across the room to slide her arm through Jack’s. “I suppose we can shop before you buy me a present. If Dr. Bleak cast you out, you’d have to live in the barn with the pigs, and you’d be filthy all the time. That would be awful, wouldn’t it?”

  Jack, who already felt like she needed a bath from just that short contact with her sister, suppressed a shudder. “Awful,” she agreed, and grabbed her basket, and let Jill lead her out into the night.

  The door slammed shut behind them. Ms. Chopper dropped the tray of potatoes in her hurry to fling her arms around her daughter, and the three of them huddled together, shaking and crying, and suddenly all too aware of the dark outside.

  * * *

  JILL STEPPED LIGHTLY, like she was dancing her way across the muddy cobblestones in the village square. She never stopped talking, words spilling over each other like eager puppies as she recounted everything that had happened to her in the months since she’d last seen her sister. Jack realized, with a dull, distant sort of guilt, that Jill was lonely: she might have servants in that great pile of a castle, and she might have the love, or at least the fondness, of her Master, but she didn’t have friends.

  (That was probably a good thing. Jack could remember Dr. Bleak returning from trips to the village shortly after she’d gone to live with him, a
dire expression on his face and his big black medical bag in his hands. There had been deaths among the village children. That was all he’d been willing to tell her, when she pressed. It hadn’t been until years later, when Alexis started coming around, that she’d learned that all the children who’d died had been seen playing with Jill around the fountain. The Master was a jealous man. He didn’t want her to have anything in her life except for him, and he was happy to do whatever he deemed necessary to make sure that he remained the center of her world. Friends were a nuisance to be dealt with. Friends were expendable.)

  Jack was accustomed to doing her shopping alone, or in the company of Dr. Bleak. It was surprising how often people forgot that Jill was her sister, or felt no need to guard their tongues in her presence. She was used to jokes and gossip, and even the occasional sly barb about the Master’s policies.

  As she walked through the shops on Jill’s arm, the real surprise was the silence. People who knew her as Dr. Bleak’s apprentice went quiet when she approached side by side with the Master’s daughter, and some of them looked at her face like she was a riddle that had just been unexpectedly solved. Jack had to fight not to grimace. It would take her months, maybe years, to rebuild the ground she was losing with every person who saw her in Jill’s company. Suddenly, she was the enemy again. It was not a comfortable prospect.

  Several of the merchants tried to give her deeper discounts than they usually did, or could afford. When possible, she paid the normal amount anyway, shaking her head to silence them. Unfortunately, if Jill caught her, she would snatch the coins from the merchant’s hand, rolling her eyes.

  “We only pay as a courtesy,” she would say. “We pay as a symbol, to show that we’re part of this village, not just the beating heart that sustains it in a world of wolves. If they want to make the symbol even more symbolic, you’re to let them. You promised me a present.”

  “Yes, sister,” Jack would reply, and on they would go to the next merchant, while the hole in the pit of her stomach got bigger and bigger, until it felt like it was going to swallow the entire world.

  She’d have to tell Dr. Bleak about this. If she didn’t, the villagers would, the next time he came for supplies or to check on someone’s ailing mother. They would talk about his apprentice and the Master’s daughter walking arm in arm, and he would wonder why she’d hid it from him, and everything would be ruined. Even more ruined than it already was.

  The basket over her arm was heavy with the things she’d been sent to buy, and with an occasional extra that Jill had picked up and simply placed among everything else. A jug of heavy cream; a jar of honey. Luxuries that were nice, in their way, but which had never been considered necessary in the windmill up on the hill. Finally, it was time for Jill to choose her gift.

  The stallholder, a slender village maiden who shook and shivered like a reed dancing in the wind, stood with her hands clasped tight against her apron, like by refusing to let them flutter, she could somehow conceal the rest of her anxiety. And maybe she could: Jill didn’t appear to notice. She was busy running her fingers through the ribbons, cooing and twittering about the feel of the fabric against her skin.

  Jack tried to make eye contact with the stallholder. She looked away, refusing to let Jack look into her eyes. Jack felt the hole in her stomach grow greater still. Most of the villagers were superstitious, if it could be called that when the vampire was right there, when there were werewolves in the mountains and terrible things with tentacles in the sea. They knew that the Master could influence their minds by meeting their eyes. None of them had looked directly at Jill without being ordered to in years, even though she wouldn’t have her own power over the human heart until she was transformed. Now, it seemed, some of that superstition was transferring to Jack.

  “Do you like this one?” asked Jill, holding up a length of shimmering gray silk that looked like it had been sliced out of the mist on the moor. “I have a dress it would look perfect with.”

  “It’s beautiful,” said Jack. “You should get that one.”

  Jill pouted prettily. “But there are so many of them,” she protested. “I haven’t seen more than half.”

  “I know,” said Jack, trying to sound soothing, or at least, trying not to sound frustrated. “Dr. Bleak expects me back by midnight, remember? I can’t disobey my master any more than you can disobey yours.”

  It was a calculated risk. Jill knew what it was to be obedient, to bend her desires to another’s. She also had a tendency to fly into a towering rage at the slightest implication that her Master was not the only master in the Moors, as if having a capital letter on his name somehow gave him a monopoly on shouting orders.

  Jill wound the ribbon around her finger and said, “The Master would be happy to have you still, if you wanted to come home. You’re very unsuitable now, you know. You’d have to be reeducated. I’d have to teach you how to be a lady. But you could come home.”

  The thought of calling the castle “home” was enough to make Jack woozy with terror. She damped it down and shook her head, saying, “I appreciate the offer. I have work to do with Dr. Bleak. I like what we do together. I like what I’m learning.” An old memory stirred, of her mother in a pink pantsuit, telling her how to refuse an invitation. “Thank you so much for thinking of me.”

  Jill sighed. “You’ll come home one day,” she said, and grabbed a fistful of ribbons, so many of them that they trailed between her fingers like a rainbow of worms. “I’ll take these,” she informed the stallholder. “My sister will pay you.” Then she was gone, turning on her heel and flouncing back toward the castle gates. Ribbons fell unnoticed from her fist as she walked, leaving a trail behind her in the dust.

  Jack turned back to the stallholder, reaching for the coins at the bottom of her basket. “I’m so sorry,” she said, voice pitched low and urgent. “I didn’t mean to bring her to you. She forced my hand. I may not have enough to pay you, but I promise, I’ll return with the rest, only tell me what I owe.”

  “Nothing,” said the stallholder. She still wasn’t looking at Jack.

  “But—”

  “I said, nothing.” The stallholder moved to start smoothing the remaining ribbons, trying to restore order to the chaos Jill had made. “She never pays anyway. The Master will send someone with gold, will overpay for the next dress he orders in her name. She didn’t threaten me this time. She didn’t show me her teeth or ask if I wanted to look at the skin under her choker. You made her better, not worse.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Leave.” The stallholder finally looked up, finally focused on Jack. When she spoke again, her voice was so soft that it was barely audible. “Everyone knows that children who talk to the Master’s daughter disappear, because he can’t stand to share her. But not you. Because even though you’re not his child, you’re still her sister, and she gets jealous of the people who talk to you. Get away from me before she decides you’re my friend.”

  Jack took a step backward. The stallholder went back to sorting through her ribbons, expression grim. She did not speak again, and so Jack turned and walked through the silent village. The sun was down. The huge red moon hung ominously close to the horizon, like it might descend and begin crushing everything in its path.

  The door of the inn was closed. A single candle burned in the window. Jack looked at it and kept on walking, out of the village, through the gates, and onto the wild and lonely moor.

  * * *

  THE LIGHT IN THE windmill window made it seem more like a lighthouse, something perfect and pure, calling the lost souls home. Jack started to walk a little faster when she realized that she was almost home. That wasn’t enough. She broke into a run, and would have slammed straight into the door if Dr. Bleak hadn’t opened it a split second before she could. She ran into the hard flesh of his midsection instead, the rough leather of his apron grinding against her cheek.

  She dropped the basket, scattering supplies and her small remaining store of coin
s at her feet.

  “Jack, what’s wrong?” asked Dr. Bleak, and his voice was a rope thrown to a drowning girl, his voice was the solid foundation of her world, and she clung to him, pressing her face against his chest, for once not caring about the dirt, and cried and cried, under the eye of the unforgiving moon.

  PART IV

  JILL AND JACK WILL NOT COME BACK

  10

  AND FROM HER GRAVE, A RED, RED ROSE …

  TIME PASSED. JACK STAYED away from the village, electing to do extra chores at home rather than accompanying Dr. Bleak to town on shopping trips. She began to make plans for the future, for the time when she would have her own garden, her own windmill, and be able to provide for a household of her own.

  Alexis continued to visit, cautiously at first, and then more and more brazenly as nothing terrible happened to her family.

  Jill walked the battlements, and counted down the days until their eighteenth birthday. She was nestled snug in her bed, dreaming of rivers of beautiful red, when sunlight flooded the room and slapped her out of sleep. She sat bolt upright, shocked and bewildered, and blinked against the terrible brightness.

  “Miss,” said Mary, voice polite, deferential. She had been using that tone with Jill for two years, since the day Jill had thrown a fit and demanded she be spoken to with respect, lest Mary find herself thrown over the battlements. “The Master requested I wake you.”

  “Why?” demanded Jill. She dug at her eyes with the heels of her hands, rubbing until the sting of the sunlight faded. When she lowered her hands, blinking rapidly, she realized that Mary was holding a large vase filled with red, red roses. Jill’s eyes widened. She reached out her hands, making small wanting motions.