Old Bones: A Collection of Short Stories (8 page)

Did I cry again? Or is the rabbit elder
laughing with the stars. How many of them are dead, yet living to
shine on me still? When I rise without a shadow, I think I will dig
up their bones and chew on their marrow for days to satisfy my
hunger. And when my strength renews itself, I shall once again be a
strong and mighty hunter. I shall…

I have never been aware of death until this
very hour when I have looked upon my birthplace and my gravesite
with the same eyes. When I was young, I never thought about death.
It either came swiftly and nobly to a warrior fighting bravely for
his prince, or slowly and with pride, honoring grand old champions.
But my death mocks me and threatens to leave me remembered as a
fool, one that chose to live near man. It would be best for my
family to forget me, allow me to become nothing, not even a
memory.

Time … season … night … is late. It marches
onward, never slowing, never stopping. Or does it? Has it not
slowed for me tonight and made me live an eternity? Will it finally
stop when I take my last breath? Or will time and I continue
somewhere else, with me in some conscious form still subject to the
rules of nature?

Is this daylight, or am I dreaming? I thought
I saw dead rabbits running through the summer grass. It must surely
be a dream. Dead rabbits don’t run. They can’t.

Or can they?

#

In
the Wake of Annihilating Kings

THE BANQUET HALL was large and windowless, which, as
banquet buildings go in the land of Nortepius, north of Ridgewood,
was simple in design and customarily uncared-for. The dark and damp
interior was carpeted throughout in fungus. A single candle, nearly
spent and lumped upon a mountain of wax vaguely encasing an ancient
gold candelabrum, lighted its dreary center. Suspended by dry,
twisted hemp sooty and black, the waxy mountain sprouted long
spidery arms of wax that descended and attached themselves to the
top of a long rectangular oak table. Faint yellow light flickered
as the candle flame threatened to extinguish itself. A groan came
from a dark figure scaling the northern side of the waxy wattle. He
had a new candlestick clenched between his teeth and he was
exerting his unpracticed body to reach the dimming flame in
time.

“Sulliac!” King Mimalaus called out from his
dirty brown throwdown. “Don’t bite that one in half. The blue ones
taste ugly.”

Sulliac the Loyal grunted in agreement and
continued climbing.

“You incipient vacillator,” a shadowy figure
chided from the northwest corner of the room; “The entire world
knows that the blue ones are an acquired taste of the sophisticated
and dexterous. Why, with just a pinch of yellow yeast glob a blue
becomes the finest meal man will ever consume.”

His nasally voice echoed throughout the hall.
Then a long, low belch sounded from the king’s area. This was King
Mimalaus’s sound of disapproval and it made the winded Sulliac the
Loyal smile as he finally reached the small and flickering
candle.

“Put
that
in one of your pictures,
Couchiniti,” the king grumbled. “If you can find the right
color.”

Then a quick booming belch from the king
marked an end to the conversation. After all, Couchiniti was
renowned for his lengthy rhetorical rambling and the king was in no
mood to be subjected to such torture. This was to be a day of
respect in Nortepius and he was looking forward to the arrival of
new fleece throwdowns.

The dining hall grew larger as Sulliac the
Loyal lit the new candle and placed it at the top of the wax-heap.
From his perch, he could see the tall and frail Couchiniti biting
his right forearm. Couchiniti did this whenever halted from giving
the hall a verbal round of his antiquated conjecture.

Seeing the sulking crafter suckling on his
arm made Sulliac the Loyal hungry, so he stuck his fingers in his
mouth and licked at the rhizopus that had accumulated from his
ascent of the waxy wattle.

Hearing the sucking and slurping made the
king hungry too, so he began cleaning between his toes. The three
snacking statesmen did not hear the low rumbling outside, nor were
they able to see the blinding white light that blanketed the
countryside. Hot winds blew at the walls of the dining hall as
trees and small buildings were swept away. Another rumble followed
as the ground began to shake.

“Another quake!” the ever-observant king
shouted as the hall began shaking. “Let’s celebrate!”

The vibrating building knocked Sulliac the
Loyal from his perch and he fell hard onto the table below.
Luckily, he fell feet first and was able to cushion the impact with
his legs.

Couchiniti’s easels fell over and palettes of
paint and brushes were knocked to the dirty marble floor. A large
clay bust of Couchiniti fell from its podium and shattered.
Couchiniti grabbed up his paintings while the king danced at the
base of his throne. Then it was over.

In unison, the three men sat down on their
tattered throwdowns and laughed. They laughed for many minutes as
tears welled and flowed from their eyes. The king’s sides began to
hurt, but he kept laughing. He was happy for the extra light and
warmth that had crept into the hall. Moreover, he was ever so
grateful that the ugly bust of Couchiniti was ruined.

“Our new throwdowns should be here by
nightfall,” he cried. “I can’t wait.”

“Hear, hear, O Great King,” Sulliac the Loyal
sang. “Hear, hear, O Great King.”

#

A Child’s Tale of Learning

A YOUNG BOY in Ridgewood discovered a question. It
was awkward and new and he didn’t know what to do with it, so he
gave it to his mother. She gently took it and with her son, looked
at it in the yellow rays of the summer sunlight. Then she handed
him an answer. It fit perfectly in his little hands and made him
warm and happy. He found more questions in many sizes, all too many
for him to carry at once, so he took what he could to his mother;
she replaced each one with a perfect-fitting answer.

At the elementary school, he found many more
questions and, like at home, he carried what he could to his
teachers. Some gave him answers that fit well in his hands, but
other teachers gave him questions—BIG questions—in return for his
questions. As he grew older, the questions his teachers gave him
increased in size and quantity until eventually he became overly
burdened and tired from receiving their questions in return for
his.

He took some of their questions home and his
mother was able to give him well-fitting answers for them. But as
their questions grew bigger, so did her answers until they became
too big for his hands. On his way to school, he often dropped and
broke the big answers and had nothing to give his teachers, except
tiny answers that didn’t fit their big questions. They scolded him
for mishandling his answers until he finally stopped giving them
any answers at all. He even kept his questions to himself.

His mother became concerned that he wasn’t
bringing home any more questions, and at school his teachers were
concerned because he had stopped giving them answers.

“I don’t want to give you answers,” the boy
said. “I want you to give them to me.”

His teachers said he was being selfish.
“Students must give proper answers in return of our questions, not
vice versa.”

“But you only want answers that fit right to
your questions,” he said. “I can only give you answers that fit
right in my hands. Anything more is too much to carry.”

His teachers merely looked at each other in
dismay and gave him more questions. Big questions. Heavy questions.
They told him to look in libraries for answers; they said to search
in universities, too. But the libraries were crowded and the
universities too far away, so he lugged around their questions and
tried to find answers elsewhere. However, everywhere he looked was
void of the right-sized answers. Along the way, he dropped and
broke them. Eventually, he gave his teachers his leftover answers,
which they returned unaccepted. Too small, they said; try
again.

Eventually, his load of big questions became
too heavy to carry, so he dragged them behind him until one day he
strayed off course and ended up at a riverbank. He rested with his
burden, sorted through the mess of jumbled questions, and found his
own unanswered questions lying at the bottom.

He felt that he had failed his teachers and
mother, and even himself terribly. Convinced that he would never
find the right answers to any of his questions, he pushed them into
the river until he was free of every one. Suddenly and without
warning, a spinning wind swept across the water, picked up his
questions, and flew them into the sky straight toward the sun. Then
a hundred answers fell upon him, all perfectly sized to fit in his
hands. He sprang about, gathered them into his arms, felt their
perfection, and gave thanks to the wind for its bounty. In reply, a
voice spoke from the sun and told him to return every day and throw
one question into the river. If so, he would be blessed with many
answers from above.

To this day, he has made good on that
promise. And every day the river, wind, sky and sun blesses him a
thousand times over with their answers.

#

Tales for Adults

Dragon Slayer

TALL AND LANKY Leo Nash followed short and shapely
Emily Umberto from the library to the faculty lounge. It was ninth
and final period at Ridgewood High School. It was also a free
period for both teachers, and each of them carried a colorful
wrapped gift. Leo sat at the center table and smiled when the
gorgeous dark-haired woman sat opposite him; he tried not to appear
anxious as he slid the long box of chocolate covered cherries to
her.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

Emily smiled and said, “To you, too,” as she
slid a longer and larger gift-wrapped box to him. “Open it. Hurry.”
She was dressed in a simple white tunic blouse and a gray flared
skirt. Her long, shiny hair and bright emerald eyes lit up her
otherwise drab attire.

Leo paused, spellbound by how bright in color
her eyes were. Their gorgeous green had taken his breath the first
day they met a month ago August when she arrived to teach seventh
grade algebra.

He pulled away his gaze, studied the gift for
a moment, and then tore away the green wrapping paper that had
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
written on it in colorful bursts of printing.
He kept his surprise and exuberance low-key when he took the gift
out of its box. “You shouldn’t have,” he said as he opened the
silver lid of the laptop computer.

“Turn her on. The battery is charged and
she’s ready to go. She has everything, too—including some games for
when you need a break.” She lowered her voice. “I added one of my
favorites. I know you’ll do well at it.”

Leo powered on the computer and said, “You
really shouldn’t have. These things are expensive and all I got you
was—”

“Never mind what it cost. I know you need a
new one, so…”

Leo grinned when the screen came on and
Emily’s youthful face filled the space. “I love the desktop
background,” he said. He looked around, ready to show off his gift
to the two other teachers in the room. But as usual, neither seemed
to notice him. Kathy Richards leafed through a
Readers
Digest
at the beat-up brown sofa in front of the far wall.
Behind her, the room’s only window wore a slatted blind that seemed
to have been installed during the Nixon era. Her expensive Princess
Diana hairstyle, cosmetic face and ruby red fingernails had
attracted recently divorced Frank Hallstead, who had just poured
himself a cup of coffee and now advanced on her like a walrus to
tuna. He wasted no time trying to talk her into his leased Porsche
after school.

“He’s such a pig,” Emily whispered. “Do you
know he hit on me my first day?” She shook her head. “But I knew
right away that you were the one for me.”

Leo blushed.

“Take her for a spin,” Emily said, nodding at
the computer and smiling flirtatiously. “Just don’t show the others
the photos I put in your pictures folder.”

“Oh?” Leo looked puzzled. Then, “Oh!” His
cheeks reddened deeper.

Emily rose from the table and fetched her
unopened chocolates. “I left my gradebook behind at the library.
I’ll be back in a few.” Before she strode away, she said,
“Definitely try out the game I put on there. It’s called
Dragon
Slayer
, my favorite game of all.”

Leo looked down at his gift and knew he had
found someone who truly loved him. His long fingers slid over the
sleek computer and he was gladdened to know that Emily planned to
stay awhile. Maybe into old age.

Grinning wide, Leo went through the menu of
games:
Solitaire
,
Hearts
,
Freecell
,
Minesweeper
, as well as some he had never heard of. Then he
found
Dragon Slayer
and opened it.

CHOOSE YOUR SKILL LEVEL
, the computer
screen said.

He chose
BEGINNER
from the options
offered.

The screen came to life as a red,
fire-breathing dragon swooped down from a velvet star-filled sky
and laid to waste in a fiery breath the Tolkien-esque village
below. Elflike people ran screaming from wooden houses and stone
buildings into the cobbled streets.

Leo marveled the lifelike graphics while,
within seconds, the dragon destroyed the living. Red words filled
the screen as the dragon and village disappeared into blackness.
GAME OVER—0 POINTS
.

Leo clicked a key and brought the dragon’s
fury to life again. He pressed the
Ctrl
keypad. A centaur
stepped out of the shadows and shot gold arrows from a gold bow at
the dragon. Every shot missed and the dragon destroyed the village
again.