Bone Dance

In my right eye, I saw a spark. A reflection in the black pool of the pupil, a light; a little scene. I opened my eye wider and came closer to the mirror.

A riverbank, and a reflection off metal — there was a figure lying spread-eagled on the riverbank. It was transfixed with swords, the white metal bright in the new sun. The feet, the knees, the belly, the breasts, the hands. On the sand, silver-blond hair spread out in starfish arms, wet and clotted with dirt. One long bright sword stood upright in and through the open mouth, below the shocked, wide-open eyes.

It was Dana.

I was sitting up before I was awake, swaying and shaking. If I’d made a noise, it wasn’t enough to bring anyone else.

It was morning, late, and no sounds in the house; Josh, Mags, and Paulo had probably gone off about their respective businesses. It was hot, and the air seemed to weigh me down like rocks where I lay. I stood up and sat back down again. Oh, what a lovely headache. And my whole face ached, skin and bone. It had been a while since I’d been hungover, but it had never given me nightmares before.

I put on some clothes and wandered to the kitchen. Halfway there, I heard someone knock on the screen door, so I continued on a little quicker.

It was Sherrea. “Hi. Are you just up?” she asked through the screen.

“Um. D’you want breakfast,”

“No. Look, could you skip breakfast, for now, and come out here for a minute? I want to tell you something.”

I’d just opened the icebox; I shut it again. “Something’s wrong.”

“Not really. Could you just come?”

I stepped out on the back porch, and her eyes grew wide. “What?” I said.

“You look — I don’t know. You look fu

The sky was white-blue, and studded in the southwest with muddled scratches of cloud. It was thick air to breathe, and motionless. Around front, on the steps, I found Theo and Frances. I wondered if I should feel ganged up on, or if they’d missed breakfast, too, at Sher’s insistence. They looked up at me, and Theo’s brows pulled together; Frances stared, her lips open as if she’d forgotten them, and said, “What did—” and stopped.

“Oh, what, already?”

“You look,” Frances said slowly, “most remarkably like you.”

“You look a lot like you, too. Won’t any of you guys make allowances for an ugly hangover?”

“Stop,” Sher said, “or I’ll forget some of this. And I think I’m in deep shit if I do.” She took a huge breath. “Okay. I had a dream last night. And I have to tell it to all of you, and all at once so I don’t leave something important out.”

Theo, Frances, and I exchanged glances, but we knew better than to say anything.

“I was down in the Deeps,” Sher began, “just the way they are now, and it was early in the morning, with all the shadows on the streets. I can see dark clouds between the buildings, and little flickers of lightning between them. I’m just outside of Ego when this woman comes hurrying down Nicollet toward me. She’s almost ru

“It looks like one of the ones we found yesterday, with the buildings lit up, and the Gilded West right out in the middle. But the building that Theo asked about, that you knew the name of, Frances—”

“The Multifoods Building.”

“Right. That one wasn’t there.” She stopped.

We waited.

“Don’t you see!? It’s now, but with the buildings lit up.”

“Okay,” said Theo. I thought so, too.

“Why us?” Frances asked.

“Because,” said Sher, thoroughly exasperated, “she said ‘your friend.’ She didn’t say which friend.”

“And you thought maybe we’d be able to tell, when we heard it?”

“I guess if I did, I was wrong. Blast it root and bough.”

Across town, from the northward road, we heard the sound of a rough-ru

“That’s odd,” I said.

“You just haven’t noticed before. The neighbors stop by to swap favors or pass news along. That sounds like Skip Olsen’s truck.”

“Maybe the wind was up last night,” I said. “It was a great night for dreaming.”

“You had one last night?” Sher asked intently.

“A whole raft of them. Terrible ones. There was a lot of hurrying in mine, too.”

Across the circle, two people were walking toward us. One of them was Josh; the other was a white-haired man ten years older, in a straw cowboy hat. He carried something in one hand. “Sparrow!” Josh called when he was in hollering distance. “Meet Skip Olsen!”

By this time they were at the porch rail. Olsen stuck out a veiny brown hand; I extended mine, took his, and shook it. It still required an effort. Olsen was smiling. “I’d never heard of you,” he said, “but this was sent sort of in care of the town, so I figured if I drove by and asked, they’d all know you. Damnedest bunch for knowing everybody else’s business.” Olsen laughed, and Josh laughed. I reached out and took the package Olsen held out to me.

It was a scuffed white cardboard box, like a gift box, not quite as long as my forearm and a little less than half as thick. It was tied closed with brown twine. Printed on it in ballpoint pen was:

There was, of course, no return address.

Josh took Olsen into the house for tea. I stared at the box. It didn’t weigh much.

“Don’t open it,” Frances said roughly.

“Why not?”

“Sparrow, don’t be an idiot. Don’t open it.”

But I’d already pulled the twine off. I lifted the lid.

Like all gift boxes, it had a piece of tissue paper in it. I folded that back. Inside was a thick tail of hair, silver-blond, tied off with a thin black velvet ribbon. One end of the tail was uneven; the other was straight and freshly cut. That end had been dipped about three inches deep in something that there was no use believing was anything but blood.

I didn’t drop the box, because it weighed hardly anything. I moved very carefully to the top step and sat down, still with the box between my hands, still staring at the contents.

Because neither Theo nor Sher would know, and because Frances might not remember, I said, “Dana’s.” My voice seemed to come from the other side of town.

Frances reached down and almost, but not quite, touched the darkened end of the tail of hair. “And whose is that?”

“I’ll never know, will I?” I said, looking up at her. “Unless I go and see?”

Her hand drew back sharply. “No. He can sit like a spider in the middle of his web and starve, or thrive, or whatever he wants to do. You aren’t going, I’m not going, nobody’s going.”

I picked up the box lid and held it out to her. “Then he’ll come here, won’t he? Would that be better?”

“How did he know?” Theo asked.

“We weren’t a secret,” I said, my voice cracking. “Somebody takes the cucumbers to market, exchanges a little community news, it gets overheard or passed on — he’s probably known for weeks.”

“I’ll go,” said Frances, her mouth tight.

I turned my face up to her again. “But you weren’t invited.”

I watched her eyes change as she realized I was right. The box bearing my name, the threat to my friend. “You can’t,” she said, as she’d said at Del Corazón. “You can’t. She might not even be alive by now, for Christ’s sake.”

“Again, there’s only one way to find out.” I put the lid carefully on the box. I had dreamed of Dana. Of the Ten of Swords, meant for me. Maybe this was the meaning of all that hurrying.