Doll Bones Part 1

Doll Bones.

Holly Black.

For Katherine Rudden, who played the game with me long after we were old enough to stop.

CHAPTER ONE.

POPPY SET DOWN ONE OF THE MERMAID DOLLS CLOSE to the stretch of asphalt road that represented the Blackest Sea. They were olda"bought from Goodwilla"with big shiny heads, different-colored tails, and frizzy hair.

Zachary Barlow could almost imagine their fins lashing back and forth as they waited for the boat to get closer, their silly plastic smiles hiding their lethal intentions. They'd crash the ship against the shallows if they could, lure the crew into the sea, and eat the pirates with their jagged teeth.

Zachary rummaged through his bag of action figures. He pulled out the pirate with the two cutla.s.ses and placed him gently at the center of the boat-shaped paper they'd weighed down with driveway gravel. Without gravel, the Neptune's Pearl was likely to blow away in the early autumn wind. He could almost believe he wasn't on the scrubby lawn in front of Poppy's ramshackle house with the sagging siding, but aboard a real ship, with salt spray stinging his face, on his way to adventure.

"We're going to have to lash ourselves to the mast," Zach said, as William the Blade, captain of the Neptune's Pearl. Zach had a different way of speaking for each of his figures. He wasn't sure that anyone but him could tell his voices apart, but he felt different when he talked in them.

Alice's braids spilled in front of her amber eyes as she moved a G.I. Joe Lady Jaye figure closer to the center of the boat. Lady Jaye was a thief who'd begun traveling with William the Blade after she'd been unsuccessful in picking his pocket. She was loud and wild, almost nothing like Alice, who chafed under the thumb of her overprotective grandmother, but did it quietly.

"You think the Duke's guards will be waiting for us in Silverfall?" Alice made Lady Jaye ask.

"He might catch us," said Zach, grinning at her. "But he'll never hold us. Nothing will. We're on a mission for the Great Queen and we won't be stopped." He hadn't expected to say those words until they came out of his mouth, but they felt right. They felt like William's true thoughts.

That was why Zach loved playing: those moments where it seemed like he was accessing some other world, one that felt real as anything. It was something he never wanted to give up. He'd rather go on playing like this forever, no matter how old they got, although he didn't see how that was possible. It was already hard sometimes.

Poppy tucked windblown strands of red hair behind her ears and regarded Zach and Alice very seriously. She was tiny and fierce, with freckles thick enough to remind Zach of the stars at night. She liked nothing better than being in charge of the story and had a sense of how to make a moment dramatic. That was why she was the best at playing villains.

"You can knot ropes to keep you safe, but no boat can pa.s.s through these waters unless a sacrifice is given to the deep," Poppy made one of the mermaids say. "Willingly or unwillingly. If one of your crew doesn't leap into the sea, the sea will choose her own sacrifice. That's the mermaid's curse."

Alice and Zach exchanged a look. Were the mermaids telling the truth? Really, Poppy wasn't supposed to make up rules like thata"ones that no one else had agreed toa"but Zach objected only when he didn't like them. A curse seemed like it could be fun.

"We'll all go down together before we lose a single member of this crew," he fake-shouted in William's voice. "We're on a mission for the Great Queen, and we fear her curse more than yours."

"But just then," said Poppy ominously, moving one of the mermaids to the edge of the ship, "webbed fingers grab Lady Jaye's ankle, and the mermaid pulls her over the side of the boat. She's gone."

"You can't do that!" Alice said. "I was lashed to the mast."

"You didn't specify that you were," Poppy told her. "William suggested it, but you didn't say whether or not you did it."

Alice groaned, as though Poppy was being especially annoying. Which she kind of was. "Well, Lady Jaye was in the middle of the boat. Even if she wasn't lashed, a mermaid couldn't get to her without crawling on board."

"If Lady Jaye gets pulled over the side, I'm going after her," Zach said, plunging William into the gravel water. "I meant it when I said no one gets left behind."

"I didn't get pulled over the side," Alice insisted.

As they continued arguing two of Poppy's brothers walked out of the house, letting the screen door slam behind them. They looked over and started to snicker. The older of the two, Tom, pointed directly at Zach and said something under his breath. His younger brother laughed.

Zach felt his face heat. He didn't think they knew anyone at his middle school, but still. If any of his teammates found out that, at twelve, he was still playing with action figures, basketball would become a lot less fun. School could get bad too.

"Ignore them," Poppy declared loudly. "They're jerks."

"All we were going to say is that Alice's grandma called," Tom said, his face a parody of hangdog innocence. He and Nate had the same tomato-red hair as their sister, but they weren't much like her in any other way that Zach could see. They, along with their eldest sister, were always in troublea"fighting, cutting school, smoking, and other stuff. The Bell kids were considered hoodlums in town and, Poppy aside, they seemed intent on doing what they could to uphold that reputation. "Old lady Magnaye says that you need to be home before dark and for us to be sure to tell you not to forget or make excuses. She seems rough, Alice." The words were supposed to be nice, but you could tell from the sickly sweet way Tom talked that he wasn't being nice at all.

Alice stood up and brushed off her skirt. The orange glow of the setting sun bronzed her skin and turned her glossy box braids metallic. Her eyes narrowed. Her expression wavered between fl.u.s.tered and angry. Boys had been ha.s.sling her ever since she'd hit ten, gotten curves, and started looking a lot older than she was. Zach hated the way Tom talked to her, like he was making fun of her without really saying anything bad, but he never knew what to say to stop it either.

"Leave off," Zach told them.

The Bell boys laughed. Tom mimicked Zach, making his voice high-pitched. "Leave off. Don't talk to my girlfriend."

"Yeah, leave off," Nate squeaked. "Or I'll beat you up with my doll."

Alice started toward the Bell house, head down.

Great, Zach thought. As usual, he'd made it worse.

"Don't go yet," Poppy called to Alice, ignoring her brothers. "Call home and just see if you can spend the night."

"I better not," Alice said. "I've just got to get my backpack from inside."

"Wait up," Zach said, grabbing Lady Jaye. He headed for the screen door and got there just as it shut in his face. "You forgota""

The inside of Poppy's house was always a mess. Discarded clothes, half-empty cups, and sports equipment covered most surfaces. Her parents seemed to have given up on the house around the same time they gave up on trying to enforce any rules about dinners and bedtimes and fightinga"around Poppy's eighth birthday, when one of her brothers threw her cake with its still-lit birthday candles at her older sister. Now there were no more birthday parties. There weren't even family meals, just boxes of macaroni and cheese, cans of ravioli, and tins of sardines in the pantry so that the kids could feed themselves long before their parents came home from work and fell, exhausted, into their bed.

Zach felt envious every time he thought of that kind of freedom, and Alice loved it even more than he did. She spent as many nights there as her grandmother allowed. Poppy's parents didn't seem to notice, which worked out pretty perfectly.

He opened the screen door and went inside.

Alice was standing in front of the dusty, old, locked display cabinet in the corner of the Bell living room, peering in at all the things Poppy's mother had forbidden Poppy, on pain of death and possible dismemberment, from touching. That was where the doll they called the Great Queen of all their kingdoms was trapped, next to a blown-gla.s.s vase from Savers that had turned out to be vintage something-or-other. The Queen had been picked up by Poppy's mother at a tag sale, and she insisted that one day she was going to go on Antiques Roadshow, sell it, and move them all to Tahiti.

The Queen was a bone china doll of a child with straw-gold curls and paper-white skin. Her eyes were closed, lashes a flaxen fringe against her cheek. She wore a long gown, the thin fabric dotted with something black that might be mold. Zach couldn't remember when exactly they'd decided that she was the Great Queen, only that they'd all felt like she was watching them, even though her eyes were closed, and that Poppy's sister had been terrified of her.

Apparently, one time, Poppy had woken in the middle of the night and found her sistera"with whom she shared a rooma"sitting upright in bed. "If she gets out of the case, she'll come for us," her sister had said, blank-faced, before slumping back down on her pillow. No amount of calling to the other side of the room had seemed to stir her. Poppy had tossed and turned, unable to sleep for the rest of the night. But in the morning, her sister had told her that she didn't remember saying anything, that it must have been a nightmare, and that their mother really needed to get rid of that doll.

After that, to avoid being totally terrified, Zach, Poppy, and Alice had added the doll to their game.

According to the legend they'd created, the Queen ruled over everything from her beautiful gla.s.s tower. She had the power to put her mark on anyone who disobeyed her commands. When that happened, nothing would go right for them until they regained her favor. They'd be convicted of crimes they didn't commit. Their friends and family would sicken and die. Ships would sink, and storms would strike. The one thing the Queen couldn't do, though, was escape.

"You okay?" Zach asked Alice. She seemed transfixed by the case, staring into it as though she could see something Zach couldn't.

Finally Alice turned around, her eyes shining. "My grandmother wants to know where I am every second. She wants to pick out my clothes for me and complains about my braids all the time. I just am so over it. And I don't know if she's going to let me be in the play this year, even though I got a good part. She can't see so well after dark, and she doesn't want to drive me home. I'm just so tired of all her rules, and it's like the older I get, the worse she gets."

Zach had heard most of that before, but usually Alice just sounded resigned to it. "What about your aunt? Could you ask her to pick you up after rehearsals?"

Alice snorted. "She's never forgiven Aunt Linda for trying to get custody of me way back when. Brings it up at every holiday. It's made her superparanoid."

Mrs. Magnaye grew up in the Philippines and was fond of telling anyone who would listen how different things were over there. According to her, Filipino teenagers worked hard, never talked back, and didn't draw on their hands with ink pens or want to be actresses, like Alice did. They didn't get as tall as Alice was getting either.

"Made her superparanoid?" Zach asked.

Alice laughed. "Yeah, okay. Made her extra-superparanoid."

"Hey." Poppy came into the living room from outside, holding the rest of their figures. "Are you sure you can't stay over, Alice?"

Alice shook her head, plucked Lady Jaye out of Zach's hand, and went down the hallway to Poppy's room. "I was just getting my stuff."

Poppy turned impatiently to Zach for an explanation. She never liked it when she wasn't part of a conversation and hated the idea that her friends had kept any secrets from her, even stupid ones.

"Her grandmother," he said, with a shrug. "You know."

Poppy sighed and looked at the cabinet. After a moment, she spoke. "If you finish this quest, the Queen will probably lift the curse on William. He could go home and finally solve the mystery of where he came from."

"Or maybe she'll just make him do another quest." He thought about it a moment and grinned. "Maybe she wants him to get skilled enough with a sword to break her out of that cabinet."

"Don't even think about it," Poppy said, only half joking. "Come on."

They walked down the hall to Poppy's room just as Alice came out, backpack over one shoulder.

"See you tomorrow," she said as she slipped past them. She didn't look happy, but Zach thought she might just be upset that she was leaving early and that they were going to be hanging out without her. He and Poppy didn't usually play the game when Alice wasn't there. But lately Alice seemed to be more bothered by he and Poppy spending time alone together, which he didn't understand.

Zach walked into Poppy's room and flopped down on her orange s.h.a.g rug. Poppy used to share the room with her older sister, and piles of her sister's outgrown clothes still remained spread out in drifts, along with a collection of used makeup and notebooks covered in stickers and scrawled with lyrics. A jumble of her sister's old Barbies were on top of a bookshelf, waiting for Poppy to try to fix their melted arms and chopped hair. The bookshelves were overflowing with fantasy paperbacks and overdue library books, some of them on Greek myths, some on mermaids, and a few on local hauntings. The walls were covered in postersa"Doctor Who, a cat in a bowler hat, and a giant map of Narnia. Zach thought about drawing a map of their kingdomsa"one with the oceans and the islands and everythinga"and wondered where he could get a big enough piece of paper.

"Do you think that William likes Lady Jaye?" Poppy asked, settling herself cross-legged on her bed, the pale pink of one knee visible through the rip in her hand-me-down jeans. "Like like likes?"

He sat up. "What?"

"William and Lady Jaye," she said. "They've been traveling together awhile, right? I mean, he must like her some."

"Sure he likes her," Zach said, frowning. He pulled his beat-up army surplus duffel bag toward him and stuffed William inside.

"But, I mean, would he marry her?" Poppy asked.

Zach hesitated. He was used to being asked how characters felt, and it was a simple question. But there was something in Poppy's voice that made him think there was a meaning behind it that was less simple. "He's a pirate. Pirates don't get married. But, I meana"if he wasn't a pirate and she wasn't a crazy kleptomaniacal thief, then I guess he might."

Poppy sighed as though that was the worst answer ever given by anyone, but she dropped it. They talked about other things, like how Zach couldn't play the next day because of basketball practice, whether or not aliens would ever land, and if they did, whether they would be peaceful or not (they both thought not), and which one of them would be more useful in a zombie uprising (a draw, since Zach's longer legs would be better for getting away, and Poppy's small size was a hiding advantage).

On the way out, Zach paused in the living room to look at the Queen again. Her pale face was shadowed, but it seemed to him that though her eyes were closed, they weren't quite as closed as they had been before. While he stared at her, trying to figure out if he was imagining things, her lashes fluttered once, as if stirred by an impossible breeze.

Or as if she was a sleeper on the verge of awakening.

CHAPTER TWO.

ZACHARY WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE FOR SCHOOL WHEN his father limped in from work. He stank of grease and favored his left foot. The restaurant he worked at closed around three in the morning, but checking the stock and reorders and getting a meal with the rest of the crew meant he came home much later than closing time most days.

"Bad blisters," Dad grunted, by way of explanation for the limping. His dad was a big guy with a mess of short curly hair the same burnt-toast color as Zach's, the same beach-gla.s.s blue eyes, and a nose that had been broken twice. "And then, like an idiot, I splashed oil on myself. But we were slammed, so that's something."

Slammed was good. Slammed meant that people were eating at the restaurant, and that meant Zach's dad wasn't going to lose this job.

Mom got out a mug, poured coffee into it wordlessly, and set it down on the table. Zach grabbed his backpack, heading for the door. He felt bad, but it sometimes still surprised him to see his father in the house. His dad had moved out three years ago and moved back in three months ago. Zach couldn't get used to him being around.

"Tear up that court today," his dad said, tousling Zach's hair as though he was a little kid.

His father loved that Zach was on the basketball team. Sometimes that seemed as if it was the only thing about Zach he liked. He didn't like that Zach played with girls after school instead of shooting hoops with the older kids a couple of blocks over. He didn't like that Zach daydreamed all the time. And sometimes it seemed to Zach that his father didn't even like that Zach had gotten really good at basketball, since it meant that he couldn't scold Zach about how all that other stuff was getting in the way of his performance on the court.

Mostly, Zach didn't care what his dad thought. Every time his dad gave him a disapproving look or asked a question that was supposed to make him defensive, Zach would pretend not to notice. Zach and his mom had been fine before his father moved back in, and they'd be fine when he left again, too.

With a sigh, Zach started toward school. Usually, he met up with some of the other walkers, but today the only other kid he saw walking was Kevin Lord. Kevin told Zach a long story about seeing deer when he was riding his dirt bike through the woods and ate a toaster pastry thing, raw, right out of the wrapping.

Zach got to Mr. Lockwood's cla.s.s just after the buses. Alex Rios leaned back in his chair to bring his fist down on top of Zach's. Then they both slapped their hands together and dragged them until they were hooked by the ends of their fingers. It was a handshake taught to everyone on the basketball team, and every time that Zach did it, he felt the warm buzz of belonging.

"You think we're going to win against Edison next Sunday?" Alex asked in a way that wasn't really asking. It was part of the ritual, like the handshake.

"We're going to wreck them," said Zach, "so long as you keep pa.s.sing me the ball."

Alex snorted, and then Mr. Lockwood started to take attendance, so they turned toward the SMART board. Zach tried to stop smiling and appear to be paying attention.

After lunch Poppy pressed a triangle-shaped note into his hand as she pa.s.sed him in the hall. He didn't need to unfold it to know what it was. Questions. He couldn't remember which one of them had come up with the idea, or when, but Questions existed as a strange private thing outside the game. He and Poppy and Alice had to answer any in-game question they were asked, on paper, but the answers were only for the questioner. Characters didn't get to know.

They pa.s.sed notes back and forth, especially if one of them was about to get grounded or before someone went on a trip. He always felt a flush of excitementa"and a little bit of dreada"when he got a folded-up paper. It was a part of the game that felt particularly risky. If a teacher got ahold of the note or Alex saw ita"just thinking about the possibility made the back of Zach's neck burn with embarra.s.sment.

He unfolded the sheet carefully, smoothing it against the pages of his textbook as Mr. Lockwood started his history lecture.

If the curse was lifted, would William really give up being a pirate? If he did, would he miss it?

Who does he think his father is?

Does he think that Lady Jaye likes him?

Does William ever have nightmares?

He started to scribble. He liked the way the story unfolded as he wrote, liked the way the answers just came to him sometimes, out of the blue, like they were true things just waiting to be discovered by him.

Sometimes William has dreams about being buried alive. He dreams that he's woken up and everything is black. He only knows where he is because he feels a heavy pressure on his chest and it's hard to get enough of a breath to scream. Usually, it's the trying to scream that wakes him. He finds himself swinging in a hammock in his quarters, in a cold sweat, his green parrot peering at him suspiciously with her single black eye. And he tells himself that when he's buried, he's going to be buried at sea.

Even after he folded the questions back into the shape of a football and tucked it into the front pocket of his backpack, the feeling of the story being close stayed with him. Zach doodled pictures in the margins of his notebook, drawings of cutla.s.ses and blast rifles and crowns next to geometry homework and facts about the Battle of Antietam.