Skeleton Song by Seanan McGuire
Our story, like every night in Mariposa, begins with a song sung by the bones of the oldest abuelas calling to the bones of the youngest children. They sing to summon all the skeletons into wakefulness and no one knows what would happen if they didn't. In the palace, the Princess awakens, her bones, sparkling with the dust of diamonds and amber, slotting into place as she rises from the marigold petals she rests in.
In the corner of the Princess’s room, a creature, built like a skeleton but covered in rags called “clothes” and flesh called “skin” waits for the Princess to rise. He fingers an instrument made from his own bone while he waits, knowing the Princess’s guards despise him, but he refuses to leave, refuses to look for the door to send him home, afraid that the guards would find it too and push him through.
Christopher fell through a doorway into Mariposa when an illness overcame him and could not be healed by anyone in his own world. Upon his arrival, the Princess immediately drew all his sickness into one bone in his arm and pulled it from his flesh, replacing it with another, allowing him to heal in his skin rather than letting him die as most rulers would have done, letting the bones rise again, looking like everyone else. How could she let him suffer through his pain until he became a skeleton?
With the abuelas’ song almost complete and everyone in Mariposa almost risen, the Princess asks Christopher why he doesn't want to go back to his home. He has mentioned missing his family, but he would miss the Princess more. He has come to love her in his time in Mariposa and knows that he will likely never love anyone else. He wants to stay with her, so she insists that he go with her to the catacombs to meet her parents.
Before they can travel down to the catacombs though, the Princess must sing a song with her people. She paints her face with beautiful colors meant only for the Princess, after all, everyone in Mariposa is a skeleton, so painting colors onto bones distinguishes each person from another since they don't wear clothes. The Princess and Christopher travel through her palace and to the throne room where she sits and sings a beautiful melody, words completely unnecessary. Song complete, they begin their journey.
Down into the darkest depths of the catacombs the pair goes until they reach the bottom. There, the voice of the Princess’s mother speaks to her daughter and to the visitor she has brought with her. The Princess’s father's voice joins in soon, joking with the voice of the mother that she should not scare the boy, because she, like he, came from far away to join Mariposa. The Princess does not know this story and so her parents begin to sing.
Long ago, travelers came through doors to the beautiful world of flowers and butterflies that is Mariposa. When they died and their flesh rotted away, they rose again as skeletons, forgetting the life they lived before they died. They had new lives and new loves and one day, they asked Mariposa for family and were taught how to create a new person from their bones and the bones of those who no longer rose each night. People still come from the doors and, when they die, they still forget their old lives and become new.
One day, one who came through a door did not want to forget his life from before, but still wanted to become like the others of Mariposa, so he was given a way to do that. His love, upon their marriage bed, was given a knife and made to kill him and slice the flesh from his bones. She did and he rose again, still remembering his life before, and they were happy. Christopher and the Princess can do this, too, if they are both willing.
After leaving the catacombs, the Princess tells Christopher she wants to sleep with him in the sun before they are to be wed that night and he agrees, knowing that, even though the people of Mariposa never rest in the sun, his Princess will rise again and they will be married and be together forever. When her bones begin to rise, Christopher gathers her together to carry her inside the palace, but as he steps through the doorway, he wonders about missing his family and unfortunately, he disappears. The Princess wakes alone, knowing what has happened, and sings a mournful song to her people.
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