Bony Fingers

The world she lived in was a forgotten one. Intentionally forgotten, and avoided. The deepest, darkest depths of the north, turning with long days where the sun never set and long nights where it never rose. It was on one of those nights that the tapping came to her door.

Tap….tap….tap….tap.

She opened the door, expecting another monster, for the tapping sound was hard like a claw. But the smell was human.

He wasn’t in the doorframe. He was pressed beside it, against the wall of the hut, shivering in the snow and wind and cold. The hard sound was on account of the lack of flesh on the left hand. The fingers were pale, smooth bone.

“Please,” he cried hoarsely, “Another minute out here and I’m going to freeze--Please just let me stay here until the storm passes--“

“Actually, for around here, the weather’s pretty mild,” she said. “Come in anyway though.”

He stumbled in. She closed the door behind him.

“H-how do you not have a fire lit?” he gasped through chattering teeth. “I’m certainly going to light one, if you don’t mind.”

She shrugged. “Go ahead.”

He took out matches and stoked the dead coals in the middle of the floor. The hut warmed up.

She moved closer to the wall. He’d taken off some of his layers of coats, and she saw not only his hand, but his whole left arm was bone, and pale threads were creeping up his neck.

“I can’t thank you enough for helping me,” he said, breaths easing. “I’m just so glad to see another human. I didn’t think anybody could live out here.”

She gave him a dead stare. “Nobody can. I’m not.”

No need to look to see it slowly dawn on him, for her words to slowly sink in. No need to see him stiffen. No need to look to see his eyes flicking over her, suddenly noticing all the little things he’d missed when he’d fallen half-frozen through her door. The inhuman boniness of her limbs. The unearthly lightness of her hair. How her eyes were a little too sunken. How her skin was a little too pale, how her fingers were a little too long.

He drew back, as if expecting her to sprout fangs. But she carried on the same tired look.

“Are you really going to go back out there?” she said. Wind was whistling behind the door.

His initial panic hardened into mild suspicion. “You’re...another monster?”

“Yeah.”

He hunched his shoulders. “Don’t look like it though.”

“I’m a mare.” she said. “Have you heard of mares?”

He shook his head.

“Mares. Dream monsters. There used to be villages here they would prey on, so they tell me. They’d float out of their bodies at night. Leech away some of their breath, fill their once-restful sleep with fear.”

She could see things slowly falling into place in his head. “Night mare. Nightmare.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “And then they all left. Got tired of all the monsters, all the nightmares. All the shrieking winds and bitter cold. Finally accepted this was no place for humans to live.” She stared at the wall, as if she could see through it, into the storm raging beyond. “They left, and we’re still here. Because this place-this land-is our land.” She said the word as if it were a foul taste.

“If you saw me when you were sleeping, though, I’d probably seem a lot more monsterlike. Not unlike your arm there,” she said, giving it a glance.

He started. “Oh-yeah,” he said. “That. I was hoping--“

“--something here could fix it,” she sighed.

“How did you--”

“Did you really think you were the first human to come knocking at my door? Everyone thinks the monsters are here to guard something. Everyone thinks the dragons have treasure.” She looked into the crackling logs. “What the treasure is changes depending on what they want.”

Her gaze shifted to the floor. “But there’s nothing. There’s nothing here. Nothing but monsters without prey, eating each other alive.” She sighed again. “Also, it wasn’t hard to figure out you didn’t come for the scenery.”

The fire popped.

“So, how did you come by this particular...ailment?”

He tapped a finger on a silver ring on his left hand. “This. It’s cursed so that I can’t take it off.”

“Hm.” she said.

“Well, it wasn’t me,” he said, “who got stuck with it, not originally. It was actually a friend of mine. And he got stuck with it because of another friend of ours, that...is no longer a friend of ours.” His voice was hard. “Better him than me, he said.”

She looked at it again, and grimaced slightly. “Yeah...not a very nice way to go.”

“No,” he agreed. “That’s why I came here. I heard-“

“Stop,” she said. “Let me guess. A golden, healing...flower, that can cure anything. Probably also makes you immortal.”

“Well, golden fruit, actually, but pretty much.”

“Fruit, huh?” She pulled a frying pan from some things in a corner. “Well, I guess that’s kind of true.”

“What?”

She opened the door. Wind roared in her ears.

“What are you doing?”

”Getting food. Wait.”

After a minute she came back and shut the door behind her. The wind quieted. She began frying bits of meat in a pan.

“Do you even need to...uh, eat?” he asked.

“No.”

“Oh, then it’s for-Uh, you don’t need to do that.”

“No, it’s fine. I need to get rid of it anyways.” She shifted the pan, and they crackled. “You wanted to know what I meant before, right? About the fruit thing being half true.”

He nodded.

She took a deep breath. “So...did you really come here alone?”

“Oh--well--no,” he said. “As I said, I wasn’t originally the one stuck with it. The ring, I mean. I was one of the friends he’d had with him. So we could take turns wearing it. You know, spread it out a little. Give ourselves more time.”

“Had,” she said.

“We got...” his voice trailed off. “Separated.”

“Separated. Right.” She shifted the pan again. “And so I’m sure, then, you now know the monsters can’t exactly be killed.”

He nodded, voice hoarse. “Every hit we managed to land just...vanished.”

“Right. Well, I don’t know if you found this out either, but even completely dismembering them doesn’t help. The parts still continue to move and grow. Regrow.”

The bits of meat sizzled.

“Do you know why they’re that way?” Her voice was hard.

“No.”

“It’s because of us.” Another word like a foul taste. “We gave them immortality.”

“With a...gold healing fruit?”

She nodded. ”Exactly.” She shifted the pan, and the meat spit. “It’s hard to see through the wind and snow, but those monsters-they have things poking out of them. Weapons. All the hits that didn’t kill them. Spears and stone arrowheads from tribal eras. Antique cutlasses of foolhardy explorers. So many bullets they sparkle.

“There’s more to us dream monsters than nightmares. It’s because of us. So long ago, it was us, who reached our long, spindly fingers into the forgotten crevices of the dream world, and fed the monsters the fruit. The fruit, the golden healing fruit. And now they can never die.”

There was a long, hushed silence.

“Is that really true?”

She shrugged, and shifted the pan again. The bits of meat slid to one side. “I don’t know. It was before my time. All I know is what they tell me, and the tree of golden apples I sit under when I dream. The centuries-old arrows their flesh has grown around. That, still, the monsters can never die.”

More silence. The fire and meat crackled again.

She changed the subject. “So the ring can’t come off?”

“Not unless it’s changing hands.”

“So it just needs a hand?”

“I didn’t say...I don’t know. It goes on a finger, which is on a hand, but...” He trailed off. “I don’t know,” He said again.

Another pause.

“So, what’d you do before...all this?” She put the pan on top of the coals.

“Farmed watermelons.”

“Watermelons?”

“Yeah,” he said. “My family owns a farm that grows novelty watermelons.” He poked the fire with a stick.

“What’s novelty about them?”

“They’re funny shapes. Mostly square ‘cause they’re the easiest to ship, but other stuff too. They start out as normal watermelons and grow into moulds.”

“Interesting.” She took the pan off the fire. “Looks like they’re done.”

“That’s good.” He took off the glove on his right hand.

“I don’t suppose you have any dishes with you,” she said.

“No.”

“Well just eat from the pan then.” She took a handful. They were crispy around the edges, congealed in some sort of weird breading, even though she hadn’t added anything.

“Aren’t they hot?” He asked.

She shrugged, and started chewing halfheartedly.

“Here. Try some.”

He took one, popped in his mouth, and hacked.

“It moved!”

He looked around wildly, first at her and then around the room. She continued chewing.

“It squirmed! I felt it squirm as I swallowed!”

She gave him a tired glance. “I told you I needed to get rid of it.”

Another molasses-slow dawn breaking over the hills. He looked down at the pan in horror.

“You don’t mean...”

“What did you think it was? Beef?” She wiped her mouth. “Do you see any cows? Or any other living thing, for that matter?”

He was staring numbly at the pan. She pushed it towards him.

“Eating that’s in your best interest. Once the monsters are down your throat, they’re as close to dead as they can get.”

His voice was hoarse again. “And they won’t try to crawl back out?”

“Not unless you have too much at once. Now eat up.”

More silence, filled with the crackling of the fire and uncomfortable chewing sounds, interspersed with the occasional shudder. Then just the crackling of the fire again.

“So,” he began. “So. Where did the, um, old mares...get the fruit, exactly?”

She sighed. “I told you. A forgotten crevice of the dream world. They went there often, which apparently is why that tree is the only thing in my dreams.” She closed her eyes. “A tree of golden apples, alone in a sea of black. They picked them and when they awoke they were in their hands.”

“So...does that mean...you could bring them back too?”

She shrugged. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“If our power is the same as it once was. There aren’t any villages around for us to haunt anymore.”

“Can’t you at least try?”

She let out a breath, and leaned forward again to look at his arm.

“Maybe...as I said, not a very nice way to go...”

“You have to at least try,” he said.

She sat back up. “You know what you said about watermelons?”

”Yeah?”

“Well, I have an idea about that. But we’ll try your idea first.”

She leaned back and closed her eyes.

The room has disappeared. It was pitch black. She could still half-feel her body, wrapped around her like clothes. Limp, wooden, only half-there. She slipped out of it like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Long, pale hair floated around her like wreaths of smoke. She looked around.

There. The tree, as it always was, lit by some unseen light source, roots anchored in a black, earth-like part of the dark where it scrunched up like cloth. She made her way towards it in long, floaty strides. Her limbs were longer than she was used to in waking, and light as air. She reached out, trying to judge the depth. Her fingers were longer, too.

The skeletal tips touched smooth fruit skin, and she snapped it off the branch. It also felt very light, floating at the end of her fingers like they were balloon strings. She dove back under. Her physical body met her in the depths of the mire. She slipped dream arms into real arms, hands drifting into each other, fitting bone back into bone, drawn by some magnetic pull. She could see the dim, blurry shapes of the room. They were getting clearer, and brighter. There was a voice, faint as if it was from a long ways away.

“Hello? Um...whatever your name is? Are you there?”

She could see him now. Weight was coming back into her body. Where was the fruit?

Almost. She could almost feel it in her hands, the mass of it and the smooth skin. And that almost was quickly slipping away. She drew her dream hand back out of her flesh and pulled, trying to get it back. Trying to pull it into a physical form. It felt trapped, as if behind some thin, membranous film. She pulled harder.

Air came back into her lungs with a gasp. The apple was in her palm, and for a moment she’d thought she’d succeeded.

Then it started to crumble. Chunks broke off and splattered onto the floor, as if it couldn’t hold itself together. Juice ran down her arm and bits ran through her fingers like sand. It was suddenly nothing more than a heap of mush. He stared at it, openmouthed.

Faint daylight began to come in from in between the cracks in the door. The sun was coming up.

She stared too, a bit dismal but unruffled. “Guess now we try my idea.”

“I-You-What?”

“Where’s your glove?” She asked.

“What-What’s your idea?”

“Where’s your glove?” She asked again.

“Oh, uh-In my pocket.” He dug around in his coat. “Here. But what’s your idea?”

She didn’t answer, and went through the door. Once more wind roared in her ears. She went around to the back of the hut. The sun had gone up a little more, and it was lighter now. Light to see, through the wind and snow, the monster. Cut up, sliced open, pieces weighed down with heavy stones, so they couldn’t crawl away.

She took a handful of it and went back inside. He was there waiting for her.

“So...what’s your idea?” He asked again.

She held up her two hands, one holding writhing monster meat, and the other a glove. “You know you can only take off the ring when it’s changing hands?” She said.

“Yeah?”

”And you know how what it needs for that is a hand? A living hand?” She said.

“Yeah?”

“And you know how cut-up pieces of monster keep growing after they’re cut up?” She said.

“Yeah?”

“And you know how back home, you make watermelons grow into shapes with moulds?” She said.

“Yeah?”

“And you know how I have this glove?”

* * *

The frantic knocking came to her door at night. Knocking always came at night. It was accompanied by muffled shouting. She opened the door a crack. It was a girl, her eyes wide and panicked.

“Please let me in! I need to hide. I’m being chased by a-”

She was interrupted by a crash as a monster threw itself against the wall and pulled her back. It was fast and strong. But she was faster and stronger. She pulled back, yanking the girl through the door and slamming it shut.

The wind was whistling outside. She could still hear the monster pounding at the door. But she knew it wouldn’t dare come in.

The girl was still shaking. “W-why does it look like that?”

“Cursed ring.”

“It’s-It’s just so bony, and so full of...hands...” She hugged herself. “Why?” The girl asked again.

She turned her head to look at the girl with a steely gaze. “Better it than you."