Doll Bones (13 page)

Alice was walking ahead, with Zach behind her. She had a blade of grass and was trying to turn it into a whistle, a trick she claimed her uncle could do. So far all she’d managed was to make a lot of spitting noises.

“I had an idea,” Poppy said, speeding her pace to draw even with Zach. She was still carrying the Queen, the doll settled against her hip like it was a child. He tried to keep his gaze from going to it. “About William. About who his father is.”

“You promised not to talk about the game.” He was tempted to, though. He wanted to know how the story would have ended, since he’d never get to play it. And he was bored.

“No,” Poppy said with a trickster’s smile. “I agreed not to ask why you stopped playing. And I didn’t.”

Zach sighed. He was arguing because he thought he should, not because his heart was really in it. “I guess I had some ideas too,” he admitted.

Poppy looked at him with astonishment. “You did?”

“He’s my character, after all. But even if his father is the king of the whole Gray Country, he’s going to stay a pirate. He’s happy where he is, on the
Neptune’s Pearl
. No dad is going to change that.”

Poppy was looking at him oddly, like she wanted desperately to ask why he thought about any of this stuff, since he’d said he didn’t want to play anymore. But for once, she was smart and didn’t. “Even if his father was the Duke of Deepwinter Barrow?”

They didn’t have a doll to represent him, but the Duke was a bad guy, through and through. They’d loved making up his crimes. He’d been raising a zombie army of broken dolls to march over the rest of the lands. He’d chopped off the heads of his enemies and abducted an evil priestess to be his duchess. Another action figure that Zach used to play had fought them over by the Silver Hills and nearly died. He was being healed by one of Alice’s dolls, in a temple she’d made from a shoe box.

“That would be pretty good,” Zach said. “If William was the Duke’s son, then he could get close enough to assassinate him. Or maybe he could
say
that he was the Duke’s son—maybe he’s really someone else’s kid entirely. Maybe someone even better. Like an ancient pirate lord or some kind of monster.”

Poppy looked flustered. She was good at making up stories, but she wasn’t always good at accepting the stuff he and Alice made up, no matter how awesome it was. It took her a little while to accept a universe she didn’t have total control over.

Alice halted abruptly.

The path had ended. Up ahead, another big fat river flowed into the Ohio, making it impossible to go farther. Two bridges spanned the river, but he could see that they were useless to three kids on foot. One was a railway bridge, rusted and abandoned, with large gaps where metal rails had fallen off. The other was a massive concrete three-lane highway, with a toll booth on one side and no room for walking on the shoulder.

“Well, that’s that,” Alice said. She had a strange expression on her face, half relief and half disappointment.

Zach sighed, gazing up along the waterway. There were shabby-looking marinas on either side of the big unknown river. If this was a book or a movie, they would meet a mysterious figure with a boat and that person would ferry them across. Like Charon. Probably try to trick them too—but if they were clever, they could make it. And if he was William, he wouldn’t need to be ferried across because he’d have the
Neptune’s Pearl
—his two-masted schooner—and all his crew.

But in real life, those things didn’t matter. He was suddenly aware of how tired he was.

“Let’s go ask,” Poppy said. “Maybe there’s a ferry?”

It was only a little after noon, so they walked down to the marina. The few buildings—an oversize boat storage area, a lean-to, and an office—sat beside three long docks, with an array of boats separated by berms. Two little kids were leaning over the side of a piling with a fishing net, watching something in the water.

“You want to split up?” Zach asked. “See if we can find somebody who might know how to cross?”

“Okay,” said Alice, glancing toward the office. “Let’s meet back here in five minutes.”

“I’m going to talk to those kids,” Poppy said, turning to head in their direction.

He walked a little ways, inhaling the smell of diesel and river and tar baking in the sun. The day had turned warm, and Zach wondered if it would be possible to swim across. He wondered if Alice had had the right idea, going into the main building. There was probably air-conditioning and maybe even a water fountain up there.

As he wandered he spotted an old rowboat, pulled up to one side of the dry dock and leaned against some pilings. The paint was chipped along the sides, and he didn’t see any oars, but for a moment, he imagined them ferrying themselves across. As he got closer, though, he saw the hull had enough rot damage to keep it from being seaworthy. He didn’t need to know much about boats to know it would leak like crazy if he put it in the water.

With a sigh, he studied the sleek motorboats, shaped like long cigars, and the towering, multilevel fishing vessels with tall antennae shooting off of them like whiskers on a cat. He couldn’t imagine the sort of people who owned boats like that, but he was pretty sure that they didn’t give kids rides just for asking.

Despite reading tons about pirates and drawing the
Neptune’s Pearl
in such detail that he’d figured out most of the rigging, and even building model ships, Zach had never been on a boat.

He took another look at the rowboat and wondered if it might be possible to patch it. Maybe he could find some nails and wood glue and tar. And if that didn’t work, then maybe they could bail water faster than the boat could sink?

“Zach!”

He turned at the sound of his name being shouted. Poppy was standing next to the two kids with the net and waving him over.

“Brian’s dad is trying to sell a dinghy,” she said when Zach stepped onto the dock. It dipped underneath him and he steadied himself, lamenting his lack of sea legs.

“Uh-huh,” he said warily. They had maybe fifteen dollars before they were dipping into the funds for the way back. “How much does he want for it?”

“Twenty-five.” Poppy glanced at Zach’s watch and raised her eyebrows. “But Brian said that maybe we could trade if we had anything he wanted. And he’ll throw in oars.”

“There’s no other way across?”

She shook her head, making her red hair fly around her. The sun had pinked her nose and deepened her freckles. “There’s another bridge, but it’s more than a mile away. If we’re on the water, Brian says we can make it to East Liverpool in a half hour. Easy.”

Brian nodded. “We go up that way to fish sometimes. It’s not far,” the other kid said.

“Okay,” Zach said. “Let’s see this thing.”

Brian led them down to the end of the dock, where a few small dinghies and rowboats were moored. Three rowboats rocked gently beside one another, buffered by plastic fenders. Brian pointed to the one on the end, painted a slate gray. It was beat-up, but afloat, with no visible leaks. A lot better than the rotted-out one Zach had found near the dry dock.

“Can you give us a second to talk it over?” Zach asked.

Brian shrugged and headed back to where his friend was manning the net, trailing it through the water like he was going to catch something by sheer accident. As Zach watched the kid go he saw Alice crossing the gravel-covered yard toward them.

It was interesting watching her when she didn’t notice herself being observed. Her coat was tied around her waist. She looked determined and sweaty and a little bit hopeful. Her angular face and thin eyebrows were utterly familiar, but he realized for the first time that she looked like one of those older, mysterious girls he wondered at sometimes in the mall, and that made her strange to him.

“All I’ve got is a necklace,” Poppy said, touching the thin silver chain around her neck protectively. She wore a tiny typewriter key charm on it. He hadn’t seen her without it since she’d gotten it from her father on her birthday. “I’ll trade that, though.”

“I’ve got my watch and a flashlight,” Zach said. “And a book I’m pretty sure they don’t want.”

Alice walked up to them, pushing back her braids impatiently. “Hey, look, guys, I talked to an old guy up at the marina office. He said there was
no way
to walk to East Liverpool. I know you’re going to be mad, but he said it was
impossible
, Poppy.” She sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“What if we don’t go by foot?” Poppy said, pointing to the gray boat.

“Do we even know which way the current of the river runs?” Alice asked. “Or anything about boats?”

Poppy looked momentarily thrown, then she frowned. “What’s to know? We just row harder if the current is against us.”

Zach itched to be on the water, even in the little dinghy.

“You promised we’d go back,” Alice said. “Both of you said that if we couldn’t get to East Liverpool in time to get the bus, we’d go back to East Rochester. Well, it’s time to turn around.”

Poppy hesitated, and Zach stayed silent far too long.

“Seriously?” Alice asked them. “You’re really going to break your promises?”

“It’s not that,” Zach said, looking longingly at the water. “It’s just that I think we can still make it.”

Alice’s expression hardened into a tight, unfriendly smile. Her eyes shone like chips of glass. “Oh no, you have to come back with me,” she told Zach. “Even if Poppy doesn’t come with us.”

“Yeah?” he said, trying to sound like he didn’t care—like he didn’t even know what she was going to threaten him with. He did know, though, and he did care.

“I’ll tell her,” Alice said. “That you lied, and what you lied about.”

“Tell me?” Poppy asked. “Wait, what do you mean? Tell me what?”

“Nothing,” Zach said, stepping back from them. He took a deep breath of diesel and river muck. He couldn’t think—all he knew was that if Poppy found out about the Questions, she would never stop picking at his reasons for lying about them until the whole story came out. Imagining that filled him with nameless panic. “Alice is right about us promising. If she wants to go back, then—”

Poppy interrupted him, looking at Zach like if she stared hard enough, she could read his mind. “What don’t you want me to find out?”

He remembered, too late, how much Poppy hated her friends keeping secrets from her.

“It’s
nothing
,” Zach insisted.

“Then tell me,” Poppy said. She hesitated a moment, then looked at Alice.
“Tell me.”

“Come on,” Alice said. “Give up. The game’s over. We’re going back. Let’s all just go back. It was still fun. It was still a quest.”

“No way,” said Poppy. “I could tell Zach something that I bet you don’t want him to know,
Alice.
I know a secret too.”

Alice’s whole face changed. He wondered if he’d been so transparent, if it had been as clear when he’d figured out just what he had to lose. And he understood, right then, why Poppy was so upset about Zach and Alice not telling Poppy things. Because whatever Alice didn’t want Poppy to say had to be pretty bad. Maybe Alice had talked about how much she hated him or said that he smelled or how stupid he was. Maybe she had made fun of him to Poppy, snickering behind his back.

“You wouldn’t do that,” Alice said, her voice hushed. “You’re my best friend. That’s a secret.”

“Just
tell me
,” Zach said. “Come on. Whatever it is, I won’t be mad. At least I don’t think I’ll be mad.”

Poppy laughed, and Zach thought he saw a strange dancing light in the glass eyes of the doll, as though the Queen was laughing too. When Poppy spoke, her voice was different. She could be mean sometimes, but never before did she seem gleeful about being cruel. “She’s not going to tell you. I win at blackmail. Alice has to come, and since
you
apparently have to do what
she
wants, you have to come too. So come on, let’s buy this boat.”

“You don’t understand how much trouble I’m going to get in,” Alice said, running her fingers through her braids.

“I don’t care. You didn’t care about me, and now I don’t care about you either,” said Poppy.

“But you promised!” Alice said, her voice anguished.

“I don’t care,”
Poppy repeated.

Zach paced down the dock, too angry at everyone to be ready to give in to anyone, especially those kids with their fishing net who were going to try and talk him out of all the cash they had. He glanced at Alice, who was staring at the water in an agony of indecision. And he looked back at the three rowboats and the dinghy, which, now, under his resentful gaze, looked increasingly shabby.

None of it was right. This wasn’t how their quest was supposed to go.

He had read lots of stories where heroes succeeded in spite of long odds, where they accomplished a task that everyone else had failed at. He wondered for the first time about all the people who’d gone before those heroes, about whether they’d been heroic too or whether they’d been at each other’s throats, before everything had gone wrong. He wondered if there was a point where they realized they weren’t going to make it, weren’t going to beat those long odds—that in the legend that would follow, they were going to be the nameless people that failed.

At the very end of the dock, Zach stopped. He drew in his breath.

In front of him was a tiny sailboat, low and slim, only a little bigger than the dinghy, but made from fiberglass. A black-and-white striped sail was folded loosely around the boom, the symbol of a sunfish visible on the Dacron cloth. Someone must have just left it, intending to come right back, because the centerboard was pulled out and there were two life jackets piled together in the cockpit.

Across the stern was one word in a curling script: PEARL.

Zach jumped down onto the hull, his sneakers hitting the curved deck. The boat rocked wildly underneath him, and he had to pinwheel his arms and grab the mast to steady himself. With a grin breaking across his face, he looked up at Alice and Poppy.

“We’re not buying anything,” he said. “We’re pirates, remember?”