June Excerpt: Moar Quidnunx!

I'm hitting the home stretch on this book FINALLY so I hope you're enjoying it! I did also write two short stories this month, but one is under an NDA and the other hasn't been accepted yet, so let's return to Littlebridge and Osmo!

I hope you are all staying safe and looking after each other. All my love goes out to you.

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Chapter Four: Girls and Knights and Needles

Every girl in Littlebridge dreamed of being crowned Frostfrau. For one thing, you got to wear a very pretty crown made of fir boughs and lingonberries and snowdrops and witch hazel and glass beads, all painted white and silver like perfect snow. For another thing, everyone had to bow to you when they passed by all year long until the next Frostfrau was crowned. But mainly, the girls just wanted the Nalbinder.

Osmo didn’t blame them. He rather wanted it, too. But boys couldn’t be Frostfraus, so that was that.

The Nalbinder was technically a knitting needle. But it was as much like the nice little sticks grandmothers used to make lace shawls as a warm, toasty housecat by the fire is like a wild tiger in the snow. It was ancient and as long as your whole arm, made of some sort of bone gone yellow with centuries of handling, chiseled intricately into the shape of an upside-down Catch-a-Crown River freshwater eel. One of its eyes was a black onyx stone with a blue flaw in the middle shaped like a star. The other was a blue lapis stone with a black star. The eel’s head came to a sharp triangular point at the bottom, and its tail curled around itself all the way up and looped around at the end to make a hole big enough to get your foot (and presumably the mother of all yarns) through it. Headmaster Gudgeon said that the warriors of old used such needles to knit bronze and iron into armor between battles. They had a special technique that only used one needle…one needle and the strength of ten men. Osmo thought that sounded as likely as leprechauns, but the Nalbinder itself was certainly very real. The Frostfraus wore it on their hips or strapped to their back like a sword. Last year, Tanta Hopminder wore it to class every single day, and every one said she slept with it like a stuffed bear, too. But when Aldred Mummer tried to kiss her under the apricot trees behind St. Whylom’s, she stabbed him in the leg with it, and you couldn’t do that with a stuffed bear.

The Frostfrau crown didn’t go to the prettiest or the cleverest. There was no way to earn it at all, really, which made it all the more desirable. Fate had to choose you. Every year at First Frost, all the unmarried girls in the village gathered in Bonefire Park at the foot of the fountain. Their mothers blindfolded them with red handkerchiefs. Harigold Blust lit off a firecracker in a big iron pot and at the sound of the boom, the girls went running in all directions, laughing and screaming and tripping over everything they couldn’t see. Meanwhile, the Mayor got all dolled up in a shaggy, matted, dank-smelling Quidnunx costume, climbed up onto a pair of terrifyingly unstable stilts, and chased the girls all over the park until he caught one. It was quite difficult to grab a sprinting child when you’re up on stilts, so the whole thing took some time. One of the most important skills a politician in Littlebridge could have was being reasonably good at walking on stilts. 

Mayor Lud was standing up on a makeshift stage in front of the Katja Kvass Memorial Fountain brandishing the Nalbinder like a sword. Ice had formed a diamond crust around the statue of Katja’s weeping eyes and wounded heart. Tanta Hopminder stood next to him, looking pained every time he awkwardly swung it round. As if Mayor Lud had ever held a sword in his life. Except maybe to cut himself another slice of pie. He had the Quidnunx pants on, complete with enormous papier-mache feet to cover his shoes, complete with curling thick toenails dipped in blood-red paint. He rested his rear on the giant headpiece, drinking with his free hand while he went on poking at the growing crowd with the tip of the Nalbinder and roaring with laughter. Two of his assistants waited under a nearby willow with the stilts.

Osmo hung back. People poured into Bonefire Park from all sides. He saw a couple of his sisters inching shyly toward the stage. All the older girls who knew this might be their last chance had already taken up strategic positions round the Mayor. And there stood Ada Sloe and Ivy Aptrick and the others his own age, pretending very pointedly not to care. He waved to Matilda and Sanna as they arrived to join Klara and Lizbel. They waved back excitedly. But he didn’t see his mother anywhere. He caught sight of Oona, finally, standing up on tiptoe to see from the back. She wore her other ribbon, the green one, in her long hair. Their father hollered over the din to his seven daughters, holding up a bunch of red handkerchiefs like a bouquet of roses. But Osmo didn’t see his mother anywhere. He mouthed to Oona across the throng: where’s Mom? Oona just shrugged.

“Come on now!” Harigold bellowed. “We haven’t got all night! Get up here, girls, let me count you up so we don’t lose any in the dark. Get a cup of cider, warm up, you’ve got ten minutes! No stragglers!”

Osmo wandered over to his favorite part of the park. Not far from the fountain, in a half-circle of birch trees someone had set up six little stone game tables with twelve inviting little stone seats. Any day of the week you could find the old folk of Littlebridge playing shockingly cutthroat rounds of chess and checkers and backgammon. But nobody bothered at First Frost. Not when there were so many other things to do, some of which involved very fat, very drunk mayors on ten-foot stilts.

Nevertheless, Osmo did not find the game grove empty. The edges of the First Frost hordes stumbled about here and there. A few tried to stand up on the tables to see over everyone else. And one figure hunched over the doublechess table, paying absolutely no attention to the festivities, wrapped in a thick quilt to keep out the cold. Her back was broad and rounded with the years. She wore a big furry coat that bristled brown and white all over. Her hair hung down in tangled grey braids like moss.

“I always thought it was a bit of rubbish that the boys don’t have anything to do while the girls smack into each other and fall on their faces,” old Mrs. Brownbread chuckled when she saw him. “I tried to have a word with the bosses about it when I was Frostfrau, but it’s a position with no real power, unfortunately.”

“You were Frostfrau?” Osmo Unknown said in disbelief. He couldn’t imagine Mrs. Brownbread ever having been young or quick, or even running at all without pain in her knees. She was the oldest person he’d ever known. She had more spots than a leopard and more wrinkles than a turtle. Osmo didn’t know precisely how old. He’d never dared to ask.

Mrs. Brownbread snorted. “Believe it or not, young man, I was not hatched from an egg already old and frail.” She gestured at the board. “Fancy a game while your father takes bets on how long the Mayor can go without falling on his rump roast?”

Mrs. Brownbread was old, yes. But she was also the best chess player in the history of Littlebridge. She hadn’t just told him that. It was a fact. There was a big silver plaque in Bodeworde’s Armory. Every summer the Armory sponsored a Tournament of Strategy and the champion got their name engraved on it. Vallu Brownbread appeared there thirteen times. 

In two more years, Osmo felt very certain he’d be standing in the Armory watching them put his name on the silver. He hadn’t told Mrs. Brownbread that he meant to beat her record. He didn’t have to. She’d known him for a player the day they’d met.

Brownbread racked up the pieces as the fiddles and drums picked up a melody a few feet away. Osmo Unknown could only be certain of a few things in this world: he loved his mother, anything you threw in the air came down again pretty quickly, Ivy Aptrick was the prettiest girl in the world, there was no such thing as monsters in the woods, and chess was the greatest game ever invented by mankind.

Mrs. Brownbread’s personal chess set was made entirely of other people’s pieces she’d won or stolen out of the poor saps she beat, all different colors and sizes. Osmo adored it. It was such a perfect, quiet show-off. One look at that thing and you knew where you stood: well below Mrs. Brownbread.

Osmo sat down eagerly. He didn’t even flinch when Harry Blust’s firecracker went off and the blindfolded girls exploded out into the park, followed by Mayor Lud stumbling after them yelling his head off as he wavered dangerously on his stilts.

Osmo took her rook right away. He felt the little victory flush through him, hotter than cider. He sent out his knight, a bit over-confident, but it worked. He took Brownbread’s pieces left and right. He’d never had a game go this well. Osmo started to frown. What was she playing at? Brownbread wasn’t the type to let him win. So there had to be a strategy to her losing half her board like it didn’t even matter.

A blindfolded girl burst through the trees, tripped over a backgammon table and landed face down in a pile of half-frozen leaves. She peeked under her kerchief and aimed herself back in the right direction without missing a breath.

Osmo rolled his eyes. “What a lot of fuss for some old branches and a bone,” he grumbled. Mrs. Brownbread’s head creaked up.

“You know what all this is about, don’t you, Osmo?” the old woman asked, peering out from under her quilt.

“I know you have your queen unguarded. Are you feeling all right?”

“I meant all this—” she gestured at the blind girls racing around the park.

“No, it’s about being able to stab Aldred Mummer in the leg if he tries to kiss you and no one minding one bit,” Osmo laughed. Brownbread didn’t. He shrugged, a little sad that she hadn’t liked his joke. It was a good joke, he thought. “Everybody has some sort of party to mark the beginning of winter. I’ve read all about Christmas and Ramadan and Hanukkah and Saturnalia. We have this. I thnk I’d rather Christmas.”

Mrs. Brownbread’s forehead gathered more wrinkles, if that was possible. “No, dear. It’s about something far older and deeper than any kiss. It’s about what happened to Katja Kvass.”

Mayor Lud careened by, barely keeping himself in the air, roaring and swooping down at the girls in the red blindfolds with his grotesque long hairy fake arms. 

“Not you too,” sighed Osmo. “You might as well tell me she used to spin straw into gold every Tuesday out on the Square.”

Mrs. Brownbread shrugged. “I know what I know and I am what I am. You’re awfully young to be such a cynic, little Unknown.” She deftly brutalized his flank of pawns in a sudden flurry. “It was all our fault. That’s what none of them will tell you.”

“There’s no such thing as—”

But Mrs. Brownbread wasn’t listening. “But that all happened long before Katja. She was so terribly pretty. The fountain doesn’t do right by that girl. Everyone loved her.”

“How old are you?”

Mrs. Brownbread looked down at her pieces. “Grief never really ends. It just changes.” She looked out over the children of Littlebridge, banging into trees and laughing and grabbing for each others’ hands. “This is how a village grieves for the terrible things that happened when it was young. For a long time it is a wound. Then it becomes a memory. Then it is history. Then, when everyone has quite, quite forgotten, we turn it into a party.”

Mayor Lud yelped with triumph. He’d finally got a girl by the sash of her dress. She yanked off her handkerchief jumped joyfully up and down, holding it up in her fist.

It was Ivy. Because of course it was Ivy.

Osmo watched the Mayor bend down to put the white crown on Ivy’s head while the village cheered. He still wobbled ridiculously on his stilts like the clown he was. The old man nearly dropped the crown, but Ivy reached up quickly and grabbed it before it toppled out of his thick fingers. Osmo watched her, full of longing. 

She looked so very much like a bride. 

Just as he was handing over the Nalbinder for the year, just as the bonfire light shone hot on the eel’s old jeweled eyes, a shot rang out over the village, ever so much louder than Harigold Blust’s firecracker. A shot, and then a scream. A scream no human throat could dream of. It sounded like the death of the sun.

And it came from the direction of the Fourpenny Woods.

Osmo watched Ivy’s face go pale and knew his had, too.

“Checkmate, little lovenunk,” Mrs. Brownbread said. She sat back on the stone chair with satisfaction, her fur coat closing her in like a bear’s ruff. 

Osmo looked down. She had him.

It takes forty minutes to run from the edge of the forest to the center of town. A little more if it’s snowing, a little less if the sun is out and no one’s crowding the streets.

Twenty minutes after the shot and the scream, Tilly Unknown stumbled into Bonefire Park. Her breath came quick and ragged. Her eyes shone wild and huge. And her hands gleamed slick with blood in the night. 

But the blood was not red, like the blood that pumps through your heart and mine.

It was gold.