I breathe out, through my mouth, aquamarine droplets spraying the air. Before they can land on the sack whose hole I'm stitching, I catch them and add them to the blood glob bobbing by my ear. The bandages sway from my cheek; my lips appreciate the open ocean air but the blood doesn't.

I knot off the end of my mending, slice the thread with the blood glob, and set the sack and the needle and the trailing thread aside. I lick salty lips, stick the bandages back onto my face, the blood floating by my ear I lower to the dry sand. It sponges away. Sadly. I might need it again.

The ocean laps, gurgles, rushes; I scoot forward until water claps my bare feet with filaments of frost. I breathe in, pull the taste of taffy bones into my nostrils.

The jet bird squawks from her perch atop the fish behind me, so at last--sack finally mended--those senses examine the jade-green creature. Its skin cocoons an intricate skeleton, ribs melded to shoulder blades to fin bones rising in a ridge down their back. The skull stares hollowly, all holes for eyes and ears and toothless jaw. Dense hips weigh the fish down--useful for staying underwater-- but one of them's cracked. Blood...

I shake my head and shudder. I ignore that, I reach back out to the ocean. Those senses seek out saltwater taffy beneath the lapping, rushing, clapping chill. I exhale, through my nostrils, stomach pulling in.

A graveyard of bones lies buried under the seafloor.

I grin, bandages stretching, I suck in a breath and the bones shiver. I straighten my spine and the underwater sand goes liquid with the bones' quaking. The devouring ocean's depths try to deny mr dredging these from their black graves, wet graves, buried by some kind of hunter. Jade-green creature.

The ocean water churns, bones yanked up from the seafloor, they violently heave against pressure threatening to crack them wide open.

The beach vibrates under my heels. The jet bird caws. I merely cackle in the heaving of my abdomen; salt streams down my cheeks and picked-white bones erupt in silent symphony from the jealous sea. They dance for me, cartwheeling closer.

The jet bird caws. Brings me back. Crystal sharp blood is picking its way down the sloping road. The taffy bones go slick, they clatter together, falling into the shallows. Plip, clack, plop-plip. I pull my knees in from dropping teeth biting the sand. The jet bird flutters from her green perch to the ground, and the child's footsteps crunch the pebbles at the end of the brick road.

I rise. Legs cold with the water and the breeze. The child's shadow curves around the cliff and stops, a hand swinging briefly into view. I tug the bandages from my skin, spiral blood into the sand, where it leaks out toward the ocean.

"Hello," I say. "Nice to meet you again."

"That was my fish," the child says, like clashing rocks.

The jet bird prances around a perfect ring of pebbles, around the jade-green creature and its rock.

"Your fish?" I say.

"I gotta kill that fish. I poked out its eye to make it mine."

"That's not how you claim something," I say.

"I made it mine," the hand flashes briefly into view and tumbling words build in his throat. I duck into the ocean of my mind of a silent language, slam words off my tongue, shooting across the tang of blood on my lips, I make the child's jaw go slack, mouth muscles numb. His tumbling words, half-complete, nonsensical, ricochet wildly into the beach, the cliff wall, the ocean. My hairs stand on end and tiny things in the sand spasm in pain.

"Aaaaaahh!" the child screeches. Crystal blood sharpens and he barrels around the cliffside at me.

The jet bird interrupts. By streaking across my vision. They both crash into the beach, pluming a cloud of sand. It carefully settles.

I stroll over to the sacks. I roll the patched-up one, holding thread, aside. Shaking dust off the other one, I walk to the waves. Toe about for picked-white bones, fish them from the sand with icy fingers. The jet bird perches atop the panting child's chest. "Aaaaah!" he rages, pummels at the bird with bony fists. She flutters out of reach, cawing. The child scrambles to his feet and charges at me, bent over in the shallows as I am.

I speak a word through blood-stained lips and his legs go limp. He splashes in the water, spluttering, screaming.

I stand up. Shake out a tiny fish skull and place it in my sack. "Please, stop screaming," I say, drowned out by the screaming. "And please stop trying to attack me." He thrashes in the water, eyes all murderous rage. "What did I even do to you?"

"Aaaaaaahh!" he screams.

"The dead fish was because of the bird," I say, fingers fishing about for long spine bones. "And also, that fish wasn't going to last, missing an eye, bleeding from a broken hip. And you tore out one of their fins."

He screams murderous rage. I shake my head, stoop over in the shallows. Fish bones can make nice necklaces. Wind chimes, whistles, though bird bones are better for those. Maybe I could give a kid in the town a whole skeleton set to assemble with string and glue. I could carve these large whale teeth into some kind of knives, sell those.

I fish them all out from the shallows, set them clinking in my swaying sack. I imagine there is clinking. Beneath the cacophony of the raging, splashing, screaming child behind me. The jet bird flutters back to prancing about a perfect circle of pebbles, wings spread, beak panting--I think she finds sweeter melodies in the screeching than I do.

***

Dear dead, two years out, you found yourself in a tent in some muggy woods, whatever were you doing there?

The answer you told yourself was that if you jumped into the fire the figures dancing there would shred you to pieces. And that sounded a whole lot worse.

Would there ever come a night, aboard some stinky boat, or in some other woods, where that wouldn't sound a whole lot worse?

What were you doing there, two years out?

Long story, you didn't have enough paper wads to pay for a room in the town. Hence the tent, doorway flapping open, the ribbons to tie it shut long since chewed to stubs by old insects. Hence the sleeping pad, in musky need of washing. Hence the jet bird in a nest of sticks and stones in the corner, panting in her sleep. You were not asleep.

A campfire crackled out in the woods, by some other tent dwellers apparently unbothered enough by the muggy heat to desire a fire's company. The flickers of light pierced the animal skin wall behind you. Shadows lunged and leapt in your periphery, you tried closing your eyes to block them out but then your ears interpreted the crackling pops as snickering laughs, as howling promises of how they died (each one of them died because of you), and as whispered stories eager to dance on your eyelids.

"Whatever are we doing here?" you whispered to the jet bird, eyes aching, awake.

Technically, your backpack held enough bone necklaces and flower wreaths you could have bought enough paper wads. To buy a room to sleep, something nice to eat. Except the jet bird, silent on your shoulder, had spooked the bread seller who broke down in tears and named you menace to her wares.

You blamed the jet bird for spooking the seller, even though the bird didn't do anything. You didn't do anything either, except accidentally shift your shirt in the muggy heat.

"Whatever are we doing here?" you whispered to the jet bird, ice cube self as hollow as an ice cup. "Getting kicked out of towns like a menace to the markets?"

The thing was, your ears didn't really hear the fire crackles as snickering laughs, howls about how the dead people died. You just pretended that was the real reason you couldn't look away from the shadows scarring the ceiling. Because if you let that reminder die, how bright claws could rip you to ribbons if you joined them, you would not have any better reason to be there, so alone in the muggy woods, heat suffocating you from sleeping.

***

The thought of a market up the sloping road makes me pause, black thread and sharpened needle poking through fish teeth in the beginnings of a necklace. The child still screams, though he has pulled himself from the icy water. His hair plasters itself nearly to his nose, a single glittering eye wells with tears. That is progress, I suppose.

The thought of the market just up the sloping road makes me hesitate. Can they hear the shouting? How far the other way does the beach go before we find docked boats, fishers who are still repairing their nets falling silent in an unasked question; how long has the screaming gone on, what could be happening down that way?

My shoulder blades prickle. My senses reach out for hammering hearts, gratefully finding the shoreline empty of humans. But still--the road up to the market bustles; can they hear us?

I glance at the jet bird, her talons digging shallow pits in the gritty sand. Folding the unfinished tooth necklace in one hand, I grab the two sacks, one weighty and damp, one empty. To the jet bird's glance, I stride down the shore, around the curling cliff away from the market. She flutters after. The child screams louder, his jaw has begun working, since he screeches vowels other than "ah." Like "ooh." I release his limp legs, but he doesn't seem to notice, or care, since he stays sprawled on the sand. Still screaming.

I don't ask why he's still screaming. In regards to the jet bird though, I do point back at the jade-green creature. Her blood goes breezy, light, and I take that as she doesn't care anymore. So I shrug. We stroll away down the beach, the screams fading out around the curve of the cliff.

The beach lengthens on this side of the rock face, less a narrow stretch between ocean and cliff, more a sprawling field. Narrow wooden boats, carved like sickles, line the beaches near the yellow rock. Most of them sit like mushroom caps, shiny bowls pointed toward the sun, points digging into the sand.

The jet bird and I slosh through the waves to avoid the tangles of net covering most of the exposed beach. I question the logic of leaving the net right at the edge of where the sea can reach it, but I am no fisher. And it is not my net.

The jet bird flutters to the boats, dancing up and down the mushroom caps, which I pretend not to notice. If she breaks one I have nothing to do with it. Bone necklaces and blades I doubt can buy a broken boat.

I squint at the yellow cliffs, bandages on my cheeks crinkling. Surely this town has more than one path down to the beach. Surely, not every fisher with their boats and nets walk up and down through the market every time. What if, I purse my lips, a fisher leaves their paddle hanging by the door, only realizes it after shoving their boat onto the water, then has to splash back to shore and go through the crowded market just to fetch the paddle?

Not that I know much of fishers. Or where they keep their paddles.

Sudden silence. I turn around, to the ocean, but it is not the water. Swishing waves babble over my feet. It is not the jet bird, talons softly clicking. I spin toward the corner of the cliff and reach out for crystalline-jagged blood, discover a child too distant to just be sprawling on the beach. I blink in confusion. He's not climbing the road.

I drop the sack of bones, the unfinished necklace, needle and thread, I inhale sharply through my nose and tug the child by his blood. Carefully pull him by the bones, against the clawing waves sucking him under. The jet bird caws, and I nod, whether she knows what that means she erupts into the air. A boat cracks. I pretend not to hear that.

***

Dear dead, you and Tatter-cloak left the tiny village before daybreak, eyes bleary, backs achy with the sloped beach you'd slept on.

You plodded off the shore toward the tundra, the tiny village quiet behind you. Tatter-cloak sighed, lifting a seed pit from the pocket under his ragged cloak.

"Nice memory," you muttered.

"Yeah. It feels like goodbye."

You hesitantly nodded at that. What, precisely, had felt like a goodbye about this tiny village, or that fruit?

You both paused in the patch of pale green grasses with the queen's scattered bones. The jet bird lay curled in a bowl of the ground, her jet feathers unfolding into a wing, a neck, to blink up at your presence.

"Or like we could have done better," Tatter-cloak said, sinking to his knees. "The queen would've tried harder for them."

"You can't convince people when they don't believe what you say," you tugged the queen's bones into a skeleton, ash-stained, facedown in the soil. You both just stared at it.

Until Tatter-cloak sighed. "Let's just go."

"Right," you pushed yourself to your feet. Scooped the foot bones into the ribcage. Rattling, the queen's bones rose to hands and knees and crawled away, leading you into the contextless tundra, south to the house between two white hills. Hardly home, but if nothing else, the sea cat would shiver with gratitude for another set of bones to decorate her sitting room.