Brain, you never imagined you'd like the taste of taffy, but you enjoyed the scent of it, like melted sugar, tickling your nose. You and Tulimaq carried the wrapped candy to Kolariq's cave by the beach, both glancing warily behind you at the town, wondering if anybody there wondered what you two needed with huge armloads of taffy.

You climbed down the short cliff to the beach first, and he handed you the wax bundles before climbing down himself. Then he frowned, dusting off his hands. "What do you think Kolariq is going to make us do with these?"

You passed half the taffy back to him. "Is that a question you actually want answered?"

He shrugged. "Seeing as how we're going to find out anyway, it might as well be sooner, right?"

You didn't argue. Just rolled your eyes and strolled across the sand to the cave in the cliffside, sand fading into rocks underfoot. Muttering under his breath, he followed you.

The cave only seemed uninhabited until you ducked in deep enough, past the hanging creepers. Then it opened into a wide sitting room, fireplace against the wall, plush chairs and rugs softening the chiseled walls to only slightly-less-than-imposing. One boy occupied the chair, the blond one, the one who was orphaned young enough he'd spent years as a street thief. Didn't remember his parents, though they were likely from the islands, to the north and east.

The blond boy glanced from the thick book in his hands at the crinkling wax paper, hair sweeping down his face. Tulimaq admitted weeks before that he liked the kid, and you nearly smacked him. He said that's why he fell for you, and then you couldn't decide if you should still smack him or hug him.

The other boy just pointed to the door. Then he stared at his book and sank even lower in the red giant of a chair.

The door stood ajar, but you entered cautiously. Kolariq, seated on the dirty table, sat frozen in a statue-pose like he was thinking deeply, and when the door into the hallway clicked shut he didn't flinch--unlike both of you. Footsteps echoed down the hall, and you worked your voice into a whisper to ask what that was about.

Kolariq rose, waving a hand. "Nothing," he said. "Merely an assignment." He smiled, eyes only for the taffy. "Tonight, four of you are going to stick together a skeleton."

You nearly dropped the wax paper rolls.

"We have a skeleton?" Tulimaq exclaimed.

He laughed at your dumbfounded expression. "Of course we do. He's fetching it from my closet right now."

***

That was the first time you ever saw a skeleton, brain. Jumbled on the table, it looked less probable than all of Kolariq's diagrams--which he kindly gave you stacks of to model the jangled heap of yellow, dust-covered bones after. Kolariq assigned you, Tulimaq, the yellow-haired boy, and his boyfriend--who'd fetched the skeleton--to put it together. Not that the pairing bothered you. But the boyfriend acted intimidated by Tulimaq. Like, he jumped when Tulimaq announced, "I call not working on the hands."

The blond boy lowered a diagram, eyebrow raised. "There's two hands. I suggest you two take the left half, and we'll take the right half."

The boyfriend nodded, and you decided to call him cyan-eyes. Instead of boyfriend.

Tulimaq sighed, but you nodded back. That was probably fair.

"We'll start at the foot." You picked a roll of wax-covered taffy from the stone floor.

"Great," Cyan-eyes said, plopping a second roll of taffy on the table. Half the bones rolled in his direction. "That means we'll do half the teeth." He grinned, poking his tongue through a gap in his mouth where some of his own teeth had yet to grow in.

Tulimaq pulled a wad of slightly-goopy taffy from the wax bundle you held. You set it on the table gently, then plucked up a toe bone--based on the closest diagram, you guessed the end of the fourth toe--and stuck it in the gob in his palms. Tulimaq pulled most of the taffy away, leaving a pale glob at the base of the bone. You hesitated, staring at the unsorted bones strewn across the table. "So...which one goes next?"

He peered over your shoulder at the diagram. "How should I know?"

"Maybe," you said, "we shouldn't stick things in taffy until we actually organize the bones."

Tulimaq grimaced, spreading sticky fingers. "Oops."

***

I avoid other travelers. There are rarely other travelers. Skeleton Cook keeps his hood up, and I carry the heavy sack and walk in front, hoping Skeleton Cook will look invisible as a regular traveler, walking the road in a cloak to ward off early-summer's chill, ice and snow receding like somebody with an old grudge they want to cling to. I have no cloak. Just a shawl, and the sack.

We reach the frost orchards before the sun falls; but that means little. Early summer's ice-grudge only lets go when the sun's eye glares more than half the day.

I conceal Skeleton Cook in a bush by the roadside, a bush covered in slushy fallen snow. He gives me my cloak back and I curl up in it, unable to sleep until the glaring sunset fades to black. Unable to sleep as the frost orchards frost over. Unable to sleep as under glimmering starlight, frozen whorls pattern across Skeleton Cook's ribs. Tracing them, I somehow drift, lost in a pattern I can't comprehend.

And wake, to the sunrise, mind aching and eyes wincing. I sit up, hand Skeleton Cook the cloak, and we keep walking. My hands pull yellow fruit from drooping trees, I pick violet berries from snow-covered bushes and devour them, I drop a trail of plant skins and when I look back, only our footprints tell us where we have gone.

***

Aching brain, you put that entire skeleton together, even though the ribs sagged. Even though you couldn't find a quarter of the wrist bones in your half. Even though all four of you had taffy smearing your skin up to your wrists, clumping in your hair, sticking on your cheeks.

"Please say we don't have to do that again," the blond boy grumbled when Cyan-eyes returned with Kolariq.

Kolariq ponderously circled the table, arms crossed, peering at the chest cavity, sniffing at the skull. "Not with candy, you don't." He puzzled over the missing wrist bones. You tried to ignore his assessment, carefully piling up the seven diagrams the four of you tried to use.

Cyan-eyes sighed in relief.

Kolariq said, "Now you get to learn how to do it with magic."

You paused. Turned away from the counter. Blond boy was gaping, one eye twitching.

"Is...the magic version less sticky?" Cyan-eyes asked. Blond boy managed to giggle through his unmoving jaw.

Kolariq stood from prodding the knees. "Obviously. But there's no working together to stitch a skeleton together."

You sighed, puffing air out your lips and up your face.

"You four may eat the rest of the taffy now." Kolariq approached the door to the hallway. "Although I would recommend bathing first."

You wrinkled your nose in disgust. Taffy you'd just been using to glue bones together?

Tulimaq glanced at you, then stuck his tongue out at Kolariq's backside.

***

I avoid other travelers. Even at the hill where I can first glimpse the city. I stop there for the night, build a shelter of wind-carved rocks, hide Skeleton Cook's body underneath them. I inhale through my nose, concentrate on the invisible strings holding him together, concentrate on this place in the boulder-strewn landscape. It won't be hard to find him again.

In the darkness, I toss and turn, bundled in a cloak. I took the ribbons from my hair two days ago, painted my face in a shard of broken ice, to practice. Washed the mistakes of fluttering eyelids in the stream of melting snow. I tell myself I don't have to be perfect. That it doesn't mean anything about me. I am an expert at disguising this jaw line. Softening my chin. Turning the crook of my nose into more of a pebble than a stone. I don't need to make my eyes look beautiful.

I roll over, stare at the mound of rocks piled atop the skeleton cook. It doesn't mean I still don't try to be.