Broke Palace

by Joe Ducato

         Skittles hurled a rock at the Snake River Bridge.  It bounced off a girder in a rousing C-sharp. Skittles had a canon for an arm.  She had even been banned from pitching in Little League because ‘her fastball was that lethal,’ they had claimed.  Skittles, though, felt her aim was true and came to doubt herself after that.  The boys walking with her swore the bridge moved. 

         ‘The abandoned always find one another,’ Skittles thought and didn’t know why.  Words were always coming to her; from where, she didn’t know.  The secret stream she called it but never told a soul.

         ‘It’s like a law,’ she finished then swept the words away.

         She had never been abandoned.  Neither had the boys. Itchy and Z.  They just felt that way sometimes, like all 16-year-olds.  Like everyone.

         “I don’t think I can do this,” Itchy confessed.

         “It’s only an hour,” Z groaned, “Everyone goes up there when they turn 16, and everyone comes back, right?”

         They walked halfway across the bridge and stopped to gaze out and over Snake River to the far hillside where Broke Palace sat alone and stoic like a dog who doesn’t know it will die.

         The massive wood structure, Broke Palace may have been broken but that didn’t diminish its greatness.  It was a true palace, and as far back as anyone could remember, had always been on the hill and had always been abandoned.  It was distinguished by a tall center gable piercing the sky with 2 shorter gables at its sides making it, from a distance, look like praying hands.  There was plenty of danger there too and enough folk lore to fill a cargo ship; stories of a faceless figure sometimes seen in a window; a figure who came to be known as The Count.  The legend of The Count fueled imaginations of the young at heart for miles.

         Skittles and the boys decided that after their hour, their rite of passage in the dark, at the Palace, they would swear forever friends.  Standing on the Snake River Bridge that day, it felt cool to be alive and more cool to be 16.

         They crossed the bridge and found the path that would lead them to the Palace.  During the steepest climb, Skittles told the boys they would spend the hour in a tiny room she’d heard about at the tip of the praying hands.  That made Itchy even itchier.  The closer they got, the more the Palace morphed into a lioness in the Land of Enormous Beasts.

         They stood at its door like ants at a pyramid.  The door was just hanging; nearly off.  A dead tree had fallen and was resting against a side wall, and the air smelled of danger. 

         Skittles tip-toed past the splintered door and into the structure.  She found herself in a huge foyer with the boys close behind.  They stopped and stood wide-eye and long-jawed.  It was a true cathedral.  They had never seen so much nothing taking up so much space.  It felt almost holy.  They had to strain their necks just to see the shadows of the upper beams.  

         Then came the flash; the white flash that happens when things turn on a dime.  It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it happened to them that day.

         There he was, standing there like a single palm tree in a desert, The Count himself.  It was the moment the needle drops on fear and the record skips, except for some reason, Skittles’ record played on.  She stood firm in the secret stream, her eyes focused on The Count.  He indeed had a face and was smaller than all the stories; not much of a count at all.  More like a favorite bus driver or a sad guy at the park.

         Itchy and Z heard a scream, although no one had screamed.  It was the scream inside your head when you’re too scared to scream on the outside.  Instincts took over and the boys turned and ran for the door, and even though Skittles wasn’t scared she found herself running too.  Six feet ran out of the Palace as if connected like the feet of a caterpillar.

         But halfway to the path Skittles stopped.  She realized that she didn’t want to be part of a caterpillar, that she couldn’t be part of a caterpillar.  The boys though, were gone, bound for Mexico, a long-distance train running through the rain.

         For Skittles, the song playing in her head played beautiful and clear.  She marched bravely back into the Palace unafraid; as unafraid as she’d ever been in her life.  She walked up to The Count.

          “You’re just a little, old man,” she mused.

         The Count turned away, then back.

         “You’re here,” he said, “Finally!  Here!”

         He rubbed his hands together.

         “I’ve tried.  It’s too strong and I’m too weak.  I’ve wasted all my long years!”

         He smiled, toothless and sincere.

         “Have you asked Him?” The Count drawled, “Have you talked with God?  Can I leave it?  Is it done – that which can never be undone?  Tell me, please.”

         Skittles noticed 2 floor boards, loosened and stacked, at the old man’s feet and empty spaces in the floor where the boards had been.

         “Did you do that?” Skittles asked.

         The Count held up bloodied hands.

          “Ask Him, please.  I’ve tried my best, but my best won’t do anymore.”

         “How long have you been here?” Skittles asked.

         “My poisoned brain won’t say.”

         He looked around.

         “Prison…”

         “Prison?” Skittles winced, “God no!”

         “God yes,” the old man countered.

         “No,” Skittles insisted, “Not a prison.  I’ve stood at my window many nights and dreamt I was here.  Not a prison.  Not a prison at all.  To me, a palace.”

         “A palace?” the old man asked.

         “Yes.”

         He rubbed the rooster skin covering his throat.

         “And shelter in the woods for the gentle,” Skittles added.

         The old man raised his hands high, shouted to the rafters.

          “I’ve tried my best!”

         Something up high fluttered its wings then settled down.

         Skittles inched closer.

         “I’ll help you put the boards back.  You can’t, not with your hands.  You’ll make them worse.”

         The old man shook his head.

         “What’s done is done.  It’s the law.”

         “No,” Skittles countered, “Not the law.”

         “How do you know the law?  So young.”

         Then they turned their heads.  The boys were back, standing in the doorway with long sticks.

         “For me, they come?” the old man asked.

         “No.  They’re my friends.”

         “Friends?”

         “Get away from him,” Itchy warned.

         “It’s ok,” Skittles held up a hand.

         The old man dropped to his knees and wept.  The boys raised their sticks.   

         “No!” Skittles shouted.

         She bent down and helped the old man up.  He started to walk and Skittles walked with him, a hand on the bottom of his elbow.   The old man stopped at a closed door, faced it like it was a lion’s den.  Skittles pushed the door open, unveiling a dark, empty room. 

         “Did something happen here?”

         She gestured to Itchy who dropped the stick, pulled a candle from his pocket, and a lighter, lit the candle and brought it to Skittles, avoiding eye contact with the old man, then shuffled back to Z and picked up the stick again.

         The Count stared into the room.

         “Heart of darkness,” was all he said.

         Skittles placed her hand over the old man’s hand.  She could feel the dried, crusted blood.

         “He’s crazy,” Z whined.

         The Count turned to Skittles, stared at her young face.

         “Love dies,” he said then lowered his head.

         “No,” Skittles said, “Nothing ever dies.”

         “How do you know, so young?”

         That was the moment.  The moment Skittles knew where the words came from.  She looked down.  Her feet were in clear water, in the stream, surrounded by large stones with words written on each stone.  Skittles read those words aloud.  She knew then, her aim was true, that it had been true all along.  Her forever friends watched in awe.

         “We build,” she said, “It’s what we do.  Sometimes the ones we build for don’t, won’t or can’t stay and we feel like our home has been abandoned, but no home is ever truly abandoned.  Someone you may never know may have placed dreams there, maybe a little one who was lost and no longer is because of what you’ve made and you never knew it, never knew what good work you did.  Leaves fall in patterns we don’t understand.  Only the One who made the woods knows why leaves fall and land how they do.”

         “Wow,” Z turned to Itchy.

         The boys lowered their sticks and joined Skittles and the old man.   

         Skittles slowly entered the room, leading with the candle.  Orange dancers leapt from the flame and onto the walls, spreading joy and light on everything it could reach.

BIO

Joe Ducato lives in Utica, NY. Publications include Santa Barbara Literary Journal, Home Planet News, Modern Literature and Metaworker, among others.