By These Ten Bones (14 page)

Questions for the Author

Clare B. Dunkle

What did you want to be when you grew up?

When I was five, I wanted to be a doctor. I had one of those little doctor kits with the yellow stethoscope and pink candy pills, and was forever wrapping up my stuffed animals in gauze and performing dangerous surgeries on them.

When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

In 2001, right after finishing the manuscript to
The Hollow Kingdom
. Before that, it didn't even occur to me.

What's your first childhood memory?

I have lots of memories from when I was two—they're supposed to erase as you age, but someone forgot to rewind my brain, I guess. I remember being carried in to wake up my father, and my mother said to me, “Give your father a big hug because it's his birthday.” I didn't say anything because I think I must have been too young to talk, but I remember thinking
So what?
because I didn't know what a birthday was.

As a young person, who did you look up to most?

My childhood was chaotic, lonely, and neglected. But I was blessed with fantastic teachers and librarians who saw how badly I needed mothering and who gave me the guidance and praise I didn't know I needed.

What was your worst subject in school?

Chemistry—hands down. I have no idea why!

What was your best subject in school?

English, which makes sense.

Also, I sat behind Libba Bray in high school English class. She usually wore her red hair in a ponytail, and she pulled her hair back in this line of four or five different-colored bands. I used to marvel at how great she looked. Even back then, she had style.

How did you celebrate publishing your first book?

You know, I don't think we did. We probably popped a bottle of bubbly, and I know I mailed copies of the book out to all my nieces and nephews.

Where do you write your books?

I wrote this book in Germany, in a rat-infested garret! Well, maybe “infested” is a bit harsh, but I certainly wrote my early books in a garret, and there certainly was a rat living on the other side of the plaster wall, in our neighbor's attic. I could hear him chewing sometimes. (He probably thought he lived in an author-infested garret.)

Where do you find inspiration for your writing?

Everywhere! Nothing is off limits.

Are you a morning person or a night owl?

I'm a night owl, but nowadays I get up at six o'clock anyway. There's so much that needs to get done.

What's your idea of the best meal ever?

Anything that ends with a piece of pie. Or starts with a piece of pie. Or consists of nothing but pie! I've made my own fruit pies and lemon meringue pies since grade school.

Which do you like better: cats or dogs?

I love dogs, but I love cats more. Dogs are complete barbarians compared to cats.

What do you value most in your friends?

I value most my friends' willingness to put up with me. That's not something I think I could handle!

Where do you go for peace and quiet?

Into my own imagination, or into a book.

What makes you laugh out loud?

Stupid puns, news anchors being pretentious, pretty much everything. I don't have a very cultivated sense of humor. Whenever something funny happens in one of my books, you can be pretty sure I was giggling while I wrote it.

What's your favorite song?

Pachelbel's Canon. I think it's what heaven will sound like.

Who is your favorite fictional character?

I couldn't choose, not with all the characters I've created for my books. In my mind, they crowd around with big eyes, like dogs in a shelter: “Pick me! Pick me!” I couldn't play favorites like that.

Aside from my books, though, I have to say that Mordion Agenos, from Diana Wynne Jones's
Hexwood,
is a fantastic character and will always be a favorite of mine.

What are you most afraid of?

Velocity! When things start to go very fast, they worry me. (Not when I'm in control, though; then it's all right. I used to drive ninety miles an hour on the German autobahn.)

What time of year do you like best?

Autumn, when the nights get long and windy and the leaves go skittering across the street. That's when the world of the imagination draws near and touches our world.

What's your favorite TV show?

Lost.
Every single episode. Even the ones that didn't make sense.

If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you want for company?

A master shipbuilder! One who also knows how to make useful things out of coconut fibers.

If you could travel in time, where would you go?

Back in time to the nearest broker's office to invest in Apple, Microsoft, and Pixar. Be honest, now! Wouldn't you?

What's the best advice you have ever received about writing?

My high school English teacher, Willa Mae Burlage, taught me to picture my audience before I start to write. Since writing is communication, we have to understand where it's going if we want it to be effective.

What do you want readers to remember about your books?

I don't care if readers remember my name or the titles or plots of my books, but I want them to remember my characters always. I want them to think of my characters as if they're alive.

What would you do if you ever stopped writing?

I have no clue! I'm not sure I could stop writing now. I might not get
published,
but I'm pretty sure I would still
write.

What do you like best about yourself?

I can count on myself to handle pretty much any emergency I could think of and deal with it sensibly. I know; I've seen me do it!

What is your worst habit?

Squirming away from hard work, which is why I'm answering this question before I get around to figuring out what to say about the previous three.

What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment?

Raising my two daughters and sharing with them the things I love, including reading.

I still remember how terrified I was when I found out I was pregnant. The idea of having to keep some zany, helpless, high-energy little being alive long enough for it to grow some good sense of its own left me hyperventilating. And now they're such gorgeous, remarkable young women. It's like a miracle!

Where in the world do you feel most at home?

In a library. Of course!

What do you wish you could do better?

Squeeze more hours into my days. I feel like I'm in one of those old movies where the time is sped up and people in black suits and bowler hats run everywhere.

What would your readers be most surprised to learn about you?

My daughter says you'd be surprised to learn that I didn't go to my prom or my high school graduation. (Bless her heart, she's lovely and popular—she has No Idea!) But I think you might be surprised to learn that I lived in Germany for seven years and visited fourteen different countries while I was there. It still surprises me to think that I had such an exciting opportunity, and I hope my life holds many more good surprises.

Eleven-year-old Tabby is stunned to find out
that ghosts are the least of her worries when
she gets a job as a maid at Seldom House.

Turn the page for a haunting excerpt from

THE HOUSE OF DEAD MAIDS

by Clare B. Dunkle

I was not the first girl she saw, nor the second, and as to why she chose me, I know that now: it was because she did not like me. She sat like a magistrate on the horse hair sofa, examining me for failings. “Stop staring,” she snapped. “You'd think I was a world's wonder.”

I looked away, thinking my own thoughts. She couldn't stop me from doing that. She had a sweep of thick brown hair tucked up into a bun, and she wore a somber black wool dress. Her hands were soft: lady's hands. Her face was anything but soft. It looked cold and hard and pale, like stone. Like a newly placed tombstone.

“I mustn't take a half-wit, though,” she said reluctantly, as if she would like to do it. She seemed to consider idiocy the greatest point in my favor.

“Oh, our Tabby's no half-wit,” countered Ma Hutton. “She just has that look. You did say you wanted to see an ugly one, miss.”

I stared at the braided rag rug, thinking about the black dress. She was in mourning. For whom? She was a handsome woman and might once have been beautiful.

“Tabby's the best knitter in the school,” Ma Hutton was proclaiming. “She can turn out a sock in a day. And handy! She's stronger than she looks, and she sews a pretty buttonhole, miss.”

“No scars,” interrupted the woman. “You can swear to that, you said. This is of the utmost importance. I cannot bear deformity.”

“She hasn't a scar that I recollect,” Ma Hutton said slowly, beginning to fidget with her hands. She was wanting to knit, I knew. She hated to put down her knitting. “Tabby hasn't worked in the fields, have you, child? She's done light work.”

“No broken bones? I must be positive on this point.”

Ma Hutton signed for me to speak.

“I've broken naught, miss,” I answered, meeting the woman's gaze as a token I was telling the truth. She winced, and her eyes glittered. When a dog looked like that, people knew to leave it alone.

“No relations, you said,” she reminded Ma Hutton, turning away from me.

“None, miss,” Ma Hutton assured her. “Tabby doesn't even know where she's from.”

Before a kindly soul had brought me to Ma Hutton's knitting school, I had grown up in the kitchens of big houses, polishing boots and running errands. I had been told that my surname was Aykroyd, although I knew no one else who had it. Most likely it had been my mother's name. I could dimly recall a face when I thought of
mother
, although the face was so young and frightened that it confused me. The one thing I held as a certainty had been dinned into my ears by angry cooks and housekeepers. I had no father at all, quite a failing in a little child.

“She'll do,” said the woman. “Tell her to fetch her things.”

I hadn't much to take from the room I shared with eight other girls, except an old greatcoat someone had given me out of charity and the pattens, or wooden clogs, which we wore outside in the mud. Then I went to the room where Ma's students sat knitting and bade them good-bye.

One of the girls who had been passed over came to whisper with me in the doorway. “She's been here before, that woman,” she said. “She took Izzy with her last time.”

I said, “I don't remember a girl named Izzy.”

“It was years ago, when I was new here. Izzy must be grown now, and run away with a soldier most likely, and miss needs a new girl to beat with her hairbrush. I got a shivery feeling when she talked to me. Didn't you? I wouldn't be you for a thousand pounds.”

I returned to the parlor. Money had changed hands while I was gone, a substantial sum by the look of things because Ma Hutton's typical good humor had blossomed into rapture. She went so far as to wax sentimental over me, though I had never been a favorite, and bade me keep my knitting needles and my ball of worsted in its little rag pocket as a parting gift from the school. “And wrap up warm,” she counseled, pulling the greatcoat around me. “I don't doubt you'll have a long journey.” But where we were going, I hadn't the heart to ask, and no one bothered to say.

We were in April then, but the spring had been cold, and the day was misty, as dark at noon as it had been at dawn. The houses across the street looked gray and insubstantial, shadows rather than stone.

The woman in black pushed me towards an open cart waiting in the lane. Its driver had taken the precaution of bringing a lighted lantern with him, and he swung down from the seat and held up the light to view me. “What have you brought us?” he boomed. “Why, it's a quaint little body, to be sure!”

It isn't that I'm so bad to look at, for my nose is straight and I have all my teeth, but my eyelashes are sparse and pale, and my eyes are no particular color. Add to that my stature, which is very small, and you'll find folks who call me a quaint body yet.

The man who bent over me was long-limbed, with a round face buffeted red by wind and weather. “Pleased to meet you, little maidie,” he said, shaking hands. “My name's Arnby. You look a right canny lass. How old would you happen to be?”

“I'm eleven, sir. My name's Tabitha Aykroyd, but people call me Tabby.”

“So many years packed in such a tiny frame! I can tell she's got us a good one. Now, listen, little maid. If she gives you any cause for grief,” and he nodded towards the woman who stood behind me, “just you come tell me all about it, and I'll soon set her to rights.”

This alarmed me, as it seemed an impertinence. I didn't want to start off badly with my new employer. “Please, miss,” I said, turning to the woman, “what am I to call you?”

She made no reply, but pushed past me and scrambled awkwardly onto the seat of the cart. Arnby stood by and laughed to see her do it.

“She'd tell you to call her Miss Winter if she could swallow her pride to speak,” he said. “But call her the old maid, dearie. Everyone else does.”

Our journey took two long, tedious, dreadfully foggy days. The creeping mist swallowed us up and showed neither landmark nor horizon, and often Arnby had to walk ahead and lead the horse by the bridle. It seemed to me that we jolted up and down and went nowhere at all. I tried to knit my sock, but the cart shook so that it made me ill.

“It's wondrous weather,” declared Arnby once, climbing back onto his seat. “The season's so late that the ewes have lost lambs, and the planting's only half done. The old earth's tired, that's what, and last year's storms and floods have vexed her. People don't think on the earth enough, and that's what causes the trouble. They plow at her and rip food from her, toss their trash and middens on her, bore mine holes into her, and never a word of thanks do they say.”

“Shut up, old fool,” snapped Miss Winter.

They were like that the whole journey, silent or quarrelling, and I was sorely puzzled how to take it. At first, I had cast Miss Winter in the role of housekeeper and Arnby as a servant, but seeing him speak so free, I thought he must be the farm steward and she a maid or cook. Soon I didn't know what to think, nor what their relation might be. I couldn't imagine steward and housekeeper taking such a frightful journey together, and that just to fetch home a new maid.

The matter must have weighed on my mind, for as I dozed, I dreamt a strange thing. “Just you try it,” I thought I heard Arnby say, and his voice was as soft as silk. “I'll grab you before you take two steps and smash your skull like pie crust. Why else do you think I brought my staff? We don't need you, you know. Not the maids.”

I sat up in a great fright at this, sure I'd fallen in with robbers, but the two of them were silent, sitting side by side on the cart bench the same as they always did.

Arnby heard me move and smiled over his shoulder. “The little maidie's been winking,” he said. “Did you have good dreams? Take care you don't catch cold.” And he reached back to tuck me up warm in some sacking.

Partway through the second day, we left the horse and cart at a farmhouse and proceeded in a little open boat. Arnby plied the oars vigorously to make progress upriver. I found that mode of travel more interesting at first, for the fog couldn't hold to the surface of the water where the current flowed, but tore into streamers or hung above us like a flimsy ceiling. When I looked to the shore, I could make out a few feet of steep bank here and there, or a line of trailing underbrush. Now and then I caught a glimpse of cliff walls.

But it was very gloomy on the river, with cold drops sliding down our hair and wetting our clothes; I soon was damp through and wished the endless bumping about would end. Then the river narrowed to a stream, shallow but fast, and Arnby had hard work to pole along the bottom. The night drew in, and Miss Winter began to fuss and scold, and I curled up in my greatcoat and tried to sleep to get away from them both.

How it ended I barely knew, but I remember the light shining on a small beach of shingle and Arnby carrying me along, while Miss Winter held the lantern before us and looked like nothing but a white face and a pair of hands with her black dress swallowed up in the night. I didn't want to be held and would have liked to get down, but protesting the point seemed so like their bickering that I did not know how to do it politely, and at the last I felt so tired and unhappy that I did not do it at all.

And that is how I came to my new house, carried in like a wax doll, and a bad business it was then, and a worse business to follow.