Waltz of the Bone King

He was called the Bone King, and for good reason. He was just a skeleton, dressed in a tattered cloak with a tarnished crown upon his head.

He wasn't always this way. Once, he had been a mighty king, alive with flesh and fingers. With a kingdom and a heart that beat with valor. 

Over time, his kingdom had fallen. His people died. His castle crumbled and his world turned to ash. Until everything he had once known was no longer. All he was left with was a graveyard of bones and an eternity of memories.

This graveyard spanned for miles and miles. The Bone King had not been to every corner yet. In his lonely nights and even lonelier days, he would explore the graves and trace his bone fingers across the names, hoping that they would spark a memory. But how could one remember anything of the past when one lived for more than a thousand years?

The Bone King drifted through the graves, exploring an especially hilly area he had not yet covered. As he stepped through the grass, he admired the tall oaks, some almost as old as he, but not quite. The trees' limbs bowed down to shade the crumbling graves and give comfort to the dead. The Bone King paused before an especially beautiful tree and placed his hand upon the bark. He wished he had skin again, so that he might feel the roughness of it.

Walking along, he trailed around the tree and paused. Something was there, in the grass. It looked like...well, the Bone King wasn't sure what it looked like. It was red, and it fluttered, just like his tattered cloak. The Bone King bent to take a closer look and parted the grass.

There, lying before him was a crumpled mass of fabric and limb. He reached out a trembling hand and pulled on different ends of this creature, hoping to get it to stand. At last, he had it on two feet and leaning against the tree.

It was a woman. The Bone King stared in utter shock. She was beautiful, with pale skin and rosy cheeks, black hair and dark eyes. But something was wrong. She wasn't breathing. With bones rattling, he reached for her chest and there he felt a cage-like casing. She wasn't real. The Bone King sighed and stepped back, disappointed. He had longed for someone, anyone else, but instead, of a living person, or even a skeleton like him, he had found a machine.

She was an automaton. He hadn't seen one since the destruction of his kingdom. It was a rare find, to be sure. It was a miracle that she even survived the destruction in one piece. Again, the Bone King sighed. He may as well find out what it was she was made to do. Maybe it would entertain him for a few moments.

After leaning the automaton against his ribcage, the Bone King reached into her back and turned the key. Gears whirred and clicked to life. The automaton jerked upright and lifted her hands. She looked down at her skirt, then lifted a tattered piece in one gloved hand, and lifted the other at shoulder height. She stood there as if waiting, in her shiny white gloves.

She was waiting for him. Shaking so hard that his bones rattled, the Bone King placed a hand on her waist and threaded his fingers through hers. After a moment, she began to dance.

His movements were clumsy at first, but soon, the Bone King found the rhythm to the silent song to which she danced. Together, they danced around the graves through the moonlit graveyard. The crows that usually watched him in silence circled and danced around them, landing on headstones and letting out raucous caws. It was almost like music.

The Bone King looked into the automaton's brown eyes and he felt himself grow flesh, muscle, veins, blood, and lastly, a heart. He was in the castle, dancing with his beautiful wife through the ballroom without a care, moving through the music that drifted down on them like it came from the open sky itself.

He drifted back to a time when the grass was green and the flowers bloomed. Back to a time when people sang and danced, a time when people laughed and shouted and cried and held hands and kissed and lived. 

The Bone King and the automaton swayed to a music only they could hear, twirling around tombstones and each other, lost in a world of their own. The Bone King closed his eyes and he could hear a whisper of his name.

His name.

What was it again? It had been a strong name, a kingly name. One befitting the greatest king the world had ever known. That is, until....

The dance slowed and gears clicked. The automaton came to a stop, poised with her head tilted back and her tiny lips curved in a smile. The Bone King stared at her a moment, a deep sadness overtaking him. If he had a heart, he was sure it would have broken.

She had brought him back to life. But just like everything else, it had just been a fleeting dream. A small moment in time. He uncurled his fingers from hers and stepped back.

He was the Bone King once again, no longer a king of a kingdom and people, and a world of plenty.

Once more, he was the king of nothing.

THE END