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one.
    “Are you attempting to be menacing?” she asked.
    “Maybe.”
    “You’re failing at it. I’ve nothing to fear from you. You shall not linger in this world for much longer.”
    “You’ve managed to stick around a long time. Why can’t I?”
    “I never surrendered my hold on my bones,” she said. “I renew my energies by bathing my skeleton in blood. You performed a similar trick with your knife. But now that you’ve foolishly removed it from the mortal world, you’re fated to fade away. All actions require energy, even the actions of a spirit. Currently, you’re empowered by the dragon blood that the bone-handled knife drank in Greatshadow’s realm. That magic may sustain you for some time. But, with no further source of blood, your energies will fade. One day you won’t even have the power to remember your name. Soon after, you’ll vanish from this world forever.”
    I ground my ghost teeth. Could I believe her? Where was the profit in lying to me? On the other hand, what was the profit in telling me the truth? “My actual bones aren’t all that far from here. What if Sorrow builds me a new body like yours?”
    “I think cast iron breasts would look even more ridiculous on you than they do on me.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “Abandon hope, Stagger. Though I despised you in life, I’m not so hard-hearted I take pleasure as you suffer in death. You love Infidel, but her love for you will only lead her to a tragic end. In the most probable future, Infidel will die on her journey to Qikiqtabruk. Your daughter will never be born. Do you wish to linger as an impotent observer to the doom of those you hold dearest? Move on, poor ghost, to the great unknown.”
    “I can’t help but get the feeling you’re manipulating me,” I said. “You’re taunting me so I’ll do something. But what? Just tell me what you want. Maybe if you’d tried that with Infidel, she would have become the savior you wanted her to be. By trying to treat her like a puppet, you’ve gotten her strings all tangled.”
    “There is nothing more I need from you, Stagger. Return to your bones.”
    “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
    She raised her ghostly hand and waved me away.
    Suddenly, I was on a sandy bluff, overlooking the sea. This was where Infidel had buried my body. The sun was low against the water, almost gone. My grave of white sand had been somewhat flattened by wind and rain, but there was a man-sized bulge in the earth that hinted that bones lay beneath.
    “Maybe you can get rid of me that easily,” I said, scratching my ghost scalp. What now? Was Infidel really in danger? Or was the Black Swan trying to trick me into stopping her mission? If so, how? What could I do?
    Impotent observer of doom. That didn’t sound pleasant at all. But as long as that little band of hair was on Infidel’s hand, there was at least some small part of me left in the world. Blood wasn’t the only source of magic. I was determined to hold on powered by nothing but love.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
    SERIOUS, HARD-WORKING PEOPLE
     
     
    T HE SUN WAS below the horizon but the sky remained luminous, casting eerie shadows across the hill that held my grave. In the dimming light I stared at the ground, imagining my body six feet below. Not even a month had gone by. How much of me was recognizable underneath this mound of sand? I’d done a lot of digging around the island. Some places in the deep jungle, the soil was so dank and worm-ridden that a corpse would disappear inside a week. Here, on a windswept hilltop, in salty sand, baked daily beneath a tropical sun... perhaps my corpse had mummified. Certainly my bones were intact. Probably my teeth and nails and hair. The colorful shroud Infidel had fashioned from a stolen pygmy blanket might still be recognizable.
    Why I found it comforting to think that I might be slowly turning into jerky instead of jelly, I can’t say. I suppose that as long as I have bones, I have hope.