The boy appeared on the day Pluto vanished from the sky. He stood in the middle of the town square, transfixed by the fountain. A hand shielded his eyes from the sun’s midday light. His bare feet rested flat on the boiling cobblestones. Baggy brown clothes hung off his small frame as he watched water flow from the statue of a gondolier into the nine-sided basin like his invisible gondola had taken on water. The statue looked toward the sun’s resting place and held a long, serpentine oar in the water with both hands. But his hands were made of bones, and instead of a face, a skull sat underneath the flat straw hat.

According to town legend, the town’s founder had been returning from a European tour when he came upon this open meadow, the surrounding trees leaning toward the middle of the round expanse like a dome. Enchanted by the canals of Venice and haunted by the catacombs of Paris, the founder immediately stopped in this natural observatory—where the sky was so close and death so hidden—and erected the gondolier statue. The fountain had been built around it, the town square around the fountain, and the houses around the town square. Radiating from the fountain’s nine sides were nine districts—Recreation, Education, Agriculture, Banking, Industry, Theology & Tradition, Justice, Healing, and Memorial.

“Excuse me, are you lost?” A young woman rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder, sucking in a sharp breath at the chill of the boy’s skin. Even through the thin fabric, the boy felt like an ice sculpture, so cold that the young woman’s hand felt like it was burning. But the touch seemed to ground the boy, so she left it there as her fingers went numb.

The boy tilted his head up and, with his free hand, he pointed to the gondolier. “That looks like my brother.” And then his eyes returned to the sparkling water, mesmerized by its movement. The sound of waves was both comforting and out of place in the middle of a prairie in the middle of a forest.

The young woman calmly joined the boy and watched the sun twinkling in the water like stars on the ground. “The water always makes me feel calmer,” she said, hand reaching into the pocket of her loose jumpsuit—one that tricked the viewer into seeing a dress—and pulling out a coin that also glinted against the sun. “Do you want to make a wish?”

With hope, the boy asked, “Do you have a star for me?”

The young woman shook her head, loosening the hair that was only just long enough to tuck precariously behind her ears. “No,” she answered slowly, lifting the boy’s small, cold hand to place the coin in his palm. “But this coin is sort of like a star. You can throw it in the water and make a wish.”

The boy visibly brightened and took a slow step forward. Then he closed his eyes and his fist, whispering to himself before throwing the hand-sized star in the shape of a coin. Its arc through the air was somewhat askew from the normal way gravity pulled things down, but still it plonked into the water with a satisfying splash. The boy’s shoulders loosened as his eyes opened, and he reached up to hold the young woman’s hand. Her sun-tanned skin and long fingers dwarfed his tiny, pale ones by comparison. “Can I tell you my wish?”

She shook her head. “Then it won’t come true. But you can tell me your name.” The boy looked at her quizzically, so she added more, “My name is Kinsey. Most people in town call me Next.”

“Why?”

“Because my family works with funeral homes.” That wasn’t the whole story. She suspected she wouldn’t get the boy’s whole story, either.

The young woman had fought to be called Kinsey, insisted on a normal name because everything else wasn’t normal. She was the black sheep of the town’s crackpot family, and due to her family’s business in death, it didn’t take long for someone to connect the name to the phrase “Next of Kin.” The nickname spread through town like a flood, forcing her to concede to the majority.

It wasn’t a normal name, but it wasn’t the wrong one, either.

“Can you tell me your address? Or a phone number?” These were the first two things she had memorized after the ABCs.

The boy folded his collar inside out. “There’s a number here.”

134340. Too short for a phone number, too long for an address. The number had been written in precise block letters, and no smudges or marks indicated the rest had been rubbed off.

“Do you know where home is?”

The boy’s brow furrowed, icy blue eyes concentrating hard on remembering. He readjusted the belt he wore—the only clothing item that fit him properly—and said confidently, “Kuiper.”

Kinsey had never heard of a street or neighborhood or family nearby with that name. He must belong to a rare tourist, perhaps, or an even rarer new resident.

After a gentle struggle to tear the boy away from the fountain’s enchantment, Kinsey led the boy across the street and into the nearest building.

Though the Burney family made all sorts of textiles, their main business was in sewing custom shrouds for local families and funeral homes. The store’s location had sealed their fate, even though the town no longer followed strict guidelines on which businesses could exist in which districts. The Memorial District was still different, stained by its connection to the dead and dying. A connection that everyone feared but no one would acknowledge. Even the name was a euphemism, distancing residents from the true purpose of the district.

The town’s founder was dying when he reached the meadow. He had been dying for most of his life—a sickly child and a weak man—but he had the same desire for immortality that any healthy, strong person had. Many assumed that, as the founder of a town, he would name the town after himself. Or lay permanent claim to the fountain that housed his last living work of art. Instead, he commissioned a memorial.

An underground cemetery, a miniature catacombs, was dug and built underneath the Memorial District, its layout supposedly reminiscent of the Venetian canals. Upon his death, the entrance was to be adorned with his bones. And so forever, or until the catacombs crumbled, the founder’s skull would stare down at every soul and every corpse that entered the tunnels, every tear shed and every bouquet of flowers left behind. The founder’s legs and arms framed the doors, his hands became doorhandles, and the rest of his bones had been carved into works of art that were now abstract even if they had not started out that way. Some bones were inlaid into the doors and others were displayed beneath the skull, creating a beautiful yet no less macabre skull and crossbones.

Though the founder’s name and most of his story had been lost to history, though he left behind no heirs and no fortune, nothing at all except this town, he would not be forgotten. As long as people died and the living buried them, the founder’s memorial, and the founder himself, would continue to be seen. Immortality through death.

Usually when someone walked in and saw the shrouds on display, they became even more uncomfortable, no matter if they expected it or not. The boy stretched his arm out to run his fingers over the fabrics, already seeming more relaxed in the dimmer light.

Though she usually found it too cold inside, instant warmth rushed through Kinsey’s body as the boy let go of her hand to study a shroud that was fluttering faintly in a cold spot. The effect was ethereal, but a swift glance up revealed the vent blowing cold air into the room.

The boy ran his fingers gently over the ten embroidered symbols Kinsey had sewn on the fabric’s bottom edge, all symbols from ancient Greek classics. She had done this one for free; she had cried over it and felt the pain that made the finished piece more beautiful than anything she’d ever done. The beloved Classics professor had died quickly but not without great suffering.

The Classics professor’s partner refused to bury her with the shroud, claiming it was disrespectful to be buried with symbols of a false religion, with a symbol for the god of the Underworld and a simplified Minotaur that looked suspiciously like the Devil. In truth, the shroud was a sign of respect for the professor’s life work, her passion, her selflessness when it came to her students.

And now a small, pale, otherworldly boy was studying the symbols carefully, pausing at each one with a concentration Kinsey wasn’t used to seeing in kids. The boy’s lips turned up into a smile, erasing the confusion he’d worn on his features all day. The creases in his brow smoothed out and his eyes widened from their squint. He ran his tongue over his lips, which were so dry and cracked they looked painful.

“Do you want something to drink? Or eat?” she offered, flipping on the old antennae-d TV that sat on the counter.

A low whirring filled the air before a staticky image of a suited-up man behind a desk faded into view on the boxy TV’s screen. The man introduced “Booker Carlin out in the field” to report on Breaking News from the official observatory one town over.

“Is there popcorn?” And then, turning his head with some excitement, he added, “And water?”

Nodding her head, Kinsey led the boy away from the storefront and into the breakroom, where she placed a bag of popcorn in the microwave. The boy stared through the screen, enraptured by the spinning dish. Then the first pop! pop! pop! sent him skittering over to the sink, where Kinsey was filling a glass. The boy reminded her of a cat; he stared at the faucet as water flowed out and created small bubbles in the glass.

Soon the boy was settled on the couch with a blanket on his lap, a bowl of popcorn resting on his knees, and a glass of water tilted up with both hands as he chugged it down. His legs swung slowly back and forth, releasing small puffs of dust each time a foot connected with the underkept couch. Kinsey knelt down in front of him and waited for him to finish drinking. Then she tried again. Maybe with food and water and comfort, the boy could focus on her words. “So where is your family?”

Crunching loudly with his mouth open, the boy tugged on his collar where that number had been written. No answer.

Kinsey sat back on her heels and pursed her lips. “Maybe they’re in the museum?”

On the other side of the fountain, visible from the Burney family business’s front display windows, sat the town’s official museum—the one with town history, special exhibits that the next town over lent out, European history and influences.

With no solid answer from the boy, Kinsey decided to try to museum anyway. The boy’s fingers were greasier but no warmer as they walked hand in hand across the eerily empty town square. Usually, even in this heat and humidity, residents were gathered around the fountain to socialize or just dip their feet in for relief. Only big events and bad weather emptied the town square. Today, the weather was nice.

As they approached the museum’s front steps, the boy began to tug her off to the side. When Kinsey asked again where his family was, the boy just said, “No, the other one.”

Behind the official museum, hidden from town square, was a mainstay of the town’s Education District: the Mythology Museum, more commonly known as the Museum of Lies. The permanent exhibits included maritime ghost stories, Greek and Roman mythology, blurry photos of the monsters that might lurk in the surrounding woods, paranormal events documented in the catacombs, and astronomy & astrology.

No one was sure how long Miss Carol had been in charge of the Museum of Lies. She insisted she had always been there. Nothing and no one had proven otherwise. The questioning look Miss Carol aimed at the boy did not fill Kinsey’s heart with much hope that he’d been there with his family.   

In the Maritime Ghost Stories exhibit, the boy halted in front of a picture of a U.S. Navy report from WWII describing the disappearance of five planes and a subsequent rescue plane in the Bermuda Triangle. No traces of these planes had ever been found, no evidence they existed beyond official records and the few items displayed in this museum that Kinsey was certain had never been authenticated. The typed transcript next to the report contained one bolded and underlined phrase: “as if they had flown to Mars.” A few steps further and they came across the ghost ships display—miniature models of ships that had gone missing or were found inexplicably empty or that housed the souls of their previous passengers.

The boy slowly turned to face the shroud-maker, the dull yellow lighting turning his pale skin into an eerie mask of shadows. “Am I a ghost?”

“Why would you ask that?”

Not much could unsettle the shroud maker, not after years working alongside the shadow of Death, but this little boy’s question sent a chill through her body, goosebumps covering her skin. The cold and pale boy in front of her who had appeared out of nowhere and was awed by simple amenities like microwaves and running water—this boy made her nervous. But he’d eaten the popcorn and drank the water. She could touch him, too. Ghosts couldn’t do those things. Right?

Without blinking or looking away from the Navy report—even though Kinsey was fairly sure he couldn’t read it—the boy reached for Kinsey’s hand again. The icy chill of the boy’s hand barely registered in the cold museum. Still, she had to keep herself from pulling away. “I am… less than I was before.”

This answer wasn’t any less eerie. “What do you mean?”

“They told me I’m not what I used to be. Even though I stayed the same.”

“What changed?”

The boy shrugged and started marching determinedly forward as if he knew exactly where he wanted to be. Letting herself get pulled along, Kinsey remembered the days when she’d had to force change, to insist on a shift in worldview from those around her. How long it had taken just to be called “her,” and how some people still insisted on the old classification just because it wasn’t what they’d learned first. How she tried to hide in old books, which led her to the one person who saw her before she could show her self to everyone else. Maybe the boy needed someone to see him, too.

“People used to tell me I was something I’m not,” she admitted.

“What if they’re right? What if I am what they say I am? Is that okay, too?” The boy’s stony fingers tightened; he was holding his breath for her answer.

The uncertainty in the boy’s voice sounded familiar—felt familiar—and sent the chill from Kinsey’s hand to her heart. “Yeah, I think so. It’s like that quote: ‘I contain multitudes.’ You can be a lot of things at once.”

Brow scrunched up in a comically serious expression for a little boy, he contemplated Kinsey’s words, then stated as a matter of fact, “I think I contain oceans.”

A small laugh burst from Kinsey like a shooting star. “I think so, too,” she agreed. The boy grinned up at her, and Kinsey wondered how she could have thought, even for a moment, that he wasn’t real.

Back at the fountain again, the boy sat down on the ledge and dangled his feet in, kicking so water splashed and sloshed against the sides, reflecting the orange-pink of the sunset. Though the sun hadn’t fully ceded the sky to its lunar counterpart, the day had darkened just enough to see the faint image of a waxing moon. The boy bent his neck far back so he could look straight up. Kinsey sat next to him in the other direction, feet on the cobblestones instead of the water, and no matter how she tilted her head, she couldn’t see what the boy was looking at.

So she looked over at her family’s business, at the word “textiles”—a word that masked the true Burney family legacy. Because Kinsey wasn’t the first Burney to love sewing shrouds, and she wouldn’t be the last. She was just the next generation.

Kinsey smiled at the thought. Maybe “Next” wasn’t such a bad name for her. Maybe it was okay to be strange and have a strange name. The shroud maker named “Next” could just be one drop in her ocean of multitudes.

A cool breeze scattered the humidity, scared off the heat just enough to be comfortable. Still, nobody was out but the boy and the young woman.

“It’s harder to breathe without the sun,” the boy said, drawing Kinsey’s gaze back to him. His chest did seem to be expanding and contracting more visibly than before. Then again, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d seen his chest moving at all in the first place.

Before Kinsey could say or do anything to help, the boy reached into his pocket and pulled something out in his tiny fist. “People don’t usually see me.”

The boy’s feet stilled in the water. Fountain water continued to flow from the undead gondolier’s perch. The boy held out his fist, waiting for Kinsey to offer her palm so he could drop its contents into her hand—a small, freezing cold, concrete-colored rock the size of a nickel. Though heavier than she would have expected, the rock seemed barely held together, like it would fall apart or melt the longer it sat in her hand.

“What’s this?” Kinsey barely moved, feeling like a part of the fountain’s stone.

“A star. For you to make a wish.”

The little boy reached over and closed Kinsey’s fingers around the rock with both hands. She smiled and closed her eyes, feeling the warm air rush in as the boy let go of her hand. Containing the cold rock in her fist made her feel powerful, like she was protecting the town from an unnatural chill. Like she held a piece of the sky that no one else had seen.

A few drops of water hit Kinsey’s arms as the boy swung his legs out of the water, barely splashing.

Opening her eyes, Kinsey tossed the rock into the fountain, listening for the satisfying plonk! before facing the boy. He stood in front of her with water droplets frozen to his feet and legs. “Do you want to know my wish?”

The boy shook his head and grinned. “Then it won’t come true.”

Kinsey stared at the small, wet footprints on the cobblestones long after the boy had walked beyond the town square, beyond the Burney family business, beyond the catacombs entrance and the founder’s bones, beyond the news station broadcasting its Breaking News. Pluto had returned home.

–Ryn Baginski

References I used to write this story: