Kade and the Skeleton King

Kade was a great stage magician.

Kade performed tricks and illusions for an audience and at birthday parties.

Kade's magic was sleight of hand and misdirection.

Sleight of hand meant her hands moved too fast to follow.

Misdirection meant you looked where she wanted you to look.

She did tricks with coins, ropes, or bits of colored cloth.

She always knew which was your card and could make dice come up any number she wanted.

One day, Kade performed at the court of the Skeleton King.

She wowed the spooks with her best card tricks.

She amused the werewolves by vanishing and reappearing coins.

Even the witches were impressed when she conjured pigeons from a hat.

The zombies were just confused.

Kade impressed the Skeleton King so much that when the time came for her to leave, he imprisoned her instead of paying her.

The Skeleton King insisted she stay and perform for his court every day forever.

She had no choice.

If Kade tried to leave, the Skeleton King’s minions would grab her.

Kade had a plan, though.

She convinced the Skeleton King to allow her one hobby: whittling, carving small bits of wood.

On the first day she was imprisoned, Kade whittled a stick into the shape of a small finger-bone – a phalanx.

While performing for the Skeleton King's court that night, she did a card trick.

While she asked the Skeleton King if the ace of spades was his card (it was), she cleverly swapped the wooden finger-bone for one of his real fingerbones.

After the performance, she went back to her cell and hid the real finger-bone in a box under her cot.

The next day, Kade whittled a stick into the shape of a rib, a chest-bone.

Performing for the court that night, she “found” a coin in the Skeleton King’s ribcage.

When she did, she swapped the wooden rib for one of his real ribs.

Afterwards, she returned to her cell and hid the real rib with the real finger-bone.

The next day, Kade whittled a branch into a femur – that’s a leg-bone.

At the performance, she sawed the Skeleton King in half.

When she put him back together, she had replaced one of his femurs with the wooden one.

She hid the real leg-bone with the finger-bone and the rib.

And so Kade kept going, whittling a bone from wood every day.

Performing for the Skeleton King’s court every night.

Swapping the wooden bone for one of the Skeleton King’s real bones.

Hiding the real bone in the box under her cot.

Kade swapped one of the Skeleton King’s toe-bones in a dice trick.

She swapped his humerus – that’s an arm-bone – in some funny business where she released a flock of pigeons from her hat.

She swapped a vertebra – that’s a bone in the spine, in the back – when she tied the Skeleton King up with rope for a trick.

Eventually, on the 206th day – for that is how many bones there are – Kade whittled a skull from a thick chunk of wood.

That night, at her performance at the Skeleton King’s court, she pulled a long colorful scarf from the Skeleton King’s ear-hole.

While pulling the scarf, she swapped the wooden skull for the Skeleton King’s real skull.

This was the last bone to swap.

That night, she returned to her cell, and pulled out the box of the Skeleton King’s original bones.

But this time, instead of putting the skull in the box, Kade did something new.

She took all the bones she had taken from the Skeleton King and reassembled them together into a complete skeleton.

The skeleton sat up and frowned.

The skeleton marched straight to the court of the Skeleton King.

There were two Skeleton Kings: one made of whittled wood, one made of original bone.

The two Skeleton Kings got into an argument.

Each one thought he was the real Skeleton King.

The Skeleton King made of wood argued that he had never stopped being the Skeleton King.

His bones were swapped out for wood one at a time, so gradually he never noticed.

The Skeleton King made of bone argued that he was the real one because he was made of all the original Skeleton King bones.

Each Skeleton King instructed his minions to grab and imprison the other.

The Skeleton King’s minions did not know which Skeleton King to grab.

While they were all distracted with this problem, they did not notice Kade sneaking out of the court.

Kade ran far away, never coming within a hundred miles of the Skeleton King’s court again.

Legend has it that the two Skeleton Kings are still arguing about which is the real one to this day.