Calaca "Cal" Calavera's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Cal lined the white skulls along the counter. Each one was smooth, whole, and dead plain. The jeweled skulls on the roof outside glowed with color. Cal's skulls had none. A costume this pale would lose the crown before a judge even looked twice. Cal needed color, and had no idea where to find it. "You've been staring at those for an hour," said Skully Sweetooth. The small skeleton girl sat on the flipped crate, a lollipop in one fist. Cal barely knew her. She just wandered in, sniffing for candy, and stayed. She kept her sock-wrapped hands folded like she was always about to sneak something. "They're boring," she said. "White. Dead white." "I know," Cal said. "I don't have dyes. I don't have anything." Skully pulled the lollipop out with a pop. "My dad works at the candy factory. They dump bad batches. Colored inks that don't pass." She shrugged. "Ask Chuckles. He's always there." Cal didn't want to beg a stranger. But the white skulls sat there, mocking. So Cal went. The candy factory rose from pale bones, its towers crowned with sugar skulls. Inside, a skeleton in a white work shirt was wiping down a steel vat. Bright flowers painted his whole skull, pink and orange and blue. He hummed while he worked. This was Chuckles, Skully's father's coworker. "Help you?" Chuckles asked, not stopping. "I make sugar skulls," Cal said. "For the parade. But they're all white. Skully said you throw out colored ink." Chuckles finally looked up. He studied Cal a long moment. Then he grinned, a wide painted grin. "Kid, we toss gallons of the stuff. Fails the taste test, not the color test." He vanished through a door and came back with a flat case. He set it on the vat and flipped the lid. Inside sat two rows of small bottles. Each one held edible ink, bright as a jewel. Blue, pink, yellow, purple, orange. Then deeper shades below. Cal reached out and touched the cool glass. "These work on sugar?" Cal asked. "Brush them on. They dry hard and shiny." Chuckles snapped the case shut and pushed it across. "Take it. Win that crown, come back and tell me." Cal held the case tight all the way back. Inside the quiet shop, Cal picked up one white skull and a brush. Blue ink, one careful line across the brow. It held. It gleamed. Cal painted a second line, then a third. The skull turned bright, glowing like the ones on the roof. "See," Skully said from the crate. "Not dead white anymore." Cal grinned. The color problem was solved. Then Cal looked at the counter. One skull was painted. Hundreds more waited, bare and white. The parade was close. And Cal was only one person, with one brush, and no time to paint them all alone.