Chapter 21

Chapter Twenty-One

A patch for loneliness

“ P erantiqua,” the woman hushed.

She did not purr my name as a king did. The woman cooed in a way that sang of her adoration, yet a surety filled her tone too. She believed in me.

She did not address me as queen.

The woman was my mother.

I peered up at my mother from the ground, and she was as I recalled her in withering—gaunt and twisted. I had hoped her death would prove plump and vibrant. “Mother, thank you for curing me with your hellebores.”

“I would not do otherwise, my patch, and the hellebores are born of your brilliance. Better to thank yourself.”

Tears stung my eyes.

Monsterdom had given me much, and now here was my mother in death, able to converse with me. “This conversation exists in my mind, I imagine.”

She nodded. “That does not mean a conversation is not real.”

Mother extended her hand that was skin over fragile bones and nothing more. I took her hand and stood, then looked around the empty grave.

My head felt much better, but my heart did not like my mother’s surroundings. “This is your home in death.”

Her lips curved. “This empty grave? No, Daughter. This is merely the passage between us. When you buried me, you dug exactly deep enough so that I might help you in your living from this side of life.”

She climbed out of her grave, and her movements were jerky with death, the sight of a static radio.

I leaped out of the grave after her, and the lack of color hit me first. Gray scale. I scanned the expanse and recognized my queendom. Some of it. Very little, really. My copper conservatory was here but set atop a large tower. The rest of the hotel was gone. As far as my immortal eyes could see, nothing but the tower existed in this place. The soil underfoot was lifeless and rocky, and this stretched endlessly in all directions.

My mother had waited for me to take this all in.

Then she said, “Until now, you have been the pain of fifty women. Are you content to remain their pain?”

I did not understand her question, and I knew the answer. “I am not.”

She cracked a smile, then stretched out her withered arms. “I expected not, my daughter.”

Mother fell backward into her empty grave, and my heart pounded as I waited for the thump of her fragile body against dirt. It never came.

A crunching step did instead.

I scanned the barren land, and though the crunching steps continued, hours and nights seemed to pass before a form took shape in the haze of the horizon. She walked to my tower through the hostile and barren place, and I did not hurry her along for fear the woman might lose her focus. Fear would not let me walk out to help her either.

She arrived, though, and after the great wait for her, I could not locate any words of greeting.

“Daughter,” she rasped, wavering on bare and bloodied feet.

I hurried forward and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Though she must be exhausted, I could feel strength in the woman, and there was no gauntness about her. “Mother,” I gasped.

The first of fifty mothers. Cassandra.

“Thank you for coming.” I led her to a stone near Mother’s grave so she could sit a while.

“I would not do otherwise, Daughter.”

I crouched at her feet and stared up in amazement. I had never seen a woman like Cassandra. Her skin showed no wrinkle, her hair seemed an impossible color—a pastel blue, and inked designs were as art on her arms. The clothing she wore was not made of any material I knew.

Here was a woman from before The End. One who had survived against all odds when the world around her died. She had lived before walled cities were erected, and I could not fathom how she had found food and water and shelter and managed to locate a monster prince to negotiate a contract with an immortal king.

This woman was an amazing mystery.

I took her hands in mine, marveling at the softness. “I do not know what to ask you first.”

She smiled, and she had all of her teeth, and they were impossibly white.

“How are you so vibrant?” I wondered aloud.

“In death I have become the fullest version of my life.”

I glanced to the empty grave, thinking of my gaunt mother.

Cassandra squeezed my hand. “Your mother will provide for you always. She cannot have the fullness of life in death and the fullness of caring for her daughter’s life too. She has traded one for the other and done so without regret.”

This made painful sense. I peered at Cassandra. “You did it. You made me.”

Tears balanced in her eyes. “A strange thing to be consumed with purpose, yet to doubt whether your purpose will manifest through the ages. I had hoped, and I should have trusted my daughters more.”

“They did not err,” I whispered. “I am queen, a monster queen.”

She cupped my cheek. “You are everything I could not fathom in human life. Perantiqua truly. And now I am here.”

Cassandra glanced at the tower where my copper conservatory was a lonely beacon in this barren world. “I did not see much of this part.”

Here was a question I had yearned to have answered. “How did you know to wither? How did you know five kings could not win?”

Her eyes were a rich brown and nothing like mine. Twelve hundred years had changed that. “It happened one week after The End.”

I could see the turmoil in her brown eyes. The loss. The panic and confusion when The End came. A weary acceptance lurked there, too, and spoke of the moment she had known the old world was gone and dead.

“There was no defense against the wind,” she said. “Wind is a weak word for what it was, for it dragged society and life in its wake, ripping buildings and life from their foundations. Little was left but dirt and ash and dust. The small number of us left in my town gathered what resources we could. But the sun came next, and most who lived through the scorching days were claimed by ice at night. The water we had found quickly ran out with the heat, and in desperation, we started to sip at collected rain that burned our skin and insides. Our numbered dwindled like the dying embers in a log fire. From fifty to thirty to ten to five to two. In six days, The End had claimed all but two of us. Then came the seventh day, and as I stripped the body of the other person who had lived as long as me, I felt the weariness of everything making sense. I felt the sense in us dying so rapidly and pathetically. So futile, our existence. Fragile creatures that we are—mere dolls for the whims of powerful beings. And we had believed ourselves mighty in our towers.” She sighed. “I could not have thought this way before The End, nor the day after it, nor the sixth. But a week later, I accepted that I existed as an ant. I waited to be trod upon by a larger being—that of nature—and I feared more than any other feeling that death would not come as it had for others. I did not want to be alone.”

She was locked in time.

Cassandra closed her eyes. “A sandstorm came, and I entered its pelting fury, feeling how skin tore from my body. I felt awe of its power by then, not fear, for there was no resistance in me left. There was comfort in what seemed a certain death. This end was fitting for a fragile creature, and more beautiful than dying from heat or cold or thirst. I felt grateful. The sandstorm came, and my skin was torn from me, and then the most beautiful sight of my existence beamed upon me. I looked up at the sky that had been filled with sand, and the moon was there instead. Chaos rained on every side, yet tranquil calm existed above for that moment, that blink—my last gift, I thought as I held my face to the moon. Quite simply, in that blink, I accepted everything that would come next. And in that same blink, surrounded by beauty and chaos and pain and gratitude and the exact point of my death, I was struck by lightning.”

I blinked. “But by lightning?”

She dipped her head. “Lightning, or the feeling of it. A force jolted my soul, burning my blood to ash and erasing all knowledge of myself. I woke half-buried in sand. My skin was as new, and strength filled me that was not mine. The sun scorched above, and I was not burned nor dehydrated. I felt no hunger nor thirst. A knowledge occupied me that had not existed ever. Who I had been was no longer, and what I was meant to do was there instead. A purpose. I had been healed and given power to survive to see this purpose through. I did not know who the purpose belonged to, but I had accepted everything to come in the sandstorm, you might recall. If I had known ‘everything to come’ would mean living on alone, then I would not have chosen it. Regardless, I had unwittingly made a deal that I would need to live by.”

Ancients had commandeered her for their designs. “What was the purpose?”

“To find a monster. To strike a bargain so that he might strengthen the daughter growing in me.”

My mouth dried. “You were pregnant.”

“When life seems about to end, we seek frantic connection with those around us. The last person to die had kept me company in the week after The End. I expected he was the father, but I cannot be sure that the force that filled me with purpose did not also fill me with child.”

If she had birthed an ancient daughter, there would be no need to create one over twelve hundred years, but I did not say so. “You found Prince Deliver.”

Cassandra nodded. “I did not need to eat or drink or worry about shelter or air. I walked through sand and burning water and storm with a sureness in my step that was not my own. The moon came and went, reminding me of how she had been there for me in the sandstorm. She came and went hundreds of times before I found the monster. And when I found him, the words that came from me were not mine, but I was powerless not to speak them.”

Ancients had warped the path of the first mother.

I shuddered at the loneliness she must have endured. The despair of isolation, and the cruelty of being shackled to life. Yet these were the uncomfortable prices of ancients. In the sandstorm, and with the presence of the moon, and with her acceptance and fear filling her, she had become the perfect vessel for them. “You forged a contract with King Raise to wither before your time so that you might leave your daughter with one powerful body part, and that she might have the same choice, and her daughter after that until a daughter refused to wither.”

Her eyes sparkled. “Then forty-nine other mothers did so. You see, I remained a creature filled with foreign power and purpose until I birthed my daughter. Some of whatever had filled me also filled her, but less of it. I did not need food or water or shelter, and those strengths enabled me to supplement her with what food, water, and shelter she required. She did not need much. Just a little each month, and my passage through the world to find the monster prince had shown me what survival might involve. My daughter was a fast learner of the subject, and she grew more adept at seeking out sustenance and shelter than I. My heart rejoiced because I suspected that her daughter would be filled with even less of this creature’s protection and purpose. I despaired also, because if each daughter possessed less ancient purpose than the last, then who could say if the deal I had forged would come to fruition?”

Yet it had. “Did you know that what you were doing would make a queen?”

Cassandra peered at the tower again. “Not at the start, but in my limited human way, I did absorb some of the ancient force in me. I had brokered a deal to leave one powerful body part to my daughter. I was addicted to the idea that she would wither too—and what mother would feel that unless a grander scheme was afoot? But I did, and the deal I had brokered gave her this withering choice too. It must be that these powerful parts would accumulate and eventually make a powerful person. A powerful being made of the same substance as the force within me. But unlike me, she would not be its creature. She would be unlike anything to walk the world.”

I looked at the tower as her gaze drifted back to it. Erected in a barren place, without surrounding buildings, and devoid of monsters, the tower appeared lonely indeed. Cassandra had walked in loneliness after The End without a friend to depend on. She had been the first. Even her daughter had at least had the memories and advice of her withering mother to go by and pass on.

I was the first queen, and I would not betray fifty mothers by crumbling. “I have floundered in queendom, First Mother, though less and less. I think of you in the sandstorm, and I think of you alone at The End in search of a prince. I will not let you down.”

Cassandra did not look away from the tower. “I know, Daughter. You are my blood, and so I know.”

She stood, the strange woman from times long gone with pastel blue hair and clothing made of materials never seen. The first of fifty mothers walked to sit cross-legged next to my mother’s grave.

She extended a hand.

Black hellebores swelled to fill Mother’s grave, and they pushed her to the surface again. She sat cross-legged in their cushioned midst.

Mother took Cassandra’s hand, and with her other hand, she revealed a needle.

She had threaded the needle—and the needle was horrible in its warp and bluntness.

I took the tool from her and crouched by their joined hands. “Cassandra, thank you for your resilience in loneliness when you had no path to follow and no one to share it with.” I shifted my gaze. “Mother, I will be worthy of all you provide. I swear it.”

Her eyes did not shimmer. Nothing could penetrate her belief in me. “You already are, my patch.”

These women were me. I was made of them. And the next step was clear, though I had no rhyme nor reason for doing so yet.

I pushed the needle through Mother’s palm and then Cassandra’s. The warp and bluntness made this difficult, but neither woman flinched. They had withered, so they knew that short pains were nothing to drawn-out pains.

I gripped the end of the needle and pulled it through their palms, then dragged the black thread through until the small knot stopped me. I tied off the thread, slicing away the excess with my nails, then I set the needle on the stone where Cassandra had perched earlier. Assumedly, I would need the needle for forty-eight other mothers.

“I see how this next part might go,” said Cassandra.

I did too.

I slipped my hand into my jacket pocket and pulled out the garter, then placed it on the stone beside the needle.

Mother passed the black pearls and lace gloves to me, and I set them on the stone as well.

Do not ever reveal their whereabouts now, nor in ten thousand years. See had bid me to hear his warning, and I had. This barren place could not be walked by King See, nor any monsters but me.

Here, my bridal gifts were safe.

I glanced at Mother’s grave, sensing my looming return to more colorful and warmer surroundings. “Will my mind be better, Mothers?”

“Yes,” answered Cassandra. “Passage through the hellebore grave has cured you.”

“I am more ancient than before,” I mused. “I have often woken from slumber this way, but stepping into increased ancientness from one moment to the next is more jolting.”

I kissed my gaunt mother on the forehead, then stepped into her grave to sink rapidly through hellebores.

As their reassuring rustle filled my ears, the lonely sight of a tower in a barren world disappeared, as did the sight of two mothers sitting stitched together, steadfast in their vigil over my queendom in death.

My protectors.

I had never had anyone to depend upon in queendom, and barely anyone in monsterdom. Their ancient, maternal presence filled me with confidence.

For princes had become pawns.

Princesses were my obsession.

Kings were my enemies, and one could prove my downfall.

But I would never be lonely again. A monster queen would never need to be alone.