Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
A drawn-out fright
A torment.
A monstrous delight.
What wonder.
We had all night.
N ine pawns were present at dusk.
Not twelve, and not fifteen—but I was growing used to the idea that Huckery, Loup, and Unguis would never sleep here.
A second dusk had come and gone without the presence of Raise’s princes, however, and they usually always stayed. Their distance was a statement of their displeasure.
I took a steadying breath, then pulsed my will into them. If they would not attend, then I would know why.
Mother gobbled back cobblestones an instant before three staircases shot up out of the ground. Dirt still showered the twelve other pawns and their copper livery, and Raise’s princes were greeted with curses and glares.
Deliver stared east. Seal stared west. Sign stared south. The point being that none of them looked up at me.
“Speak your feelings,” I declared. “I would not have anything uneasy between us, and if I do not know the source of your problem, then I cannot do anything to solve it.”
Sign’s third hand rubbed the back of his bald head. He peeked up. Once. “Your Majesty, we feel very…”
“Annoyed,” Deliver butted in.
“Hurt,” Seal added.
Sign explained, “We feel very annoyed because we’re hurt. And we’re hurt because?—”
“You caught us between your will and our king’s purpose in a public fashion,” Deliver hissed.
Seal blew out a breath. “The manner of this felt disrespectful.”
“We were unprepared for the suddenness of the confrontation and public nature of it too.” Sign summarized.
I understood. “You did not like that I willed you to betray your king’s subterfuge and dishonesty. Particularly not in front of other kings.”
The three pawns grumbled their agreement.
“That’s just it,” said Sign. “We expect that you will need to do this many times in the future, and we do not anticipate these sudden and public confrontations with delight. We wish not to be caught between king and queen, you see.”
I saw. And did not. “You wish that you were not my pawns?”
Their shocked gasps and hasty pleading refusals did stroke my immortal ego.
“Then,” I said after a time, “you wish that I would not protect myself against your liege?”
“No?” Deliver asked, then glanced at Seal, who glanced at Sign.
Three princes stumped. This was a stumping situation, so I could easily forgive their uncertainty.
“I would hope,” I said, pushing the bothersome crown up on my head, “that there will only be a few instances like the tribunal where I must put you on the spot to act against your liege. I would prefer to give you warning in the future, though there must be times when this is not possible. Find solace, my pawns, in the certainty that if my will exceeds the purpose of a king’s command, then ancients must intend it such, and who are you to question their goals?”
“No one at all,” whispered Sign, peering fearfully at the sky as if Ancients might lurk there. I might, too, if I’d been warped by them for one hundred years in the womb.
As things stood, I was not a queen who enjoyed hurting another’s heart, so though I could not be less of a queen with them, I could act to heal their hearts and outweigh the toll of my queenly actions.
“Deliver, Sign, Seal,” I called down. “Will you join me for a fright this evening?”
Grunts and sneers rang out from the others. Of all my pawns, I had only shared a fright with Huckery.
Sign’s eyes widened so much that I worried the surrounding skin would tear. “Lady Queen, we would be honored. Vastly honored.”
I walked down to the courtyard in time to see Mother pushing the wooden steed from her grave.
I withheld my groan, though Valetise had dressed me in a baby-doll dress with gartered stockings that would make mounting and riding the steed a breeze. “Thank you, Mother.”
Has Been knelt down to give me a boost with his large white hands.
I sat sideways on the mount and adjusted the thin straps of my bouncing dress that brushed the tops of my thighs. “I know the perfect place. Let us go.”
“What will we do tonight?” grumbled the slimy Sigil. “I’d like a fright too.”
My stairway pawns enjoyed Sigil’s annoyance and began to laugh in their nervous and barking way. Though I did not relish division between my pawns, I did enjoy hearing more laughter in my queendom. Not so long ago, princes used to fill Hotel Vitale with their chuckling chimes and staccato snickers.
I twisted to look at Sigil. “Attend your kings, dear pawns. There will come a night where you cannot, and so enjoy the simplicity of this dusk hour. Anticipate future frights with your queen. Though Hex, I asked you to move our new rope monster somewhere safer the other evening, did I not?”
“Yes, my queen,” replied Hex. “And so I did.”
I glanced at the rope. “Did he worm back here then?”
“I can move him again, if you like.”
I nodded. “Please do, Hex. I don’t like to think of monsters walking on him.”
The wooden steed grated forward, and the rope only just managed to open the gate, and then remained upright to bow as I passed.
“Good on you,” I told it. “You are growing in strength. Hex shall move you somewhere safer though.”
The gate clanged closed after us, and the four of us set on our easterly way.
“Where will we go for a fright? It has been centuries since I gave a scare that wasn’t to my brother princes,” Seal said from where he walked behind my steed. He was breathless with anticipation.
My eyes rounded. “Centuries, you say?”
“We are kept busy with our liege’s purpose.”
“And still you are monsters who must give frights as well as receive them,” I chided.
Sign mumbled, “Just so, Lady Queen. Sometimes it’s hard to do all the things one knows one should.”
I straightened my bothersome crown, then gripped the ruffled reins again. “I understand this difficulty. We go to the apartment building of the landlord I rented from as a human. I intend to haunt her most terribly for the rest of her life.”
Deliver stumbled and nearly faceplanted onto the street. “You glow with monsterly intention, Lady Queen.”
“There is that within her that cannot be contrived, only born,” whispered Sign.
I did feel truly a monster in my heart these nights. My fragilities centered on being a queen weaker than all kings, who must protect herself from those kings, but who also greatly doubted her capability to do so.
We continued through the city with a grating pace that helped me appreciate each and every one of my teeth, and as we neared my old apartment building, I recalled that we neared King Bring’s towering sky kingdom too.
No sooner had I thought the thought, than King Bring appeared in the street ahead of us.
The king was careful not to disturb the freshly sowed seeds, and that consideration wasn’t lost on me, for this was the king who truthfully believed in future and life and vibrancy.
Did my thoughts of King Bring possess a more favorable glow this evening because See had declared himself a claiming king? A meaningful romance with See had been reduced to a transactional agreement in one dusk, so I could not say whether I might prefer Bring in a century or two.
“Upon a steed and dressed for a king,” the immortal said hoarsely. “I tighten at the sight of you, Queen Perantiqua, as always. Please tell me that you are here in my fifth to accept my offer.”
I had not thought much of fifths when roaming Vitale. My queendom sat at the heart of Vitale and in the middle of the five kingdoms. If I could not ride into other kingdoms, then I would never be able to leave my queendom. Better to not ask for permission, then, but forgiveness.
I ran my gaze over his black, long coat and leather trousers. Dusk light was such that I could see the second fanged mouth over his stomach. “I dress for myself, King Bring, as ever.”
“The bottom hem dances over divine flesh only concealed. Your stockings would feel soft as I ran my hands up your thighs. Your garters would be used as handholds as I feasted on what you offered, no more and no less. Have you considered, fair queen, that you could kiss both of my mouths?”
I looked again at his second stomach. My, but I could not fathom how I would kiss that without injury, but intrigue stirred me so. “Sir, you speak like a lover, though we are not. These thoughts are yours to have, but kindly keep them in your head. I am a queen, and you are a king.”
He did not feel remorse, and his teasing chuckle told me so. There was something in arrogance that did stir my blood. How surprising.
“I come to you on matters of kings and queens,” King Bring said, dipping his head. “Will you walk with me, ethereal and impossible beauty?”
I would seize any chance to walk. “For a short while. I am on the way to share a fright with my stairway pawns.”
Only then did I become aware that my pawns lurked behind my steed in simmering silence.
“Lady Queen,” hushed Sign. “He seeks to concubine you. I would not seek to give you advice?—”
“Then do not,” I answered.
Sign snapped his mouth closed, then bowed.
I said to Deliver, “Some help, dear pawn.”
“Might I help you off?” Bring blurted from up the street.
“My pawns will do,” I replied without engaging ancient thought first.
King Bring cleared his throat. “I was surprised and… concerned to discover that my princess had been to see you. Without my knowledge or consult.”
And here was his game. I chose my response with more care. “There are precious few female monsters, sir, and only one that has ventured to speak with me.”
His breath caught. “Why do you speak with my princess?”
“Because princes that were my friends are now my pawns. I am lonely.”
“I would be a balm for your loneliness.”
I did not comment that his princess was the loneliest monster I had met. He should offer some balm to her. “I do not require a lover, sir. I require a friend. You do not wish to be my friend. You wish to feast on me and use my garters to help.”
A moan slipped from his mouth. Or both mouths. Goodness, how extraordinary.
The war in him was evident by the tension in his shoulders. “It would not do for us to enter friendship territory, no. I will be your lover. That is what I have sworn. Your lover and more. Your friend, never.”
And more… He wished me for more than a concubine?
That was not possible. He had a princess.
I did not like the contemplativeness in his tone. Though, thanks to his princess, I already knew this king’s reasoning. Bring was worried that growing friendship between his princess and I would drive me from him out of a feeling of friendly duty to her.
I could reassure him—genuinely—that the more time I spent with his princess, the more I became convinced they were at an end. I would not confess that my wariness of entering lovership with him grew in tandem with this as I viewed the sorry state of esteem of his princess.
And I did not wish kings to be aware that I fathomed their reasonings.
“You may help me dismount,” I announced, for that had been his game in mentioning the visit all along.
Deliver exchanged a dark look with his brother pawns, but stepped away.
A slither of power wrapped around my waist, taking no liberties with my stockings or garters on the way. I was nevertheless reminded of Bring’s desire to feast upon me, and I did wonder how immortality might work on me again because the thought stirred me. My body might eventually feel lonely without the warmth of intimacy without transaction. What I could do to myself did not hold the same unpredictability and spontaneity of shared pleasure either.
King Bring lifted me from the wooden steed, then set me between rows of sowed seed. My shoes crunched upon the dried corn husks left there from the recent harvest, but I thought more of the way his touch lingered before releasing me.
King Bring moved to the edge of the street so that we could walk alongside one another.
“You would give humans quite a fright if they happened upon you,” I remarked. As it was, I had held my power at the ready to race to the shadows should any have happened upon me and my pawns.
He glanced at me. “Do you forget that humans cannot see us? Not without making themselves very insane. Their minds protect them by erasing kings, and assumedly a queen. Princes in daylight, they might manage, though not enough to look a prince directly in the eye. That is why humans are to be cared for, because they are weak and ill-equipped at much.”
I was reminded of how I had once struggled to look See’s princes in the eye. Bring’s explanation made perfect sense. The first part anyway. “I have not much to say on the weakness of humans, but if there is one thing I would change about them, it would be their tendency for convention.”
“Convention. Yes, this is detestable.”
I glanced at him. “Pitiful, I rather think. A sorrowful outcome. How they trap themselves in it, when they could be free. A pity indeed.” My thoughts turned to King Change, who suffered from the same poison.
“You are gracious and caring in ancientness, young Queen.”
I dipped my head.
Bring stopped then, and I walked on a few steps before doing the same.
“But look at what I find this dusk,” he whispered and stooped down. He held out the corn husk, and my first urge was to smile, for a child had bunched the husk and fastened twine here and there to make a doll.
I said, “I used to make these as a child.”
“As did I many centuries ago. Peer closer, Queen.”
I did so, and noticed the unusual patterns of the twine. The child who had made this doll had dyed some parts of the husk in different colors. These clues connected quickly in my mind. “A child has made a doll in my likeness.”
Bring stroked the doll. “They have, and no wonder, for you are wondrous, and human children feel such things the most.”
He put the doll in his pocket, and I could only imagine what his intentions were for it, but I said nothing as we walked on. Mostly because now that he had pointed out one of the corn husk dolls, I could see they were everywhere. The recent harvest had left a mess of husks, but the dolls jutted out and lay abandoned as far as I could see.
There was something about that—the abandonment—that struck at me. Though someone had taken care to make them, they had then discarded their art where anyone might tread on it. And the dolls themselves… did I look such a way? The dyes blotched in a way that was not magnificent. The stitches of twine caused bulges and trenches in the husks, a lumpiness I had never fathomed of my body.
Is this how children knew me? And how did they have this image of me when humans could not see me? “How came there to be dolls of me?”
I had quite forgotten he was there when King Bring answered, “The tampering of a king, young queen. Always the tampering of a king, though is this act to save or ruin you? We are only seeing the first of the tampering, and the nature of this will become clearer soon.”
I glanced at him. “You did not do this, then?”
“Not I, young queen. I regret that I did not think to glorify you in art form.”
And I felt glad of it. The dolls confronted me strangely, and in a way that challenged my ideas of myself. These dolls could be an act of saving, and so was my fragile reaction a sign that I was not as inwardly strong as I had thought. Or was this an act of ruin and designed to make me feel such a way? Was I ruining myself, or was someone ruining me?
Uncertainty over the answer was not lovely to behold.
But Bring had said that the nature would become clearer soon, and so I would wait.
“Change comes for you, Perantiqua,” Bring said low and fast. “He readies his fifth.”
“So I am told,” I replied, wondering if Change was behind the dolls. “And how does the kingdom of bringing sit in the battle between an untold queen and a king who would ruin.”
“I find myself caught between purpose and desire, fair queen.”
“And if I were king?”
“Then I would ally with you against King Change. His attack would naturally imply that you served the opposite purpose to his.”
I heard what he did not say. “I have not declared my purpose.”
“You have not.”
“Not doing so is what saves me.”
“Saved you, more so.”
There was something in that. Now Change would send his fifth against me whether I declared purpose or not. My grace period was over. “You speak wisely, king.”
I walked on.
Bring’s clear voice followed me. “Will you speak your purpose to me?”
I paused. “I have made a deal, King Bring. You will hear my purpose after King Take.”
“Will I hear it after King See?” he asked, and I heard the jealous edge. Jealousy could prove the downfall of what he felt for my body and queenly potential. Jealousy could turn him into an enemy.
I trusted his princess in this.
When I turned, I found his gaze fixed lower on my body. “Thank you for helping me dismount, King Bring, and thank you for the gentlemanly nature of your advice.”
He’d presented another conundrum to me. Take must be first to know.
Who would be second?
King Bring bowed. “A rich midnight to the most ethereal of monsters.”
I did not mount the steed again after leaving the king. The horse grated behind me and the trio of pawns as we left Bring. We walked all the way to my old apartment, and I lost count of the husk doll renditions of me on the way.
“We are here.” I leaned down to pick up a doll, then tucked it under the saddle of my steed. I wanted to look at it when no one was around.
“What is your fright plan, Your Majesty?” Seal said on an exhale. He hopped from foot to foot as he stared at the apartment.
I had felt a fresh surge of anticipation too. “She faints easily.”
Sign pouted. “Finesse then.”
“My favorite,” declared Deliver, barking in nervous laughter.
“Not mine,” said Seal. “But I will do what is required of the fright.”
“Let us head up to my old apartment first. I like to be inspired by my surroundings.” My monstrous instincts would lead the way, and these dolls had none of those, so how could they ever appear magnificent?
I jerked open the entrance, and we lumbered up to level three. The path to the apartment door was a familiar one. And yet different. I rapped my knuckles on the brick wall that had been erected.
“That is a strange and heavy door,” remarked Sign.
Yes, it was. “Did she hope to trap her fear and dark convention inside?” I wondered, then pushed. The brick wall crumbled, and I climbed through the gap.
The smell was different. Stale, and… “What is that?”
“A herb,” answered Seal. “Humans burn them on occasions like this.”
I had been human and had no memories of this. “Why?”
“To ward off evil spirits.”
The trio barked together in laughter, and I grinned too.
Traces remained of whatever she had burned in the form of ash in stone bowls. The bowls were arranged in a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, and this pattern was pleasing to the eye. The landlady had left the hole into the elevator open, clearly content with bricking up the main door.
“Who’s there?” a voice warbled from the hall. High-pitched. Fearful.
I beamed as true excitement lit me from within. “How do you best like to fright?”
Sign’s gaze grew vacant as if he pulled a file from deep in the archives of his mind. “I like to trap. And I like the frightee to know it.”
“I like to trap, but I like the frightee unaware of the trap for as long as possible,” said Deliver.
Seal hummed. “I used to like bringing a frightee’s worst fears to light. Yes, I like that a lot.”
Every one of my skins buzzed with excitement. “Sign, go ahead and lock the doors. Deliver, how about a never-ending staircase? Seal, her apartment is at the end of the hall. You can find inspiration for her worst fear there.”
Deliver bounced on the balls of his feet. “And you, my queen?”
I smirked. “For this frightee, a more personal approach works for me. My voice must do if I will be invisible to her now. Remember, fright lightly .”
The pawns slipped into the shadows as the landlady edged closer down the hall. I shrank back into darkness too.
“No, no, no.” The landlady moaned low as she reached the crumbled brick wall.
Pressed against the wall, I held my breath, and nearly laughed when Seal wheezed from the pressure of keeping quiet and Sign elbowed him in the gut.
I bit the inside of my cheek, determined not to ruin this haunting before it had begun. My, but I had forgotten the emotional highs of this pastime.
Candlelight swelled into the bedroom as the landlady neared, but this time, when she entered the bedroom, I had no plans to wait in the elevator shaft and utter eerie rental reminders.
My pawns blurred out of the apartment, and I blinked into the hallway after them.
This would be a light and drawn-out kind of fright. A torment.
A monstrous delight.
Yes.
My stairway pawns exited the apartment behind me—Seal racing off to the landlady’s apartment, Sign to lock the exits, and Deliver to create a paradigm trap.
I whispered after them, and a terrible horror layered my voice, “ Easy , my pawns. We have all night.”