Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
One touch did earn one thousand years slumber,
Time for ancients to warp, break, and build.
Five powers to grasp the world's fraying seams,
And if golden fate deems fit, to mend.
" G reetings, lady." The male's voice was pitched low and filled with uncertainty.
I dusted my hands off on my apron. "Toil, good evening."
This prince had pushed me into a one-month slumber, but that was no reason to be impolite. He might have come to speak an apology.
The sun was fading in the sky, and his conventional beauty beamed still, though soon our dusk forms would appear.
"I hope your evening is still good though I have arrived," he mumbled.
"You speak of the manner of my slumber?"
He licked his lips. "I must agree that King See's rage in this matter was warranted. We should have guessed that as a new monster, you might not be strong enough to look upon us. I can only say we felt very surprised in the moment, and all three of us are very sorry to have caused undue slumber."
"Thank you, Toil. I appreciate that you didn't intend me harm. Are Sigil and Hex with you?"
"No, lady. They are at odds about coming. They are sorry for your slumber, and very relieved—as I am—that you've awoken still yourself, though."
I grunted and pushed another set of bars into place. "At odds to see me?"
"Well, yes, lady. Our liege orders that we capture you tonight and drag you before him. Sigil and Hex feel strange knowing their orders and coming to exchange pleasantries with you beforehand."
I pulled a face. "I'm not sure about an evening spent that way. Do you need to capture me?"
"Yes, I'm afraid. He is our liege, and we are his princes."
"I see." And perhaps I really was beginning to.
"Lady," said Toil. "Allow me to remark on your intriguing word arrangement. Have you been practicing?"
I lifted a shoulder. "I woke this way." Slumber must be behind the change. He wasn't the only monster to have remarked on it.
"How lucky for anyone who chances to hear you."
I didn't need to do anything with a compliment. "Would you mind delivering a letter to King Bring before dusk? Maybe that would change his mind about capturing and dragging me about."
Toil stepped forward. "I'd be happy to. How wonderful if there were a peaceful way out of this misunderstanding."
I'd waited all week for Bring's princes to visit, or any other prince for that matter. Even See's princes hadn't called in. I pulled a letter—one of four—from my apron and passed it through the bars. "I'll talk further with Bring, but I do ask that he abandon the capturing and dragging, please."
Toil tucked the letter into the back pocket of his jeans that followed the curve of his masculine legs.
Where did his clothes go when he turned into the bulbous slimy monster? I blinked a few times at the memory of their dusk-clad horrors.
"Are you renovating?" Toil asked, peering through my wall of bars. "I've never seen a wall like this."
I pushed my hair back to wipe at my brow. "Reinforcing the place. All the windows here have bars, aside from reception, so I'm pulling them out and crushing them into a barricade here." I pointed to the far left. "And there's a door I took off the laundry room so I can get in and out. It was the thickest and strongest."
"You feel unsafe here to be doing such things?"
"I do feel that way, and then your visit a month ago confirmed what I knew I should do."
He grimaced. "It is good that you protect yourself. Very good. And tell me, how exactly did you pull out the bars and crush them together?"
I rapped my knuckles against the bars. "Exactly that, Prince Toil. I yanked them from the concrete walls of the top-level rooms, which made a terrible mess, I'll admit."
I had a feeling that recent slumber was behind my remarkable new strength too. I'd also found myself able to deny dawn sleep for longer and to wake earlier. Did monsters usually change over time?
He said in awe, "I can see how you've pinched the metal frames together to create the wall."
The barricade blocked the entrance beyond reception. Tall walls already surrounded the hotel, but anyone could undertake to scale them without much difficulty. I'd fortify those in a different manner, and if those combined with a wall of metal bars didn't put a person off, then likely as not, that person was a prince. I didn't have much power against princes anyway, and recognizing my limits was a good thing.
"I'll deliver your letter now," Toil announced. "Just remember that I'll return with Sigil and Hex later to capture you."
I dipped my head. "I'll remember. Thanks for the warning."
He frowned. "Is that what I've done? King Bring won't like that at all. Why did I do that?"
I watched the powerful man stride away through the lupins covering the outside road. How odd that such a conventionally handsome male could turn into something so unconventional and monstrous at dusk. The same could be said of all the princes' handsome daylight forms. From dawn until dusk, they existed as beautiful statues, sculptured magnificently to make humans revere and not fear.
To think I might never have known the truth.
After stopping in the kitchen to enjoy some lentil soup, I returned to the top level to yank out more metal bars for my wall. I had to admit that this strength had its perks, and I enjoyed that the strength remained in my daylight form, even though the strength was monstrous in origin.
I wrinkled my nose at the chunks of concrete and thick layer of dust littering the landing. That would be quite the clean-up job. I couldn't do anything about the great holes left in the window frames, and I'd managed to crack most of the windows, too, and shattered more than one.
Once my entranceway wall was complete, I carefully gathered my supplies to fortify the tall, outer wall.
"Good evening, lady," said a man. He was echoed by two other men.
I peered down at Sigil, who stood between Toil and Hex. "Goodness, is that the time? I meant to be away from here before you arrived. Oh, but you're still in daylight form."
Toil lifted a shoulder. "We came earlier than intended to trick you."
I considered his words. "A wise idea when capturing someone you've warned." I couldn't begrudge him that.
"Lady, why do you sit up there with a box of broken glass?" Sigil asked.
"I had an idea to fortify these walls by cutting mirror shards into the top. No one would wish to climb them then."
"You decided to sit with the box of shards for a time?" Hex inquired.
I nibbled on my bottom lip. "Can I admit something hard to the three of you?"
Three nods.
"When I became a monster, I also became unable to bear even the thought of looking at my monster form. Now, I also find myself unable to bear the thought of looking at my day form because I'm reminded of how I don't look at night."
Three vacant stares.
Perhaps they needed more information. "So I'm sitting here with the mirror shards face down, afraid to do more work in case I accidentally glimpse myself, no matter the day or dusk."
"You're afraid to see yourself," Sigil said oh-so-slowly.
They had it now. "You see the matter at hand. I would not have expected to ever have such a problem, but I feel topped up with dread and doom when I consider seeing what I've become, and what I'm no longer."
Toil and Hex gaped.
Hex asked, " Why do you feel dread and doom, lady?"
"Why, because I'm…" Grotesque, revolting, horrific. "… a monster." More vacant looks. "Because I don't feel good about the change. I liked how I looked before, or I at least wasn't repulsed by it."
"Repulsed?" Toil gasped. "You mean to say that you're repulsed by the sight of your true form?"
I squeezed my eyes shut. "Perhaps it's not really my true form." Maybe one day it might go away, and I would be as I was.
"But how can this be, lady?" Sigil hushed. "You are as tendrils of dancing steam over a simmering cauldron, you are as the aroma of spring flowers and culinary herbs drying overhead, you are as the most priceless and rare ingredient of a charm or curse."
"Summer snow," Toil murmured.
Hex scoffed. "Summer snow. Nothing so plain. She is pure hope of a newly broken heart."
Sigil added, "The breath of an unburdened king."
Their eyes rounded at that statement, reminding me sorely that in not much time, their eyes wouldn't have much eyelid to speak of, and far more blood and slime.
"You're exactly right, Prince Sigil." Toil gaped at me. "That's what she is. Rare beyond rare."
I didn't like to be the target of so much gaping. "Those things sound very rare indeed, and I don't doubt that I'm rare—a new monster who only slept for three weeks and now one month more, one made up of so many parts, a stitched-together thing. My issue is that I…" Unshed tears clogged my throat, reducing my voice to a warbling whisper. "I can't quite put my finger on what the matter is."
I knew what bothered me, but admitting that I was afraid to see myself filled me with shame. I shouldn't place importance on my looks, and yet there it was. Perhaps seeing myself made this all real, and I had to believe it a dark, odd kind of fairy tale for now.
Sigil was walking toward me along the wall, and I couldn't fathom how he'd been ten feet below me at one point, then all the way up here in the next.
He extended his hands. "Give me the box, Lady Patch. We can do this part. I can't understand why you will not look at yourself, especially your new form, when I would love nothing more than to gaze at you all the night. But maybe one time soon, you'll feel up to it. Until then, let us help you safeguard this snuffed space."
The mirror shards rattled in the box from the force of my trembling hands. "Would you, really?"
Toil and Hex were on my other side as suddenly as Sigil had appeared.
Hex bowed. "Yes, lady. We will help you."
"And then we'll capture you, okay?" Toil said. "Be ready."
"I will," I promised, and then unfurled from sitting before reaching for the ladder propped against the wall. "Don't let me delay you too long. I appreciate any help you can give."
They settled into work, and without me saying so, the three princes made sure to face the reflective part of the shards outward. Working with small knives I hadn't seen before, they cut slits in the thick concrete wall and jammed the shards in, not appearing to mind the trickling blood leaving their fingers and palms. That might have something to do with the way my broken collarbone healed overnight because otherwise, a person should be very concerned about such cuts.
I sat by my mother's grave and made sure to keep my full focus off the three princes working above as my skin started to itch with the onset of dusk. Now, they would be monsters, and Toil had reminded me twice to be ready for capture. I didn't wish to let him down. Watching their shadowed forms from the side of my eye, I could see that they blinked here and there, not very far at once, and always the same distance—about six feet. They could do it in rapid succession. Blink, blink, blink. But they couldn't just teleport a huge distance or very short distance at once. Just six feet. I would have time to run before they got to me, but I couldn't risk watching them fully in case I fainted again. I'd keep an eye from my peripherals like this. My mind seemed fine with that.
I plucked a hellebore from Mother's grave with my stitched-on fingers and toyed with it so as not to look completely upon their monstrous forms. "You mentioned curses and charms. Do they really exist?"
They laughed in unison, and I felt a pang to hear the chiming chuckles of King See's princes.
"Surely, Lady Patch," Sigil said. "That is the nature of King Bring."
I considered that. "King See sees all possibilities." Though I couldn't say that I understood much of what that really meant. I could put together that the past, present, and future were visible to him, however, by the name of his princes.
There was a scowl in Toil's voice. "He sees and does nothing."
I tilted my head. "Does nothing? King See?"
"One and the same," Hex said in scathing tones. "Sees all and does nothing."
I pursed my lips and plucked petals from the hellebore bloom. "King See did help me for a long time at great inconvenience to himself. I don't feel right being privy to comments that insult him."
"Just so," Sigil called. "You must understand that we do not serve King See, we serve King Bring."
I could understand that a small bit. "They don't get along?"
"More than most," Hex replied.
I listened to him jam more shards in. They worked steadily along the wall. I wondered if they would continue work on the other walls once this was complete or if that was when the capture would happen.
Sigil muttered, "A person who does nothing gets on with everyone, and what that means is nothing, too, just like them."
I remained silent, sure that was an insulting comment again. "If King See views possibilities, what does King Bring do?"
Toil snorted. "Why, he brings, of course. He can bring a person any number of things, good or bad, pain, happiness, riches, and despair. King See has his eyes, and our liege has his charms and curses."
He could make someone rich or happy with a potion? "What's a charm or curse made of?"
"Depends on the recipe, doesn't it, Lady Patch," Hex answered. "Oftentimes they're a potion, or sometimes a salve or sugary crystal. Then there's the matter of how the curse or charm is applied, which changes the nature of the bringing. Is the charm swallowed or rubbed in anti-clockwise? Is the curse stabbed or inhaled as a toxic fume? Is the bringing boiling in design, or must it chill the soul to best adhere? There are many thousands of nuances to the esteemed work of our liege."
I couldn't begin to imagine, just as I couldn't begin to imagine the thousands of nuances of King See's work. "What is King Bring's goal then? Do these curses and charms help his kingdom and hinder the others?"
I assumed King Bring ruled one-fifth of Vitale too. Maybe he wanted two-fifths of it.
The three monsters stopped in their work, and I adjusted my sidelong gaze in case my mind shimmered and squeezed.
Toil drew his bulbous form to full height, which would be around my shoulder height, unlike his towering daylight form.
He declared, "Our liege undertakes the most noble of causes, Lady Patch, and he is the only king to do so. Our liege vows to save the world from extinction and end."
My brows lifted. "That certainly is noble. He seeks to return the world to how it was before The End?"
"What the saved world will appear like is unknown," Sigil answered. "But he vows to mend it."
Maybe I'd misjudged this King Bring. The idea of curses was a chilling one, but by all means, he seemed to intend well. "You say he's the only king that wishes to save the world. How is it that King See doesn't wish the same?"
I wouldn't have thought him capable of great villainy. There had been ample opportunity for See to do ill by me, and perhaps he did break one of my bones, but for the most part, he'd done far more for me than anyone ever had aside from my mother. He'd endured blindness. He'd allowed me this hotel and still hadn't claimed his snuff share. He'd somewhat claimed me, yes, but I was yet to learn if that was a heroic or villainous action. The king sat on a throne of bones, and had a menace about him quite terrifying, but for some unfathomable reason, I would've expected him to pursue noble causes.
"The reign of King See slips," Hex scoffed. "Once, he was nearly as great as our liege, but time has weakened his morality. From the dawn of the new age to now, time has eaten away at him. He grows more and more a shadow of who he was."
A terrible fate. "You say he does nothing now. Do you mean that while King Bring intends to save the world, King See intends to let the world do as it will?"
Their replies were snarled and scathing of the king who had helped me more than anyone other than my mother. I pressed my lips together and took no part in it. Instead, as they belittled the seeing king, I took note of their progression. The three princes were nearly done with this wall. What would they do once it was over?
I'd formed somewhat of a plan as they'd worked, and it suddenly occurred to me why King See had only somewhat claimed me. He'd done so hastily, just as I'd hastily formed a plan just now. He must have made the choice in a moment of pressure. A hasty plan must rankle to someone who likely hadn't ever done a thing hastily or uncertainly.
Maybe that was why he'd also kicked me out when I woke, then not sent his princes along though an entire week had passed.
I hadn't given full thought to how much I'd inconvenienced the king with my presence. For him not to see all possibilities when he'd always seen them was like how I'd been human one day, then monster the next. King See must feel horrendously out of depth, and yet he'd endured that to ensure I rested in safety.
The princes finished the wall and glanced at each other.
"There are still shards in the box," said Toil. I heard a squelch of slime and watched him peer upward to the moon from my peripheries. "There is time plenty to see out our king's order. Lady, are there more mirror shards to be had? We might as well carry on some."
"Thank you, I'd appreciate that."
I pointed them to the top floor and listened as they smashed mirrors up with carefree abandon. The job had taken me hours. When they blinked in their curious way to the wall behind me, I shifted to the other side of Mother's grave to keep them in my sights. It wouldn't do to disappoint Toil by relaxing my guard.
I rolled the black petals between my fingers. How strange that there should be five petals on a hellebore flower, when my question involved five kings. "King Bring seeks to save the world. King See does not seek to save or ruin it. Tell me of the three other kings, then. What is it they desire for the world?"
Perhaps I could rewrite my letters with such knowledge to better persuade them.
More snarling and scathing. Then Sigil said, "King Take and King Raise behave as boys on the cusp of manhood. They show no respect for the responsibility of their task."
"Was their task to save the world told to them?" I asked.
"If one wakes with the power to save the world, one knows they are meant to save it, even if the world is very changed."
I rested my head on my legs, hugging them close, my face still turned to keep their shadowed forms in sight. "You speak of your one-hundred-year slumber."
"No, lady, I speak of the one-thousand-year slumber of kings."
My ears rang. One thousand years . Goodness, kings slumbered for a long time. "No wonder my three-week sleep is considered odd, even with another month added on."
"Yes, lady," Hex said sadly. "Three weeks and a month is not a great deal of time. Ancients need a lot longer to warp, break, and build one mighty enough to enter the toothed beast's yawn. It's impossible for them to shatter what must be shattered while we're awake. Our minds couldn't bear it, as yours is struggling to."
I sighed. "You speak truth, Prince Hex. Being a monster of little slumber is a difficult fate so far. My mind does awful things when the impossibilities grow too thick."
"Ah." His mourning sound echoed my feeling exactly. How incredible. If he'd had a conventional mouth, he couldn't have done such a magical thing.
"I understand," he said. "And I'm sorry for it. I wish you'd slept longer."
I tossed the ruined flower on my mother's grave. "I'm beginning to wish the same. If I'm part monster, I can't really be friends with you all, and I can't really be friends with a non-monster. My mother might have loved me still, but she is gone, and when I consider my life, I fear how lonely it might be. Take my mind off such things, please. What of the fifth king? King Bring seeks to save. King See observes, and King Take and Raise care not. What of the fifth?"
"King Change," they snarled in the darkest and most scathing tones yet.
I'd almost stopped thinking of the princes as monsters. As the hours had ticked by, my mind had stopped considering them as abhorrent and started to consider them as abnormal. From there, I could reason that the princes weren't abnormal at all to themselves or the monsters in their circles, just to me and who I had been. They lived in a world where bulbousness and sliminess and an excess of eyeball and deficit of eyelid needn't cause alarm.
As dusk leaned into night, I'd started to appreciate that the wobble and toothless state of their sluglike mouths gave them the ability to give sound to a feeling. I might sigh as a sign of frustration, but they gave frustration itself a unique noise.
What a glorious, strange and wonderful thing.
Their short stature and girth aided their balance high up, I'd noted, and the constant squelching to come from their ever-darting eyes, which made me feel they must be very alert. I couldn't have said half as many interesting things for a normal person as I used to be.
"Thank you," I said suddenly.
They cut off their snarling.
Toil replied, "Whatever for, Lady Patch?"
"Your uniqueness has made me pause to consider how normal I used to be, and that perhaps normal isn't so interesting. I've never met a person who could rip metal bars from concrete walls, nor pinch metal frames together. If I met a person who could do those things, I'd find them very interesting indeed."
Squelch, squelch, squelch. Three eager nods.
"I'd find that interesting too," Sigil said. "Will you look at yourself in one of these shards now, do you suppose?"
They spoke so casually of supposing. King See's princes would have something to say about that. "Not tonight, Sigil. I don't feel wonderful about doing that yet. Could you tell me of the fifth king instead?"
"King Change," growled Toil. "The traitor of the cause. Our liege seeks to save, and Change seeks to destroy."
I looked more directly at them than I'd yet dared. "You say he means to destroy the world? More than it's already destroyed? Why would he desire such a thing?"
"Because he's evil," said Hex. "That is all there is to say."
He must be filled with pain—or evil as the three princes had said. At least King See wasn't trying to ruin the world, though I had to confess myself disappointed at his lack of part in the saving of it. He wasn't squandering his power and position as the other two kings apparently were, though. Perhaps there were other factors to King See's choice that I didn't understand.
Of all the kings, King Bring seemed most driven to do what was right. Yet he also wanted to drag me places. King See and his princes had always tried to give me a choice in important matters by contrast.
I rubbed my forehead, feeling the stitch on my temple rub on the jagged stitching over my wrist. "Prince Toil, did King Bring get a chance to read my letter? I realize he must be busy making charms and curses to save the world."
Toil paused in his work, and I watched a great drip of slime fall from his body to slide down the wall. The stuff seemed impossibly sticky, almost like glue. No wonder they had to blink about.
"He did," Toil replied. "Thank you for the reminder. King Bring has heard your plea for the return of his one-fifth snuffing share. He will gladly do this if you reject King See's claim of you."
I'd already done so, though indirectly. Why would King Bring return his snuffing share to me in exchange for such a simple thing? "I was under the impression that King See had only somewhat claimed me."
Toil's chins wobbled. "Somewhat claimings carry a weight of unofficial complete claiming about them, lady."
So I'd heard. "What does it mean to be claimed by a king?" I ventured to ask.
Sigil caught a shard tossed to him by Hex, then replied, "Why, that King See wants you for his princess."
I looked directly at them before I could think better of it, and quickly glanced away though my mind didn't shimmer or squeeze. "Princess, you say? He wants me as his wife ?"
"A wife," Hex murmured. "That is a commoner concept, lady. A princess demands more and less of a king. More protection for you, and less vulnerability for him. There is not the friendship that commoners find in the arrangement of marriage. At least that is how it is with our liege and his princess."
There were princesses. Or one. Were they monsters too?
"Why on earth would he want me as his princess?" I blurted. I couldn't be a princess. I didn't have the makings of one.
"Ah," Sigil said in pure mourning. "You do not see yourself clearly. Would that I were a king to claim such a prize, Lady Patch, and yet my heart knows you are above me and I must not try to claw you down to my level and diminish your shining."
"I do not see you as inferior, nor myself as superior," I answered, feeling the flush in my cheeks.
"My heart, she blushes ink for us again," Toil hushed. "It's as if tiny squids live in her cheeks, wouldn't you say? Glorious."
I tucked my head against my knees and hoped they wouldn't capture me just at that moment. "If I reject King See's claiming, then what does that imply? Please speak truth because I sense this is important, or your liege wouldn't have asked that I do it."
Sigil smiled. "You have no protection and could be captured by our king."
"We weren't meant to say." Hex elbowed him sharply.
"Ow! Don't do that. She already knows about the capturing."
"I know for a fact that doesn't hurt, blob."
"Don't call me blob! The little ripples hurt. You know they do."
Hex sighed. "I do. Please try to do a little better, though."
Sigil glared at him, and Toil shook his head at their interaction.
"I could be captured by your king or the others? For what purpose? Surely the other kings are not in search of a princess, too, and even if they were, then why would they ask me? And you said that King Bring already has a princess. He won't require a second." I spoke my thoughts aloud. "I could simply turn more offers down."
There was a silence—the telling kind.
"Could I not?" I demanded.
Hex asked his fellow princes, "Does she not know that a monster king will plague and terror and scratch until he gets what he wishes? Though you are right, our liege has a princess and cannot take a second. That would not deter him from capturing you, lady."
This was a complicated business. "I'm willing to reject King See's claim, but I would need to talk directly with King See to do so. In return, I will need King Bring's solemn and binding oath that once his snuffing share is returned to me that he will not take it, change it, or ruin it by any means possible."
There was every chance that by rejecting King See's claim, he would snatch away his snuffing share. However, if the other four kings would only deal with an unclaimed version of me, then I'd rather gamble for four-fifths of my treasure than cling to one shaky fifth.
"I'm certain our liege would be glad to accommodate your request," Hex answered happily. "We shall take your answer to him."
Sigil slid the last shard of mirror into place, and I admired their work. Both walls done, and now there was only the roof to consider protecting.
"How wonderful of you to spend your evening this way," I told them. "Especially when you were meant to drag me before King Bring."
The three princes gasped.
"Our liege will be furious," Sigil groaned, peering up at the moon. "Is the night nearly gone then?"
I glanced at the sky, which was lightening, but the crushing need to sleep was more telling of dawn's approach. "Yes, Sigil. I'm afraid so. He won't punish you, will he?"
"Not in any lasting way," Toil said. "Don't you worry about us. We were glad to help you out, and I truly didn't mean for so much time to go by. Your conversation is just so delightful."
I smiled, and the movement pulled and twisted at my face. "And yours. Will you capture me tomorrow night, do you think?"
"I would wager so, lady, so mind you don't forget."
"I won't. Nor that you sought to trick me with an early arrival tonight."
"That's for the best, lady."
Toil, Sigil, and Hex disappeared off the wall, and when they didn't blink toward me, I gathered that they'd gone the other way and departed the hotel, leaving only a trail of slime and their rumbling laughter behind.