Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Imagine a sudden blindness to what is,

To what has been,

To what will be.

I could not. I cannot.

I will not.

T hey'd arranged her nicely on the blanket, then rolled her up. Sand Cat had carried her out of the shaft and still held her as we walked through the city. After a few words from Ox, the landlady and agents disappeared without further shout or slap.

All in all, aside from the burning question in my mind, the horrible situation had been sorted with impossible ease.

But where did dead bodies go? That was what I'd really like to know, for I had one last thing to do, and that was to bury my mother. She'd never told me how to do that part.

I walked behind Ox and next to Stag. Sand Cat followed behind. I hadn't asked where we were going. When Ox dismissed the agents and landlady, it became clear they expected me to go with them.

How did the trio know to come? Discovering where I lived wasn't implausible—Ox could have followed me home after all—but why at that particular moment did they come? Then to handle everything so smoothly, as if they sought to help me. I felt certain they'd caused my three-week slumber, and yet a three-week slumber didn't exist unless it were a coma, and even a coma required food and drink. Logical rules didn't allow for the happenings and horrors of my situation.

And so I didn't ask those questions because I didn't want those answers.

I just had one question in need of answering.

We arrived at the skull's apartment building. Two twisted statues now decorated the outside door. The beasts' mouths were wide in a toothed yawn, and I could imagine their howls would be the exact sound of my aching heart. Beautiful, really, if one chose to see past their initial grotesqueness.

"Redecorating?" I asked Stag, nodding at the statues.

The three skeletons exchanged a look.

"He sent her away," Sand Cat said. To all appearances, he was unperturbed by carrying a rotting corpse, but very perturbed by the thought of escorting me within the building to his skull a second time.

Stag answered, "She held my gaze."

"She held one before."

"For longer this time."

I didn't have the heart or energy to tell them that I'd chosen to look away. I felt that would mean something to them. But that conversation didn't operate in the confines of the world's logical rules, either, because while they'd discussed a held gaze at length, they hadn't discussed the rotting corpse or three-week slumber at all.

Ox unlocked the door. "We'll take her."

"We've taken her," Sand Cat griped.

Stag tossed them a smirk. "We take her."

Ox chuckled, then stopped a little after Stag joined him. Sand Cat relented and laughed with Stag for a time before Ox finished off their chuckle chime.

The matter seemed settled.

Up the stairs we went, just a skeleton crew, a nineteen-year-old woken from a three-week slumber, and her dead mother rolled in a blanket.

They'd redecorated in here too. Along with the statues at the entrance, the railings on the stairs weren't painted steel any longer. Today, a weave of black metal twigs and branches formed the railing. The vicious ends of the twigs jutted in every direction, their points daring a person to use them.

"Why have a railing you can't use?" I wondered aloud.

Another exchanged look.

"It's usable," said Ox.

My brows rose. "Not without great injury or great care."

"What's your point?" Stag inquired.

I fell quiet again, climbing higher as I studied the railing. How did they replace the old one? They must've ripped steel from concrete to do so, and I couldn't see crumbling at the inserts or gaping holes. No dust from the extensive work. People in Vitale didn't just redecorate on a whim like this. Not even skulls.

"What's the flower on the railing?" I couldn't help but ask after another few flights, though I'd resolved to only ask one question and had already asked several.

Sand Cat purred, "Gray lilies."

Lily? "Lilies were my mother's favorite. They aren't lilies."

Stag paused, and I nearly smacked into his back. "What do you see?"

"Rounded black petals, sepals," I answered. "A yellow center with many styles and filaments." While the first eight years of schooling in Vitale were really just childcare to enable adults to work all day, we did learn crucial life skills in that time, along with some reading and numeracy. Much of our learning—both earlier and later on—centered around the sciences of crop production. I'd learned to identify many flowers in that time, including lilies. Just never this one.

Pausing by a cracked window, I drew a likeness of the flower in the dust. "It's like this."

Ox's voice drifted down from the next landing. "Hellebore."

Stag gestured me ahead of him, and we continued to climb.

Hellebore. I'd never heard of it. Ox had, and yet he didn't see hellebores on the railing. "Do you not see the hellebores too?"

No answer.

I squinted at the railing again, trying to spot a single lily. None. But plenty of hellebores.

I bumped into Ox's back.

"My apologies." I rubbed my nose after and belatedly recalled the landlady's slap. I searched for the wounds with my fingertips. The bleeding had stopped, at least, but she'd done her worst by the bruised feel of things.

I poked my head out from behind Ox to peer ahead. We'd reached the top floor at last. But the metal door to the skull's room was gone, and a stone archway stood in its place.

Wait. I shook my head.

The metal door blinked into view again. Then the archway again. It remained this time, and I swayed. Stag hooked a hand under my arm.

Ox entered the skull's room without knocking. And why would he knock on an archway? Except there was a metal door there sometimes, so which was it? A door or an archway?

"What is it?" hissed the skull from inside.

I trembled at his terrible voice. Yesterday—or three weeks ago—I'd prevented my knees knocking together. Not today. Perhaps the starvation and dehydration of the last three weeks were catching up. Except I should be dead from that. The dehydration certainly.

Ox cleared his throat. "My liege?"

" What is it? " he hissed again.

Stag stepped forward and shot Ox a baffled look. "My liege… you need an explanation?"

My focus wandered from the skull's stiff back to the wooden chair he sat upon. Something funny was happening at the legs. Thin white pillars propped each of the four legs, piling under the chair in a mess of different lengths and thicknesses. I shook my head again and fixed my sights on the skull once more.

His hand formed a fist on the armrest formed of skulls.

I blinked, and the skulls disappeared, a wooden armrest taking its place once more. My heart hammered.

Sand Cat spoke from behind me. "You've never needed an explanation before, my liege, is all."

"Is all well, sire?" Ox asked.

"Perhaps I have sat overlong," the skull mused in a detached voice.

I took a breath. "What are your plans for me, sir?" Ox had done something to me to make me sleep. I was a felon, but the skeleton had sent my captors away. I was the creature of this skull now. Best to know my path.

The skull jerked his head. "Who is here with you?"

Stag grunted in surprise, and Ox sucked in a breath.

Sand Cat blurted, "S-Sire?"

A pressing silence filled the space as surely as the smell of my mother did—a smell the skull hadn't reacted to in the slightest.

But here was what I knew: No one would hire me now. Word would spread from the landlady and through Vitale of the girl who kept her dead mother in an elevator shaft. Vitale was large enough to start again in some ways but small enough for a reputation to stick. Even if the agents didn't update their paperwork with what had happened, the landlady would talk and talk until she got her revenge on me. So, the worst thing that could happen would be for the skull to turn me away. There'd be no option but to do the very thing I'd sworn to never do.

"I would know my fate, please," I said.

"It's Capable and Dependable," Ox told the skull, almost in question. "Three weeks ago after the hotel wasn't possible. Do you recall, sire?"

The skull remained with his face partly turned to us, except my eyes couldn't see him. My focus slid down to his armrest of skulls each time I tried to see his face. I blinked, and the wooden version of the armrest returned. I'd just seen skulls that weren't there.

I needed food and water. Maybe more sleep.

How could I want more sleep?

"Where are your possibilities?" the skull said at last.

My possibilities? First, he'd said I'd had too many, and now he was saying I had none?

The skeleton crew turned to me as one, and my mind squeezed.

The skull unfolded from his chair, and I was pushed back a few steps.

"I cannot see her possibilities," he stated.

Stag blurted, "That's impossible."

"There's nothing to her?" Ox asked the skull.

My gaze was driven to the stone ground as the skull walked around his chair. No, not stone. I shook my head, and the stone ground became carpet again. I stared at the carpet as the skull strode forward to me. I walked backward with each of his steps closer. My shoulder blades thumped against stone, and then a force like a giant balloon pressed against my chest and face, crushing the air from me.

I gasped for breath against the power squashing me between the wall and the skull ten feet away.

"Who are you?" he demanded in a voice of splintered bones.

I panted, biting back a scream at the squeeze on my mind. "Patch."

" Who are you?" He stepped closer. I heard a crack of bone. My own. The pain in my collarbone and the sudden loss of control over my left arm was nothing against the balloon of him.

"Patch," I wheezed. "I don't want to know more about you. Stop!"

The pressure eased somewhat. Enough for me to collapse against the balloon and suck in gulps of air. I moaned and nearly missed his quiet words.

"You would keep your denial, and that is your choice. If you must cling to denial, then it is too late for you."

"I see that," I snapped.

I shouldn't have snapped at a skull. Especially when I could only look at his booted feet and no higher with him this close. Supple black leather boots. Embroidered with a silver stitch. By far the most exquisite footwear I had seen. How strange what the mind chose to see when clinging to sanity.

"I see nothing ." There was a leaden beat after his statement.

"My liege?" Stag hushed. "You see nothing at all?"

"She has no possibilities. I see no possibilities between the three of you and her either. I cannot see anything. Though before you arrived, I could, and so I fathom that she blinds me." He tilted his head. "Yet when last I saw her a blink ago, she had a sickening amount of possibilities. Grotesquely unset and horrifically purposeless."

The skull didn't move closer. If he did, I felt my death would be the result. He, the balloon that extended before him, was a terrible thing.

The problem appeared to be that the skull didn't know what was going on, and he was somehow used to knowing everything.

"My mother died," I explained. "She's in that blanket."

He didn't look to where I'd nodded.

"This is true?" he asked his skeleton. He sounded very unhappy about asking.

"Yes, my liege," said Sand Cat, still holding my mother like she weighed nothing. "Capable and Dependable was found clinging to the body. She'd been there for three weeks."

Though the skull's shoes were very lovely, I'd prefer to see his face. I tried to budge my eyes higher to no avail. In fact, my mind pulsed in warning when I tried.

"What did you do to me, Ox?" I muttered. "Why did you make me sleep for three weeks?"

"Who is Ox?" the skull bit out.

"I believe I am Ox, sire. I did nothing of the kind to her. I bade her return home to force her from here. No more. But sire, she was able to hold Iz's gaze for longer this time. She is well and good after a three-week slumber too. We thought…"

"You thought what ?" the skull asked in a chilling voice.

The question wasn't a question. Ox sensed that too.

Stag took a turn. "There is oddity to her, and?—"

"You thought a three-week slumber compared to one of a thousand years." The skull whirled from me, returning to his wooden chair, though he didn't sit. As he retreated, I could lift my gaze to his long jacket. Velvet, silver buttons.

Stag tried again. "Sire, we three sense just one possibility from her. That is why we brought her here."

The skull halted by the chair and beside Sand Cat, holding my mother. "You are not blinded to possibilities by her?"

The skeleton fidgeted on the spot and didn't confirm he could do what his skull could not. I couldn't blame him.

"What is it you see of her?" the skull growled, making my insides seize in fright.

Sand Cat answered, "The only possibility was that she came here to you, sire. We saw nothing past that, nor anything to explain why that, alone, was possible."

I could look at the back of the skull's head again now, so I saw him shake it in response to Sand Cat's explanation. I was glad all these mentions of possibilities confused someone else. Though the skull understood a lot more than me about such matters. I could guess that "possibilities" loosely referred to choices. But there was a deeper level to what they discussed that I was ignorant of. For instance, how could they see choices to even know only one existed for me?

"That she came here," echoed the skull. "What have I to do with a woman, barely that, who blinds me?"

I cradled my arm, which no longer wanted to work. "Perhaps to answer my question, sir?"

The skull stared straight ahead, and I stared at his broad back of black velvet. His skeleton crew stared at walls or carpet or chair. Everyone stared. I couldn't speak for the others, but I'd chosen to do so because my mind couldn't take in more detail. Someone had smudged away anything but the easiest and largest of the skull's features and clothing, and I could only fathom that had been done to preserve my calm and reason.

"Sire, what would you have us do?" asked Ox.

The skull didn't move. "She was to come to me, and she has a question. What is there but to hear it? What would you ask?"

My focus drifted to my mother. "Where do dead bodies go? I do not know, and I would like to, so I can do best by someone I loved very much."

The thought occurred to me that this skull and his skeleton hadn't asked me to repeat myself once. Nine months of leading a double life had softened my voice. I didn't speak much to the other staff at the hotel. Guests, on occasion. Mostly, I spoke to my illegal mother in an elevator shaft in constant fear of being overheard, so my voice was painfully quiet—I'd been told by an annoyed Frank more than once. The skull and skeleton had never asked me to repeat myself, like almost everyone did.

"Dead bodies go to whoever finds them," answered the skull. "My princes have found your mother, and so she is mine. Ah, that is what's meant to happen then. She must be a strong one."

Princes. I'd gathered that the skeleton crew referred to their skull as "liege" or "sire" in deference to his power, but perhaps this skull enjoyed royal pretense to a larger degree. I supposed if I were a skull then I might like to pretend princes were at my disposal.

None of them had asked me to repeat myself, so I could make space for some of their quirks too. "You deal with dead bodies… sire?"

"Place the body on my throne, Willboughy. There, I will find my answer to this blindness."

Did he refer to the wooden chair with the mismatched stones piled beneath as his throne? He certainly was dedicated to his kingly vision. Or was it me who was dedicated to mine? Because I was calmly ignoring that he planned to sit there with my dead mother. There seemed no option but to ignore a great many things today.

"I cannot, sire," replied Sand Cat. "The body is incomplete. The pelvis is missing."

My gaze darted between them all.

"Where is it?" grated the skull. "If not to add a body to my throne, then what is the outcome of bringing the woman here?"

I had no answer to that, but I was used to not having answers. This skull was not.

"The pelvis wasn't there, sire, and the agents were certain they'd dragged Capable and Dependable from sleep."

Sand Cat hummed. "Perhaps the pelvis was stolen."

Did a thief come and steal away my mother's bones as I slumbered? I rubbed my forehead and swayed some more.

The skull hummed. "Is that the future, then? To find the pelvis?"

"Sire," Ox said after. "This lady asked about the statues outside the building. She asked about the flowers on the railing but did not see your gray lilies."

The skull sat. Except his wooden chair was gone, and though my chest had loosened a fraction as he put more distance between us, the sight of his throne sank me into a heap on the stone floor. I cradled my injured arm close, eyes unblinking.

Thrones. Pelvises. Princes. Lilies.

Three weeks ago, this room was an old office space with a single chair, stool, and almost pristine carpet and painted walls. The skull had been smaller, then, his voice and presence more acceptable. Someone had pulled back the bloodied curtain, and I could see a second version of everything. Unless the horror climbing my body like vines was incorrect, this second version had always been here, masked from me. Which was the truth and which was pretend?

As the skull settled in his throne, I glimpsed the white around the legs. Bones. Any number of bones formed the base of his throne. Some newly white and some cracked with age. The bones piled to form a base held together with mortar. The backrest of the throne was made of interlocking rib cages, while splintered thigh bones fanned from the top in a savage statement of the skull's danger, depravity, and power. The armrests were indeed made of skulls, and as the skull himself sat there, he toyed with a hole in an aged cranium under his left hand. "Is this the point? What flower did you see, Capable and Dependable?"

"Hellebores, I am told, sir. Sire." How could I speak still? Shock. Denial. Confusion.

The skull stopped toying with the hole. "Hellebore. The cure of ancient insanity."

"Sire," Ox breathed. "Do you suppose?—"

"My fate is not to suppose, Hasbin."

I didn't much care what the skull supposed and didn't. I didn't much care about any of this. "Could you kindly tell me my fate?"

"There is no fate without possibilities," he roared.

His roar shook the stone walls, dislodging dust and debris. I screamed, unable to prevent panic escaping my body.

The shaking stopped, and I squeezed my eyelids shut while my scrambled brain tried to right itself. My voice cracked as, for some reason, I said, "That is what I feared. That I am fateless."

"She talks sense," Stag said in awe.

Did I? I rather thought I'd spoken none.

Hasbin—Ox—crouched beside me, tilting my chin, and I looked into his eyes, which weren't any discernible color. I'd seen a void in them once, but now I could see him within. That was a nice surprise.

"She is sensical," he announced. "Able to hold a gaze yet."

Sand Cat whispered to the king, "Sire, what would you have us do?"

"I would have you take her and the body away, Willboughy," the skull said wearily. "There is no point to either. I care not for pelvises and hellebores today."

Willboughy lowered his voice. "We would not leave you blind."

"She is that which blinds me. The possibilities were there before, though not yours in her company, and all will be well again when she leaves and when you leave her company. Take her away. To where, I care not if she is but away from me."

Ox hauled me to my feet, and I had no choice but to lean on him in my stupid state. "Where to, sire?"

The king hissed an exhale. "Ask her, Hasbin. Let it be her choice. Only, let this be the last time I see the pointless wench."

I could only hope. He had a lot of quirks. Too many for my mind.

Hasbin half carried me from the throne chamber. Stag walked behind us, and Willboughy followed with my mother.

"Where will you take me?" I stammered, ignoring the altered appearance of the landing outside the skull's throne chamber. The throbbing in my collarbone made it easy to keep my focus very small.

The three skeletons stopped at the top of the stairs, and Stag spoke first, "Where would you like to go, lady?"

"Iz…" Willboughy said under his breath.

"Kingsie told us to ask her," Stag burst out. "Have you got a better idea?"

The skeleton crew turned to me, and their pinched brows told me no one had a better idea. The choice was mine, then, as their skull had said.

I supposed at nineteen, I might have a life ahead of me, though a tiredness filled me as if I'd lived many times already and shouldn't be too concerned with another. The king didn't care for pelvises and hellebores today, and neither did I, as it turned out.

To live, then shelter and food were necessary. If I had those, then I might manage the rest when the ability to care found me again. The landlady would have already helped herself to my possessions, and nothing of worth had existed in the apartment but my mother, who wasn't there any longer.

Shelter. Food. My mother.

I couldn't say what I'd need tomorrow or what I'd need to exist alone without my mother. To fathom more than my immediate survival was out of reach.

So I licked my lips. "Kindly tell me what became of Hotel Vitale."