Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Breaking free of the cave, no longer brave,

They stared at a new, foreign age.

I pounded my fist on the wall of Kingsie's apartment building. I was surprised a mad dash through the city had led me here. I hadn't paid close attention to the route on either previous visit. My frenzied knocks were abrasive to the ears in the deepest dark of night. I didn't care.

I didn't care that Kingsie's apartment door had transformed into an enormous and ornate gateway, nor that a heavy and rusted portcullis barred my way, nor that the two twisted beast statues had quadrupled in size and towered over me.

No one answered my knocks though. That I cared about.

"Kindly open." I kicked the portcullis and—thankfully for the sake of my toes—encountered thin air when the portcullis started to lift.

Oof. " Thank you." I smoothed my outfit as I shifted from foot to foot in wait. I noticed my black-tulle skirt for the first time. I'd dressed in a panic, and the top I wore was transparent with a skull plastered on the front. I groaned. Kingsie would think that was on purpose.

At least I'd put on a bra and underwear.

Once the portcullis creaked high enough, I ducked under and raced through a courtyard bordered high on every side with stone towers.

I did my best to banish the screams in my mind as I climbed the stairs to Kingsie, but the stitches on my skin were the biggest impossibility yet. Is had seen the stitches too. He'd told me not to worry, and that he needed to think of his words before uttering them. He'd said Kingsie needed to see me, and not be told.

If there was another place to get answers for such things, I didn't know of it.

I raced up the winding stairs, staying well away from the vicious railing, and ignoring the vast number of arched hallways branching off the stairwell that now spiraled from level to level. If Kingsie's apartment changed each time I visited, then I couldn't let that impossibility bother me. There were too many others demanding space in my head.

I stopped at the top landing and panted hard, hands on knees.

Wiping sweat from my brow, I took in my surroundings despite my best intentions.

Gone were the great torn scratches down each wall. Here now was an arched walkway mostly open to the outside through sculpted openings on the walls. The moon's light illuminated alterations to the skull's throne chamber at the end of the airy passageway.

How did I ever see a mere office space?

The stone chamber was dome-shaped and made more of holes than wall just like the walkway I stood in. The chamber reminded me of the climbing domes in the school playground, but made of stone and with every inch sculpted in exquisite, painstaking detail. Moonlight beamed upon the throne of bones and basked the man atop it.

And yet I couldn't see the man, really. He was blurred, all colors of him smudged together like an out-of-focus oil painting.

"Kingsie?" I called. Only now did my fear of the man exceed the panic over my stitches.

He moved. Perhaps tilted his head, though everything about him was so blurred. "I find myself blind, and so it is the mistress named Patch. Why have you returned?"

I couldn't step closer. "I… Sir Kingsie, I…"

"Speak now. It is an immortal fool who believes seconds don't account to days, decades, and eons."

I wanted to speak. I just couldn't fathom how to achieve it. "Sir… I'm stitched together, and I'm not sure… I'm not sure." My mind trembled before I forced the last word out. "Why."

"You're stitched together," he repeated. "You are not usually stitched together?"

His acceptance of the impossible reassured. My words came easier. "No, sir. I wasn't like this yesterday or three weeks ago. I'd hoped Is was in the building because he saw me like this earlier, and I had thought he might've come to tell you already."

"My princes are away. I'm to hear that Is came to see you?"

"He kept me company as I sat by my mother's grave. I was covered in dirt, you see."

"No, I don't see."

I waited. "Of course you don't. I blind you."

"You do."

"I am sorry for it."

"That changes naught. Where did the princes drop you? Did your broken clavicle pain you after our last exchange? These are questions without answer."

I supposed they were. But I better not say so to someone who didn't suppose at all. "I could tell you the answer, if you like? I'm living at the hotel you closed down, and my collarbone healed overnight."

A small sigh. "It fits better to know answers."

"I can imagine. About Is. He didn't tell me what he saw, but I discovered the issue a while after. I'm a stitched-together thing, sir."

"With a name like Patch, I would say stitches were a certainty."

Patch.

As I leaned on the wall behind, my brows furrowed. "Mother always called me Patch unless she was taken up by the medicine."

"You have your answer then, mistress."

"Fifty mothers and fifty gifts," I whispered. "Twelve hundred years of them."

His voice splintered through my vague thoughts. " What did you say ?"

I looked up. Kingsie now stood. No balloon crushed against me, so I wondered if he faced away still. "That's what my mother would say, sir. Fifty mothers and fifty gifts. She was the fiftieth mother in our line to wither and die. I am the fiftieth daughter. There are twelve hundred years of us since The End."

Kingsie's quiet chant floated to me.

"Five soldiers rode across the plains,

At a cave they arrived.

Green light shone from far within,

So sought it, the brave five.

A pulsing power, a stone half-buried,

Beckoned, taunted, coaxed.

' Til five brave men, in unison did,

Touch left hand to olden rock.

Each man awoke in icy darkness,

The stone eroded and dull.

Breaking free of the cave, no longer brave,

They stared at a new, foreign age."

He trailed off, and I got the sense the haunting poem had more to it. What bothered me more was that my mother uttered most of that poem before she'd died.

"Did that happen twelve hundred years ago?" I asked in the lull.

Kingsie exhaled.

That seemed a yes.

"And," I dared to ask, "is that a well-known poem?"

"To mortals, no. To five kings, yes."

My mother hadn't been a king, and she'd certainly been mortal. How had she known that poem? Chills swept over my stitched flesh.

Kingsie sat again, and I remained leaning on the wall, because I couldn't do much else.

I was unsure what to say to a blurred man heavy with memory. "I just wondered, sir, if there was any explanation for why my skin is mismatched and why I'm stitched together. I wasn't stitched together when I woke."

Kingsie played with the hole in the skull under his left hand. "I would say the answer is simple."

I blew out a breath. "I'm very glad of that."

"Since the dawn of the new age—or since The End—as your kind likes to call it, each mother in your bloodline chose to wither before their time in order to gift you a part of their body. Your mother was without a pelvis, I recall. I'd gather her gifted pelvis was the final piece of you. You are made up of their gifts, their various body pieces. Patched indeed, and stitches between. This transformation explains the three-week slumber. Such transformations can take far longer. Why do you have this appearance now and not this morning? Like all monsters, you burst forth at dusk into toothed beast's yawn."

The last part sounded recited. Was it a missing piece of the poem he'd started earlier?

My mind pulsed in heavy tempo. "Yes, yes. I see how you've made those connections. That all makes sense. Thank you." Nodding, I pushed off the wall. "I'll go now."

I pivoted on the spot like a puppet and took one step down the stairs. My shaking legs collapsed, and so numb was my mind that I didn't react as I thumped and bumped to the landing below.

I lay on the stone there, staring down an arched hallway that led to a gigantic chamber of stained glass.

Fifty mothers. Fifty gifts.

I didn't want to think on it—could barely manage to. My thoughts shimmered at the edges, warning of the threat to my sanity if I pushed harder. I couldn't manage more, and so I very tentatively considered what the skull had told me.

Fifty pieces made me up. After dusk, I was this.

A monster.

There was no other word for a person made of so many different skins threaded together in a bumpy mess with every kind of stitch. I was a monster.

Monsters didn't exist, however, so how was I one? The shimmering started to encroach past the edges. I shook my head and blinked a few times, then crawled up the stairs, my tulle skirt tangling and catching in my legs.

I sat on the top step. "Kingsie?"

"You're back."

"I fell down the stairs."

"Why did you do that?"

"I can't say. Overwhelmed, maybe."

"Your kind are easily overwhelmed. Fragile creatures not made for ancient matters."

I nibbled on my bottom lip, then stopped when I felt a stitch there. My face. I couldn't bear to think of how it must look. "Sir, how do you know why I'm like this?"

A dark laugh, low like a rolling mist that could swallow a girl whole, clawed across the space between us. "Is this your way of asking if monsters exist, mistress?"

I licked my lips and whispered, "It is."

"Monsters exist now. Maybe they always did. Certainly since the dawn of the new age monsters have lived."

Since The End. "Are you a monster, sir?"

"I am what ancients made me."

I grimaced. "I apologize if I offended you. Does your form change at the onset of dusk?"

"It does. This is why you do not venture closer than the stairway. Why you cannot."

"I admit, you're all blurred, and I'm not sure I could come closer if I tried."

He dipped his head. "Your mind will break if it sees me even though you are somewhat of a monster now. Your slight monsterdom explains why you could look into my princes' eyes during daylight. I warn you that even my princes cannot look into mine."

He offered wisdom.

"I will heed your advice."

"Time will tell, as it always does. You are already here at night when you should not be."

My instincts had warned me not to come, but panic had overridden them. "Thank you, Kingsie. I appreciate you clearing things up for me."

I was unsure what to do about my monsterdom. The trickiest thing seemed to be believing this all existed. If I could figure that out, maybe the rest would be easy.

"Incredible," he muttered. "I find myself curious again. Mistress, would you mind if I looked upon your new form?"

Looked upon me. "You'd like to see my stitches and skin, sir?" I wrung my hands.

"Yes, mistress. It is not every day that another monster is made, and there is never a day when I am blind to a monster just made or otherwise."

Kingsie didn't move, awaiting my answer. My instinct was to refuse, yet perhaps he could glean something from looking at me. Didn't Is say his liege would want to look? If there was a way to undo this damage and monsterdom, then Kingsie would know.

"You can look," I whispered.

He stood slower this time. My gaze lowered to the stone floor as he turned toward me, and the balloon of his power extended between us.

I swallowed when time extended overlong, then wrung my hands again. "What can you tell from the sight of me, Kingsie?"

He didn't answer, and I heard his sharp intake of breath.

A second swallow didn't rid me of the lump in my throat. I blinked several times to contain the fat tears easing from my eyes, and yet a few escaped to trek down my cheeks. More fell when the first of them gathered on stitches near my jawline, reminding me what an atrocity I'd become. "I have not looked. I-I fear I'm horrendous."

I closed my eyes against the awfulness of the encounter.

"You are far, far more beautiful than yesterday, mistress," Kingsie hushed. "What an exquisite creature. An impossibly exquisite creature."

I would've looked up if I could. Instead, I gazed at the stone and felt stumped. Exquisite creature. "I don't see how I could be so, mismatched and mended as I am." I gestured down my body, and recalled the skull on my T-shirt.

My cheeks flushed, and Kingsie sucked in another sharp breath.

"You blush midnight black, mistress. What a sight to behold, and I having thought myself to have seen all the world had to offer."

I pulled at the skull T-shirt. "It's just that I don't wish you to think I dressed in this T-shirt because I'm infatuated or obsessed. I was not concerned about picking clothes in my rush to get here, and?—"

"Why would I believe you obsessed?"

"Because you're a skull and there's a skull on my shirt."

"Ah, I recall what I am considered." The king lingered a moment more, then the balloon-like force of his power pressing against my body eased. My head could lift as he took his throne once more.

I rubbed my forehead, and a stitch on my right temple caught at a stitch on my wrist. I quickly lowered my arm. "Could I trouble you for another answer, sir?"

"I wonder if some blindness might be refreshing on occasion," he said to himself. "You may ask."

"Are there many monsters like us?"

"You are not a monster like me. But yes, there are some monsters. Not many at all. Very few, in fact, and none you would wish to know better."

He sounded angry about the last part. To only have some others like me, and none worth knowing sounded lonely. But no different to life before monsterdom. "I'll leave you to your possibilities now. Thank you for helping, Kingsie."

My heart ached after our conversation and also didn't. Maybe if he hadn't seen much in my monster form to abhor, then I didn't look as bad as feared.

"You have a delightful way of speaking, mistress, I will admit. I've not heard my name uttered so."

Bother , I'd messed up again. "You aren't called Kingsie?"

"I am, but most speak my title as two words. King See."

I stared at his blur on the throne. "King See. A real king?" I could see where I'd gone wrong with the name.

I'd gathered his name, Kingsie, had much to do with the fake pretense of thrones and princes and mentions of "liege" and "sire." Thinking harder into the matter, I could admit that I'd known the pretense wasn't fake at all. I'd convinced myself of that to preserve my calm, but today I could admit otherwise. It was just that kings hadn't existed in my world before, and I'd thought everyone lived in the same version of this world.

Things were greatly unraveled.

"A real king. An immortal one, mistress."

I blinked. Shook my head a few times. Immortal. I'd not expected him to be so. Or a king. So he might as well be two impossible things at once. "Where is your kingdom, sir?"

"Here."

"Where is here?"

"Let there soon be an end to your questions, mistress. Here is this pulse. My kingdom is one-fifth of this pulse to be exact."

The pulse was the city. He was king to one-fifth of Vitale.

I took care not to ask another question. Perhaps he'd like an answer to some of his curiosity instead. A king of seeing might not know how to ask questions after all. "You are King See, and not Kingsie. I'm not really Patch either." I didn't know what other answers to offer immortal royalty. I'd never been in this situation before.

He didn't answer. "What is your real name? Patch suits you well, and I do not like the abrupt change."

"Perantiqua, sir. My name is Perantiqua." My voice warbled at his reminder of how I looked. I couldn't wait for daylight. I'd sleep every night, and I wouldn't ever need to look at my monstrous body.

"Perantiqua," he purred the first syllable and drew out the last as if relishing a cool drink on a scorching day. Purrantiquaaah. It was nothing at all like the Peer-an-tik-wa pronunciation my mother had used.

He repeated my name in the same fashion, then said, "The change was abrupt, but this name suits your improved beauty better than Patch. Very ancient. You must be so to be a monster, and yet I am saddened your slumber lasted a mere three weeks. Will I be sad tomorrow, I wonder. Blindness is a strange affair."

The musings required a key to unlock the meaning, and I'd resolved to ask no more questions and agitate a man used to seeing all. "I hope you are not sad tomorrow, King See. Good night."

He didn't reply, and I descended the spiral staircase, focusing on each lower step until I exited the apartment building that was really a gothic palace for an immortal king.

So much change, and yet the street outside was filled with lupins, and that was a normal enough sight for a young woman in Vitale.

Life tonight was much as life had been yesterday, I supposed.

All that had changed was that I was now a monster.