Page 5

Chapter Five

The answer:

If eeriness is haunted emptiness,

Beauty must arise from the haunt.

T here was a needle. Thread. Twelve mothers. And a queenly tower that mirrored my queendom in the living world of monsters. But only barrenness was present here. The world held no color, and gray scale spoke of its departure from vitality and from Vitale too. The emptiness extended far beyond the power of my sight into the thick haze, and that fueled my certainty that creatures such as humans and monsters kept emptiness at bay.

Without us… there was this.

Yet there was a warmth in this place that existed just for me. A simple dive through hellebores in Mother’s grave turned me upside down and deposited me in her empty grave. Only a clawing climb was necessary to discover my mother.

She sat beside the first of my fifty ancestral mothers, Cassandra, who was filled with ancient purpose on the edge of death twelve hundred years before.

Beyond Cassandra were ten other Mothers, each sewn together.

They had been drawn, all of them, to my lonely tower through the hazy barrenness beyond. Sometimes, I had arrived to find two or three gathered, and other times, I had waited at Cassandra’s bidding for the arrival of another. Two weeks had seen a total of twelve mothers sewn into eerie vigil around my tower. I assumed that thirty-eight more would eventually come.

“Good evening,” I said to all. “My heart is happy to see you all, and my mind is at peace in your company.”

And so it was, though each Mother did not feel the same in return. My mother was always on my team, and Cassandra was driven in death to this purpose as she had been in life. Others varied, and this had somewhat to do with their temperament and somewhat to do with their order in the chain of fifty.

Adalina, for instance, had been the forty-second mother, only eight before my own mother. While Cassandra had been filled to brimming with ancient purpose, this had dwindled more in each daughter, and Adalina had not possessed any at all. She had believed stoutly in the actions of the women before her, and she had not much liked her life anyway. Adalina possessed a sweetness that had lent itself to the idea of self-sacrifice too.

The choice to wither had not been a difficult one for her.

Others…

Molly had arrived at my tower fifth. Instead of trudging in wearily as others had, she had circled my tower until fainting in a heap on the hazy outskirts. I had carried her here and quickly sewn her into position at Mother’s urging.

Mother had known what I had not—that Molly begrudged her withering most bitterly. She begrudged that ancients had ruled her mind and she could not resist their push. She begrudged that her daughter had shared the same fate. She begrudged that withering had stolen precious decades with her beloved child—and all for the sake of someone else’s child, even though one of her line.

My gaze moved to her daughter beside her.

The arrival of Madison had healed the lurking grudge in Molly. Mother and daughter were reunited, and she had ceased tugging at the stitch that connected her to the twenty-second mother.

“Mothers, are you well?” I asked.

“We are as we are meant to be,” my mother answered, and as always, I wished that she shared the vibrancy of the others. But she had sacrificed journeying in death in her prime to provide for her daughter always.

I nodded. “You called.”

“We called,” chimed twelve mothers.

Their heads tipped back as words were pulled from their throats.

“She that inspires

She they desire

Should only shimmer

Like a star

Without its power

Lest starlight steals

All they are

To build her tower. ”

I blew out a breath. “Yes, so I have heard many hundreds of times on the human radios that Princess Raise insists on leaving turned on all night. I am warned, as kings should be, that I must press on before my power is stolen.”

A lie. That is not what the verse of King Take’s gateman really meant. Luckily, no one seemed to have guessed the true meaning—that I would not just equal kings in power, but become most powerful of all by stealing their power.

Or so I fathomed. My queendom was not at fullness, that much I felt, and though nearly equal to the power of kings now, I did not possess the ancientness of mind of some of them, King See, for instance. For others—such as King Bring—I felt greatly more ancient.

The twelve mothers deepened their voices into a new chant, and their voices layered and collected to spear down the ancestral line into my trembling soul.

“ Up and out

Weaves golden fate

Feeling ancient in gifted wisdom.

Five powers grasp

All icy demise

Free from her olden prison.

If throne is seat

Union is seam

Skulls are skin

Shackles are stitch.

Until ancient in truth

Tarry not

Linger never

Lest the world becomes forever buried.”

Their chant faded into the hazy abyss, and a new voice rose from the haze, frail and tired. “Your immortal burden cold and lonely,

Hear! Rule until the bloody finish.

For the mighty never stirred at dawn,

They burst forth at dusk,

Into toothed beast’s yawn.”

The many millions of cogs in my mind were turning, of course. Because there was such language in the second chant uttered by twelve mothers that had reminded me of a poem first heard with my human ears.

A poem of how five soldiers came to be immortal kings. The newly arrived mother had just recited the very end of that poem. I had always believed that poem referred to kings and princes, particularly the ending where they must rule under the bloody finish.

“The poem also refers to me,” I said, and my voice rung out, covering the new mother’s moans as she dragged herself toward us through the haze.

She would come into sight soon.

Golden fate. Five powers. Olden. Throne.

There were many possibilities—too many to be sure of how to interpret their chant and the original verse of kings. The gateman’s verse was far easier to decipher. But one part was very clear. “ Until ancient in truth, tarry not, linger never, lest the world becomes forever buried.”

The twelve mothers still stared at the gray, stormy sky, but Molly lowered her chin and said, “Feel no contentedness until the matter is done, daughter.”

I had felt content to wait. I had seen the lulls between obsession as a chance to tidy up loose ends, like drawing King Change’s rhyme and reason from his princess and clearing the air with all princesses. “I am warned. What understand all of you of the rest?”

Molly returned her stare to the sky, and no mother answered, statues in their vigil.

A figure staggered through the last shroud of haze. I would never admit that the unknown of that haze filled me with stark fear. In my stitches, I knew that beyond the clearing of this tower existed a void that would seek to claim me forevermore. Retrieving Molly from close to the haze had nearly undone me. Something surely lurked in its foggy depths to make an ancient queen quail and shiver.

While my instincts were not always to be obeyed, in this matter I did not doubt them.

This mother did not have the grudging temperament of Molly. She stumbled all the way to me and fell into my arms. She was a beauty by human standards, and we shared long, blonde hair though little else. Her eyes were a rich brown, and her top lip was full and puffy. She was willowy, like a poppy in the breeze.

“I have you, Mother,” I whispered, lifting her to cradle the woman against my chest. “Thank you for returning to me.”

The mother licked her dry lips. “I would be with all mothers and all daughters in death. I am here.”

There was a hitch in her voice that spun my focus to the hazy outskirts again.

“Let’s get you stitched then.” I kissed her forehead, and the stitch on my ring finger—that I knew was very neat and filled with diligence—buzzed in recognition of its crafter.

Cassandra called, “We welcome Poppy, the forty-third mother.”

Then I was thankful indeed to Poppy, so aptly named, for no ancient purpose had filled her when she made the choice to wither. She had operated entirely in respect of her ancestral line. I had not ever considered withering, and there was a small shame in that when presented with so many women who had chosen that path.

Then again, I had always been meant to deny that fate.

Once Poppy was comfortable, I took up needle and stitch and speared the blunted end through Madison’s free palm. She did not wince, and neither did Poppy when I did the same to her. I drew through the thread and tied off the end, cutting the ends tidy with my fingernail.

“Thirteen mothers.”

“The others tarry,” said Adalina nervously.

I glanced at her. “They resist?”

Cassandra returned my stare. “This place offers them resistance.”

Tarry not. Linger never.

I stood. “I must return to the queendom. My steward and lady’s maid smelled looming obsession on me last night. I must question them further to trigger fate.”

“There is wisdom,” croaked Poppy. “And not merely the feeling of it.”

Up and out, weaves golden fate, feeling ancient in her wisdom.

I grimaced. “I have been arrogant in my new power and larger queendom, ’tis true. The chant of mothers has humbled me today and reminded me immortals are no more immune to the terrors of time than humans.”

The middle part of their chant remained murky, but as all things in monsterdom, I had no doubt my curiosity and obsession would reveal the whole soon enough.

I floated in my queenly walk to the grave, then turned to smile at Poppy. “Welcome, Thirteenth Mother. We are so happy to meet you again.”

My mother held up a hellebore. The hellebore glittered like the one she had pushed up from her grave as a message that I was needed here. “Eat this, Daughter.”

I ate it, of course. In my mother I held unshakeable trust.

I ate every last petal.

“You are poisoned,” she stated after. “The jolt of obsession will go better now.”

She gripped my ankle in a hand more bone than flesh, and pulled hard. But I did not land flat on the hard ground.

I sank into hellebores instead, and down, down, down I went in body and in mind.

As mother had informed me, I was quite poisoned.