Page 23 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

I blinked several times as the circle of my mothers in vigil superimposed onto this world.

They were not really here, but I could see their grayscale bodies, and their lips moving in chant.

I tilted my head as the circulatory system of the world’s sickness and ruin superimposed in this world too.

Lines of brilliant white lightning snaked out from my conservatory.

I paused to listen to kings, but they had not interrupted their bickering, and so I could assume that kings could not see this map. Which was well, as King Change possessed great connection and would undoubtedly try to keep his union as frayed as possible to prevent me saving the world.

I did not need to trip through a grave to see the world’s sickness. I could see everything from here.

The world’s sickness and ruin stole my breath anew.

“What do you see?” said King See.

I had stopped by him as I stared outward at all that ancients had tasked me with fixing. “I see a lot to do.”

A pause. Did he glean that I meant A lot to fix ?

“How will you do it?” he asked.

I tuned him out and everyone and everything. Soon enough, a wisp arose from the powerful whirrings of my minds.

Unions were represented in the main stitches of me—my shoulders and hips. My relationship with See was represented in the thick stitch connecting my head to my body. A natural leap in logic would suggest that my other stitches represented some or other part of the world that must be healed.

I tuned back in. “I see a way.”

King See remained quiet.

I touched a hand to the stitch that connected my little finger to my hand. I tasted the power of the stitch, then pushed into the stitch. The world was sick, and I was the antidote. I was the healing tonic of deep ruin and disease.

I dove into the stitch, and my head was wrenched to face west.

In my mind’s eye, I could see a fractured and flopping line of lightning, a broken part of the world’s circulatory system. The vein was far away. The vein was represented by the stitch of my little finger.

I had its location.

I let myself return to the noises of my queendom. Kings were in a heated argument, but they ceased their loud ramblings at the sudden entrance of Princesses Take, Raise, and Change.

My champions.

“We must go,” I said in a distant voice. Such rumblings in me that I had not felt since obsessions.

“Yes,” said Princess Take from under her veiling cloak. “We are needed.”

Her king groaned at the sound of her sultry voice.

A growl of madness entered my voice. “Can you keep up?”

My three champions laughed in response, and I could imagine—I could get the idea—that ancient power might fill them as ancient power had once filled princes when needed.

My champions could keep up with a queen in her reckoning.

I shoved my power downward and shot into the night sky. I pulsed my power to the ground to stay aloft in the stars. The gleeful cackles of my champions swooped and whooped close behind.

We flew through the world.

I had only been outside Vitale a few times in my life. The landscape rapidly passing far below was much the same. Piles of filthy sand. Great expanses of acrid and acidic water. Lifeless dirt.

Sickness.

Ruin.

All caused, incredibly, by humans. The same humans who I had likened sometimes to clucking chickens with how they meandered here and there doing trivial things.

The humans’ effect on the world was monstrous but nevertheless impressive.

Their monstrous power demanded respect in the form of our lives, for humans could eliminate an entire globe and all existing life just by being.

I descended, and my champions swooped after me.

Goodness.

Black sludge bubbled from a cavern. How deep the cavern extended into the world, I could not say.

“Is it oil?” called Princess Raise.

Oil. A mythical idea from before The End. Oil was gone.

“No,” said Princess Take. “’Tis not oil. This goop is hard in places, and too viscous overall.”

Neither humans nor monsters had seen this substance, but I had an inkling that ancients knew it well. I had an inkling that they traveled the universe to chase and eradicate this sickness. I had the conviction that this black sludge was their nemesis and their ruin.

“’Tis the sickness of the world,” I told champions. “I had not expected a physical sign.”

“Will you heal it?” asked Princess Change.

“That is the hypothesis.”

I landed on a patch of sand that seemed untainted by sickness.

There, I ran curious fingertips over the stitch of my little finger. The sludge erupted into the air in response.

My, we were certainly in the right place. My stitch tugged in a bid to be free. My breath quickened, and I pulled back at the stitch with my power in the same way any person might try to stop a part of their body ripping away .

Yet… I was a queen.

I was a queen of stitch and patch, and my stitches represented the areas of great sickness in the world. If my stitch wished to be free, then it was for good reason.

But first.

I pushed my power out and tentatively touched a tiny tendril to the black sludge. The world screamed and warped. The black sludge shot high in a wave that blotted out my view of the night sky. The waves surrounded us on all sides.

Princesses gasped as the black sludge started to pour inward toward us. I blasted my power upward to meet it.

The sludge passed through my barrier, and I staggered backward from the blow as it disintegrated my defenses.

Three princesses moved to stand in front of me—three champions. The princesses stood together, holding hands, their power joined and pushing outward in a bubble. The sludge pounded against the barrier in a deafening waterfall, but the sickness did not permeate their defense.

The faces of Princess Change and Take were grim and serious and entirely focused, so I did not disturb them, for I could see the beads of sweat upon their brows.

I stood on trembling legs.

Only a stitch could fix this sickness. Yet I had learned that the stitches were a mother. That harm to a stitch resulted in harm to a mother.

But why else would the stitch tug if it was not meant to be free of me?

I closed my eyes and touched my power and mind to the stitch. Go, I told the stitch.

The stitch did not.

Neither did it stop tugging.

The stitch knew that I did not truly wish it gone.

I cursed under my breath, then considered the stitch in greater depth. The… feeling of it. The feeling of the mother who ha d stitched it. Accepting. The mother had accepted her fate as I had so often accepted mine.

Why had such radical acceptance been asked of the women in my ancestral line? How was that fair?

Fairness hardly mattered, but fairness was a warm idea at the same time. What if that mother had felt she possessed a choice? I could imagine how this mother had resisted her fate for so long before eventually relenting to the idea that she must wither.

Life had not given her fair and free choice.

“Your acceptance is your greatness, Mother,” I whispered. “Life was not fair because you were needed to heal the world.”

The stitch wiggled free of the two patches it had held closed. The stitch pulled free of my body and hovered before my face.

A tear slipped over my cheek, and I could only smile at the little stitch… which did not remain little for long.

The stitch swelled and expanded and pushed outward and upward in every way.

The stitch was an enormous and mythical creature designed to battle against the sickness so rife in the world.

The stitch blasted into the waves encasing us and shattered them like glass.

The pieces fell to the ground, only to be eaten by the snaking stitch in a blurring rush.

My champions fell to the ground like dolls, their barrier no longer needed.

The front of the great stitch formed the screaming face of a mother, Danya. Her teeth were bared, and fierce hatred was etched in the lines of her beautiful face. She dove into the cavernous pool of black sludge, and I gasped, running forward to help her.

But this was not my battle. The mother did not need me.

The sludge was hardened and cracking underfoot.

Danya was feasting upon the festering wound and emptying the cavern of its putridity. I could see that was so, for the black sludge was sinking and shattering so.

Less and less black, until the sickness was gone .

I peered over the edge and found that the cavern extended to the center of the world. I could see right to the middle now that the sickness was gone of this vein.

“Danya, you did it,” I said hoarsely, and extended my little finger for her to return.

But deep in the cavern, the stitch—no longer bearing Danya’s face—was weaving the walls together. The walls nearest the center of the world pulled closed first, and the wound steadily closed.

The stitch bobbed in and out of crust, then through minerals, clay, sands and lifeless dirt, up and up, until I was forced to retreat so Danya could stitch together the very surface.

The wound was cleaned. Closed.

My heart hammered, and King See must have felt my response.

I stared at the neat stitch as its glowing power faded. I extended my little finger again. Nothing.

The stitch was no longer mine.

I peered at the skin between my little finger and hand to find that the seam of the two patches had merged. Two distinct colors remained, but they no longer required a stitch to hold them together.

“Thank you, Mother,” I whispered. For I had a heavy, sickening feeling that I had seen her for the last time.

The soil turned black underfoot. Not a black of ruin, but the black of rich soil—soil bursting with life. I picked up a handful, and startled at a wiggling worm within.

A worm!

Grass popped up through the rich soil, and shrubs and small trees followed. I hastened backward to accommodate the sudden and lush growth.

The impossible growth, unseen since before The End.

With all that I was and with all I could do, I could barely fathom this miracle .

This picture of what a saved world would be—so like the vibrant world atop King Bring’s pedestal that had echoed my human dreams of a different world.

This was all we stood to win.

This was all we stood to lose.