Page 5 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Five

I had relief

forever, really

on distraction of body

distraction of necessity

distraction of survival.

T he child would not respond, no matter what I asked or supposed about our turmoil. But as I continued to try, the creature had shuffled forward to snore heavily close by, tamed by my attempts to know my pain.

I felt grateful for the reassurance. If I could help this child, then I would be stronger, and when I returned to my monsters, I would be everything they needed.

You are me when I was human, I said to her.

She did not tremble as the woman of me had, but her stillness was worse. She was numb, as if dead. Already caked in mud and blood, if she did not move, then nature might grow over her.

Finding the right question was difficult indeed when my mind wept so. I never knew you were in such pain.

A ragged inhale. The first sign she had given me.

How have we been in such pain forever?

How had I become used to feeling these things and thinking they were usual and good? I had cherished my ability to see the best of monsters and the bright purpose of their uniquities. I had celebrated my dislike of convention.

Those qualities remained, but they were built upon dust. The foundations of my queenly tower were crumbling and could not possibly support my magnificent aspirations. My tower could not remain upright for long.

Ancients had surely seen that, so this creature was their design.

The mere thought of the creature earned me a warning growl, so I returned to my inner vigil. To her.

I considered the child’s aching numbness and the forever feeling of it. But forever was incorrect. Her age was the answer.

I had not felt this way always, only since…

My minds pressed and squeezed against what I must admit.

The woman, standing aside from the child, now fell to one knee. She did not wish to admit the truth either.

“I am a broken queen.” A broken monster. A broken creature. And King See had told me so.

My minds continued to press and squeeze until a sludgy thought fought free from the muddy depths. I gasped for air that did not exist.

We could not save our mother.

The child silently screamed.

We could not save our mother, I whispered.

I cried.

I cried in soul and mind and power. My power shrank to a ball, no use without the wellness of me. Time swam by, so luxurious and uncaring of my soul breaking .

We could never have saved her, I told the child.

Her death was set from the moment she’d decided to wither. But I had not known of her withering for the first years of my life.

Not until…

I looked at my four-year-old self. She had just been told that her mother would die.

One day. Not just now. Mother had told me at four, so that I would live knowing the truth.

She had told me then because her mother told her at four, too, and her mother’s mother.

Maybe that had worked out for them, or perhaps they never discovered these deep parts of themselves.

But from that day—to my ignorance—I had lived as a broken child, then a broken woman, then monster, then queen.

All chapters of me broken by the knowledge that life was not a happy ever after.

The clamor in my mind swelled, and the clashing waves licked the sides of my skull and threatened to force their way out. A scream built in my throat—the wordless shriek of a person pushed past their limits.

I have always lived in loss and fear.

I sobbed. I screamed. I submitted to pain. So much of it, never-ending. I could not bear the agony, and I could not survive it. How could anyone survive knowing that they had lived in denial forever?

But monsters needed me.

Monsters need me.

Other mothers never reached this dark abyss because there was no need for them to do so. There was need for me to be here.

I sank under the surface of the dark ocean as violent waves clashed above. From the calm depths, I stared up at the frenzy and the storm. Reprieve. Ah.

I sank deeper, and more clamor faded. More pain too.

Deeper.

Silence. Freedom from turmoil .

Torn throat smoothed.

No pain of ended childhood here. No terror of loneliness.

Finally an escape from the ringing in my minds, and from this calm place, the answer felt simple.

This was not a grown woman I spoke to; this was a child. I turned my head and found the child not far away.

You will never be alone, my love, I called to her.

She cried against her knees.

You will never lose your mother.

The child screamed into her muddy hands.

She will remain with you always, talking and thinking and giving as she is now. She will provide for you always.

I floated to the child to wrap my arms around her. She cried into my chest.

From so deep under the surface, I got the sense of the storm’s end above.

That happened as I saw the truth of how, at four, I had stopped feeling.

That day, I had ceased to be a child in a dream where everything would work out.

My happy bubble of carelessness and hope had been popped by the knowledge that my mother would leave me.

Until him. Until King See. Then he had destroyed what new dreams and hopes and cares I had bravely dared to build.

So, then… he had not destroyed them at all.

I had allowed him to reinforce the idea that hopes, cares, and dreams could not belong to me. Part of me had expected it and chased it. Me, a child robbed of the surety of her mother’s protection and love.

Me, a woman ready for loneliness.

You will never be alone, I told the child. There are so many who love you, and you love them too.

She had stopped crying and started to tremble.

We are together. I have found you, and I will never let you go.

Holding her, I kicked upward and swam until my head broke the surface of the calm, clear water .

Peace extended in all directions for as far as I could see.

No clamor nor turmoil. No ringing of minds.

I hugged the child tight to me.

We will form our hopes and cares and dreams together again. We are allowed to have all of these too.

She uncurled, and I was not very surprised to find that she had been curled around something. The woman in me broke through the surface on the other side of the child. She was dressed in a flowing copper gown, and she was a queen.

She was me.

When I looked back at the child, her golden hair gleamed and her blue eyes shone with everything that I had never felt while her. A child of hopes and dreams and no fear of loss and loneliness and withering.

The water around us faded, and our surroundings became grass and meadow. In the distance, trees swayed in the gentle breeze, and a simple cabin sat behind us in the sunlight.

I faced the woman and child again, smiling. The child was dressed in a playsuit and held a knitted animal in one hand.

In the other was an orb.

She offered the orb to the woman, and they held the orb together, so lovingly.

I stepped closer to peer at it. They had cradled this even in the deepest torments of our pain.

What had they protected so fiercely?

I looked into the orb and tears swam in me at the sight of fifteen pawns and four princesses, of four kings, and of Valetise, Picket, Candor, and Life.

Though I could not see King See in the orb, for the first time, I also could not feel hate for him, nor the burn of revenge that had filled my mind so noisily.

Revenge could never exist in this beautiful, profound moment.

In the orb, I saw my monsters whom I would protect always, forever. Because I had already done so as a broken child, a broken queen, and every broken thing between.

My monsters.

My reason to return.

Our monsters need us, I said to my soul. My soul smiled, both chapters of her: child and adult.

How she shined.

How we shined for ourselves and for monsters too.