Page 7 of Of Sockets Of Stitches (Unworldly City #4)

Chapter Seven

The sands of time.

I f King Change possessed the power to stab me in the back, no doubt he would have many hundreds of times in the day, week, or month of our journey through fog.

I did not always sense his presence nor hear his voice or breath, as the creature did not always stalk beside me, instead prowling away to do whatever a creature might do.

King Change did not possess the power to stab me, and I could assume that a great fear existed in him at the thought of losing sight of me.

For when the creature brushed against me or ventured within arm’s length, then I could again sense how close the king trotted at my heels, and how shallow and rapid were his breaths.

I no longer feared the haze. There existed a link between the peace in my soul and the peace of this place.

There was no longer discomfort in the robbing of bodily senses, and instead a relief to be free of their distraction.

For instance, what would it be to always listen to King Change’s fearful breaths?

Or to always feel him at my heels? I might become as panicked as he, and what purpose did that serve?

Yes, I felt new relief to be robbed of bodily senses now and then.

My minds required ample time to consider and connect.

King See had been right about that, too—I had not spent enough time reflecting on queenly matters.

He was wrong, however, in thinking that this arose from a fault in character.

I simply could not have known how high the mind could soar in isolation of the louder and shouting physical body.

What wisps arose from the mind in isolation.

I held great respect for my time in this haze and also an awe of its power that could have ended me as easily as it had made me.

I no longer feared the haze.

This haze was a queenly gift.

The creature brushed against me.

“I will do it,” King Change bellowed at my back.

I winced at the sudden volume, then realized he spoke idle threats. “Do not do it, sir. You would regret your choice.”

“You need me, or you would not have collected me. Answer my questions, or I will walk away, never to be seen again.”

I might inform the king that I would find him again. Or perhaps divulge to him that ancients had led me to his location for collection . Maybe he would enjoy a reminder that my power was far greater, and that I could stop him leaving without much effort at all.

Or I could say and do nothing.

The creature pressed against my thigh, reminding me for the first time since entering this haze of what I wore. How incredible. I had nearly forgotten that monsters mostly wore clothing.

Functional. That is what I had thought of the loose trousers made of such sturdy material.

I ran a hand over the long tunic that extended to the knees and split up each side to my waist. Nogs fastened the high neck.

Functional. Valetise had not known what I would face, but she had dressed me for an inner war, nevertheless.

The creature growled, and I dropped my hands at its warning, then tuned out the king’s continued threats. I could not become distracted.

I heard it then.

“Quiet.” I thought the word and it echoed through the haze, rendering King Change mute. To use my lips and mouth to form the word had seemed… superfluous and extravagant.

Ah. Yes, the sound was clear. A scritch-scratching and a rustle. A disturbance of sand.

“What is that?” King Change hushed.

My lips curved at the ruin of a ruining king, but as the path widened to another clearing, my smile faded.

I crouched beside a pile of sand. Something buried in its midst agitated the sand, causing the sides of the small dune to pour and fall away in tiny amounts. The changing king craned to see over my shoulder.

With naught but a finger, I brushed the sand this way and that. The small creature within stilled, sensing the threat, but did not flee. Could not flee.

I gently shifted the sand, then froze when my fingertips encountered… stickiness. The stickiness stretched as I tried to pull my hand back. So viscous and strong.

And alive.

I scooped sand over my sticky fingertips, and the tiny creature released me again. I knew this creature. I knew her in my heart.

“Princess Bring, my friend,” I whispered. This moment deserved full noise. “I had assumed the worst and grief has lingered in me.”

I ignored King Change’s exclamation. He had seen Princess Bring draw the deadly curse into her blob, the same as I. She had died before our eyes, reduced to a pile of ash.

Like this pile of sand.

“So there is the answer,” I murmured.

Princess Bring—this rudimentary and infant version of her—had paused to listen. She knew me, too, in whatever capacity remained to her.

The tiny path in the fog had led me first to King Change, and then to Princess Bring. The king was clearly needed. And Princess Bring would clearly live again.

Here was the purpose of such a long tunic. I scooped the princess, with a large portion of sand, into the front of the tunic. The split up the sides allowed me to hold her safely encased in the coarse grains that she appeared to need.

King Change sneered. “You cannot bring her back. I will enjoy watching you fail.”

My savage and snarling beast left my side, and the urge to respond to the king with a retort drained away. Silence was powerful. I did not need to respond to petty utterings of ego.

The creature stalked ahead to yet another tiny path.

I held no expectations that this would be the last stop. Expectations bred disappointment, after all. Yet not so long evaporated before the creature brushed against my side once more.

King Change let out an almighty yell, and the ground shook as he crashed to meet it.

I glanced back to find the changing king ready to attack. His instincts were commendable, for he had tripped over someone’s arm, and he had assumed—as most would—that the arm was attached to a person.

He was incorrect.

“Calm, sir. ’Tis but an amputated arm from one of my mothers.”

King Change spluttered, “C-calm? Over a severed arm ? ”

I enjoyed a rhyme as much as the next monster, but this moment demanded my full attention.

“Once upon a dusk, the creature who stalks beside me nearly tore the arm off one of my mothers. I amputated her arm and tossed it into this haze as a challenge to the creature. I had already fathomed that one day we would meet, and I quite misunderstood her purpose back then.”

I would not misunderstand her again. The path had led me to the very arm of a mother.

The dead flesh of a mother.

The fingers twitched, and King Change surged upward with somewhat of a yelp to put distance between himself and the twitching arm.

Not dead.

Or granted life in death, like my fifty mothers. Though I should say forty-nine, for one of my mothers was forever dead. Adalina had died forever when a deadly curse was dripped onto the stitch shackling King Change in place. The stitch had died, and so had the mother who had stitched it.

King Change had just tripped over this arm, which should be dead but was somehow alive. Meanwhile, Adalina should be alive, but was dead.

Two sides of the same coin.

Picking up the arm whilst also cradling the baby princess was not easy, but I did so, then scanned the fog for any sign of path. Power, mind, and body were robbed from me at the unexpected sight of a queenly tower.

My queenly tower.

The haze had split in two, like an ocean, and the grayscale world it had shrouded was revealed again. The rocky, dirt ground.

My tower.

Forty-nine mothers sitting in vigil, and the fiftieth—Adalina—flat on her back in death.

My mother sat beside her hellebore grave, and my heart leaped into my throat and filled my mouth so. Such feeling to return when I had not even wished to upon entering the haze, and then after never expected to.

And then hoped.

Hopes and dreams. They had triumphed. They could triumph.

The faint tendrils of my mothers’ chant reached my powerful ears, but the savage snarl of the creature sitting beside me overrode them.

King Change was running toward the queenly tower, I realized. Fool. He could not leave here without my permission, not now that the circle of my mothers was complete.

I tried to step after him, and the creature snapped at my boots. Drawing my foot back, I considered her: russet fur—so like copper—savage fangs, and so much violent potential. This creature represented part of me. My body, specifically.

This creature was ancient designed. And… I supposed that my body was the same. Had not ancients filled Cassandra, the first of my mothers, with their purpose to drive her to make a bargain with King Raise? That bargain had led to my bodily creation of stitches and patches.

I lifted the amputated arm, and the creature’s gaze tracked the movement.

Ah.

But ah.

“Here is the answer. We do not challenge one another. We do not toss things to one another. I have great respect for the power of my body. Such power my body has that it can distract my ancient mind from a broken soul. I have great respect for you, magnificent creature. I will not toss you arms to challenge you when I might simply gift a precious meal to you instead.” I lifted the arm higher, and her cold gaze tracked it.

I told her, “This was the arm of a mother stitched in vigil. Would you accept this token from me on behalf of ancients? If they are merciful and deem fit to return the mother, Adalina, to the fullness of deathly vigil, then I would exist properly humbled for the duration of my immortality. Either way, this is my gift to you and my thanks to ancients for the gift of their haze.”

The creature lunged forward, and though the arm was her target, I was left without doubt of my sorry fate had she intended me for a meal. She might have killed me at any time in this haze. She would have killed me on behalf of ancients if I had remained a broken queen.

But I had not.

I crouched beside the creature as she tore through the ligaments of the mother’s forearm. The distant screams from the tower informed me that the mother could still feel pain from her severed limb, which was regrettable.

I murmured, “Thank you, extraordinary creature, for all that you made clear to me. This will not be the last time I see you, I fathom that wholly.”

The creature did not leave its meal to acknowledge me, but I drifted fingertips through her copper fur before standing.

I adjusted my grip on my tunic and peered down at Baby Bring.

“Here it is, dear friend, the moment of our return. Constant irony in queendom, for I quailed at the idea of entering this place, and now I quail at the idea of leaving its peace. I return to all I was as another person and queen. Shall they know me?”

Baby Bring did not stop her scritch-scratch rustling in her sand pile.

I stared at my queenly tower to where mothers still chanted. “There are a great many things to do. To queendom, to the world, to monsters and humans. To him.”

No question and hesitation lingered in me, really—more like a soft regret and a goodbye in my heart to all I had been before. That was all. Otherwise, I was clear on my path .

For at the final moment of my breaking or making, only one driving need had healed me again. Only one purpose had held me together when all parts of me were broken and in pain.

The woman had curled around the child. The child had curled around an orb.

We, all of us, had curled around monsters.

“There are a great many things to do,” I said over the creature’s feasting. “I will begin.”