Page 43 of Of Monsters Of Kings

“If one wakes with the power to save the world, one knows they are meant to save it, even if the world is very changed.”

I rested my head on my legs, hugging them close, my face still turned to keep their shadowed forms in sight. “You speak of your one-hundred-year slumber.”

“No, lady, I speak of the one-thousand-year slumber of kings.”

My ears rang. One thousand years. Goodness, kings slumbered for a long time. “No wonder my three-week sleep is considered odd, even with another month added on.”

“Yes, lady,” Hex said sadly. “Three weeks and a month is not a great deal of time. Ancients need a lot longer to warp, break, and build one mighty enough to enter the toothed beast’s yawn. It’s impossible for them to shatter what must be shattered while we’re awake. Our minds couldn’t bear it, as yours is struggling to.”

I sighed. “You speak truth, Prince Hex. Being a monster of little slumber is a difficult fate so far. My mind does awful things when the impossibilities grow too thick.”

“Ah.” His mourning sound echoed my feeling exactly. How incredible. If he’d had a conventional mouth, he couldn’t have done such a magical thing.

“I understand,” he said. “And I’m sorry for it. I wish you’d slept longer.”

I tossed the ruined flower on my mother’s grave. “I’m beginning to wish the same. If I’m part monster, I can’t really be friends with you all, and I can’t really be friends with a non-monster. My mother might have loved me still, but she is gone, and when I consider my life, I fear how lonely it might be. Take my mind off such things, please. What of the fifth king? King Bring seeks to save. King See observes, and King Take and Raise care not. What of the fifth?”

“King Change,” they snarled in the darkest and most scathing tones yet.

I’d almost stopped thinking of the princes as monsters. As the hours had ticked by, my mind had stopped considering them as abhorrent and started to consider them as abnormal. From there, I could reason that the princes weren’t abnormal at all to themselves or the monsters in their circles, just to me and who I had been. They lived in a world where bulbousness and sliminess and an excess of eyeball and deficit of eyelid needn’t cause alarm.

As dusk leaned into night, I’d started to appreciate that the wobble and toothless state of their sluglike mouths gave them the ability to give sound to a feeling. I might sigh as a sign of frustration, but they gave frustration itself a unique noise.

What a glorious, strange and wonderful thing.

Their short stature and girth aided their balance high up, I’d noted, and the constant squelching to come from their ever-darting eyes, which made me feel they must be very alert. I couldn’t have said half as many interesting things for a normal person as I used to be.

“Thank you,” I said suddenly.

They cut off their snarling.

Toil replied, “Whatever for, Lady Patch?”

“Your uniqueness has made me pause to consider how normal I used to be, and that perhaps normal isn’t so interesting. I’ve never met a person who could rip metal bars from concrete walls, nor pinch metal frames together. If I met a person who could do those things, I’d find them very interesting indeed.”

Squelch, squelch, squelch. Three eager nods.

“I’d find that interesting too,” Sigil said. “Will you look at yourself in one of these shards now, do you suppose?”

They spoke so casually of supposing. King See’s princes would have something to say about that. “Not tonight, Sigil. I don’t feel wonderful about doing that yet. Could you tell me of the fifth king instead?”

“King Change,” growled Toil. “The traitor of the cause. Our liege seeks to save, and Change seeks to destroy.”

I looked more directly at them than I’d yet dared. “You say he means to destroy the world? More than it’s already destroyed? Why would he desire such a thing?”

“Because he’s evil,” said Hex. “That is all there is to say.”

He must be filled with pain—or evil as the three princes had said. At least King See wasn’t trying to ruin the world, though I had to confess myself disappointed at his lack of part in the saving of it. He wasn’t squandering his power and position as the other two kings apparently were, though. Perhaps there were other factors to King See’s choice that I didn’t understand.

Of all the kings, King Bring seemed most driven to do what was right. Yet he also wanted to drag me places. King See and his princes had always tried to give me a choice in important matters by contrast.

I rubbed my forehead, feeling the stitch on my temple rub on the jagged stitching over my wrist. “Prince Toil, did King Bring get a chance to read my letter? I realize he must be busy making charms and curses to save the world.”

Toil paused in his work, and I watched a great drip of slime fall from his body to slide down the wall. The stuff seemed impossibly sticky, almost like glue. No wonder they had to blink about.

“He did,” Toil replied. “Thank you for the reminder. King Bring has heard your plea for the return of his one-fifth snuffing share. He will gladly do this if you reject King See’s claim of you.”

I’d already done so, though indirectly. Why would King Bring return his snuffing share to me in exchange for such a simple thing? “I was under the impression that King See had only somewhat claimed me.”

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