Page 33 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
What else was a lie? Everything had been clear, a clear betrayal. I trembled within, devoid of courage, as I considered the full or partial disruption of the peace and acceptance I had come to on the subject of King See’s usurpation.
I could survive anything. I would never lose my self again. Future betrayals from King See could not break me.
But I trembled at the idea of daring to hope for a dream instead of a betrayal, for I had clawed myself away from him once. Though confident in my ability to repeat this, I also respected the turmoil and effort of doing so.
To have coped with See’s betrayal once was a lesson.
To open myself to him again… if he betrayed me a second time, then I would have myself to blame too. I would open myself to shame and further resentment, and these were the ingredients to unhappiness.
I was as undone as a queen could be.
“No,” I replied to Is. “His request for a queenly audience is denied.”
Is swallowed hard. “I shall deliver the news. Might I give him a reason?”
I ignored the question, though not really from a design to do so. A queen had work to attend to, and this matter was irrelevant in the reckoning of the world.
Three princesses were sitting in the larger of my private lounges when I left my chamber.
“An audience with King See, huh?” drawled Princess Raise.
When they realized I was leaving the chambers, the princesses hurried after me, even the subdued Princess Change.
Princess Take snorted. “He seeks to crawl back into her goodgraces and her bed. He envisions a lonely immortality with only a hand to warm him.”
There was that potential. That was why I trembled so. Ultimately, I would have to believe one way or another.
I would need to havefaith.
That was not a tangible thing. It was a hope and dream. I wished to believe always in hopes and dreams, and not expose them to a monster who had dashed them before.
“To where do you hasten?” whispered Princess Change.
I peered back and noted her dirt-covered hands. “To the grave.”
The others cried out their objections.
“Not the grave,” mourned Princess Raise. “Not so soon. You have only just returned.”
“To the grave, not to the haze,” I clarified. “’Tis but a simple trip.”
To understand the ruin of the world.
I had thewhyof the ruin of the world. I had thehow. But where and in what way would the ruin of the world occur?
Where and in what way must I fix it?
I must gain knowledge in reckoning. “As I circled in my conservatory amid kings, I was reminded of another tower that I have no understanding of. The answer to the world’s healing does not reside in humans, nor kings, nor even in fifty mothers. Therefore, the answer must reside in me, but which part of me?”
I wrenched to a halt before the balustrade that overlooked my mother’s grave.
I faced princesses. “King Raise’s question to me last night about how I had ripped the single reason for existence from Princess Change sparked a thought in me. I entered a haze that robbed me of body, so that I might understand my minds and self, but in that haze, I did not gain understanding of my power. That is why I trip through a grave this dusk. I believe understanding of power could lurk atop a tower.”
“Power and tower,” murmured Princess Change. “They rhyme.”
“In my experience of poems and chants and verses, rhyme often points to the answer,” I answered.
Princess Take and Raise helped me to stand atop the balustrade, and then Princess Change tentatively pushed me in the lower back.
