Page 34 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
I toppled off the balustrade and just managed to wave in response to Life’s rear across the courtyard before I was encompassed by hellebores.
After clawing up the other side, I kissed my mother’s gaunt cheek and greeted the other mothers. They did not interrupt their chanting vigil to greet me, but their chant swelled louder and higher for their daughter’s presence.
I strode to the tower and looked upon the various items set out in the dirt.
A needle for which to stitch fifty mothers.
The bridal gifts: a crimson silk and black lace garter from Princess Take, a black bouquet of strawflowers and roses from Princess Change, the black-and-gray pearl necklace of Princess Bring, and the fingerless lace gloves of Princess Raise.
I picked up the items and then considered the tower. As I did so, a doorway appeared. Naturally, a queen was meant to go inside.
So I did, and then climbed to the heights of the tower. There were no other openings, whether window or door. The stairs simply led to the top.
The top was a platform, so far from the ground and fifty mothers, and exposed to all directions without any walls to speak of. A rock—a grayscale replica of the olden rock—sat in the middle and in the exact same place as in the colorful version of this conservatory.
My dress flowed around me in a gentle breezethat must have arisen from the haze. My focus extended to the haze, for there was a link there between this tower and the haze.
What was it?
I started to circle the olden rock, for no other reason than that doing so had sparked my intention to come here. I circled, and my body became less important and my mind and power more so.
Power.
Slumber in power. Vulnerability in power. Obsession in power. Madness in power. Uncertainty in power. Reckoning in power. From infancy of monsterdom to now, my journey in power had transformed as much as the rest of me—perhaps more.
Understanding in power.That was what I lacked.
I held up the needle in my hand. I was a creature of stitch and patch, after all, and the origins of my monstrous form were the heart of my power. Fifty mothers had withered to make me.
My gaze flicked to the olden rock, which was the heart of this conservatory. I walked over, and could see the tiny hole drilled in the top.
A hole for a needle of a queen made of stitch and patch.
I set my needle into the hole—a perfect fit. There was a distant rumble in the land of haze as I did so, then nothing more.
My stitches and patches were the heart of my monsterdom.
The floor around the olden rock was not entirely flat. I had not noticed. Indents. Four of them.
I set the four bridal gifts into the indents, but no distant rumble arose. The indents were not meant for bridal gifts, so I took up a slower pace, scanning the ground for clues as I circled.
I found four holes. The number of them might have led me to believe that they were meant for bridal gifts, but the shape was unmistakable.
“Mother,” I thought.
She pushed out five keys from five kings. Afterstudying the keyhole before me, I selected King Bring’s brass key. There was an order to kingly things, I had always found.
I slotted the key into the hole and twisted.
A scream was ripped from my lips, and I clutched at my left shoulder. I screamed again, clutching at the joint. The stitch there—something was trying to rip the stitch from my body.
I pressed a hand against the stitch, and pulled at the stitch with my power in a desperate bid to hold it there.
I pulled and held the stitch until the force subsided.
Panting, I dropped to my hands and knees, watching as beads of sweat fell to stone. Did the tower or ancients cause that?
The ruin of the world?
