Page 52 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
“Will you heal it?” asked Princess Change.
“That is the hypothesis.”
I landed on a patch of sand that seemed untainted by sickness.
There, I ran curious fingertips over the stitch of my little finger. The sludge erupted into the air in response.
My,we were certainly in the right place. My stitch tugged in a bid to be free. My breath quickened, and I pulled back at the stitch with my power in the same way any person might try to stop a part of their body ripping away.
Yet… I was a queen.
I was a queen of stitch and patch, and my stitches represented the areas of great sickness in the world. If my stitch wished to be free, then it was for good reason.
But first.
I pushed my power out and tentatively touched a tiny tendril to the black sludge. The worldscreamedand warped.The black sludge shot high in a wave that blotted out my view of the night sky. The waves surrounded us on all sides.
Princesses gasped as the black sludge started to pour inward toward us. I blasted my power upward to meet it.
The sludge passed through my barrier, and I staggered backward from the blow as it disintegrated my defenses.
Three princesses moved to stand in front of me—three champions. The princesses stood together, holding hands, their power joined and pushing outward in a bubble. The sludge pounded against the barrier in a deafening waterfall, but the sickness did not permeate their defense.
The faces of Princess Change and Take were grim and serious and entirely focused, so I did not disturb them, for I could see the beads of sweat upon their brows.
I stood on trembling legs.
Only a stitch could fix this sickness. Yet I had learned that the stitches were a mother. That harm to a stitch resulted in harm to a mother.
But why else would the stitch tug if it was not meant to be free of me?
I closed my eyes and touched my power and mind to the stitch.Go,I told the stitch.
The stitch did not.
Neither did it stop tugging.
The stitch knew that I did not truly wish it gone.
I cursed under my breath, then considered the stitch in greater depth. The… feeling of it. The feeling of the mother who had stitched it.Accepting.The mother had accepted her fate as I had so often accepted mine.
Why had such radical acceptance been asked of the women in my ancestral line? How was that fair?
Fairness hardly mattered, but fairness was a warm idea at the same time. What if that mother had felt she possessed a choice? I could imagine how this mother had resisted her fate for so long before eventually relenting to the idea that she must wither.
Life had not given her fair and free choice.
“Your acceptance is your greatness, Mother,” I whispered. “Life was not fair because you were needed to heal the world.”
The stitch wiggled free of the two patches it had held closed. The stitch pulled free of my body and hovered before my face.
A tear slipped over my cheek, and I could only smile at the little stitch… which did not remain little for long.
The stitch swelled and expanded and pushed outward and upward in every way. The stitch was an enormous and mythical creature designed to battle against the sickness so rife in the world. The stitch blasted into the waves encasing us and shattered them like glass. The pieces fell to the ground, only to be eaten by the snaking stitch in a blurring rush.
My champions fell to the ground like dolls, their barrier no longer needed.
The front of the great stitch formed the screaming face of a mother, Danya. Her teeth were bared, and fierce hatred was etched in the lines of her beautiful face. She dove into the cavernous pool of black sludge, and I gasped, running forward to help her.
