Palace Walls

Prologue

    Autumn 2432

Awd Dimpling Summer Palace, Splendora

"The humans' journey home was delayed by none other than Auntie Bathilde herself. After the couple ate a large breakfast, she dashed in, wringing her fat, bejeweled hands.

"Au secours, King Octavius 'as abdicated!" she gasped, "Clotilda is...la reine!"

"Clotilda is Queen?" Beatriz asked, "But she's a child!"

"A maiden," Orraca corrected, "I was married at fourteen."

"Either way, it's too young...."

Bathilde adjusted her cat-eye glasses.

"Age matters not in times like this. Za king is za last of za Hua Dynasty and also has za bone spiders."

"Hua Dynasty?" Orraca asked, "Then that makes Clotilda...."

Bathilde gaped, her eyes wide and unblinking.

"Queen of an entire nation. Officially a woman."

--from The Queen and the Baker: A Love Story by Bathilde Beraude

The Queen was ancient. Nobody dared to ask her age, but she was old enough to remember the Alliance Feast between Cyclops and Giants. (In fact, she sang at it!) She was old enough to remember wearing stiff round skirts that made her wobble when she walked, and later, being a plump, dark-haired dame constricted by rib-crushing corsets. But she wasn't all deep wrinkles and jutting veins. She was young enough to remember a world that didn't shiver when they saw her. Over five hundred years old?! She was fortunate to feel the warm light of so many days and the cool air of so many nights.

"Names?" grunted a guard, shifting them back into reality. He was tanned, muscular, and wore several thin black tattoos that dove in and out of his dark-blue uniform. An Amathzuli native...had to be! Even their names mean "one of the ink!"

They stammered out their names, stated their purposes, and waited for the guard to move. He nodded and stepped aside, allowing them to walk down the long, marble hall into a luxurious blue-green parlor. They froze. It had a strange, marine theme. Long, slender seashells and pink coral encrusted the green carpet like a shimmering sea of fingers. An anchor dangled from one wall, while dead fish dangled from the next. Several paintings adorned the walls of fur-clad Cyclopes laying defeated in scarlet pools of blood before mounds of open-mouthed humans, as Giants grasped the glossy crystals from their caves. The gore made one current Cyclops' stomach turn, so she looked away.

Fraying posters of anti-Cyclopean theater fluttered beside them— with giant, grotesque faces wearing false single round eyes over their natural pairs, stooping to mock the Cyclopes' "shortness". The titles were coarse and bawdy, hideously mocking the caveland dialect. 

 "Mawma Needcha Ta Giva Sugah?" gasped one of the current Cyclopes.

"Ah Was 'Is Favorite Conkyabyne?" coughed another.

They cringed. How could anyone be entertained by this?!

In the room, huge, golden Cyclops skulls suspended from thin wires in the ceiling. The Cyclopes shuddered; Neo-Jotun pride slept comfortably in these walls. Heavy blue-green curtains rose and fell with the cool breath of evening. One of them wished she brought her pen: Green— a symbol of wealth and luxury —still pulsed in the heart of the Queen.