Weaver & the Wight

Chapter 01 - The Prince

Beneath Gillian's feet, the city churned and breathed.

The streets pulsed lightly with Muln's distant heartbeat as the people around him lost their own rhythm, shriveled veins drying up under their skin. Gillian kept his head down, hoping no one would notice him. But that was a weak hope. You couldn't not notice him, the stitches running from his forehead to the bridge of his nose, the sharpness of his left, pitch-black eye. A barn owl's in lack of a human's. His skin was a myriad of different shades: tans, pale whites, and greys.

The mist from the grey day collected on his patchwork skin in tiny droplets of water, as eyes watched him from alleyways and street sides, ever so colder than the icy fog.

The boy approached the rickety place of Tooth, the wormfarmer. He wasn't sure why his father sent him down here all by himself. He supposed the King just didn't see much worth in him, otherwise he probably would have kept him more isolated.

"How much you want?" grumbled the burly man, sighing heavily as he saw the prince approach. His leather-skin apron was splattered with murky, grey blood. "I'm running low."

Gillian hesitated; he didn't like Tooth, but at least he trusted him a bit more than the rest of the folk in Muln. Only because he was required to, of course. Tooth was the one and only provider to the King's palace, sharing his great "cuisine." Not many could afford to eat Tooth's soup. Most Mulnic folk probably had never tasted much more than wormmeal, a colorless stew cooked from filthy rainwater and gruel of strandworms. Tooth prepared his worms in the way only the King would eat. Large pink steaks packed into tight metal cans.

"The King's a bit annoyed," Gillian said finally. "He said the last batch made him feel sick. I'm sorry if—"

Tooth cut off the boy's words with a deep growl, slipping the few rations he had in the boy's direction. "Do I look like I bloody care?" he said. "No. Now off with you now, boy." For a prince, Gillian was never exactly treated like one. And neither was the King. The slum people were just too weak and tired to ever do anything about it.

Gillian handed off the small crate of cans to the steward who accompanied him, Ogilvy, and the two made their back down the cramped street, up towards spires of the Palace.

Today, the clouds were a hint less dark than usual, letting light trickle down from the grey skies. The dying sun shone brighter than usual, yet still fairly dim. Dim as Gillian always felt. Because Gillian didn't want to end up like the King. But one day, he would inevitably become something just like him. He was a prince, in a way. Not a real one, as they were in the fairy stories.

The King never had a child. He said it was because he was too disgusted by the women below in the slums of the city. He said he was too pure for them and didn't want his heir to have any of their tainted, muddy blood. Not that his blood was any less black. The King, if anyone, was the grossest of Muln, the foulest. Gillian liked to pretend he didn't exist. He liked to pretend Silas was his father. Weren't fathers supposed to be there for their sons? Weren't they supposed to love their sons? Silas, the old inventor, was the only who had ever shown any love to the boy.

Raggedy guards sat waiting at the edge of the King's palace. They were waiting for the prince, whom they both hated dearly. Somehow, they were blind enough not to see how much of a monster their king was. Instead, their sardonic words were always about the prince. Gillian knew they talked about him, and he understood. Who could like what he was? He, too, was undoubtedly a monster. Not in the same way the King was, whose heart sat shriveled and black in his chest. No, Gillian's heart was a little quilted thing, made from bits of dirty fabric and donated bits of organs. Gillian was the monster because of his body and the King was the monster because of his twisted heart.