Palace Walls

Part Twenty-Five

"To this day, I am not sure how much Mama remembers. She recalls Cyclops Freedom Act. For now, she tells of Amendment 75, the firm way she spoke the day she banned the death penalty (thus giving Cousin Hatcher a new job),

"What inspired you to get rid of it, Cousin?" Hatcher asked in his slow, lazy way, sipping amber liquid from a triangular glass.

Mama's mouth trembled and she lowered her head to her chest, like she would cry.

"Well...it's been a long time coming. All this chaos with my dear Cyclopes, my family...the criminals were once like us, you know. I wonder what I'd have turned out to be, had the King and Queen not adopted me. Perhaps I got to thinking 'that's the way it is' is a lazy way to justify years of pain...but, Goddess! If I were human, they'd kill me, too. To teach a lesson."

"Cousin, be serious. If you're dead, you can't learn anything!"

She looked up— her once scary, stiff eyes quivering in the light.

"Thenen I've been dead all this time."

Hatcher still comes around. He's what humans call a "mixologist", making all kinds of crazy drinks that make you stumble and sing. He's what we call Aush, or soft. But a good soft. A kind soft.

She calls every time she kissed her Mama, practiced shooting out the window, and played chess with Chief Cyanu, but does she recall the day Papa died? I asked my brother Naumburg about it, and he says it "pains her to talk about." It's true; when she tried to talk about it, she grips her throat, like it hurts, like it chokes the life out of her, and tears roll down her cheeks. She hates that. The court ladies hate that it ruins her makeup, but what do they know? I don't even think the Grand Historian recorded Papa dying in the histories, so our children have no idea. They'll grow up without a Julhan ["Grandpa"]. An unexplained absence, a jagged gap in time and being. Nobody deserves that.

The day he was lowered into the Royal Crypt was a sad one. His sarcophagus glistened with the rosy shadows of candles, and his painted eyes glowed as they had in life. Even the seashells on his sarcophagus quivered as his soul rose to rule the paradise forged by so many heartbeats....!

I can't translate the stars and shadows of my mother's heart, but I know her feelings were all twisted up tight, a knot of hurt, anger, and loneliness. I know mine were, too. Papa wasn't perfect-- I always thought he was stupid, cheating on our smart, strong, beautiful Mama with that...creature. But I still tear up, knowing I'll never hear him laugh again, or sing at a festival."

--from the diary of Princess Jasperine, the Queen's second-oldest child

The day Prince Eryx developed a cough, the Queen knew she would lose him. The way sleepy-eyed nurses huddled around his bed, slipping him warm drinks, seemed all too pointless to her. She recalled Bathurst's glazed eyes and clammy pale skin. Back then, the nurses didn't want her to enter his sick-room (partially due to King-Training nonsense), but she caught glimpses through the door-crack. She knew a slow death from a life lengthened by idle illness.

At first, it seemed mild. Now walking, little Linden was allowed to toddle into the sick-room. His ritual of slapping his Papa's palm before gurgling and stomping laps around the room. Everyone would laugh. But Papa's devolved into a nasty, wet cough before the rattles of wheezing.

A Neo-Jotun actor even tried to enter, a young one who dressed as a Cyclops for plays. He adjusted a big false eye-mask over his face, hunched into a shorter height, and began speaking a hideous exaggeration of the caveland dialect:

"Och, Ah see tha awd Prince got sikky," he grunted, "Yah wan me to kiss it and make it all betta?"

"No!" snapped the Queen, "I will not tolerate this disgusting mockery in my house! Who invited you here?"