Category Archives: Part 2: queen

Chapter 24 (comes to pieces)

I stalk away. I leave Skeleton Cook behind, because he has to fetch my cloak. I stalk down the street, ignore the curved one of dark green, I march to the hill. I march to the edge of the city to the hill steeped in mud and I don’t stop even though I hate theContinue reading “Chapter 24 (comes to pieces)”

Chapter 23 (how a battlefield)

The queen’s friend leaves the vase by the compartment where the glimmer insect jars are kept. Then she guides me to the exit, pulling a pair of mittens–one dark indigo, the other beige–from a hidden pocket. I don’t have mittens, so I ball my gray, dust-covered hands into fists and hope the guards don’t notice.

Chapter 19 (intercut)

(ps table of contents here) Here is a memory, brain: you as a child walking through the caves at night. You couldn’t sleep; the sound of the waves on the beach, the unfamiliar bed, the stone walls, the hill pressing in from above you. At first, you just went to the wide sitting room. YouContinue reading “Chapter 19 (intercut)”

Chapter 18 (birth day)

The queen yelps. I stop in the street, because she’s in the doorway of the building, and therefore hasn’t seen Rattle-bones carried in Skeleton Cook’s arms like a baby. There’s a loud crack and I run forward, Skeleton Cook at my heels. Rattle-bones makes several weird hiccups until we stop, beside the queen. She isContinue reading “Chapter 18 (birth day)”

Chapter 17 (death day)

The queen–it is the real queen–doesn’t take us to the palace. We go back to the building where I killed the glimmer insects. “So I take it you’re the death mage,” the queen asks me, calmly, as the three of us tread through the building’s dark interior. “Is that how you made it go dark?”Continue reading “Chapter 17 (death day)”