The Worm and His Kings Read online

  Monique couldn’t afford to slow again. She stomped away from the forming puddle. Its crimson streaks crept after her down the next hall and into the palace’s shadows.

  The hall curved ahead, forming a hook toward the palace’s center. At the inside of its curve, Monique crossed a set of iron double doors, scarcely visible in what light still ebbed from the outer halls.

  “Please be right,” she whispered, and pressed at the doors. They were heavy, but each gave under her hands. Their whining creak echoed through the corridors. “Please, please.” She limped through and shoved them shut behind her.

  Glowing fungi matted the walls of a three-tiered room and lit the ornate stone railing of its balcony. Dark, slender windows glowered from the domed ceiling above. A familiar stone table stretched across the floor below.

  The throne room. Monique was still a level too high, but she was here. That would have to be enough.

  An open book sat in front of Donna’s place at the table, but she wasn’t reading it. She stared at the wall of fungal stars and the brass throne seated beneath it.

  Cold fingers of the empty place clawed at Monique’s skin. It had been waiting for her return. It would have to wait forever after this; she was never coming back here. She wouldn’t even glance at Freedom Tunnel.

  Donna turned to the balcony. “There you are.”

  “Climb onto the table,” Monique said. She laid her middle across the balcony railing and outstretched one arm into the room. “Jump and grab my hand. I’ll pull you up.”

  Donna closed her book and sighed. “Monique, I’ve told you. I haven’t been dis—”

  “I’m sick of hearing that!” Monique leaned deeper. The ache in her shoulder said Donna’s weight might tug her arm from its socket, but she didn’t care; she had another. “Everything you know about the Worm is bullshit. And even if he was a god, you don’t have to do what he wants.”

  “And what about what I want?” Donna stood from her stone seat and glared past Monique’s hand, into her eyes. “We shouldn’t have to crawl beneath this world any longer. He can give us a world without hate. He can heal you.”

  “He’s not a healer.”

  “We’re not the only ones.” Donna paced the length of the table, eyeing her dead tablemates. “Everyone who’s different, everyone who needs a path out from under society’s bootheel—the Worm will carve that path.”

  Monique noticed she’d withdrawn her arm without meaning to, as if her hand were repulsed by Donna’s devotion to the Worm. Never mind that; Donna wasn’t herself right now.

  Monique reached again. “This isn’t how we fix the world,” she said. “I know more than anyone that patience is slow and soul-breaking, but it’s better than rushing to Doctor Sam. I don’t know if the Worm is a god or physics gone wonky, but all he’s ever done is destroy. He found a world of one people and carved their land into kingdoms. When they didn’t do what he wanted, he carved their world itself, and we picked up the pieces. All he does is carve, Donna. The Worm is Doctor Sam for the universe.”

  Donna shuddered—a genuine reaction. She’d been at Monique’s side, changing bandages, wiping pus from wounds, helping her remember to walk again. They couldn’t share pain in their bodies, but Donna had absorbed some of it into her soul.

  Monique pushed through. “Now we’re the world’s people instead. He’s not going to save or heal. He didn’t help anyone last time he carved everything. He won’t help anyone now. I don’t know where the right carving or healing might ever come from, but it’s not from him.”

  Donna lowered her head. Her shoulders were shaking.

  Monique stretched over the railing on tiptoes, far as she could without falling, and reached down. Her injured foot pleaded for her to come back. “Grab my hand.”

  “It won’t work,” Donna said, her voice flat.

  “It’ll work because I’m helping you! You’re not alone. He’ll try to keep you. You’ll take my hand, and I’ll take yours, and you’ll scratch and bite and flail around, try to break yourself in a fall so you won’t have to leave that room, but no matter what, I won’t let go. I’m your girl, remember? And you’re mine. I won’t let him make you his bride.”

  Donna looked up, her face perplexed, but there was light in her eyes.

  “Please, Donna, take my goddamn hand!”

  “Mon Amour, what are you talking about? This is the throne room.” Donna waved at her skeletal tablemates. “These are the new kings. And so am I.”

  Monique's stomach growled at being squashed against the railing. She ignored it. “But you’re a—” The Broken King’s torn belly dripped across Monique’s mind. Both a king and a mother. “A woman.” It didn’t matter, she realized.

  “In the Great Pangaea Kingdoms, king was a title that crossed all boundaries,” Donna said, echoing Corene. “A new day arrives, the Third Coming of the Worm. The world will learn of King Donna, her power and reach, how she brings her love close and holds her tight.” She looked up at Monique. “To keep her for destiny’s sake.”

  Enormous hands seized Monique’s sides and hauled her off the balcony railing into mid-air. She squirmed, but there was no getting loose.

  The Gray Maiden raised her arms. “OOH!” Her breath gusted against Monique’s back.

  “Don’t do this!” Monique shouted to the Gray Maiden. “We’re the same. It wasn’t fair what the Worm did to you, and I get it, okay? I know what it’s like to grow up wrong. And you didn’t even get to pick your own name; everyone keeps deciding new ones for you. I know what you’re going through!”

  The Gray Maiden didn’t react. She held too much pain inside her to care.

  Monique snapped at her switchblade’s trigger and drove the blade down at the Gray Maiden’s fingers. It scratched across skin. The Gray Maiden squeezed, one thumb jamming into Monique’s spine. Pain surged through her shoulders and down her arms. Her switchblade clattered on the balcony floor.

  “Don’t hurt her!” Donna shouted. She stood before the wall of stars, her suit both sickening and resplendent in the eerie fungal light. “Just keep her still.”

  The Gray Maiden’s grip tightened, but no talons pierced Monique’s skin.

  She was too worn out to struggle. Her chest ached beneath giant fingers. Constriction and unconsciousness were coming, same as had happened to Phoebe and Corene and anyone else the Gray Maiden had grabbed.

  Monique turned weary eyes down at the throne room. “You tell her what to do?” she asked.

  “I tell everyone what to do,” Donna said. “The Worm works through kings. Who do you think told them about you? Sent the Gray Maiden looking for you?”

  Another wave of dizziness swept Monique’s head. “But why?”

  “Because I’m not the Bride of the Worm.” Donna smiled brightly. “You are.”

  14

  ALL OF TIME CONSPIRED

  MINUTES, HOURS, YEARS—THEY SEEMED the same. Time had no meaning when there was no sun to revolve around, only a dark underground that spanned all existence. Monique would never see sunlight again.

  Only the stars.

  The Gray Maiden carried her through corridors and into a chamber where Monique was expected. Hands pawed at her from all sides. She would’ve preferred the touch of Mimic and the rest of the old kings’ daughters, but these were talon-free human hands. They wielded scissors and brushes, rags and soap. They pulled off her jacket and shoes, and then they cut away her shirt and jeans. One sock came off hard, the foot caked in blood. Her scarves fell loose, exposing her throat.

  She knew she was naked in the distant, impersonal way that she knew the sun would die someday. These were strangers. They could see her scars. She didn’t want them to see, but there was nothing she could do about it. This hardly felt like her body now. It was theirs, and they would make it clean. Warm water ran through her hair, down her back, and into unseen drains. She heard the ringing of drops against stone. Hands scrubbed sweat from her skin and grime from beneath her fingernails. Knots fell,
cut loose from her hair.

  When the washing finished, her handlers bandaged her foot and dressed her in a silken gown that puddled at her feet. She was used to keeping the scratch marks on her arms hidden inside her jacket, but there were no sleeves to this gown. She was dressed like Mimic. If only she could crawl up the walls and into the palace’s shadows, too.

  “The Worm won’t want me,” she muttered, or thought she did. She might have only meant to speak. Her throat didn’t feel enthusiastic about trying.

  A familiar pair of clasped hands floated close. Something shiny poked over their wrists, and when the palms opened, they revealed a broad silver circlet that fit across Monique’s brow.

  “There,” said a king’s familiar voice. “You should be more comfortable now.”

  Those same gentle hands stroked Monique’s bare shoulders and pressed her down. She reclined across cold stone, the world sweeping out from beneath her body. Steady fingers explored up her gown, where their fingertips traced her inner thigh, stirring a confused hurricane inside her. She reached down to guard private places, but these were familiar fingers and they knew how to tantalize nerves while avoiding scars and months-old aching.

  A shadow crossed Monique’s bleary world. It had Donna’s blue eyes.

  Soft weight settled across Monique’s prone body, where lips kissed first at the meat of her bicep and then between her shoulder and neck. A shock skittered beneath her skin, and she gasped hard. She reached to feel for Donna’s hips, hands, the small of her back, and found Donna’s inner thigh, soft and wet and welcoming. An exploring tongue swept lightly along her throat, beneath her jaw, gentle enough to draw tears. If she was stronger, Monique would’ve twisted around like in their old apartment, where she and Donna used to taste each other until morning.

  The tears cleared Monique’s eyes. This was no apartment. Glowing fungi offered scant light that climbed stone walls. A balcony hung partway overhead. Higher than that, the ceiling curved into a dome, where slender windows gave glimpses into the room.

  Faces filled those windows. Their eyes had watched her nakedness, her scars. They were watching her reunion with Donna.

  “They’re looking,” Monique said between panting breaths. “We can’t.”

  The tongue wouldn’t let her go. She gritted her teeth. It would be easier to flow with Donna’s touch and pretend a river of ecstasy might wash her away from the Worm’s maddening world.

  But easy wouldn’t save their lives. Monique forced her head up and pushed Donna away. “We have to stop.”

  Her palms sank into moist, hairless flesh. An enormous wet worm writhed across her legs and chest, its boneless form sagging around her joints. Donna’s blue eyes shined from its pink faceless front. A curious tongue prodded Monique’s neck.

  She screamed and thrashed. No, not this. She wouldn’t be this thing’s bride.

  The haze cleared in full as the weight lifted. “This is no kingly primae nocta,” Donna said. “You were my love first. But have it your way.”

  A dozen hands drew Monique up from cold stone and guided her onto a soft seat. Time thickened into a stone table that reached down the dim throne room, its aged books and silverware having been pushed to either side of where she had reclined moments ago. The table’s jagged end stuck out on the far side of the room, undisturbed. Dead men sat in five of the stone seats, their faces covered in silver masks so they couldn’t have seen her nakedness, while a sixth seat stood empty.

  Monique felt another, larger seat beside her, somehow even emptier, the reserved vacuous place of a god. She had reached the bottom of the throne room and its throne.

  At the side of the empty place, and for the last time.

  She pressed her feet to the chilly stone floor, started to stand, and then collapsed. Her seat creaked—not stone, but thatched wicker. The Worm’s people had dragged this new chair down the elevator, into the throne room, and beside the throne just for her. Lighter, daintier, fit for a bride.

  She patted at her head. The silver circlet already felt like a part of her.

  Donna paced one side of the table as she buttoned the front of her suit. “We couldn’t find your beanie,” she said. “But just as well. It wouldn’t have looked appropriate for the ceremony.”

  Young men and women flitted around the bridal chair, once more fiddling with Monique’s hair and stirring dishes of mushroom and fish. She didn’t recognize their faces, but their hands seemed familiar.

  “It was always going to be you, Mon Amour,” Donna said. “Even when the Gray Maiden grabbed all those wrong people, I knew you’d find your way. She mixed up the details, only ever fragments of the bride coming home, never the whole of you, but that couldn’t stop us, and it couldn’t stop the Worm. His will brought you where you belong.”

  Monique tried to swat hands away from her hair, but her arms felt too heavy. “All those people.”

  “I take responsibility. I gave too many details or not enough, and she never wanted to come home empty-handed.” Donna paced closer. “Living rough? She understood that. Red’s a familiar color, but she’d forget where you wore it. I described your features, but her kind probably don’t see the distinction, and I didn’t want her to grab every trans—well, every woman like you who she came across. Can you imagine, surviving Old Time, only for me to turn her into a bigot? I’d feel so embarrassed.”

  “Embarrassed?” Monique asked. “Dee, this is murder. Some of those people are dead now. If you keep me, they’ll kill me.”

  Donna paused between the bridal seat and the throne, at last putting her warm body between Monique and the cold clawing of the empty place, the way it should have been in Freedom Tunnel. Yet Monique still felt cold fingers. Donna’s presence couldn’t keep its grasp at bay.

  One of the young women quit fussing with Monique’s hair and plucked up a silver fork. Its points slid into a cooked mushroom cap, brown juices sliding down the tine, and brought it to Monique’s lips.

  She pursed them and turned away, though her needy stomach rumbled.

  “I’m not killing you,” Donna said. “I’m giving us the gift of a world without hate.” She took the fork from the intrusive hand and waved her servants away. A king could do that. She knelt in front of Monique and offered the mushroom again. “Please. I know you’re hungry.”

  Another groan erupted from Monique’s stomach. She couldn’t fight it anymore. Her lips slid open.

  Donna pressed the fork into Monique’s mouth and drew it back empty. “This must be preferable to starving in the streets.”

  Monique grunted. When she finished chewing, she found a cup in her hands. The water came crisp across her tongue and down her throat. She ate sparingly, not wanting to throw it all up after running so close to empty for days. The mushrooms were moist and spongy, the fish tender. To her angry stomach, this was a banquet fit for kings.

  Even King Donna.

  Monique swallowed one last bite and then shook her head.

  Donna relented, placing the fork back on the stone table. Its reflection caught briefly in one dead man’s silver mask. “That should give you strength for what’s to come,” she said. “The Worm’s never had a bride before. We aren’t sure what to expect.”

  Monique was sure. She’d seen what the song did to Phoebe. “Snap out of it.” Monique’s voice cracked, going hoarse, but she didn’t care. “Please wake up.”

  “I’m awake.” Donna reached over the table and began to part bowls and books from a small blue box. “You act like this isn’t me, but I know you better than anyone. I’m the only one who knows how special you are.” She placed the box at the head of the table, within arm’s reach of Monique—a wrinkled cardboard package of blueberry Pop-Tarts. “You always had the worst taste, Mon Amour. You’re still you, and I’m still me.”

  Donna could preen all she liked, but she was wrong. The underground had eroded her, day by day. While the Worm’s people let her keep her wits, they had turned her mind self-destructive. What remained of her ha
d faced choosing her girlfriend or a god, and she’d chosen a god.

  “You were always brimming with love,” Donna said. She sat against the table’s edge and reached for Monique’s hair. “Too soft for a world like this. Too special. You deserve better.”

  Monique clenched her fists at her sides. “There’s nothing special about me.”

  Donna’s cheeks blossomed above a wry smirk. “Of course there is. You could’ve continued pretending to be a son to your parents. You could’ve given up on me. There were a thousand times you could’ve made your life easier by doing what everyone else wanted.”

  Monique looked to her lap. The gown was thin. If she stared long enough, her gaze might pierce its fabric and find her scars. “Doing nothing wouldn’t have been easier. Not on the inside.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. You’re a fighter, and you never quit.” Donna waved a hand in an arc that passed both the bridal seat and throne. “You have this inescapable gravity, perfect for the Bride of the Worm. You’ll ensure the Worm’s will is done past the physical world, beyond the time we generate by gravity, into the grand role that Earth will take on a cosmic scale. His children will grow inside you, feeding on future what-if’s, reflections of Earth from this moment that will never come to be, pathetic Wormless futures. When your children are grown, you’ll rain them across land and sea, our eventual inhuman kings.”

  “I don’t even have a fucking uterus!” Monique snapped.

  “It doesn’t matter. You won’t be human anymore. More importantly to him, you have the soul of a mother, caring and resilient.” Donna slid her hand from Monique’s hair and traced a finger down her jawline. “This fight is your last. You’ll be taken into his fold, but that you’ll fight? That makes you special.”

  This wasn’t the Donna who once sang across Coney Island or who’d dragged Monique from hospital to church to shelter this past winter, weak and weary, scarred and hating life. King Donna remembered old Donna, but they were not the same. A fundamental switch had flipped.