Total pages in book: 58
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52915 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
“I’m not sad,” I tell her. “Not because of you.”
“Because of the dragon?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because of the dragon.”
Scrtch scrtch…
A harsh scratching at the door heralds the arrival of Whiskerton. In the Happily Ever After he taps respectfully, but he cannot help but claw madly at the portal now. We are all affected by the presence of the creature.
“Enter!”
The hour is late, and the day has been challenging. We are ready to eat. The door creaks open and Whiskerton screeches his arrival, his bright red eyes glowing in the gathering shadows.
“Dinner is served, your highnesses.”
He is still an admirable butler, no matter the Ever After. In his yellow gnarled claws, he holds a blackened tray with soot and grease adorning the edges. I recognize the tray, or rather I know the tray this tray is the shadow of. I took its silvered reflective surfaces very much for granted. I wish for better days, for more innocent princesses, for a Happily Ever After that somehow feels more distant than it did before I found the love of my eternal life.
“Yum,” Emmaline says, sitting up with the black sheet over her breasts. “That smells amazing!”
She seems very unbothered by the darkness surrounding her. Whether good or bad, she has a constancy I find utterly admirable and entirely confusing.
“It’s stew,” Whiskerton says, depositing the tray across her lap obligingly. One of his whiskers, bent and twisted, spirals down toward the meal, arrested only by my plucking it out of the air as the charred lid comes off the plate. “Raven and wretch stew.”
“Oh, and are the wretches good today?” Emmaline humors him with a courteous question.
“Very wretched, your highness.”
“Lovely,” Emmaline says. I watch as she takes a spoonful of the concoction most foul and devours it with apparent enjoyment. I myself do not have much of an appetite. My stomach feels as though it is burning with a roiling flame that will not easily be sated.
“Is there anything else I can bring you, your highnesses? The kitchen has been aflame six different times today, so everything is more or less in a state of char and brûlée.”
“Thank you, Whiskerton,” I say. “You may leave us.”
“As you wish, your highness,” he says. “Just hurl the tray out the window when you are done and one of the soaring serving harpies will return it to the kitchen.”
“Oh, is that what this feather is?” Emmaline pulls a dripping red feather from her lips,
“Probably, your highness. My profound and profuse apologies.”
“Adds flavor,” Emmaline says cheerfully.
“You do not have to pretend all is well when all is not well,” I say once Whiskerton has taken his leave. I notice that Emmaline does not keep eating her meal. Instead, she delicately places the domed lid back over the plate and hurls the entire setting out the window as instructed.
CLANK! SQWAW!
One of the harpies has caught it or has been caught by it, and will no doubt tear the remnants to pieces before depositing whatever is left in the kitchen.
“It’s fine,” she says. “I’ve got a roof over my head, the food is nutritious, and you love me. This is a lot less than what I had back in my world. The flying harpy feathers were not nearly as tasty.”
She gives me a rueful little smile and I feel a deep sense of responsibility and dread for what I have done to her. I have taken her from a perfectly reasonable mundane realm and plunged her into a twisted horror.
“I am sorry, Emmaline. I told you that you were to be a princess…”
“And I am. A princess with a collection of skulls of strangers, and…”
“I suppose they are strangers to you, but those are the skulls of my enemies.”
“Oh,” she says. “Your enemies. What sort of enemies?”
“Some of them were other princes, others were court officials who attempted to betray me. Some…”
“Charming,” she says very carefully. “Have you killed all the actual, well, people here?”
“I mean, not all the people,” I say, feeling a little defensive.
“Oh, so there are some others left in the castle who still have those humanoid kind of skulls? Not walking rats, flying harpies, hens, etcetera?”
“I mean. Well…” I draw in a breath. “Yes, okay, technically, and I do mean technically because there were a lot of finer niceties and very good reasons…”
“Alright, yes…”
“Yes, I may have slaughtered the entire royal court and replaced their heads with enchanted animal heads.”
“I see. And the villagers?”
“The dragon ate all the villagers when my father died.”
“Right,” she says. “So that’s why the priest was a goose, and the piles of skulls, and the tiny mice chairs. How long have you been alone here, in this world without any others of your kind?”
“You mean, how long have the animals been my companions, servants, and populations?”
“Yes,” she says. “That is what I mean.”