Pence Read online

  Chapter XIX

  The room was barren but for an old blanket bunched against the wall and a small, round window overlooking the sea. On the windowsill sat an unpainted clay flowerpot, the home to a wilting flower with white petals, their edges crisped like the corners of an old treasure map. Next to the window stood an ancient woman with sun-browned skin and white hair hanging to her waist in loops and braids. Her once-green dress was faded to a pale afterthought, the color of a leaf that never managed to find enough light.

  The Prince stepped to the center of the room. “So,” he cleared his throat and glanced at the shabby bedding on the otherwise bare floor, “Father take away all your toys?”

  A shadow crossed in front of the open window, blocking the sun entirely, then sailed off like a kite on a windy day.

  “Why are you here?” the woman demanded as the sunlight returned to her back, outlining her hair with a silver sheen. “What do you want?”

  “Get your shoes! Get your handbags! I’m here to save you, my lady!” rang Pence’s voice for an instant before the Prince sneezed to cover it up.

  “AHEM! Excuse me,” said the Prince as he paced. Adopting an expression of curious disgust, he lifted the woman’s blanket from the floor with one foot. It was an old apron, he saw, with waist-strings and a deep pouch in front–not much for a bed at all. He smelled it, dropped it immediately, and sauntered over to the window. The woman backed away as he drew near. “Why do you recoil from me?” he chided her. “Am I not of your blood?”

  “Give me your hand and your axe and we shall see,” she replied without skipping a beat.

  For a moment the Prince stared at her, smiling like a shark. Then he slowly lifted his left arm; layers of purple cloth cascaded away. He uncurled what remained of his hand. The dried scabs crackled and popped as he stretched his tendons back fully–fresh blood trickled out of the tiny new fissures like molten lava crawling down a mountainside.

  The woman gasped and grabbed at her own wrist protectively.

  “What is it?” cried Pence, hearing her distress. “What has he done to you?”

  Again the Prince sneezed and spoke over the boy, “Ahhhh, many a night did we spend at our windows talking deep into the night, brother and sister.”

  “Many more a night have I spent here alone,” said the woman. “I have not a brother, now.”

  The Prince shook his head–Pence was rocked off his feet, unable to speak through the grog in his mouth. “Tsk tsk, have you still not forgiven me? Immaturity does not keep for those at court,” he sneered, cozying up to the windowsill. His butchered hand held aloft, he playfully wiggled his disfigured knuckles. “Now, I understand the inconvenience you have experienced, but that is no justification to pardon you. Had you never went to that accursed garden…” he trailed off with a dark implication.

  The old woman stood her ground. The chamber door hung in pieces on axe-battered hinges and the Prince was preoccupied looking out the window, but racing down a thousand flights of stairs was apparently not a winning formula to her mind. She only stared at her long lost Honor Guard, awaiting his next move.

  Inside the bottle, Pence found his footing. He pounded on the glass walls with both his stumps, sloshing grog all about. “My lady, hurry, you must free me from this vile prison so I can get you out of this evil tower! This bogart is the Prince! The Prince, can you believe it? Defenestrate him! Defenestrate him! But free me first!”

  “Sister, sister, sister!” boomed the Prince, drowning out every word the boy spoke, “I have suffered like none other these hundred years.” He swayed as he spoke, occasionally jerking his head to upend Pence and keep him dunked in grog. “Exiled from my home, cut off from those I loved–”

  “Cut off?” The woman raised her right arm. Her hand was gone from the wrist, the stump a slaw of crusty stitches, ancient burn scars, and mangled skin. “There is no absolution for you in this tower… but that cannot be why you are here. The Throne, then? You have the wrong room.”

  “Have I?” He fixed her with a prescient gaze over his stooped shoulder as he placed a hand on either side of the white flower. “And you have never left these quarters since that fateful day?”

  “No,” said the woman.

  “Do you know why you were never sent away, never sold into marriage when a hundred lords of men were offered your hand?”

  The old woman raised her stump defiantly.

  “You had quite a few old chaps interested,” drawled the Prince, “but then, you see, how can a man pay for something which is already taken? Now, because of you, our home is empty. Abandoned. The bones of our father sat on the throne gathering rot, crown rusted to his piss-yellowed skull–did you know that? I disposed of him with due respect,” the Prince assured her quietly. “I suppose that means you’re a queen now, sister, or have been for, what, half a century?”

  “Neither have I a father,” said the Queen. “I shed no tears for the bones of an evil man.”

  “Zing! You tell’em!” Pence celebrated–the Prince burped at the exact moment–and Pence fell back into the grog.

  Another looming shadow swam in front of the window, blocking the sun, then was gone.

  “We used to watch the whales together from this very spot,” said the Prince as his eyes trailed after the passing shadow nostalgically. “Do you remember this as fondly as I do?”

  The Queen shook her head so slightly not one white hair on her head was disturbed. “Have you never seen what happened to the tower, or did your miserly eyes spare you the sight? I myself have not seen firsthand, of course,” she disclaimed, “but the stones from your vaulted chamber fell so far I could not hear them hit the sea. I believe the whales were killing away any last remnants of you. I have come to see that they are ever mindful of what we do. If I were you, I would not stand so close to the window.”

  The Prince stiffened. “Any last remnants of me?” He spun on her. “HERE I AM!” He held her defiant eyes until she looked away. “Your stubbornness will be the death of you,” he said in a low tone. “And yet… the King is dead long years, our home is a hollow shell… but here you are, survived in this room a hundred years behind locked door? How, sister? How are you nourished? You should be shriveled bones by now, unless you have been eating your apron-strings.” He stared at the Queen as he had stared at Pence when he first believed the boy to be the gardener incarnate. “What is your secret? You must tell me.”

  The woman’s eyes darted to the white flower and away quickly, but it was too late.

  “Oh my,” said the Prince, “I should have guessed.” He cracked his nose once, plucked a petal free, and raised it to his lips.

  Under the top hat, in the dark, Pence froze. His heartbeat pattered as rapidly as rain funneling out a gutter onto an iron drum.

  The Prince put the white petal in his mouth, where it began to glow through his cheeks like a rotten pumpkin with a candle inside. He tentatively chewed and swallowed. A sinister grin spread under his sable cowl. “I feel it in my blood already,” he cooed, “like a most tasty grog. Even as I speak these words, I am sated in body and mind. What an extraordinary plant. Men would pay dearly for a draft of it.” The Prince soulfully searched one cavernous nostril with a very thorough finger as he spoke, then flicked what he had recovered out the window into the vast gulf of white sky. “I have not seen its like before,” he said, “although it tugs at my memory. I consider its condition: Am I to assume it has been here with you all this time, and is only in recent days beginning to fail?”

  The Queen pursed her lips.

  “Very well,” said the Prince, shaking his head, “it makes little difference. I seek a superior prize. But here–you have shared your food with me. Allow me to return the favor.” He removed his top hat and placed the murky bottle next to the flowerpot on the windowsill. “Finest in the land?” he offered her with a sadistic grin.

  “Egads!” cried Pence as his confined quarters were flooded with intense sunlight. “The Sun has beaten us here? Oh,
wait… of course! Why didn’t I figure it out sooner?” He slapped himself on the forehead. “The Sun must be the one behind the Princess’s abduction–it’s the only explanation! He has kept her here above the wind where only he can worship her divine beauty.”

  Then Pence noticed the white flower and everything else evaporated from his mind. He pressed himself against the glass facing the flowerpot as though his gaze was called by a powerful magnet. “What is this?” he cried, his voice catching in his throat.

  “What black craft are you at now?” demanded the Queen, for Pence’s blurred shape behind the thick glass looked to her to be the silhouette of either a very small rodent or a very large insect. Then she felt the cadence of the heartseed. “That pulse–”

  “I have been thinking about just that,” said the Prince lazily, enjoying himself very much. “The day I rescued you from the devil’s garden–do you recall it?”

  The Queen stared at him with brimming malice but refused to give him the satisfaction of conversation.

  As Pence strained to press his face closer to the white flower, his nose–pushing against the glass–disappeared bit-by-bit inside his head, in turn nudging the brown pebble out of the back. The white flower began to glow softly.

  The Queen shifted her eyes from the Prince to the flower.

  The Prince grinned and continued musing, “I took you to our father and informed him that you carried a secret from the garden–an object which also beat like a human heart. Do you recall what happened next?”

  The flower perked up. The brown decay lining its edges dissolved into the white glow like a snowflake on warm skin. Traces of green mist wafted off the delicate petals.

  The Queen put her hand to her open mouth.

  “What I found in your fingers, after all that unpleasantness with the screaming and the blood, was a penny–the last leftover of those minted for your impending grooms. But to me, you see, that never felt–” the Prince twirled a fingerless knuckle in the air as he searched for the right word, “–natural.”

  The Queen advanced a step. “What…” she began, but could take neither her eyes nor her mind off the white flower.

  “What indeed,” said the Prince offhandedly. “I have often wondered, you know: What was she holding–” he idly spun the coin inside the bottleneck, “–before she switched it for this selfsame penny out of her still-bleeding, severed hand?” His eyes locked on her hers to ascertain the truth of his theory.

  The white flower had fully recuperated. Pence pulled back from the glass–his face was flattened to the dull contour of the bottle’s interior. “Princess!” he wailed. “Princess!”

  She gasped and took a step back–it was the first time Pence’s voice had escaped the bottle unimpeded to reach her ears.

  “And now I know,” said the Prince, thrilled with himself. “Like the boy’s heart, here, it was a talisman from the garden–it was a seed in your hand! You held a seed, not the penny! A seed from the garden! No doubt the same used to grow this implausible flower!”

  “Aren’t you clever?” snorted the Queen. “Where else would a flower come from–an egg? But you’re a century late. It began to wilt two moons ago, the same night the sky was filled with white light.” As she spoke, her eyes were cemented to the bottle.

  “Princess!” Pence called again. “It is I, Pence, a small boy from a potato, budding poet laureate, and all-around gentleman of fancy and leisure come to liberate you this fine day! My old man sent me! I can escort you to the garden!”

  The Queen rushed forward, but the Prince stepped in front of her before she could reach the windowsill. He violently threw her to the floor. She landed on her paper-thin apron with a clatter, as though all her bones had tumbled out of a bag onto the cold stones.

  The Prince grunted his observance of her sorry state and turned his back. He stared out the window. There were no whales in sight.

  “You unsavory sack of spoiled asparagus!” Pence shouted in rage at the Prince’s abuse of the Queen, but his tirade was stopped short when the Prince slapped a cupped hand over the top of the bottle–the suction when his hand pulled free caused the syrupy liquid inside to bubble up and Pence found himself with yet another face full of grog.

  “The boy is correct,” said the Prince to the prostrate Queen. “I will soon make my eternally ordained return to the garden. You will accompany us, and the old fool will have no choice but to open the gate. I have the thing–the penny–that started all of this. When I stand over the well all your lonely years will be undone. This tower will be as it once was and we at our windows always. There is no reason to delay. We leave at once. Get up,” he growled, turning back to the Queen.

  She was up and ready for him–she flung the pouch of the apron over the Prince’s head, crying, “You will never return to your window!” He lunged blindly, swiping at her face with his bleeding snub of a hand, but she sidestepped and deftly tripped him. Even on the floor, the Prince’s legs continued to pump crookedly up and down, as though they were still in their iron bicycle stirrups. He flopped around in circles like a fish out of water, fighting to unwrap the pouch from his face, but the more his legs drove him around, the more the apron-strings caught underneath his shoulders and twisted tighter. He gasped for air, his right hand clawing hysterically at his throat.

  The Queen approached the windowsill and set her eye flat to the bottle’s opening like it was the lens of a spyglass. Pence spat grog out of his mouth and looked up to see what had suddenly blocked the light. The Queen blinked rapidly as she came to comprehend at what it was she was looking–or, rather, at whom.

  “Cheerio!” Pence called up, waving his arms like windmills.

  The Queen jerked her head back in surprise, but continued to peer into the hole with a squinted eye. She spun the penny around experimentally, studying each side briefly before aligning it vertically so as to see the boy trapped below.

  “You are as exquisite as my eyes recall,” sang Pence. “And do you remember me?”

  Gazing into Pence’s eyes, the Queen put her good hand to one of her earlobes and nodded once in earnest.

  Pence smiled, then frowned. “But where is your beard? I thought it the customary fashion, these days.”

  The Queen leaned back over the bottle, skin to glass. To Pence, her eye was a green mirror showing his own face warped and enlarged like a heads-up penny flattened by a heavy wagon wheel.

  “You are indeed a gentleman, little one, I can see that already–and with bravery to spare, that you have come so far to find me. But what are you doing inside this foul bottle?” Her words, although polite, were harried; behind her, the Prince was attempting to tear in half the cloth that bound him by biting one end and pulling the other.

  Pence gazed up. Whether it was the frank compliments or the fact that his brow was now obtuse–flattened by the side of the bottle–his expression was dumbfound wonder. Then he remembered his manners and curtsied proudly, although he no longer had a sunhat to worry about upsetting. “Alas, my love, that I have ever been prone to bravo; in my zeal I was blind and the Prince used his mind-tricks to gain advantage over me. He is a very cagey adversary, you know. He must have a jewel in his head the size of a kickball. But please don’t tell anyone he got the best of me–I would never recover from the bad publicity.”

  The Queen was anxious to fit in her next question between Pence’s never-ending parade of words. “Are you truly a messenger from the boy in the garden?”

  “I am indeed a humble servant of the garden,” Pence carried on as though that had been his thesis all along, “but the old man there is no more a boy than I am a turnip, which is of course ridiculous. He is an old man, but he loves you very much. And so do I. I’m not ashamed to say it, either! You are much more lovely in person. On my penny you look so sad.”

  “Thank you, little one. I knew he must be alive–I can feel it when I stand at the window… or, I could, until my flower began to wither. And so he has grown old with the rest of us? Somehow I
doubted he ever would.”

  “Oh yeah, he’s really old. Almost dead. He’s desperate to see you. Shoot, am I botching this? I’m such a lump. I promised him I’d be a smooth talker to you. Let’s see… I don’t know… shall we have a kiss?”

  The Queen let out a subdued laugh. “Oh, little one, I think I should prefer not to put my lips anywhere near the business end of this bottle. But quickly now, do you bring a missive? Or… some other form of aid?”

  “He wanted me to help you, that’s all. Are you hungry? I have a grain of rice, if you like.” Pence fumbled at his face with his stumps but the rice was already wholly jammed inside his head. He looked down at his feet, ashamed at his clumsiness. “Apologies, my love: I cannot find my own nose. All this grog must have made my brain go fuddley. It seems that, try as I might, I have lost everything my old man gave me. He told me I was a grand success, but that is not true. Unless you’d like a bite out of my tummy?”

  “No, no, little one–never mind all that. You are the unlikeliest hero I ever met! Chin up, now. What words do you bring? Please, what is our plan?”

  There came the sound of fabric ripping.

  “Well, actually… my old man was a little hazy on the nuts and bolts of things. Do you think your hair is long enough to let out the window and climb… uh oh.”

  Behind the Queen a purple silhouette stood tall, all boxy angles and serpentine curves. “Sister… that was quite less than cordial of you. Most unbefitting of a queen.” The Prince threw the torn, wadded-up apron out the window.

  The Queen spun around, her back pressed against the windowsill where the bottle and the flowerpot sat between her arms protectively. The Prince leaned in to her, his nose poked past her one ear and then the other. “Give me the bottle. You can keep your flower–I am feeling generous today. I need only the penny. And of course I need you, as I know you need me. The boy’s heart will also do nicely, if that is not asking too much.”

  “Why ask at all?” spat the Queen, turning her nose away from his rank breath. “Last time you wanted a boy’s heart cut out you were not so genteel.”

  “My heart? Oh, gods!” Pence bawled. “Don’t let him take it, Princess! Save me!”

  “I believe,” said the Prince through his teeth, “that there is truth to the old saying: a stolen hook will catch no fish. So give me the bottle, kindly.”

  The Queen turned her nose up a fraction more.

  “Now!” roared the Prince.

  “I will not,” the Queen said forcefully.

  “That’a’girl!” cheered Pence.

  “Step a-side,” the Prince hissed.

  “I should sooner jump to the sea than allow you any path to make a wish. Your rotten, purple heart would bring a pestilence to a hundred kingdoms before the words left your lips. You will never stand at your window again. I will never speak to you there. I expect to die for this–” The Queen lurched sideways and pushed the flowerpot out the window with her stump. Faint green mist trailed after its fall like phosphorescent vines growing upside-down. With her good hand the Queen seized the bottle around its neck.

  The Prince grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back, but he was too slow by a tick.

  The Queen flung the bottle out the window whirling end-over-end like a throwing knife.

  “AHHHHHHHH!” Pence cried in terror.

  “Old witch!” shrieked the Prince as he thrust a hand into the bowels of his haversack. In a blink, he withdrew a crossbow fashioned like a dueling pistol with a mainsail set atop the barrel and a fishing reel beside the flintlock, all made of sturdy wood and iron, ornate with silver. As the bottle reached the peak of its flight, the Prince pulled the trigger of his weapon and a metal bolt with a square of cloth tied around its middle zipped through the window in pursuit.

  It was a perfect shot. In the exact and only instant in which the bottleneck was openly aligned with the window, the half-sized arrow pinged past the penny–setting it spinning like a waterwheel–and flew straight for Pence, who was pinned to the bottom of the bottle by the force of rotation, like water stuck in a bucket swung in a quick circle.

  A perfect shot, otherwise, but the minimal contact with the penny was all it took to activate the black cloth tied around the bolt: it released backwards and unfurled–a parachute, connected to the bolt as well as to the crossbow’s reel. With the arrowhead a penny’s length from piercing Pence’s chest, a tremendous and sudden blast of air from below the bottle filled the arrow’s black sail and whipped it away, jerking the bolt back out of the bottleneck just in time. At the other end of the reeling line, the pistol was yanked out of the Prince’s hand. It floated away out to sea, carried by its full sail, sinking quickly through the clouds.

  Without a moment to spare, the Prince was searching through his haversack again while keeping one eye out the window on the bottle. He pulled out a crumpled piece of black paper from under the massive chain and padlock. He frowned at the wrinkled paper and quickly tried to smooth the corners out on the windowsill, but the bottle was falling too fast for him to waste time making it perfect.

  The Prince lifted the paper to his lips. “Bring me the penny,” he commanded, inflecting his voice with a mystic tremor. The paper stirred like a dry leaf and carried off his hand as if from a gentle breeze. Airborne, the paper puffed up imperceptibly and quite suddenly it was shaped like a bat with slightly fractured wings.

  The bat chased the bottle down, flying rather groggily due to its crumpled corners, or perhaps to the intoxicating fumes on the Prince’s breath. It stretched out its folded claws and clutched the penny with surprising strength, but the coin was wedged in too tight to come loose.

  “Stupid bat, be gone!” Pence shouted, shaking his arms like a farmer at crows in his crop.

  The paper bat fanned out its wings, readjusted its claws on the penny, and ripped back. The penny shifted.

  A streak of brown with black stripes tore across the sky and shredded the enchanted bat in one merciless swoop. Black scraps spiraled everywhere, lifeless confetti. A high-pitched, preternatural whistle accompanied the demise of the insubstantial creature.

  From the Queen’s window, the Prince glared at the bird that had just assassinated his own dark servant. The nut wren flew toward the small, round window as though to carry on her assault with the Prince, but she veered upward at the last moment and disappeared from view.

  “What have you done?” the Prince shouted at the Queen. He grabbed her hair, dragged her out the bedroom door, flung her over his shoulder so that her head was stuffed in his haversack, and mounted the bicycle, which he had left perched precariously at the top of the stairs, trusting to its pencil-thin kickstand.

  “Save him!” screamed the Queen in the direction of the window just before being muffled entirely by the canvas bag, “Save him, please!”

  “Who are you talking to?” demanded the Prince, but he was in no state to wait for an answer. Without another word he set his ever-pedaling feet in their stirrups and the bicycle jolted to a start.

  “You broke your nose last time you tried this!” the Queen shouted when she realized what the Prince was about to attempt.

  “I’ve had a lot practice since then,” he replied in monotone accordance with the truth as the front wheel dipped over the first step. And down they went, sparks flying every time pink iron scraped across chalky stone. Echoes of the Prince’s mad tirade climbed the staircase like smoke rising, “The garden will appear! It will have no bloody choice but to appear. The Princess returns!”

  Outside the Queen’s chamber a shadow flew arms-length in front of the window. The shadow had skin like gray marble. It had a gleaming black eye the size of a watermelon. The eye squinted, angry. The shadow passed in a breath.

  A moment later an enormous tail smashed through the stone wall, sending a typhoon of debris and dust chasing down the tower stairs after the fading echoes of the Prince.

  From out of the storm of rubble came a pair of birds diving toward the sea. The nut wren was
young and small, birthmarked with a strawberry breast. The second bird was not much larger but flew with ancient, unsurpassed speed and surety. Her wings were as bright as the flower petals that floated down from the Queen’s window. Around the white bird’s neck, tucked behind her wings, was a cloth patchwork purse looking every bit like a doll-sized haversack, purple, yellow, green, and white, all woven with thread finer than silver hair.