The Habitation of the Blessed - Catherynne M. Valente [89]
It was only that she wanted to be queen. Sometimes we want things, and we cannot quite say why, except that somehow we were made to want them. She was not the first to decide to kill a king—all those silver vessels speak to such considerations. Without natural death to put a flourish at the end of a reign, it was common as cake, and not just for kings, but any profession a creature longed after. True, a country may support many more blacksmiths than kings—however, there is a limit to the number of possible blacksmiths, and sooner or later someone would think of those silver vessels, and one passing afternoon a sooty face would be replaced by another in the Pavilion, looking fair pleased with itself, and that would be that.
Now, my little cygnets, I exhorted them, before I tell you how the vartula-man was brought low, tell me what death is. Speak up, don’t be bashful.
Ikram, Who Had Read About Such Things: Grandmother died. Nobody else, though.
Lamis, Who Was Badly Frightened: I don’t know! I don’t want it! Make it stop!
Houd, Whose Curiosity Flushed His Cheeks: People go away and unless they get planted they never come back. I don’t know where they go. I haven’t figured that out yet. Somewhere where they can’t talk anymore, or be seen, and maybe they live there like normal and maybe they don’t, I don’t know.
No one can know. I have listened to many stories and I think we are all more frightened of death because we can avoid it. A mortal girl, if she is uncareful and manages to die early, might lose fifty years or so. Less. We lose time without counting, without end.
And so Senebaut lost.
For Giraud was patient. In a space of rich black mud she planted every noxious thing she could find: hooded serpents and mushrooms and spiders with green spots on their bellies, poppies with black pollen, rice gone sour and prickled with colorful rot. She bent her will to these trees as she had to everything else. She tended them with tears to coax their bitterness, with blood to swell their cruelty. And by and by, a tree rose up in her orchard full of odd, blackish, custardy fruits that not only killed the moths she kept for this purpose, but dissolved their little bodies to a bit of wet dust.
The immortal can afford to wait. Giraud was very beautiful, her single eye fringed with dark lashes, her wit quick, and she had never accepted a suitor. She presented herself as a prospect to the king, with her warm kiss said to him: I will be queen when you are dead.
Children, she married him, and every night when he kissed her she told him this, and he laughed, and so did she, for royal folk have a peculiar sense of humor, and for many years they were happy.
Lamis, Who Believed She Would Never Marry: Why would he marry her if she wanted to kill him?
We are more frightened of death than mortals, and also more enamored of it. Perhaps he didn’t believe her. Perhaps he thought wifehood would mollify her. Perhaps he looked into her one eye with all his own, and saw the beckoning of the dark. But she bore a child to him, and then another, so that she could be certain no one would deny her the throne when he had gone, and then one night, she lay down beside him, her long hair covering his skin, and gave him a rich tea, full of her own soft fruits. Perhaps he even knew it, as he drank, perhaps he held her close as his flesh went to dust. But he did drink, and she became queen, and ruled well and kindly enough in her time—no worse than Senebaut, no better. She, too, liked things her own way. Kings change not because the country