Her eyes glimmer with something deeper, but the cold mask held firm.
"You speak far beyond your place, puppeteer. You admit to your failings, though I have granted you four days yet. Are you so eager to replace your fellow hanging on my strings?"
I dropped to my knees. "Whatever I must, to prove my love for you."
I did not wait for her reply. I laid my left hand palm-down upon the display table by my side. The Queen's eyes widened as she realized what I was to do. I laid the knife against my smallest finger, by the knuckle, and pressed down.
The skin slit easily. I pushed harder, and felt the bone shear under the pressure. Blood gushed out, splashing over the surface top and down onto the floor.
I had cut off my finger.
The Queen paled.
"You asked this of your jester," I said, the pain a distant thing far below. "He failed you. You asked more of me, and I failed you too. This is all I know to do."
I laid the knife against the second finger, pressed down until the bone crunched, and cut it free. More blood gushed out, and two of my fingers lay in the red before me, like marionette limbs cut from their strings.
"This is not what I asked," said the Queen, her tone faltering. I watched her, saw the innocent child I remembered bubbling through the cruel facade. "I did not seek this."
"But you sought it from Antonio," I said. "What crime did he commit, my Queen?" I pointed to the bloody clockworker hanging by her side. "What crime did Gregorii commit? If you seek to punish any, punish me, for I left a small child to harpies and buzzards, who have picked over her bones for a year and left her twisted and dark."
"Levetti!" she barked. "That is enough."
I ignored her, pressed the knife against the third finger, and felt the crunch as my bone snapped. The finger rolled free and fell to the floor. The nearest Balustrone took a step back, disgust on his face.
"I command you to stop Levetti," said the Queen, and I looked up. She was cold still. I had cut three of my fingers away and it wasn't enough. My blood was pooling on the floor. I felt a cold nausea rising through me, a revulsion at what I would do, an acceptance that I would do it.
"My Queen," I replied, and laid the knife against my index finger. I pushed down, and it seemed as though the knife hurt for the first time. As I sliced through the skin and tendon to the bone, I was coolly aware that I would never craft puppets with that hand again.
The Queen was calling my name now, shouting commands, but I ignored her. My index finger clung to my palm by a few raw pink threads. I slit them one by one, and they popped in my head like Chinese fire.
"My Queen," I repeated, and set the knife mechanically against the base of my thumb. My hand seemed an alien thing before me, flowing with blood, shorn of all its fingers. My vision blurred and doubled, until two palms lay there, with two knives and two thumbs. The Queen was standing now, gesticulating, causing Gregorii to dance and jiggle.
I pushed down. The knife slit through the thick base of my thumb. How many puppets had that thumb held, moulded, sculpted? The bone broke, cut through, and as a new welter of blood poured out, bright light-headedness overcame me.
"Levetti, stop!" shouted the little Queen. I thought that in that voice there was something familiar, like the voice of an old friend back from distant travels overseas, different but still a friend. I looked around for a moment, dazed with loss of blood, unsure for the moment of where I was. Then I saw her face, saw Gregorii hanging slack and beaten beside her, and remembered.
"My Queen," I said a third time, and laid my wrist down upon the table. I set the knife to the skin. For abandoning a child to animals I deserved this. To reach back to the sweet little girl I once knew, it was necessary.
I sawed at my skin. Blood was everywhere, sloshing on the tabletop, riming my remaining hand, everywhere I looked. The knife slipped in my hand as I sawed at my own arm. The pain was a crutch I used to ground me, to keep me from fainting dead away.
"Levetti, stop, please," came the voice of the little Queen, so close I thought she was speaking in my ear. Then she was. She was by my side, dirtying herself with my blood, prizing my remaining fingers open, pulling the slick knife from my hand. Her touch felt like forgiveness. Her voice was so kind again. As I staggered into unconsciousness, I felt her guiding me, holding me as I once held her, steering me down into the warm velvet that awaited.
"My Queen," I whispered in her ear, a final time.
7. SKY PAINTER
The Sky Painter lived on the mountain and painted the sky. He painted it blue for blue skies, white and grey for clouds, and black for the night, with silver spots for all the stars. When the sun rose he dashed its arcing yellow lines across the heavens, and as it sank he brushed it orange and gold over the horizon.
He knew he had to paint the sky, because if he didn't paint the sky, how would the world go on?
He lived on the mountaintop alone. Sometimes it was cold, and all he had were his brushes and some rags left from his once bright raiment. He had been a king a long time ago, somewhere. He had a crown, now cast to the floor and grown through with grass and ivy. Juniper bushes grew up around his feet and between his toes.
He never moved, he only painted the sky. And he was lonely.
* * *
One day a young girl climbed the mountain and came to stand by his side.
"You're the Sky Painter," she said.
He turned to look at her. She wore faded blue dungarees, her hair was blonde as hay, and a ragged doll hung from her hand.
"My daddy says you paint the sky blue when you feel blue, and you paint storms when you feel angry."
The Sky Painter thought about this for some time. "Did he say what color I paint when I'm happy?"
The little girl nodded. "He said that's sunrise and sunset. He says you love sunrise and sunset more than anything."
"So I'm happy twice a day, every day. Once at the start of the day, and once at the end."
"You have thorn bushes growing between your feet," said the little girl. "Is that your crown?"
"They keep me warm," said the Sky Painter. "It gets cold up here sometimes."
"My daddy says cold people shouldn't stand on top of mountains painting the sky. He says they should close the barn door and make a bivouac out of hay."
"Your hair is the color of hay."
"My daddy says he thinks you're lonely, and need some company. Do you want some company?"
The Sky Painter looked at her. "You ask a lot of questions for a little girl."
"All little girls ask questions. I used to ask more. Do you want to know why I think you paint the sky blue?"
"Because I'm sad?"
"No, because you're in love. You love your queen, and her favorite color is blue, but she's trapped in a castle at the ends of the earth where not even dragons can go, and you're painting the sky with her color so she knows you're still here. That she's not alone."
The Sky Painter watched her.
"My daddy says you've been here forever painting it blue, so she must've been in prison forever too. If I think about that, it makes me sad too, so I guess the color of love and the color of sad are the same."
The Sky Painter turned to look back up at the sky. There were still patches of black where he hadn't finished erasing the night.
"I have to finish this work," he said. "You should probably go home now."
"I will go home now, because it's time for supper, we'll have fried meatloaf. I love fried meatloaf. But don't think I'll forget about you. I drew a picture of your queen once, she's very pretty. I think I'll leave it here for you. It might make you a little more sad, for a while. I drew a picture for my daddy when mommy went away, and it made him sad, but after a while he said it made him happy. Maybe it'll make you happy too. Bye bye!"
Then she turned and danced off, through the mulberry fields.
The Sky Painter who was once a king looked down at the picture she'd left on the overgrown grass. It was a crude tower against
black, with a window at the top, and a woman's face and her hay-blonde hair and a big blue tear in her eye.
The Sky Painter turned away. There were tears glimmering in his eyes too.
That day he painted the sky a deeper blue than ever he had since the day he failed to rescue his queen. He painted it so blue it hurt to look at, like the depths of the ocean where the blue is so deep it looks black, though you know it's still blue. He painted it blue like sadness and love at the same time.
* * *
The little girl came back the next day, skipping up to him. The sky was slate-grey that day. He had his grey brush out and was slathering it over the world.
"This is a different kind of sadness," said the little girl. "This is what despair looks like, isn't it?"
The Sky Painter didn't even look at her.
"I know what despair is because my daddy told me. He got drunk once and he hit me. I think this grey is the same as that. This is daddy-hitting-me-sad-and-despair."
Tears welled in the Sky Painter's eyes.
"I think it's terrible she's locked up in that tower, I don't know why she has to be there. But I know she won't want to see this grey sky. This grey sky tells her only that you're giving up. It tells her you're sad, and broken."
The Sky Painter dropped his hand from the heavens and hung his head.
"My daddy got better," said the little girl. "I think you will too."
The Sky Painter threw his paintbrush to the ground. Where it hit, the bushes sparkled into emerald flame.
"You'll feel better tomorrow," said the little girl, watching the flames simmer down. "I know my daddy always did."
She turned and left. The Sky Painter remained, great silent tears rolling down his face.
* * *
The next day was grey, but the grey was starting to run at the edges, seeping into black and dripping down to the earth in great gloopy drops. Everywhere across the land, and the mountain, and the little girl's house, a grey rain fell.
She hurried to the Sky Painter's side with an umbrella open over her head. She found him laid on his massive side, his feet still tangled up in the bushes, his brush lying on the wet grey ground just out of reach. He was barely breathing.
"Leave me alone, little girl," he said. "Go away."
"I can't go away Mr. Sky Painter. The sky is dying because you're not painting it. It's all grey, don't you see the sky falling? It's the despair, and it's raining down on all of us."
"I don't care," he said, "it doesn't matter any more. Nothing matters any more."
"Don't say that!" protested the little girl. She ran around to his face, to look into his big empty eyes. "My momma's buried and there's violets on her grave, and your big grey gloop will spoil her grave, and that'll make my daddy sad again, and he'll get like you and lay down and give up too, and then who'll look after me?"
"You seem to look after yourself well enough," said the Sky Painter. "With your stupid little doll and your paintings of queens in towers. Why can't you leave me alone?"
"I made the painting for you!" said the little girl, stamping her foot. "And I'm not stupid, I just ask a lot of questions, though not as many as I used to, and my doll's not stupid, her name is Marcy and she's just sad because you're going all grey, and everything's going all grey, and.."
The wind was knocked out of her when the Sky Painter's great hand rolled across the mountaintop and struck her. She flew 100 yards and smashed into a rocky outcrop.
Her blood ran red down the grey rock, mixing with the grey gloop of the sky.
The Sky Painter watched her silent body slide down the rocks, and began to cry again. He hadn't meant to kill her, even to hurt her. He'd just wanted her to go away.
* * *
She didn't come the next day. She was dead in the rock-pile. The sky rained grey. She didn't come the day after that either, because she was dead, and the Sky Painter lay in place, watching the color drain from the world, until everything was a white-grey smog. He couldn't see his hand before his face. He could barely feel himself breathing. The paintbrush with its emerald flame was out of sight.
"So this is what dying feels like," he said to himself.
* * *
At some point he heard a voice, calling in the gloom.
"Violet! Violet!"
The Sky Painter recognized the anguish in the voice. This was the father of the dead little girl with the hay blonde hair in the rock pile.
He recognized the anguish because he recognized it in himself. When his queen had been stolen away, to a tower in a land where even dragons couldn't go, he'd beat at the border for a thousand years, and still he couldn't get in. He'd screamed out her name every day, every hour, every minute and every second, until the world around him was only black and spiky with his rage and frustration.
"Violet!"
"Hello," said the Sky Painter.
"Hello!" replied the man, invisible somewhere in the gloom. The tinge of sudden hope in his voice made the Sky Painter feel sick. "Is somebody there? Have you seen a little girl, her name is Violet, she went missing two days ago and now I can't find her in this fog. Have you seen her?"
"I'm the Sky Painter, and I have seen your daughter."
"You have? Where is she? Is she safe? Is she alright?"
"She's in that rock-pile over there. She's dead."
"She's what? Did you say she's dead?"
"Yes."
The man howled.
The Sky Painter listened to his rage and anguish. It felt like the spiky raw pain he felt inside. It felt right. He was broken. Everything was gone, why shouldn't this man's daughter be gone too? Why shouldn't the world be grey and dying.
"How did she die?" wailed the man, "how did my sweet Violet die?"
"I killed her," said the Sky Painter, his voice flat and dead. "Just as you struck her once, I struck her and killed her."
"You?"
"It was me."
"I'll kill you, then!" screamed the man. His anguish was suddenly wild rage, and his voice rang out red through the grey gloom. "I'll kill you with my bare hands!"
His rage shot red spikes through the gloom that hit the Sky Painter in the head and stomach, doubling him over. The man chased the beams of color to the Sky Painter's face and beat upon his tough skin with his bare fists until they were bloody and mashed, until he could beat no more.
After his fury had passed, there was nothing but his sobbing as he lay encircled by the great bulk of the Sky Painter.
"I'm sorry," said the Sky Painter, his deep voice thick. "I didn't mean to kill her."
The man just sobbed.
* * *
In time the man fell silent. The Sky Painter felt the shudder when he died.
The grey thickened around him like dust, like the ocean a hundred miles down, only grey and powdery and thick like cotton wool. There was no sound, only the beat of his heart and his long slow breaths.
He was truly alone.
* * *
One time he thought he heard her, dancing through the smog towards him, her father too. They were talking about the color of the sky on their porch, about how blue sky was for sadness, but also for love.
Blue had never helped him. It could not break the seals on the world where his Queen was held. It only swaddled him, kept him in place as a slave to the sky.
"It's not slavery," the little girl would say, her name was Violet he remembered. "It's devotion. It's a message to your Queen."
He reached out for the painting she'd made. Through the grey he had to hold it touching his eyes to see it. A tower, and a giant, and something he'd never noticed before, filling the space between them.
A violet bridge.
An old feeling flickered to life inside his heart, a feeling he hadn't felt for the longest time, one he hadn't dared dream could exist ever again.
Violet, the color of hope.
He seized onto it, breathed life on it. In all the years his Queen was gone, he'd never painted with hope. Anger first, then fr
ustration, then sadness and love, but never hope.
He reached blindly through the smog, breaking through the vines and bushes that held him like shackles. His fingers clasped over the mountain top, first settling on his old crown, then upon his brush.
He hauled himself up to stand in the powdery grey gloom, and he began to paint.
* * *
It was all violet, for a dream. He painted faster than he'd ever painted before, filling in the sky and the land, the clouds and the mountains, even the little girl and her father. They were still dead, he didn't have the power to change that, but he gave them graves atop the hill, where they would never be forgotten.
Then he turned to the world where dragons cannot go, and painted his attack. It wasn't like a storm, because it was faster and stronger than any storm ever had been. Shades of violet raced and darted like sparks in the sun, his paintbrush a whickering blur, and beneath it the barrier bruised black and blue with all the wild dream she hurled at it.
Violet Dragons flew in the air and were sucked back in, violet volcanoes spewed out and sucked back in, stars were born and planets collided, and the hole in the sky grew deeper.
"You'll make it," came the voice of the little girl from somewhere nearby, by his feet, with her father standing by her side looking up. "Just don't give up."
His arm flew ever faster still, blurring through the walls of life and death, painting a bridge to the place where not even dragons can go. At times he had the right shade of black for the tower that held his queen, and at the others the right hay color of her hair, and at others the brickwork on the tower, and the blue of their love, and he painted on and on until finally in a salvo of violet her world exploded into his.
She was there in the tower, and she saw him across the gulf, and he saw her, and a violet bridge of hope swelled between them. As he ran towards her he felt all his anger and loss vanish in violet, and in her eyes he saw himself anew, as the man who never gave up, a King again, a King who had found his Queen.
* * *
The little girl and her father woke up on the mountaintop. The sky was the most beautiful shade of violet, and the sun was both setting and rising at the same time.
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