Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

  Dishes clattered. Cheap utensils smacked the table repeatedly. I turned and smelled spices which made my mouth water.

  “Eat up,” Rachel said. “Growing boys need more food, and you need more than most.”

  I smiled and laid into the food she’d made.

  I attempted to hold onto the memory and follow it through, but got nothing beyond the brief glimpse. It vanished, along with a dozen more meals from across the years. Me sitting with Daniel, chowing down on food. Rachel was in the later years. Tal, attempting to make real food but clearly helpless with anything more than cereal or oatmeal. Each one was a brief flicker that sorted neatly into a pile.

  My fingers scraped against the cell’s floor. A desire for food displaced me nearly as much as everything else. It didn’t even feel like a memory, not really. It felt like an event from my current time, not the past.

  I’d slowly managed to square away more bits of the past into shit that made sense.

  Muni was a black feathered raven in the same way I was a giant, winged, fire breathing creature. She ate memories and somehow her presence lingered in my mind as I relived the past. Her original words had been a warning stuck in a loop.

  Tal had been an adopted father, of sorts. He hadn’t been great. He’d been gruff, stern, and expected me to fall in line like a soldier. The man also provided food and I was a sucker for meals.

  Roy had been a distant older brother, both of us molded by Tal’s expectations. It twisted us, but at the same point, the strictness probably helped. There were no tough but kind guidelines with children who could punch through walls when throwing a tantrum.

  We spent years fighting in rings. We weren’t wolves, but our bouts were often one sided against normal humans. Between endurance, rigorous training, and excessive strength, standard people couldn’t compare.

  Daniel spent his time researching and asking questions. He, along with the other two, helped me understand my abilities that set me apart from everyone else.

  It took me years to figure out no one else felt the world in the same manner I did. And even longer to realize there were multiple races with weird ticks. Elves were rarely seen at Tal’s home, but Daniel played with them in the forests.

  I did not like going into the woods, despite how some elves treated me. They gave me funny looks and smiled as though I belonged right there with them. One even gave me a crown. The memories felt wrong when compared to my encounters with Evan and Candy.

  Rachel’s face arrived during my teens. I liked Rachel a lot. She made food, whereas Tal made disasters. She and Tal dated for a long time, or whatever it was old people who were too stubborn to talk in front of children did.

  Tal had died too. The last memory I had of Rachel was her huddling in a car with the others of Roy’s tribe, and Evan.

  “What a mess,” I muttered to an empty room. “What a Gods forsaken mess I’ve made.”

  Confession only made the regret tangible. There wasn’t enough time in the world to sort through my entire past. Not when other events were happening outside, plus a deep gnawing hunger made it hard to breathe.

  It might have been the air. It felt denser than normal. As if an innumerable amount of weight pressed upon my shoulders. The earth rumbled again, slowly.

  Then I felt something wholly distinct from the past’s mess of mind fuckery. It had nothing to do with the emptying jail cell that was Atlas Island. There was something out there, huge, and moving.

  “What the hell?” I asked. My senses slid off the object. They traveled through water and air bubbles.

  The upper range of my abilities, blocked or unblocked by Muni’s charm, reached sixty miles. Easily encompassing the island and a chunk of ocean. It was enough to feel the object moving around for miles.

  Whatever it was, it easily dwarfed my winged form. The creature moved sluggishly, and felt like a long tube, or a snake. Only the size made no sense compared to the shape. Its body lethargically rippled in waves to propel along a sandy section of ocean bed.

  “Holy hell,” I muttered.

  Was that Warden Bennett’s charge? A giant fucking sea snake that could knock over this building like a toddler fighting blocks?

  I shook with a strange mixture of excitement and fright. That monster would absolutely wreck the hell out of a city if it ever got loose. Alternately, my senses could be really messed up and detecting something not there. It felt too alive to be a submarine or carrier. It wouldn’t be a pipe line that funneled oil.

  My head swayed as I checked again. Memories crashed into my mind, bringing up dreams of feeling planes fly above me, and my brief annoyed elation at knowing other creatures could soar through the air. Flying wouldn’t help me against a sea creature unless it came out of the water. I wasn’t a puffin, able to fly and swim with ease.

  The earth rumbled again in what might have been an aftershock. I felt the cement walls of our building crack while something immense heaved itself onto land. My other sight shook apart at the seams as a spider web formed in the mortar.

  Cracks in the room mirrored the ones mentally plaguing me. This jail housing was going to hell and wasn’t my fault, not like Warden Bennett accused. The large creature in the water had to be causing these earthquakes, simply from its size.

  I decided it was time to change this situation.

  “Knock knock.” I rapped against the study door loudly. This thing should have caved under the pressure of my nighttime rampages but had held.

  “Little pig, little pig.” I swayed while reciting Bottom Pit’s code for the backdoor. “Let me out. Or I’ll huff.”

  Knocking rattled down the hallways. I could feel it echoing and sinking into concrete and steel rebar. The materials swallowed my shouts with their man-made indifference.

  “Knock. Knock.”

  I could barely hold myself against the door. Memories of shouting then punching adults who fought back dizzied me. Being forced to swallow my anger and hurt because Tal expected us to be men. They were even madder when I won.

  “Little pigs.” My words were probably not the best choice of wording when talking to law enforcement. I felt like the hallway had emptied.

  Hell.

  “Knock.”

  The vague echo of footsteps tangled with my senses. It felt like there was a riot happening downstairs. Dozens of bare feet pushed against dirt and sand. Skin ground roughly against the granules and roots were unearthed. Hard plastics and metals pushed back. Shouts were absorbed.

  People were fighting outside; guards against inmates, if my wild tactical sensations could be trusted. To the north, a pack of wolves with matted fur stopped. Their heads moved as one toward the island’s northern end, opposite the prison’s beachhead. Chains rattled, a huge pressure pushed against the north beach. The white tower overlooked it all, indifferent and unmoving despite the shaking earth.

  I hated using my abilities in a new place because it took too much time to separate out the sensations. All those bits of feedback painted a strange picture of this island’s true nature.

  “Let. Me. Out.”

  A man in heavy armor stood outside the door. His soles were thick and a plastic visor sat upright. His head shook and body moved funny. He tensed then left while a faint hint of liquid trickled into his fabric.

  “Quiet down. Warden’s been notified you want to talk. He’ll be here when he gets around to it. Inspecting the facility...” Things fuzzed again, words from memory telling me to stop complaining about a disappeared toy.

  The guard finished his speech, “Until then, shut it.”

  I mumbled and banged on the door despite being warned. “Little pig.”

  Western Sector guards, even one who watched over a prison like this, were made of strong stuff. The man didn’t react, didn’t argue, and told me to shut up again.

  I fell to my knees and tried to keep my head in one piece.

  People were in an upstairs office, rutting away like animals. I felt it. Their cries were absorbed by a couch. Ther
e were two men downstairs engaged in the same activity, with far less happy sounds pouring into the small cell’s walls.

  I could feel all that shit and it was unbearable. It’d been easier as a child. All these sensations were simply a curiosity. I’d lived for years as a suppressed human and felt absolutely disgusted.

  Being alone, in a cell, with nothing but random highlights of a checkered past hurt my sanity. Especially since many of them were filled with fighting in some form. Tal exploded on me one day and I torched a dozen objects while Roy held me back. Neither man spoke a word of an apology.

  I failed to contain the shaking. Failed to prevent myself from being racked with sobs. Decades of my life where I’d been a stronger man, indifferent to those beneath me, in charge. By the Gods, I could breathe fire and turn into a giant creature with wings to fly free through the air. The power to command, healing, perks that had made me a cocky young adult.

  And I was reduced to a mess on the floor.

  Muni’s voice crawled in imaginary gaps between memories. I grasped the words and tried to chain them together. There was something important.

  “When the trinket comes off...”

  Her face flashed. Littered with dark feathers threatening to swallow my mind. Soaking everything around them. The background blurred, our setting, events leading up to her words, all dimmed.

  I clutched my head and struggled to remember more of Muni’s warning. I’d heard those words before while being jostled across Leo’s shoulders. The attempted woodland escape felt like so long ago.

  “Shut up!” yelled the guard.

  I growled and hit the door harder than intended and felt it crack just a little. Not enough to send me into a rage, but enough to cause the guard to jump. His hand went through the air and clutched a gun. The safely clicked off and he drew it in a single movement.

  His pointless self-defense could be ignored.

  Was there anyone nearby who might help me stay focused? I could handle it better when meeting with Roy. He reminded me to stay rigid and professional. There might be someone who could call Muni and help smooth out this nonsense.

  Evan, the elf named Incomplete Servant, was hundreds of miles away. Kahina was no longer mine, but I tried, spinning my thoughts through the air at a rapid speed. Her cord was a tattered string—I couldn’t connect.

  There weren’t many choices. Tal was dead. Rachel—my memories of her were jumbled and hadn’t ironed out yet. She was the closest thing to a mother I’d ever had. Flashbacks of being hit by her wooden utensils assaulted me, causing me to flinch.

  Leo, he had phone privileges and was close. We knew little of each other, but he was Roy’s son, and Roy was the closest thing to an older brother I had. The absurdity of my makeshift family helped focus the world.

  Wooden trees, battered and strong. Branches slap against skin. Breathing heavy as Failed Lion runs. Pants. Breath stains air with fog. Paws jut behind him. Running footsteps. Feel jags and spikes of uneven laughing.

  What? The world focused on the problem. Those sensations that had come with my attempt to reach Leo were completely unexpected. Plus his nickname was weird. Failed Lion.

  Was he running from someone? Had he been evicted to the northern side of the island? Was it my memories jumbling up and playing a perceptional trick on me?

  I cast out again.

  “Just a little bit farther!” Female tenor, half growled. Another figure travels with Failed Lion. Thing is tall. Joints awkwardly bent. Familiar.

  “This is insane!” Failed Lion tries to yell. Voice hoarse. Tired. Impossible.

  “Come on!”

  “Why did the Warden do this?”

  “No time! You can’t let them bleed you!” Female makes noise again. Yanks at Failed Lion’s arm. He shakes loose and moves. Chasm passes underneath as they jump. Heavy weight collides with the ground.

  Hell. Leo was on the other side of the island and somehow Stacy was with him. I couldn’t figure out how long I’d been drifting in and out of consciousness with my memories all muddled. Being in isolation made keeping time hard, it wasn’t like my senses were honed enough to target a clock. Not with all the shit plaguing me.

  “When the trinket comes off. There will be hell to pay.” Muni’s voice peeked out again from behind my memories. “You will remember, everything has a price, and all debts will come due.”

  We stood in my apartment, upon the tiny back porch. Muni hadn’t wanted to come in. She hated being indoors.

  “I know,” I said.

  “You will suffer. Your mind is like a hurricane. A wash of memories both yours and not yours.”

  “They’re from my father. He, Daniel, thinks my dad imprinted memories into me somehow.”

  Muni shrugged. Her face shifted slightly making one eye seem all the larger. There were irises in there somewhere, swallowed by pitch black pupils and framed with dark hair.

  She pressed her hands together, pinching the flesh between fingertips from worry. Her head shook as she clicked with her tongue.

  “I speak from experience.” Muni clicked again. “Gifts like mine, and my brother’s, have an origin. They come from a tree where our kind were birthed. Thought and memory are ours to feed upon and change.”

  I’d heard all this before. But at the same time, I managed to exist separate from the past. This admission of her abilities felt new. It felt right that a person who was a raven might share an origin with a tree.

  “Tell me, Jay. You’ve wings, have you ever flown in a thunderstorm?”

  I nodded. Darkness, on stormy nights, was the best time for me to fly. My large scaled form could use the clouds to hide and still stretch. Lightning and electricity were another form of energy, and absorbed as fuel for the transformation.

  “Imagine capturing the storm. Imagine holding it to one place with strands of ribbon. Imagine telling the wild storm it’s a harmless summer cloud. While no one looks the storm rages, it tears upon itself and thrashes as nature intended.”

  “Like telling a lion it’s a housecat. Then one day it remembers it’s really a lion and goes on a rampage.”

  Her head shook. “I do not like cats,” Muni said. “Snotty creatures. Always staring with their hungry eyes.”

  I nodded to Muni’s words and felt a jarring sense of disconnect. The past had already happened. I wasn’t really talking to her, but instead remembering a prior time with extreme detail.

  “The man I did this for. He was powerful. A forgotten cripple of a god whose family had been torn away by magics beyond our ken. His sons, powerful men, killed before their time. He’d expected a war to end all wars and instead woke to find the world around him was no longer the same.”

  I knew why. It was those damn elves. The same event had happened to me. Cast from one timeline into the next, both of us losing something in the process. For a moment, I felt envious this other man Muni spoke of had remembered anything at all. I only had my father’s guidance, which was closer to a series of life lessons.

  Muni continued, “He could not be bound for long. He pretended to be another man, live another life. A mortal one. He had a wife and son. Only human, but there was love.”

  That sounded a lot like what I needed to do. Minus the children and wife. Without Kahina, there would be no purpose, and children had never been in our future.

  Muni paused and stared at a tree. She reminded me of a bird, who might fly away in a panic at any moment.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “They died in a car wreck. He woke, and saw again the horrors he’d tried to forget. Then came anger, rage, and a soul filled with the need for vengeance. He turned into a beast, a monster, and called up the lightning and storms of old.”

  I could breathe fire. Summoning lightning felt like a myth.

  “Really?”

  “He brought a storm. The kind of storm only angry gods might summon. From a rage that could not be quelled without a sea run red by blood.” Muni backed into the wooden railing and ran fi
ngers through her hair. “Over forty Hunters died that day. Your friend Crumfield’s mother was there. His father as well. I remember their faces.”

  I’d asked Daniel where his mother went, once. All I’d ever found out was she’d died to non-human monsters. Hunters, as a matter of fact, worried me. Daniel was the only person I’d ever met to cause damage I couldn’t outright heal. My nose still had a scar from where he’d broken it during our childhood.

  “And in the end, they slew a god at the price of a small city. The news covered it up by saying a hurricane hit the coast.”

  There had been a few terrible events over the years. She alluded to earthquakes causing tsunamis and hurricanes wiping out coastlines being cover stories. It struck me as odd to think some of these large scale disasters might be lies to disguise Hunters fighting monsters.

  “Who was it?” I asked.

  “No one remembers it but me, and I will never tell another soul. But that doesn’t matter. Once the seal breaks, I will find you, and do what I can to smooth it out.”

  I’d bargained with Muni, a creature, half raven, half something else. With our deal she would take away my memories, or block them, in exchange for finding her brother. Blocking them would force me to stay low key due to ignorance, and help prevent others from finding me.

  As for finding Muni’s brother, I’d attempted multiple times and failed. Her feather, or the one she claimed was owned by her brother, led nowhere. I had to keep trying. One of Bottom Pit’s three overarching rules had been very simple. Everything has a price.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I need your gifts to find my brother, but I cannot risk becoming a target for your rage either. So you will only see me after I am gone.”

  The memory vanished into a flutter of feathers.

  Through the shaking, through the blur of memories swimming over my head, one thought solidified. Warden Bennett had made a move in reaction to the threat I’d uttered in ignorance.

  “Hell,” I stuttered. My legs gave and arm refused to lift. There were bloodstains from where I’d pounded upon the wall.

  Muni’s voice echoed for the umpteenth time. “All debts will come due.”