Spin Me Sweet Tales

Chapter Four

When the gold disappears, I'm no longer in the room where I killed Tuhinga. The previous room was the size of a large prison cell, and it was devoid of any windows or sense of comfort. It was small, painted gray, and surrounded with an array of torches holstered to the walls to keep the room warm and lit.

This is the previous room's opposite in almost every way.

Where I am now, it has an arched ceiling, which I dangle from in a gilded bird cage. To my life and right, I do not see an exit. The only escape I can see is an endless black, spiral staircase which leads only to darkness. I'm in a tower; at least, I think I am. My main illumination comes from a single candle, which sits in my bird cage with me, the wick recently lit. It is how I can see the spiral staircase, the barred arched window at the very top of the tower, and the six other bird cages nearest me.

But I look down, then up, and little blimps of light from individual candles tell me how many bird cages are dangling in this tower. At least a hundred victims sit in bird cages from an endlessly long tower, hanging from the ceiling at different levels. Some lights are at the very top of the ceiling, but others are so far down that I cannot see their candle.

From the single window at the top, sunlight streams in and ignites the two highest bird cages with light. I'm dozens of feet below them, and the women are barely shaped from the distance, but I can feel their pain. Their fear and uncertainty if today is their last day alive. While they are far from where I sit in my cage, I'm close to some imprisoned women.

To my left, I can make out the faint outline of the woman's face. She has an olive complexion, and she wears a white tunic accented in gold trimmings. Gladiator shoes are strapped to her feet, and familiar green serpopard blood is painted on her toes like nail polish. The woman looks at me with startling topaz eyes, then stares back at her candle.

To my right, the woman still sleeps, but her appearance gives me pause. Tuhinga was a serpopard, who shifted to human form, but this woman is a blend of a human and a feline. She does not transform into a full human and shift to a full cat, but she's a mixture of the two. While her face is human, whiskers emerge from her brown cheeks, and her ears have a furry tip. Her seated stance is like mine, but a brown-and-white tail sways while she rests.

I hike my knees back up to my chest, and I rest my forehead against my kneecaps. One arm I wrap around my legs to keep them against my chest, but my free hand goes into my pocket for the finger. Guilt rests on my mind as I remind myself of Tuhinga's life, which I stole prematurely, but I'm in a game of survival and his claw is sharper than any knife. The dismembered claw becomes my solace, and I rub it the way I would a rabbit's foot for good luck.

The sun is bright at the top of the ceiling, turning the tower into a sauna, when the gold woman's familiar voice reverberates off the walls. "Good morning, potential wives of King Shaharuddin Ochir."

One woman, too far from me to see, screams in a language I can't understand. The tone tells me enough, though. She's angry, and none of her words are kind to the gold woman.

I lift my head up from my knees in time to see the woman's gilded magic transform into a whip. While I can't see the gold woman from my cage, I can see her golden whip slice through the air. It travels near the top of the ceiling, and I watch as it grabs an ankle, then plummets the outspoken woman to the endless bottom.

She shrieks in fear, the sound echoing off the bricked walls, before a final kerplunk silences any resilience.

The gold woman speaks again, her voice too calm after murdering somebody. "Does anybody else have complaints about being here?" Nobody says anything, and I swear I can hear her smile as she says. "I did not think so. Now, as I was saying, you are in the second round of your trail to become King Shaharuddin, the Great Usurper's, bride. Today, as the sun rises and our world rests, you will try to survive in the tower. By the time I return at sunset, all but one of you will die. The sole victor of life gets the esteemed privilege of becoming Queen of Oraxto."