Butterfly Reign

26. And I Know You Can't Understand

Every year, on the same exact day, the palace falls into a deep slumber. Paperwork is put away, guests stay in their rooms where the laughter and sound of their voices couldn’t stir the Empire’s gloomy grief. Even the birds in gardens seem to trill quieter, their songs whispery and short. It’s not the serenity of peaceful sleep but an artificial, suffocating abyss.

Tommy spends the whole day glued to his bed, stomach churning and hurting as if it was filled with stones and sewn shut again. At that moment it feels nothing short of a prison; pillows are the soil of a fresh-dug grave, canopy pressing down on him from overhead. Thinking about it makes it sound ridiculous, but there’s nothing amusing about the feeling of being buried alive. Tomorrow, Tommy will find a reason to exist. Today, let him pretend that he doesn’t have to.

The evening comes around, and Tommy forces himself to stand up – or more like he crashes, ankle twisting underneath him, to the floor. For some time, he contemplates not standing up at all, lying there mangled for Beau or some servant to find the next morning, but now he’s conscious enough now that he feels the pain of throbbing muscles and the beginning of a headache ravaging through his skull. Tommy drags himself up on the nightstand, gulps down a glass of water and with his forehead against the wall decides that’s enough self-care for him today.

Playing the role of a ghost has never been easier. The servants avoid looking at him, wrapping up the end of their shifts, or maybe Tommy’s just that quiet that nobody notices a sauntering figure with a face shadowed into a misty blurr. He prefers it that way, really. Nobody there to irk him with their pity.

Outside, the sunset hits and carves him into a rose gold statue atop of marble stairs. The Emperor and Techno are just about ready to leave now, checking their saddles one last time and pulling their mounts towards the opening gate. Empress Kristin had found her last resolve in the Imperial cemetery, one grave among many others climbing high upon the rickety mountain road – a walk of four hours from the palace and a horse-ride of one, closer to the sky avian emperors had loved so dearly, and their wingless descendants would never reach.

The horse Techno climbs onto isn’t his chestnut steed. He hadn’t left the stables since yesterday, chasing servants away to tend to Carl’s wounds himself. Tommy had been on his way to see Dream when something made him change direction and sneak inside. Techno didn’t notice him, leaning against the stall door with his eyes closed, Carl’s head in his lap, his hand petting the horse’s neck up and down each time a swallow breath labored itself out of a heavy ribcage. In the borderline silence of sleeping animals and singing crickets, under the moon peeking in through the cracks in wood, Techno’s murmured tales came to life: spring blooming where winged Zephyrus flew, the tip of Nemesis’ sword spreading the ember blaze of her wrath, Protesilaus and his courage in a battle he wasn’t destined to win.

Tommy stood there listening until his hands had gone cold and his legs began to hurt, and then he listened some more. Techno’s voice seldom rose above a whisper, turning almost wispy the longer he went on. Tommy wondered how much of him was present at that point, and what there was in the myths that brought him, exhausted down to every muscle in his body, comfort.

“As the planks of Theseus’ ship needed repair, it was replaced part by part, up to a point where not a single part from the original ship remained in it, anymore,” Techno said, his forehead sinking to rest against Carl’s, and as Tommy’s blue eyes met the cloudy haze of the horse’s, he suddenly felt the urge to leave. “Is it, then, still the same ship? If all the discarded parts were used to build another ship, which of the two, if either, is the real Ship of Theseus…”

Tommy sped up and almost stumbled over his own foot. The stall door he had leaned on creaked, the mare inside neighed, woken up from her slumber; still, Tommy ran until he almost crashed into someone.