Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

  My feet weren’t big like the people in my memories. They didn’t move with the same grace or speed. But I could see a picture in my head of a lot of men standing and moving in unison. Their feet created a beat like a solid drum being banged upon the earth.

  The memory within a memory swept me away. I saw men who looked like Roy and Tal, saw how they moved. Felt their vibrations. Mimicking what was in my memory was a far different thing. I tried and proceeded to fall on my face.

  Tal’s breath took a sharp intake and he looked pensive.

  “Stand up. Do it again,” he ordered.

  Falling had brought me too close to Tal’s larger form. I’d seen him hit punching bags, hold mitts for other fighters down here, so being within his grasp frightened me.

  I shook my head.

  Tal couldn’t restrain himself. His face pinched as he got closer. I stepped back and found myself against a table.

  “Show me again, runt,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Show me now.” Tal turned on full drill sergeant mode and pointed aggressively with a finger. His stance seemed to swell and fill the room.

  That caused me to retreat more by wiggling past the table and toward the stairs. I didn’t even have to reach out and feel for a wall. I knew the route up to my room like any normal person could touch their elbow by reflex.

  “Show me,” Tal said, much louder. I could feel people in the other part of the building shift their bodyweights. Some heads turned to peer toward us, which only made me feel more hunted.

  “You should offer him food.” Roy’s voice broke through the winnowing world view with the magic word.

  I paused and cocked my head in the younger male’s direction. Even Tal paused.

  “Hamburger?” Tal asked at last. “Would you show us again for a hamburger?”

  I almost caved but wanted more. My mouth hung open slightly and drool formed.

  “Steak?” Tal offered, clearly onto a bribe tool.

  That got me. I’d fail any number of times for a medium rare slab of cow. Not just the ground up leftovers, but a whole chunk carved off. Tal got cable television. I’d watched the food channel avidly for the last two days in the main living room upstairs. I’d even sneaked out at night when the others fell asleep just to turn it on. They showed images of something called ‘barbeque’ that I wanted to smell and taste very badly.

  “Just like on channel seven! Steak. Medium rare. Seasoned to perfection!” I shouted all the phrases and dodged past Tal to the largest open space of their house. The home itself sat attached to the gym. All thoughts of other people working out faded away as I prepared to earn myself a real meal.

  I stomped one foot down, attempting to mimic the deep thumping pound from my memories. “The other foot. Like this. It must beat. Thud. Thud. Thud.”

  I stayed slow in my motions and still failed to get the placement right. Despite this I kept attempting to go through, saying the beats with each movement. They were important to the army of people in my memory, so they must be equally important to Tal and Roy. Food was riding on my success.

  Whatever I did made the other two stop and stare. Even Roy put down the jump rope and huddled next to his father. They reminded me of puffy birds watching crumbs of food.

  “Where? How? No. Who taught you to move… like that?” Roy seemed flabbergasted and upset. Like I’d stumbled on a secret treasure trove of food that I shouldn’t know about.

  “Was it your father? Or someone else?” Tal tried to pry an answer out of me. My motions were falling apart.

  “Where’s my steak? I showed you the thud. Thump. Thump.” I repeated the steps eagerly.

  Their distraction would make the steak harder to get. At that young age I’d made it my life’s mission to find all the edible material in their home. Some of the metal boxes all in a row downstairs had wrapped bars. I’d been chastised when eating one.

  I assumed, at the time, that those bars were some form of poison. Only a monster would leave such terrible tasting food inside an attractive wrapper like that.

  “Who was it?” Tal was suddenly too close again and I shrank back.

  “No one,” I responded.

  “How do you know we do this?” Tal said.

  That question was easy. “I feel it.”

  “Feel?”

  “You know. Feel. Like, touch. Every night after dark. Swoosh. Swoosh.” I scowled and scrunched my eyebrows and shook the table to represent the rumble. “Again! Your words shake the walls. Shake.”

  There was another pause just before Roy could no longer control himself. For the first time since my arrival, the younger boy laughed; truly sounding his age. He bordered between not quite a teen yet not a child. Roy laughed for a long, long time.

  “Steak now?” I asked.

  Tal smiled faintly.

  8

  Probably boned

  In the land outside my convoluted memories, two more days had passed, along with two more minor earthquakes. Each one was followed by Warden Bennett stopping by to glare inside my cell with his pale skin and annoying goatee.

  My return smile was full of false confidence and superiority. There wasn’t an ounce of justification to it. Sensations were too messed up reliving the past memories anyway. The longer they kept me in this room, the better I felt. The biggest concern outside this cell was Leo.

  During those two days, I’d come out of a memory doing half motions in the tiny cell. It was mostly the footsteps and slides. Tal’s words and commands echoed across the years even though the old man was dead.

  That realization would hit me briefly. I’d been reunited with him at Bottom Pit, then again in the small town. He’d been looking out for me two decades later, and I couldn’t even recognize him until the very end.

  I couldn’t recognize myself. Sometimes I’d find myself standing in front of the reflective metal staring at my face. It wasn’t the face of a young boy, fresh to a strange world and lost. It didn’t fit with the growing child in my memories.

  The two timelines were still jumbled. There’d be a flash and I could see a younger version of Roy behind me, glaring on with a mix of disapproval and other submerged emotions.

  It took us nearly ten years to find a balancing point between ourselves. Coming to terms with the kind of creatures we were. Roy’s kind, Tal, Leo, their brothers, were all cut from the same cloth. They were naturally muscled creatures with slightly discolored skin and eyes. They wanted to fight. They were borderline savages unless they managed to keep under control. They all longed to fight and see who was on top.

  They’d been obsessed with learning the dances from my memory. To them, they were an incomplete series of martial forms used by creatures with excessive strength or natures beyond the pale. It made sense, their arts had been created by generations of battle obsessed brutes where only the successful survived.

  Both men were obsessed with learning this material artform. Knowing more than either one, as a child, simply added fire to their desire. They both hungered to know, but at the same time they were worried why someone outside their kind knew anything at all.

  Swoosh. Swoosh. Step. Step. Wall, spin, arm up out to the side. Punch twice. Turn and sweep the leg. Each motion was designed to flow into the next. They could turn into another pattern easily, or link together in new chains, but the full unblocked series of moves looked exactly like a dance that vibrated the air.

  I relived the learning process moments at a time while actual sleep stayed broken and disturbed. It was getting hard to tell what was now and the past.

  “Fields,” a guard called. I shook my head and huffed out of the latest flashback.

  I’d been thinking of my third grade teacher. The only one who’d actually tried. She had dark hair and pale skin on a tiny frame.

  The guard was none of those things, but he was polite as cuffs were placed on hands and feet. He didn’t tell me to wait inside the cell, though. Instead I was escorted along two halls, down the elevato
r and into another room.

  A woman sat inside. Her build didn’t belong to the dark-skinned Kahina Rhodes. It didn’t match Boss Wylde’s with her freckled complexion. She wasn’t Candy, a deceased Julianne or my third grade teacher, but that last one was close.

  “Ms. Sauter?” I said haltingly. It took me time to figure out who this visitor was.

  It was the blue eyes. I’d seen them on her daughter as well. Sky like, mixed with a slightly tanned skin that seemed to have hardened over the last year.

  She smiled, but her eyes squinted just so against tightened cheeks. Her expression wasn’t attempting to be friendly, it was guarded.

  “Mr. Fields.” Ms. Sauter acknowledged me with a slight nod.

  “What—” I didn’t even know where to start. This reminded me of how Tal had reacted when my corrections had come forth. I felt even more disconnected from reality.

  “I had an appointment with Stacy. She’s a guest of Atlas as a result of... disturbances.” I looked around. A briefcase was on the floor, some electronic device off to one side, and a phone.

  Then there were her clothes. There was the decorative jewelry just like the last time we’d met, but that jacket on the back of her chair, the way she held her hands. It all screamed business professional.

  I knew exactly what Stacy had done, which was rescue me from a shitty situation, but played dumb. “Why visit me?”

  “To extend an offer. We, myself and two others from our pack, are part of a national group offering counsel and other legal services to wolves in need.”

  “Wolves in need…” I trailed off in wonder for a moment. “I’m not a wolf.” That had to be out of the way first thing. With Muni’s charm gone, no one would remember me wrong. No one would smell this body and picture a furry creature that might lick a face or sleep on someone’s feet.

  Hell. The last person I’d cuddled with had nearly lost her head twice because of me. That was hardly adorable. Plus, Spike had attempted to stab me with silver and set me off.

  But I’d always had a weakness toward ladies.

  Now it was Ms. Sauter’s turn to be confused. “But you’re—” She sniffed, followed by a study of my neck and shoulders. Quick glances to the typical stress areas of a wolf.

  “May I see your hand?” she asked.

  They were still bound with some slack between legs and arms. I managed to get an arm up which forced the other one into my crotch.

  “Huh. But you don’t smell…” It occurred to her what other options there were.

  If I wasn’t human or wolf, and clearly didn’t have pointy ears despite attempting to superglue the tips one summer, well, what remained was worrisome at best.

  “That’s strange. I could have sworn you were pack the last time we met,” Ms. Sauter said.

  I smiled weakly.

  “A lot has happened since then.” A lot was still happening, even if most of it was in my head at this point. Atlas Island itself had been rather peaceful aside from the earthquakes. Whatever foundation the prison was built on seemed sturdy. Only a few cracks here and there.

  “Well,” she said while leaning back. My hand was dropped kindly on the table.

  “Well,” came my tired response. “Thanks anyway.” I started to stand and head back to the door when Ms. Sauter called.

  “I think I can still help you, Mr. Fields.”

  “Why bother?”

  Why did any of these people reach out to me? Some answers I knew. Daniel helped because he needed a tame monster. Candy helped because of her twisted addictions and desires to keep me under control. Leo helped because he was desperate to win my, and his father’s, respect. Julianne had helped because we were friends.

  I shook my head and listed my own crimes. “I failed to get your money back. I got you into a fight with your husband, right in front of your daughter. Hell, I even stole one of the rings that dropped after you shifted and chased your husband.”

  That bit of guilt had been building for a while. She had shifted in a rush to chase after her fleeing husband and left behind two rings. They were shiny and abandoned, so naturally I picked them up for my personal collection.

  “You did what? You took that ring?”

  “Yeah,” I said with a nod.

  “Why on earth would you take my jewelry?”

  There were a lot of halfhearted reasons. Her husband had owed money was my excuse if anyone caught me. I could have said it looked abandoned on the sidewalk. That it might have dropped off someone else.

  Or “Because it was pretty,” I admitted.

  She started packing up her stuff. The briefcase opened and in slid one electronic device, then a second. Her jacket came off the chair and was halfway to the shoulders before she paused and counted. I saw her lips move, one to ten like a mantra. A moment later her face forcibly relaxed.

  “Mr. Fields, do you still want legal representation?”

  “No. Go home. Take care of your little girl.” The one who was now short a father due to something I’d been directly involved in. I’d fucked up enough lives.

  “I’ll sit down, if you will, Mr. Fields. We should talk this through.” Off came the jacket, back onto the chair, down went the briefcase onto the ground.

  Clearly she was crazy. I rattled my way to the door.

  “Sit the fuck down, Mr. Fields, or I will make you sit.”

  I turned and looked at Ms. Sauter. Her face twisted in a snarl, form slightly disfigured, cheekbones warped. Quick calculations went through my brain. Ms. Sauter was the mother of a teenage daughter and a lawyer of some sort. I’d upset her with the missing ring talk. Above all that she was a literal bitch and high in the pack hierarchy.

  I sat the fuck down, noisy chains be damned, and refused to make eye contact. Maybe it was the insecure childhood I’d been reliving. Maybe memories of being thumped in the head by the first female Alpha I’d run into plagued me. It could be blamed on my general weakness for doing what women told me to do.

  “Now. Here’s my offer. I, and the firm I associate with, will take your case and mitigate the charges to the best of our ability. Mitigate, at best.”

  I risked a glance. Ms. Sauter looked annoyed and rubbed her hands together with uneven jerks. I could feel the finer grooves of her fingers, where skin rippled in swirls, brushing along the much larger bumps of thread. My brain threatened to fall into the patterns and study how her clothes were made.

  “In exchange, the debt over my husband’s recovery will be wiped clean. You will provide a sworn statement as a witness to Stacy’s involvement during the conversion of Kahina Rhodes. And. by God above, Mr. Fields, you will return my ring.”

  My body had been turned away, almost sulking, but now I looked directly at my proposed lawyer.

  “What if I don’t want to leave Atlas?” I asked.

  “Regardless of my efforts you’re probably boned on some of it. I would need time to catch up with your case, read over the charges, and see what sort of legal precedence could be applied.” She paused, confused.

  I turned to face her directly instead of to the side like a lost boy. The memories of my past which unraveled every night shouldn’t keep screwing up how I acted.

  It had taken years to get used to people and dealing with people of this world. Adult Jay Fields feared no one and faced them head on. I had to stop letting my mixed up brain take control.

  “Isn’t freedom better than this? At least out there you’re able to decide for yourself. In here, everything is on someone else’s timetable. Eating, sleeping, work.” She managed to look even more uncomfortable. Both hands jerked off the table and back to her sides for a quick shudder. “I don’t know how anyone stands it.”

  I let her self-compose while thoughts ran through my head. Would it be better to be outside and free? The Order of Merlin might still try to hunt me down, but good luck tracking a giant serpent in the frozen northern tundra. Maybe I could find a cave and set up a television dish with some power generator. For dinner I’d eat a
seal straight from the iceberg, freshly burned to a crisp.

  “And the other thing?” I asked. Before everything else, this mattered.

  “What other thing?”

  “I’m not a pack member.”

  “As far as our firm is concerned, nothing about it would be unusual. We extend services to those affiliated with pack as well, simply because we’re considered the experts in these matters.”

  “You know what I meant.” I locked eyes with her for a moment and struggled not to blink.

  She had more control than any other pack member I’d seen. She didn’t even bat an eyelash. “That might actually help us. I’ll have to check, but there’s wiggle room,” she said.

  What did it hurt? Sitting in here, going half mad with memories flooding in and out already taxed my mind enough. Waking up in cold sweats and feeling like a lost child could only be improved by a legal ground to exist on.

  “I can pay,” I said.

  The words hurt. Parting with money was against my personal code. Still, even I knew lawyers weren’t cheap. If Ms. Sauter truly wanted to take this case on there’d be so much paperwork involved she might drown. I had been a bad boy over the course of my life.

  “Good.” She kept steady.

  “Do you know where Bottom Pit is?”

  “I know of it.”

  Of course she did. She was a pack member, even if she didn’t seem like the elitist or seedy type. Pack always knew where the fights were.

  “Go there. Talk to the bouncers, tell them James sent you,” I said.

  “James? A pseudonym? Legal or street name?” Miss Sauter had gone into business mode. Her hand was a bit steadier now, jotting things onto the tablet she’d recovered from her briefcase.

  “Not legal. A go by. Roy Forge, their head of security, is a childhood friend. They were, sort of my foster family. Someone there will remember—” Briefly, images flashed through my mind. Memories of talking to people about handling my cash and where to store it rushed by. “Will—” Gods, speaking through the onslaught grew difficult. My body tightened and breath hitched. One arm wound up the loose chain as I struggled to keep in one piece, as if physical tightness could help my mind stay together.