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(Art by Xenoglssie. Description in alt. Click for full-size.)
Long ago and far away, the world fit in a neat little box.
John’s life was charmed (in his opinion, at least), with days of play by the stream or in the workshop, racing father’s sleighs in winter and flirting with pretty workers in the mill. It was fun. His older brother Yellow was the responsible one—John was, he’d learned early on, “unplanned,” and so wasn’t expected to do anything.
Well. He was expected not to do things. Not to get anyone pregnant, not to steal from the till or stores, not to make a laughingstock of father’s name in town or with traveling merchants. Easy. John was careful in bed, had a big enough allowance that he didn’t need to steal, and he both tipped well in town and made friends with merchants. People trusted Yellow to deal with the hard things, but people liked John, and that was even better.
Yes, indeed, life was charmed, sweet through and through like warm honey-cake. At least, until his father died.
#
Long ago and far away, the Miller King Hastur fit in a neat little box.
John couldn’t understand. No one that strong and vibrant could die. It was the sun going out, the water drying up, the cattle turning to vicious beasts in the fields. It could not be.
Except it was. Hastur was dead and gone.
John had little to do with arrangements. Yellow organized the funeral and aftermath, and the town’s livelihood was assured, so they produced appropriate mourning. It all passed in a daze.
Father was gone. Nothing would ever make sense again.
After the funeral was done and the father buried, Yellow and John sat in their too-huge house and found uncomfortable silence. Hastur had filled it so well, but now his voice boomed in the Dark World. Their home felt big and weird and empty.
“I went over the will today,” said Yellow, leaning forward to stir the fire.
John blinked at him, dazed in the wake of their father’s retreating shadow. “What?”
“The solicitor came by.”
John scoffed. “Larson? He’s a terrible lawyer.”
Yellow’s look was dry. “He’s a terrible human, but he’s very good with the law. I’m afraid father’s will is clear, and I intend to honor it.”
What a weird thing to say. John felt sluggish, slow, his thoughts half-formed. “What are you talking about?”
Yellow sighed and leaned back, watching the fire as shadows played around his horns. “He’s left it all to me. The mill. The land. The livestock.”
Like the sun going out, the water drying up… “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“You weren’t planned. You weren’t intended offspring. Father’s only left you one thing, and once you receive it, you’re to leave.”
…like the cattle turning to vicious beasts in the fields. “What?”
Yellow looked torn, but he did not look at John. Yellow always looked at people, but in this oblique moment, leaked shame like smoke. “Sleep here tonight,” said Yellow. “You’re my guest, for now, but he’s right. The legacy must continue, and it can’t with two sons. So. Tomorrow, after you’re well-fed and clothed, you will receive your inheritance, and you’re out.”
“Out?”
“Out.”
“Out where?”
“Wherever you want. Just not here.” Yellow stood, studying the last finger of fine brown booze in his tumbler.
John stared at him, unable to speak, move, think. “But what am I supposed to do?”
Yellow threw his last sip back, then coughed, his dark cheeks flushed. “I don’t know.” And with that, he left, heading up the stairs to bed.
John sat. John stared. Father hadn’t wanted him to stay… home?
This wasn’t home? Anymore? Ever again?
Unbalanced, blinking through tears, he tried to plan. He had some allowance, though not a lot—he hadn’t known he’d had to save it. He had fine clothes; maybe he could sell them.
Father was gone, withdrawn in worse ways than death. Had father truly never loved him at all?
John couldn’t stand the thought of heading up to the room that had been given and taken away, so instead, he curled up in his father’s chair to cry himself to sleep.
(Art by Kitsuna. Click for full size. Description in alt.)
#
“Mas-ter.”
It was the clacking that woke him. John stirred. Only one thing sounded like that in his father’s home, clicky and clacky and rough. “Yorick?”
“Mas-ter.” Clack-clack went the skull, which had been placed on the table between old whiskey-glass stains.
John rubbed his tired eyes. Was it calling him master? “What?”
“We are expected to leave.” Clack-clack. “You have slept late. All. Is well! My plan. Does not require a strict timetable. Today.”
John had never quite understood why father had a talking skull, but here it was, speaking its odd, broken rhythm, jaw moving on its own, a deep and unpleasant green swirling in the depths of its sockets. It wasn’t even a proper skull, for crying out loud—no horns or anything. “Your what?” said John. “What are you talking about?”
Yorick clacked. “Gather your things. You can stay. With the priest while I work.”
“Work?”
“Master. I belong to you. Now.”
Betrayal! “You’re all my father willed me?” John cried. “‘Tis a joke! An insult!”
The skull was undeterred. “Do you want to make your fortune?”
“How should I know what I want?”
The skull was undeterred. “Do you want to be. Loved? Provided for? Safe?”
“Yes!” wailed John, who’d had those things and now lost them. “Yet why should you concern yourself so?”
The skull was undeterred. “Because I belong. To you. You are my master, now. If you do as I say, all. Will be well. Or do you think. Your father made his fortune. On the strength of his own. Skill?”
Huh. That was a wild question. John had no idea how Hastur had done it. That was thirty years go. Ancient times. “You helped him?”
“I did, master.”
Maybe there was hope. “I suppose I have nothing to lose, do I?”
“Correct. Lift me, master. We will go to the priest.”
The priest. Human, and favored by the workers in the village, though John had never had cause to meet him. “Fine.” John picked up the skull.
The local locksmith chanted at the door, altering the spell needed to get inside.
John doubted he’d be given the new charm. This truly was the end. Vision blurring, he stomped up the stairs to his former room, where he grabbed the biggest bag he could find and then agonized over what to bring into his new life.
#
The bag was too heavy. John didn’t care. He staggered to the priest’s house, belabored, and knocked. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled to Oscar’s sandaled human toes. “I’ve nowhere else to go.”
“Of course, my son. Come in,” said this human priest, who’d never feared his inhuman lord, and never treated anyone as less than equal.
After a humble dinner (bread and cheese, the first food John had eaten all day, and he cried over both), John went to his tiny, new room, which barely had space for the bed, and sat in sorrowful gloom.
This accomplished nothing, so at last, he took out the skull. “Now what?”
“Now, master, I require boots.”
He must have heard that wrong. “Boots?”
“And a hat. Bring to me these things, and all. Will be well.”
John had so little money. He swallowed.
“Trust me, master. As your father. Once did.”
John considered his few coins, and knew that to do this was to believe his father had loved him. So it was he walked into town (and pretended not to see pity and sneers from once-called friends), and purchased what Yorick asked.
This reduced him to his last twelve coins. “Gonna smash that skull,” he muttered, but returned to his new home.
#
Yorick looked absurd. He perched upon folded-down boots of a fine enough leather, if clearly second-hand, and on his bony top sat a red-feathered tricorn at an angle most jaunty, indeed. “Master.”
“Now what?” said John, who was tempted to point and laugh even though all was dire.
“Now, you rest. Be kind to the priest, and he will be kind to you. Wait here for me. I will return.”
“Return from where?”
The skull trembled, then suddenly rose into the air. Insouciant, he hovered a hand’s width above his new boots, and then the whole shebang jumped right off John’s bed to the floor.
“Ah!” John cried.
“This will take. A few weeks,” said Yorick.
“Ah!” John cried.
“I will return, Master. All will be well.” And like some bizarre, boozy dream, Yorick leaped out John’s new window.
“Ah! Why?” John cried, and then lay face-down in his pillow to moan.
#
Yorick clopped down the road as elegantly as a dancer would not, heel-toe, heel-toe at startling speed, and was pleased with his goal. His new master had needs, but they were easy to supply—and it took little time to find his first target. Clop clop clop went his boots as he darted to the bushes, and then he went quite still.
A pair of horses came his way, at no full gallop, but clearly in haste, unwilling to stop for roses to smell. “Behind us?” panted the first thief, though his horse was doing all the work.
“No, I said,” panted the second, though he wasn’t even carrying what they stole. “We got away clean, I tell you.”
“You did not,” Yorick said, and emerged.
As any schoolchild knows, things that pop from bushes are generally funny or wicked. Yorick was both, and his appearance froze the burglars in their saddles. Their horses reared.
“What the hell?” said thief one.
“FOR JOHN!” Yorick bellowed, and leaped.
Jaw gaping wide and boot-toes pointed back, he was such a sight that even the horses gaped in confusion. Then Yorick chomped down on thief number two’s left calf, all the way to the bone.
Thief two howled, kicked, and panicked his horse, which threw him off.
Thief one’s horse panicked as well, similarly bucking its burden, then took off after its equine friend.
Yorick disengaged and leaped at thief one.
Thief two wailed, curled around his injury, turning the dirt to iron-tinged mud, and did not stop until the silence told him something worse had happened. There was neither wind nor birdsong; where had the blasted skull gone? “Dab?” he whimpered.
Nothing.
“Dab?” thief two groaned as he rolled over, fearing the ruin of his leg.
There was no weird flying hat-boot-skull, but there was a body. Dab was very dead. Bone glistened in the wreck of his throat, and he still faced the sky, unseeing.
“Dab!” Thief two tried to crawl to him, gasping and bleeding. He pulled out a dagger (almost dropping it for the slickness of his blood) and brandished it wildly. “Where are you?”
“Here,” said Yorick, and got him from behind, biting his head clean off.
#
The Skinless Court was aptly named. Bloody meat decorated the walls. Pillars of bone rose like giant toes, supporting a nightmare-silk sky. The land was fertile but not verdant, growing but not good. Its king (lord, master, god) was renowned for his cruelty, his creativity, his dark and terrible humor. It was a heavily unsafe place to be.
Which made the princess very strange.
Arthur wandered the halls of madness unfazed, head full of endless sighs and yearning poems. He sang songs he wrote (unmindful that echoes returned as gibbering screams), and leaned out windows to wistfully gaze toward distant peaks and true love.
Everyone knew Princess Arthur was the Unnamed King’s favorite, so nobody messed with him. Yorick, however, did not play by the rules.
“I dreamed a dream of times gone by…” Arthur sang.
“A time to please your only father,” Yorick croaked back right beneath the window, and so caught the princess’ attention.
“Oh!” Arthur said. “And who are you?”
“The servant. Of. A mighty lord,” said Yorick, who stood beside a sack of skin that bulged with unknown goods. “I bring you greetings from the great Marquis de Carcobas!”
“And I return them, little skull,” said the princess, leaning out fearlessly. “What have you there?”
“A thing which belongs to your father,” said Yorick, “stolen from him last night. My lord the Marquis has recovered it.”
“Then you’d best come in,” said Princess Arthur, who’d never been hurt in his entire charmed life (which one might even say scanned well), and he bent double to scoop Yorick up with a core strength that belied his pretty pink dress. “How do your boots stay on?”
“Do not forget the bag, Princess,” said Yorick.
Arthur lived a charmed life, but also in the court of a mad god, and he took up the nasty sack of skin without hesitation.
#
(Art by Kitsuna. Click for full size. Description in alt.)
“Father!” Arthur cried, stepping boldly forward.
In the court loomed beings of madness and tears, of gaping smiles and twisting eyes, ragged flesh and memories of good times gone sour. And of course, the court’s king.
“Father, look!” Arthur cried again, striding toward that throne as pulsing floor-veins slid out of his path.
On the throne, the king of madness and all this terrible place draped like a dropped sock, head back, sprawled sideways across the armrests as though he’d rather be anywhere in reality or unreality than here. “Yep,” he said. “That’s true.”
“Father, look!” said the princess again, hefting the sack (which oozed blood between his fingers, but he was not a squeamish man) and the skull (who sat upon his palm, boots forward, tricorn as jaunty as ever). “This new friend hath returned that which was stolen!”
The Nameless King of the Skinless Court sighed. “You know, we don’t have to do this part.”
“Shall I open the sack?” said the princess.
“We could just skip this. Or, you know, put someone in the role who actually wants to play it,” said the Bloody Tongue to the ceiling.
“All praise from the Marquis de Carcobas!” Yorick declared.
“I’m going to make you suffer for this,” the Howler in the Night said to no one present.
Princess Arthur pulled a crown made of gristle from the bag. “Oh! This was stolen?”
“And returned, mistress,” said Yorick.
“Our thanks, servant,” said Arthur, remembering his royal manners. “The Crown of Cartilage is truly precious, and thus, we must see thee repaid. Extend our blessing to the Marquis de Carcobas.” And he offered a little bag that chinked with gold.
“So I shall,” said Yorick, taking the bag of coins between his teeth, then clop–clop-clopped right out the window and back to work.
“This is fucking stupid!” the Stalker Among the Stars shouted after him, but nobody seemed to hear.
#
Over the next three weeks, Yorick brought to the Skinless Court many special things: a unicorn’s horn, which the princess could use to tune any instrument; a bouquet of rare flowers that spoke in verse; a special glowing pear which, when planted, bloomed a tree that grew whatever fruit Arthur wanted each day.
In return, Princess Arthur gave Yorick much gold and many jewels from his endless personal stores. Yorick used the wealth. Yorick made some purchases and fooled some ogres (and liberated victims, too, though that is a different tale). Yorick won land and stocked it with grateful freemen and healthy crops.
Word of the Marquis de Carcobas’ generosity reached the Skinless Court. This Marquis was clearly a liberator of the oppressed, a generous lord of land and life. This John, thought Princess Arthur, seemed wealthy and good, kind and clever, and he could not help wondering what such a one looked like.
“Very handsome, mistress,” Yorick assured, and hopped back out the window.
“Would you just bring in a sexy lamp or something?” cried the Skinless Court’s god, the Bat of L'gy'hx, but could not get out of this because escape wasn’t in the script.
#
John was learning so many things.
Oscar insisted on waking him early. Oscar had this way about him, a comfortable, patient silence John felt the need to fill, and since Oscar kept listening, John kept talking.
It was unbearable. It was humiliating. It was… absolutely addictive.
John had never spoken so much to anyone in his entire life. John talked as Oscar showed him how to work in the orchard’s cool shade. He talked as Oscar taught him how to make wine (Make it! John had only ever drunk it), and talked as Oscar demonstrated how to patch damaged clothes, and talked as Oscar coached him through washing linens, preparing food, and failed to impress the importance of evening and morning prayers.
For a human, Oscar was all right.
By the end of the first week, John built the courage to visit his brother. At the mill’s door, he was told he had to make an appointment. John made no appointment, and did not try again.
By the end of the third week, he decided Yorick was not coming back. Maybe that was why the thing had wanted the boots—to escape this mess. He told Oscar.
Oscar heard his fears, comforted his tears, and told him tales of far worse fates. So it was that John learned of hardship in the world, and terrible, sorrowful ends. John, through his grief, began to learn gratitude for what he yet had.
By the end of the fifth week, John decided he was going to stay here forever, work with Oscar, and pretend nothing bad had happened ever, even though those who were once friends eyed him askance and murmured in his wake. None were willing to hang out anymore (busy, busy, just too busy), but Oscar had found happiness in simple chores and honest work, so maybe John could, too.
Then at the end of the eighth week, Larson came knocking, and John’s new hope burned to ash.
#
Oscar was a human of peace, but the anger in his eyes would make even the inhuman pause. “You know you’ve gone too far.”
“I am only looking out for my client’s interests, now,” drawled Larson, just as human but unbearably arrogant, and ignored the tea Oscar had kindly made. “The problem is, see, that this whole fief belongs to the heir, and the spare is explicitly prohibited from inheritin’, even by proxy. Having him around is a causing heap of confusion.”
“I will not throw a homeless young man out of my house,” said Oscar again (and John knew how good he was, and steadfast, and knew Oscar would stand by him to the end).
“I’d hardly ask a man of the faith to do something so… low,” said Larson, smiling with boring human teeth. “No, sir. My words are directed toward your lodger. John? I think we both know the right thing to do here. Elsewise, it seems to me there might be some trouble continuing the lease of this land, no matter how kind the cause.”
Oscar’s sun-kissed face went pale.
John had lived a charmed life and lost it. He’d never known generosity until the priest—and now, the priest stood to lose his home and orchard and fresh-water well because of generosity to John.
He would not see this good human ruined. John put his hand on Oscar’s arm. “It’s all right. I’ll go.”
Oscar gasped (and John’s heart grew a deep and tiny ache, like a bad seed planted). “No.”
“I’ll be all right,” said John. “I can make wine now and everything.”
Oscar looked like his own heart was breaking.
“Maybe I’ll even come back once my brother calms down,” said John.
Larson smirked as if that would never happen, and it was a crooked and ugly thing.
Was Yellow really behind this? John didn’t know, but he could not let Oscar pay the price. “Thank you for everything.”
Oscar pulled him into a hug. “Let me give you supplies.”
John knew now “supplies” didn’t come from nowhere. They were worked for, earned, created. “I won’t take your things.”
“You’ll take a gift.” Oscar bore no excuses.
“Out by sunset,” said Larson. “Then we won’t need to do anything so messy as calling the constablery.”
That left hours, so John got to work. He sold what he could—alas that what he’d brought was fairly useless, but any money was money still. He accepted parting gifts from Oscar—food and water, a few books to read, and a benediction. Then he left the town he’d known as home, and though the faces of his former friends were sad, no one said farewell.
John had learned so much. He knew he would be fine.
#
Five hours later in a steady rain, John was far from fine.
Shelter should be easy! Well, it wasn’t, and he was soaked. Food should stretch longer! Well, it didn’t, and even extra bread did not satisfy as well as a simple bowl of stew after picking apples with a priest.
John was hungry and scared and wet. He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t know how far away other towns were. People said there were bandits on the road; he didn’t know how to fight them, regardless of his powerful heritage. “What am I to do?” he said to the uncaring, weeping sky.
“Mas-ter.”
John startled. “Yorick?”
And there was the skull by his side as though sprouted from the dirt. “Excellent,” said Yorick. “You look. Perfectly pathetic.”
Was that a joke? “I thought you’d left me,” John accused.
“No, master. I have executed the plan. It is time. For the last step. Rise and follow me.”
John sniffled, but what was he to do? He had no home, no friends, no fortune. Bereft, he rose.
“Leave your things,” Yorick said.
John gasped. “I can’t do that!”
“They will be. Safe. I can teach you to hide them well.”
“But why?” John felt he had the right to whine. “You’ve been gone for weeks! And now you want me to follow you into the night without my few belongings?”
“You will soon have. Far better ones,” Yorick promised.
Yorick was all John truly had—the final gift from his father. Even Oscar had been taken away. Had father loved him? Perhaps. If he had, then this would not be his ruin. “Promise?” John said, trying not to sound pathetic.
“I exist to serve you, master,” said Yorick. “You desire love, safety, happiness—all are within your reach. Now. Leave your goods. And follow me.”
Deep in John’s heart, the tiny seed of hurt transformed, breached the soil, and bloomed golden blossoms of hope. “As you wish,” he said softly.
“Leave your clothes, as well,” Yorick commanded, and John was too near rope’s end to argue.
#
A fuss approached the Skinless Court—shouts and horns, cries and howls, and above it all, Princess Arthur’s cheerful call to him who sat upon the throne.
“Father!” Arthur hailed. “Father, behold the Marquis de Carcobas! He hath been robbed!”
John, naked as a jaybird and very wet indeed, clung to the fur Arthur had thrown around him and shivered. He barely seemed aware of the Skinless Court, staring only at Arthur as if the beauty of the princess filled his every thought.
“Final scene, at fucking last,” muttered the Crawling Chaos, and pressed his palm to his head as if beset by ache. “And whose fault is that?” he muttered at the ceiling.
“He who hath been so gracious unto us—” Arthur began.
“Blah, blah, blah, you’re in love, he’s in love, happily ever after, we get it. Let’s speed this up, shall we? I have other strings to play,” interjected the Master of Evil, the Living Shroud, and he rose and filled the room with his dark and terrible presence. He pointed. “You. The Marquis de Carcobas, I take it?”
John opened his moth.
“Right, right. And you—” He pointed at Arthur. “This is the one, huh? This is it. This… guy.”
“He is hardly human, as thou didst command,” Arthur said defensively, leaning in (and John leaned back). “All thou hadst bid of me to find I do find, behold, in him.”
The Floating Horror rolled his eyes. “Nooooo,” he said, tone flat. “How will I ever. The princess’s virginity.” And he looked directly into the eyes of the reader. “Weird that I, the father, would be so fixated on my child’s sexual activity, right? Just obsessed. Positively uncomfortable. And now you’ll never read about a princess being offered to some guy as a prize the same way again!”
“Father, I want to keep him,” said Arthur, firm and bold.
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go see what the calvaria-ex-machina finagled.” At last, he descended from his throne.
#
The carriage ride was… focused.
John still had no clothes. He’d folded the fur over his lap, and did not object as Arthur rested his own hand atop that fluffy softness. They spoke in low murmurs, face to face as if to hide in one other’s heads. It was as if each had become all the other could see.
Outside the window, the Skinless Court gave way to clear skies and verdant fields, rich with scents of healthy life and clean water and happy crops. Miserable in the golden light, the Skinless Lord slumped in his seat as if half-melted. “This is so fucking stupid,” he said instead of his scripted part of asking who owned these lands, and was thus ignored.
“Behold,” said Yorick as the carriage came to a halt. “The seigniory of the Marquis de Carcobas!”
“What?” John stood and leaned out the window (and over the princess, who took in an eyeful and blushed).
A lovely farmstead spread before them, nestled against purple mountains. Beings worked the fields, limbs dark and arching in the sun. Orchards dappled and brooks babbled, lambs gamboled and vineyards rambled, and as John stared, a butterfly flew by the carriage window like a wish made into a wink.
“Master,” said Yorick, whose boots were suddenly and inexplicably polished. “Come see to your lands.”
“Out, out, get out,” said the Baleful King, who was about to set fire to the story and everyone who’d read it.
John stepped down.
Arthur leaned out the window. “For you, my good sir,” he said shyly, and offered the blouse off his very back.
John took it (and also an eyeful—those princess outfits hid a lot), and blushed, too. “Thank you.” He dropped the fur and tied the shirt around his waist (leaving one strong, dark thigh revealed, of course). Then, his back to the carriage, he picked Yorick up. “What the hell is going on?” he whispered.
“Master,” said Yorick. “It is yours.”
“It can’t be mine,” John whispered back. “I didn’t inherit anything.”
“No, master. We have bought it.”
“With what?”
Princess Arthur alighted beside John, still shirtless. His pale skin and red hair shone as if with the purity of his heart.
“Really?” said the Unnamed King. “Fucking really?”
Arthur slid his fingers between John’s. “Show me around?”
John gulped and wished his makeshift kilt were looser.
“Come, master,” said Yorick, and clopped toward his master’s humble home.
The freemen in the fields waved, calling John’s name with welcome. One detached and jogged toward them—a fit young man, his slanted eyes sharp, his broad shoulders strong, his grin ever fearless. “Hey! Good to see you. Name’s Parker. I’m your majordomo.”
“Good?” said John, his eyes enormous.
“Should I wait aside?” Arthur suggested.
“Naw,” said Parker. “Come on. I’ll show you what’s what. Uh. You maybe want some clothes?”
John remembered his role. “Oh! Yes. Mine were, ah, stolen.”
Parker glanced at Arthur, then back. “Real unfortunate,” he said, deadpan, and led them both away.
Yorick stayed behind, his job well done, happy over his boots and under his hat. “Mission. Accomplished.”
“This was a waste of time,” said the Floating Horror.
“Nonsense,” said Yorick. “Even childish gods should have. A happy ending. Once in a while.”
“Eh,” doubted the Haunter of the Dark.
“It is. A fairy-tale. After all,” Yorick clacked.
“It sure as fuck is,” said Kayne, and disappeared in a spray of rainbow sparkles that settled into the soil. Forevermore, that patch bloomed moss with psychoactive spores, and all who breathed them relived this tale as if in a dream.
(Art by Kitsuna. Click for full size. Description in alt.)