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“I put you in the cell.”
He shrugs like it doesn’t matter. “We’ve all done things we’d rather forget. Forgive yourself and move on. Help us reach the spire.”
“Are you trying to die?” I accept his hand and with his help, I stand. I tower over him. While I haven’t lost any height, I have lost some of the hard scale that protected me. I give my arm a prod. My skin is soft, though still green. Without the hard scales, I’m vulnerable, any fight will leave me wounded.
The queen was right. They are dangerous.
“It’s the only way home,” Julie says.
Home, that word again.
“Home is up the spire?” There is nothing up there, only a different type of death. “What is home?”
They all turn to stare at me like I said something terrible. Maybe I did. I want to step back, but the remaining bars are at my back, and the man is at my side. Does he not fear me? I could snip off his head with a pinch of my mandibles. Even though he claims he was once a monster, I’m sure he would taste like unchanged meat.
You were human once. Every monster was.
When I glance at my hands, I remember them being different. If I was human, where did I live? All I remember is the spinning, brightly lit death.
“Home. Where we are from, before the queen dragged us here.” Julie says, studying me like she is trying to pull me apart with just her gaze. It’s working. I am already unravelling.
And I don’t like it. Why did I keep coming back to watch them?
I should have stayed away. My life here is simple. Fight, eat, obey the queen.
Now I cannot face her. Not in this weakened state. She will demand answers I don’t have, and then she will kill me.
I could flee the castle and return to the wilds of Under. Or I could follow them on this foolish quest to climb the spire, not fall off it, and go home. I glance at the beast she calls Michael. “You believe in this home up the spire?”
“Yes. I remember living there. I knew Julie when I lived there.” His voice is a growl, even though his words are simple.
He should be working for the queen. Or is he planning to overthrow her? He has helpers, even if two of them are human.
“And you?” I turn to the gray skinned monster with huge black eyes and a mouth the looks like it could swallow the Michael-beast in two bites.
He nods. “That is the only way out of Under.”
“Under?”
“This place,” the human man says.
Home. Under. Michael. Julie. There are too many names. Names. My gaze bounces over each of them. I should round them up to stick them in another cell until they have completed the task set out by the queen. She wants Julie to change. I explained she had claws, but that wasn’t enough. My gaze drops to her hands. She doesn’t have claws.
I’m sure she did. I would not have told the queen a lie.
“Where are your claws?” I take a step toward her, and her monsters move to protect her. Even the man at my side moves to grab me.
Julie lifts her hand and smiles. “They disappeared. Like your hard shells.”
My mandibles twitch. I don’t know what to say. Or do.
Have I started changing back to human? Is that what the new appendage and loss of scales means? Is it punishment because I was curious about why they weren’t fighting but embracing? Because I went to protect them from what I thought was a monster intent on eating them?
“Why does she call you Michael?”
“That is my name.” He tilts his head and one massive horn points at the man next to me. “That’s Joe. And he’s Theo.”
They all have names. Who am I?
