Tillie escorted Ama through the castle to the queen mother’s chambers. Sorrow was left behind, in Ama’s room, happily lapping a bowl of still-warm milk. When they reached the queen mother’s rooms, Tillie knocked at the door for Ama, waited for the queen mother’s call of “Enter,” and then turned the knob and pushed the door inward for Ama to pass inside. She crossed the threshold, and Tillie curtsied and shut the door, leaving Ama there.
Ah, the room was warm—deliciously, delightfully warm. Ama’s gaze flitted around the chamber, overcome by the glut of richness. Giant tapestries of floral and ivy masked the stone walls; the floor was spread thick with furs and finely woven rugs. Unlike Ama’s chamber, which was large but all of one level, here the floor was terraced into several platforms—the lowest, with the queen mother’s enormous fireplace, brightly burning, the second, with a dining table large enough for six, and the third, with a massive four-poster bed, roped with silks and velvet, drenched in furs and satins.
The queen mother sat to the right of her fireplace in a chair nearly as impressive as a throne, her feet up on a wide footstool. Ama saw there was another chair, across from the queen mother, slightly smaller, but angled, as well, toward the voluminous heat that poured from the licking red flames.
“Dear heart,” the queen mother said. She gestured for Ama to come closer. Ama obeyed. The queen mother’s chair, padded and upholstered in shiny brocade, black at its base and woven through with thick golden filigree of leaves and flowers, rose high behind her head. Two cats perched there, on the back of the chair, both black with milky green eyes that followed Ama as she drew closer.
On the queen mother’s lap rested another cat, this one an enormous gray-and-black tabby, whose ferocious purr rumbled like contained thunder. The queen mother’s ring-encrusted hand stroked the tabby’s back in long, smooth, continuous passes, almost hypnotizing to watch.
More cats curled on pillows near the queen mother’s feet. Even more cats hunched over bowls of food, devouring morsels of meat in gravy.
And mingled with the smell of the meat and gravy was another scent—the acidic biting odor of cat urine.
“Sit,” the queen mother said, but there in the seat of the opposite chair was yet another cat, this one small and orangey red. Ama picked him up, and he stretched and yawned, his barbed pink tongue arching out from between his small sharp teeth.
Ama sat and, unsure what to do with the cat, arranged him onto her lap. His front paws kneaded at her skirt, claws extending and retracting and extending again, and then he circled, wound his tail across his neck, and fell back asleep.
“He likes you,” the queen mother said, sounding pleased.
“He’s a lovely cat,” Ama said. “They all are.”
“Yes,” purred the queen mother with satisfaction. “My pets are the most beautiful, most well-loved, most well-tended cats in all the land. In all the world, most likely. You know,” she continued, “when I first came to the castle, I inherited the cats that had belonged to the queen mother before me. My favorite was a small gray kitten with a white face and blue eyes. I called her Finch, because she was quick and shy like a bird. That cat was my best comfort, Ama, in my early days here. In my early years, even, as I adjusted to becoming a wife and a queen. She is long dead, that cat, but I miss her still, to this day.”
Ama looked carefully into the queen mother’s dark eyes. The woman before her was the only person who shared Ama’s past—a rescue from a dragon; a voyage to this castle; a marriage to a king. Ama listened.
“Here is the truth,” the queen mother said, and Ama felt herself go straight in her chair, felt her spine tingle, felt the hairs on her body stand on end. “It is a king’s world in which we find ourselves, Ama. A woman, you see, is a vessel. And it is a vessel’s duty to be filled. What is a cup without wine? What is a vase without flowers? A cup, you might say, is not a cup at all, until it has felt the flow of wine within it. A vase without an arrangement of blooms to hold? Not a vase, at all, really. A vase is meant to be filled. Am I making sense, so far?”
Ama’s every nerve vibrated with the desire to stand up, shout loudly, and run away, away from the urine-tinged air of the queen mother’s sultry-hot chambers, away from the words the queen mother spoke. But she held her nerves together, and she softened her hand, which had gripped, clawlike, in the ginger cat’s fur, and she said, “I am listening, Queen Mother.”
“Good,” the queen mother responded. “Listen more. Because, Ama, you are no ordinary woman. You are a damsel, rescued from a dragon, and destined for a king. As I was, and as your future son’s wife will be, as well.”
Her future son’s wife. Her future son. A chill ran across Ama’s skin and her palms were slick with sweat.
“And you will be a vase that will hold the most precious, the rarest flower of all—the son of my son, the future king. You are important, Ama. You are special, for you alone can bear the prince to come. No one else. Only you. Only the king can plant the seed, and only you can grow it. It is a unique privilege. A unique duty. To create a king! What more, dear girl, could a damsel hope for?”
“But Queen Mother,” Ama asked, managing to keep the tremor from her voice, “surely we are more than just the men we serve. What were we, before we were taken by dragons? Before we were rescued by men?”
“That is a dangerous question, dear heart,” the queen mother said. “It is better, I think, if rather than asking questions—rather than traipsing about the castle, bothering the servants, for instance, at their work—”
And here, Ama could not stop her face from showing her astonishment, her cheeks from darkening with shame. How could the queen mother know that she had been in the kitchens this morning? But, of course, the queen mother must make it her business to know everything.
“—Rather than such antics, Ama, your time could be much better spent learning how to please your king, and preparing yourself for the wedding, and practicing ease in this body of yours. This life of yours. Acceptance, Ama. That is woman’s greatest strength, you know. The power to accept that which must fill her.”
The queen mother blurred in Ama’s tears, and Ama looked down at the cat in her lap. He smiled a bit in contented sleep, wanting for nothing, questioning nothing. Two tears dropped from her eyes and splashed into his ginger fur.
“You seem to have taken well to that cat,” the queen mother said. “It will be my pleasure to gift him to you.”
Ama sniffed and willed herself to smile. “You are generous, Queen Mother, but I think that my Sorrow may not take kindly to another animal in my quarters. I would hate for any harm to come to one of your cats because of my Sorrow.”
“Oh,” said the queen mother, waving a hand as if to clear that foolish notion from the air, “I wouldn’t worry about that. The king knows that your animal is not fit for the court. I would not be surprised if, by the time you return to your room, you find that problem taken care of already.”
Ama’s Prayer
How could she sit through breakfast, then? How could she smile and nod and make pleasant conversation? How could she drink barley tea?
She could not. Ama stood, quickly, and the ginger cat yowled as he rolled from her skirts, landed on his feet, and stalked disdainfully away. Perhaps it was the result of standing so quickly, and in such heat. Perhaps it was due to the sweet-spice tang mixed with the acidic sting of cat urine. Perhaps it was because of the queen mother’s words about Emory and Sorrow. Whatever the cause, the result was that when Ama stood, the world around her seemed to narrow inward to a tiny point of searing light, so bright as to blind, so small as to almost disappear.