The Hundredth House Had No Walls by Laurie Penny

Author:Laurie Penny
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

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The next night, the King was back at the bar before the band even started getting set up. The Princess of Everywhere and Nowhere was doing sound-checks with an upsettingly handsome drummer.

‘Can I help at all?’ asked the King.

‘Plug in that amp for me,’ said the Princess.

The King fiddled with the amp for forty-five minutes until someone took it away from him.

The next day, over breakfast in a run-down diner, the King asked the Princess to marry him.

‘Honestly, I’m flattered,’ said the Princess. ‘But I’m not really into the whole marriage thing.’

Nobody had said no to the King in a long time.

‘If you come to the land of Myth and Shadow as my Queen, we can feast together all day and night on every sort of sushi your heart desires. I will give you ten beautiful maidens to wait on you and ten handsome swordsmen to guard you and a golden piano to play, and you will enchant all the creatures of my land with your music as you have enchanted me.’

The Princess looked intrigued, so the King raised his game. ‘You will sleep on a bed of spider’s silk,’ he said, ‘and I will dress you in gowns of spun starlight.’

‘I’ve been dressing myself since I was six,’ said the Princess.

‘And aren’t you sick of it?’

‘You’re a very strange man,’ said the Princess. ‘I like it. I have to head back to the studio, but text me, ok?’

The King went back to his castle, gathered his most tenacious shadows about him and prepared for a sulk that would go down in legend.

She’s just a girl, he thought to himself. There are others.

But a chill wind of pathetic fallacy was blowing hard over the storyfields, and it whispered: you’re an idiot, and you’re kidding yourself.

‘What do I do?’ the King wailed at the innkeeper’s wife. ‘There’s nothing here she wants.’

‘Oh, you foolish man,’ said the innkeeper’s wife, who was no longer married to the innkeeper, and now ran a small vegan cafe in town. ‘She doesn’t want any of your treasures. She just wants you.’

The next night, when the show was over and all the hangers-on had finally left the party in the hotel lobby, the King climbed into bed. He curled his body around Melanie and started to tell her a story about a princess who grew up to be a cabaret singer, and a King who fell in love with her.

The King was nervous, because he’d never told this sort of story before. For one thing, the narrative structure was all wrong. For another, it had no ending to speak of, not yet, maybe not ever.

‘Once upon a time,’ said the King.

His mouth was very close to her face. Her hair smelled of cigarettes and vanilla.

The King of Myth and Shadow was no different from the rest of us in that he preferred stories to real life, which was messy and full of plot holes and disappointing protagonists. You couldn’t count on real life to deliver a satisfying twist, just more complications and the random violence of everyday heartbreak.

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