Fanfiction Archive

When her husband managed, with great effort, to get her to answer why she never spoke of her sister, Nina had looked away.

“I hate her,” Nina said. “She’s gone. I hate her. Don’t make me think of her.”

Her sister was always quiet. The smart one. The one adults liked. But she had been Nina’s rock. Her whole world. When the men from the school took her sister away Nina had watched until she vanished; silently begging her to stay.

When one half of your heart is carved away how can you say anything but that you hate it?

It was said Simon Kaine had built the Polyhedron for himself, and maybe even he believed it. But the marvelous tower was the dream of Nina Kaina. It was she who had envisioned it, had whispered the idea of it into the ears of the men of the family, in the way of women who want to get anything important done. It was she who had brought together the minds that would birth it. It was she who had stayed up, drunk on math and bad beer and twyrine watching her architects plot the course. The tower belonged to Nina.

They said that Nina had died. They spoke of it in hushed whispers. Her shadow had loomed so large over the town, it seemed impossible to believe that she was simply gone. Her husband was in mourning. The town held its breath. What could possibly have taken the giant, Nina Kaina? Surely even death would bow its head to her in respect?

There was a child who said he had seen her on that final day. Laughing as she walked up the steps of her brave, impossible tower, so close now to being finished. She had never descended those steps.

Nina Kaina’s nimble fingers cradled the claw-carved pipe’s bowl, the light of the match flaming up high and briefly framing her in its light.She had stolen her husband’s so often that he had finally gotten her own, and the two would sit together smoking in quiet, or discussing dreams and sorcery. It always amused her to see the scandal on the faces of men who saw her put her soft lips to the stem, the smoke obscuring her face like a white veil as she puffed away gently; a great dragon with her coils wrapped around the whole town.

It is unfair to every other baby boy in the world how perfect Kaspar is. That’s Nina’s first thought when she holds him in her arms for the first time. This little creature, pink, and wailing, and helpless, is perfect in a way that words can’t describe. She holds him close, his heartbeat distant from her own for the first time. She knows as she holds him that someday little Kaspar will be a king. Like his sister, he is born for command. Like his mother, too. And as his mother she’ll lay a kingdom of stars at his feet.