The eighth chapter.
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A large rose-tree stood near the entrance of the garden: the roses growing on it were white, but there were three gardeners by it ("They look rather serpentine…" thought Yuki), busily painting them a dazzling pink.
Yuki thought this was very odd, and came closer to watch them, and just as he came up he heard one of them say "Look out now, Five! Don't go splashing paint about like that!"
"I couldn't help it," said Five, in a sulky tone "Seven jogged my elbow."
On which seven looked up and said "That's right, Five! Always lay the blame on others!"
"You'd better not talk!" retorted Five "I heard the Queen say only yesterday that you very nearly deserved to be beheaded!
"What for?" asked the one that had spoken first, whose scales, Yuki noticed were all of a club-shape, like in a pack of cards.
"That's none of your business, Two!" said Seven, who had Diamond-shaped scales.
"Yes, it is his business!" said Five, his scales of which were of a Spade-shape "And I'll tell him- it was for bringing the cook tulip-roots instead of onions."
Seven flung down his brush, and had just begun, "Well, of all the unjust things-" when his eye fell down upon Yuki, as he stood watching them, and he checked himself suddenly: the others looked around also, and bowed down low.
"Would you tell me," said Yuki, a little timidly, "why are you painting those roses?"
Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, "Why, the fact is, you see, Sir, this here should have been a Pink rose-tree, and we put in a white one by mistake, and if the Queen finds out, he'll be so angry- he might have our heads chopped off! So you see, Sir, we're doing our best before he comes, to-"
At that moment, Five, who'd been anxiously looking across the garden, called out, "The Queen! The Queen!" and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their scaly backs.
There was a sound of many footsteps, and Yuki looked around, curious to see this Queen that everyone had been talking about.
First came ten soldiers carrying clubs: they were all of the same sort of creature as the three gardeners, Yuki noticed; next ten courtiers; these all had shining crimson diamond-shaped scales, and were quite bejeweled. After these came all of the guests, mostly Kings and Queens, and among them Yuki recognized Momiji ("He really is climbing up the social ladder young…" he mused): he was talking in a hurried, nervous manner, smiling brightly at everything that was said, and went by him without saying a word (Which Yuki found most rude). Then followed the Knave of hearts, who was looking very out of place in the procession, and not the least bit interested. He was begrudgingly carrying the King's crown, and Yuki had to quickly stop himself from laughing, for he looked as if the whole thing to him was a silly children's game; and last of all in this grand parade, came THE KING AND QUEEN OF HEARTS.
Yuki wasn't sure if he was to lie down on his back like the gardeners, but he thought that it was such a silly idea that not even this place would think it to be fine, so he stood where he was, and waited.
While he was waiting, he studied the King and Queen. The King looked like he was enjoying himself the most and that it was all a game in which he mostly ruled over, for him. His Yukata was a plain royal blue, but he wore a cloak over this, which was covered in intricate embroidery, while the fringing was dotted with hearts, the identical shade to the colour that the roses were to have been. As he laughed to something that one of the guests said, Yuki was sure that this man was Shigure Sohma.
"Ah, you forget" piped up his conscience, making Yuki jump, for it had not been able to speak for quite some time "that this place changes the rules to what you say is true. Why, whoever heard of the King of Hearts being a lowly Novelist!"
"Ah, true," thought Yuki "he isn't the real Shigure." To which his conscience began asking him why he was contradicting everything he knew that was correct. Yuki ignored it. He was getting very good at ignoring his conscience, actually.
While Yuki was thinking this, the procession had halted in front of him.
"Who is this?" said the Queen of Hearts severely, glaring down at Yuki-chan. The Queen had an identical cloak to the King, but this one was all a lurid pink, and a little glitzier. Worn underneath the cloak was a dress of a very frilly variety, which was drawn together with something that looked a lot like a tape-measure, of which the loose ends hung in loops around his sleeves. The outfit was finished with a grand-looking staff, and a golden pink-jeweled crown was placed upon the Queen's silvery hair.
The Queen was elegantly holding up a fan to his face while he asked this. "Well?" he asked, narrowing his eyes slowly, as he looked around at the silent group. The King shrugged his shoulders, still smiling, while the Knave pretended to take no notice at all.
"Really, I only asked a question!" said the Queen, tossing his head impatiently, and turned to Yuki, still fanning his face quickly, "What's your name, little child?"
"My name is Yuki, your Majesty," said Yuki very politely, thinking that he should try to be polite to this Queen, if he was fond of arresting or beheading people. There was something that bothered Yuki about him, though…
"And who, dear Yuki-chan, are these?" asked the Queen, pointing to the three gardeners who were lying around the rose-tree; for, you see, as they were lying on their backs, and their under-scales were exactly the same as all of the other serpents, he could not tell whether they were gardeners, or soldiers, or any of the courtiers.
"How should I know?" said Yuki coolly, surprised at his own daring "It's no business of mine."
The Queen blushed crimson with fury, and, after glaring at Yuki for a moment like a wild beast ("Like an angry serpent" Yuki noticed), shouted "Off with his head! Off-"
"Nonsense!" said Yuki, very loudly and clearly, and the Queen was silent, still blushing and fanning himself.
The King laid a hand upon his arm, and calmly said, always in a non-serious tone, "Consider, dear boy, if he keeps his head, we could have another one to join in with our game!"
The Knave looked up at this, and added, in an unimpressed tone, "It's also not very strategic to behead every person who disagrees with you."
The Queen glared, and said to the Knave, "Turn them over, please!"
The Knave did so, very carefully, with one foot.
"Get up!" snapped the Queen, in a shrill, loud voice, and the three gardeners got up immediately, and began arching down to bow to the Queen, the King, the Knave, and everybody else.
"Oh, leave off that!" glared the Queen, pausing in fanning himself to sigh "You're being most silly, and you're making me giddy." and then, turning to the rose-tree, he went on "What have you been doing here?"
"May it please your Majesty," said Two in a very humble tone, bowing down low as he spoke, "We were just trying-"
"I see!" said the Queen quickly, who had been examining the roses in the meantime. "Off with their heads!" and the procession moved on, leaving behind three guards to execute the poor gardeners, who slithered to Yuki for protection.
"Don't worry!" Yuki said, and put them into a large flower-pot that stood near, for he did not like the idea of that horrid Queen getting his way. The three soldiers wandered about for a minute or two, looking for them, and then quietly marched off after the others.
"Are their heads off?" asked the Queen, looking over his shoulder at the guards.
"Their heads are gone, if it please your Majesty" replied the guards, in a quick tongue, flicking their own forked tongues out as they did so.
"That's right!" nodded the Queen. "Can you play croquet?"
The soldiers didn't reply, but looked at Yuki instead, so the question was clearly directed towards the Rat.
"Yes, a little." admitted Yuki quietly.
"Come on then!" said the Queen, waving his hand impatiently, and Yuki joined the procession, wondering where this would bring him.
"You've been rather quiet," Yuki remarked to his conscience, who was sitting once again on the Nezumi's shoulder.
"Everyone knows that consciences have to attend when the Queen is talking to them." his conscience dismissed, fluttering its wings.
"It's a great day, ja?" said a bubbly-sounding voice at Yuki's side. He was walking beside Momiji, who was looking up at him, questionably.
"Very," said Yuki "-where's the Duchess?" For she was no where to be seen, even though Yuki clearly remembered that she was meant to play croquet with the Queen.
"Hush! Hush!" Momiji said quickly, his voice dropping a little. He looked carefully about as he spoke, then raised himself up on tip-toe, and whispered into Yuki's ear, "The poor Herzogin is under sentence of execution."
"What for?" asked Yuki.
"Did you say, 'What a pity!'?" Momiji asked.
"No, I'm sorry, I didn't," said Yuki "I don't think it's really a pity at all. I said 'What for?'"
"She commented on the Queen's fashion sense-" Momiji began. Yuki could not help but let out a little shriek of laughter. "Oh, try to be quiet!" Momiji whispered in a worried tone "The Queen will hear you! You see, she came rather late, and the Queen said-"
"In your places, all of you!" shouted the Queen, and everyone immediately began running about in all directions, bumping into each other; however, they got settled down in a minute or two, and the game began.
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Yuki thought he had never seen such an odd croquet ground in his life: it was all ridges and furrows, the balls were live (Bright pink) hedgehogs, the mallets live (Bright pink) flamingos, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and arch their bodies up like arches.
Yuki found that he wasn't very successful with the game. His flamingo kept on refusing to straighten itself out, and his conscience kept on protesting every time that Yuki managed to straighten the flamingo out, and was about to hit the hedgehog with it.
"I do like birds," his conscience told Yuki, "And I don't find it very civil to whack them about on hedgehogs."
By this time, Yuki's hedgehog had begun crawling off, so he had to chase after it, and after a little while, Yuki concluded that this was a very stupid game indeed.
The players all played at once, without waiting for turns, and fighting for each other's hedgehogs. Very soon, they were making nasty comments to each other, which usually resulted in the Queen shouting "Off with his head!" or "Off with her head!" about once a minute.
This naturally made Yuki a little uneasy, and he was just trying to think of a way of leaving without being seen, when he noticed a curious apparition in the air.
It puzzled him very much at first, but after watching it for a moment or two, he made out a grin, and said to himself "It's that baka Neko: now I suppose I shall have someone to talk to."
"How are ya?" asked the Cat, as soon as there was mouth enough for him to speak with, though he didn't sound very interested.
Yuki waited until his eyes appeared, and then nodded, and waited for his ears to appear (For there should be no reason to speak if he had no ears to hear with). In another minute the whole head had appeared, and Yuki began into an account of how the game had been, happy to finally have someone other than his conscience (Who had gone off to talk with one of the flamingoes) to talk to.
The Kyou-cat (He was again in his Cat form) seemed to think there was no need for appearing more of himself, and left it at his head.
"I really don't think it's a very good game at all!" Yuki complained, quite forgetting that he disliked the Neko "Everyone is so fond of insulting each other, and if there are rules, if any at all, no one attends to them. And I should have hit the Queen's Hedgehog a moment ago, but it ran away when it saw mine coming!"
"How do you like the Queen?" said the Cat in a low voice.
"Not at all," Yuki glared, thinking he knew who the Queen reminded himself of now. "He's so extremely-" Just then he noticed that the Queen was close behind him, and listening: so he went on, "-likely to win, that there really isn't any point in finishing the game. And his fashion sense is fabulous!"
The Queen smiled, looking most pleased with himself, and passed on.
"Coulda' fooled me." the Cat grumbled to himself.
"Oh, little Yuki, who are you talking to?" said the King, coming up to Yuki, and looking at the Cat's head oddly.
"He's an acquaintance of mine- a Cheshire Cat, I suppose," said Yuki "Allow me to introduce it."
"Well, I don't really like the look of it," said the King in his usual laughing tone: "however, he may kiss my hand if he likes."
"I'd rather not." remarked the Cat flatly.
"Maa, how rude!" wailed the King, which sounded decidedly fake, "and don't look at me like that with those angry eyes!"
"I don't think it's really wise to be arguing with a bodiless Cat." said Yuki, wondering how it was really possible.
"I don't care, it must be removed!" declared the King, waving his arms, and called to the Queen "My dear! Can you have this Cat removed?"
The Queen, when he was in such a cross state, had only one way of dealing with things that did not agree with him. "Off with its head," he said, without even looking around.
"I'll get the executioner myself!" laughed the King, rather nastily, and eagerly rushed off.
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Yuki decided that he should really go and find his conscience, so he wandered off in search of his flamingo. He found the bird hiding behind a bush with most of the other player's flamingoes, all evidently hiding from the Queen.
His conscience was sitting on the head of Yuki's flamingo, and was discussing a way to assassinate the Queen and take the throne for themselves (Yuki did not like this one bit, as it sounded a little bloodthirsty, and if the Queen was indeed the odd doppelganger of his brother Ayame, Yuki did not want to find out if deaths extended to the real world).
"Come on," Yuki sighed, sounding very tired, and he picked up his conscience by one of its wings (To which it made many noises, such as: "Hey! Let go! You can't take me away from there! Let me go! Assault! Assault!" and a great deal of other things that were unmentionable), and took it back to where the Cheshire Cat was.
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When he got back, he was surprised to find quite a large group collected around the Cat: there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen, who were all talking at once. The rest of the party were silent, and looked very uncomfortable.
The moment Yuki appeared, he was appealed to by all three to settle the question, and even though they repeated their arguments for him, Yuki still found it quite hard to understand them, for they were all talking at once.
The executioner's argument was that in order to behead somebody, there needed to be a neck to cut, and as there was no neck on the Cat, he couldn't do his job.
The King's argument was that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you shouldn't talk such nonsense.
The Queen's argument was that if somebody didn't do something about the situation soon, he would have everybody beheaded, and this last comment was what was making everybody look rather uncomfortable.
Yuki could not think of anything to say, so he told them "You should ask the Duchess- it's her Cat."
"Oh, she's in prison," said the Queen to the executioner "Fetch her now." And the executioner slithered off as fast as his muscles would allow him to.
Kyou seemed to think this was a good cue to leave, and began fading away, so that when the executioner had finally come back with the Duchess, he had completely disappeared; so the King and the executioner ran wildly about looking for it, and the rest of the party went back to the game.
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For those wondering, Herzogin means "Duchess" in German. Please Review!
Zuki-chan.
And yet again, character illustrations. Omit the spaces, as usual:
The King of Hearts: http/www .deviantart. com/deviation /18417266/
The Knave of Hearts: http/www .deviantart. com/deviation /18553866/
The Queen shall come later…
