Episode 215: Melnapping (Meldrick)

Meldrick sat. He sat on a couch in the living room, the kitchen island a few feet behind him. He had dreamt of sharing kissing with Giana, of cluttering the island with something and her asking him to clear it.

He had dreams of normal, simple, of life with Giana.

She wasn’t there. She never had a chance to see the living room or the kitchen, or the other rooms for that matter.

She wasn’t there and his chest still felt heavy with water from her drowning.

On some level, he knew she shouldn’t be able to drown, but it felt like drowning. He’d felt drowning before. When Aadya had drowned.

He didn’t know how she had drowned either. It all felt like a barrage of conflicting sensations.

Thoughts were a web, tangled and unapproachable. Something had happened to Giana. It had been painful and unexpected and fast. It had happened after dinner, after a shower. He was still wet if he thought about it.

He heard banging from beside the fridge.

Down the small hall to the door, knocking. It wasn’t the fridge.

Mel stood and walked to the door. “Konrad.”

He had brought friends. Meldrick couldn’t recall scheduling an evening with Konrad. There was supposed to be a war that evening. It had to be strategic.

“Any word of Giana?” he asked. He held the door wide open so Konrad and the friends could come in. A strategic meeting could take hours, hours Giana didn’t have.

Hours Giana was dead during, if she was dead.

It all felt like the worst alcohol he had ever allowed to poison his body. Perhaps it was poison; a cornucopia of beverages assaulting his senses.

Soren liked corn.

It may have been related.

But to what. Related to what.

“Not at the moment,” Konrad replied. “Would you care to come with me while I release Spence?”

No. “I would rather wait here.”

He wanted to eat. Pizza. He wanted more pizza.

“I thought you might like the distraction,” Konrad offered.

Soren would eat pizza. Maybe he knew Rhyss.

No, that wasn’t it. Soren was … the thought escaped Meldrick again. Giana was gone though. Giana needed him to be home, waiting. She needed lemon sorbet.

He didn’t know if she liked lemon sorbet, but it felt like something she would like. The sweet bitter taste, the coolness on her tongue. A movie.

“What if she returns?” Meldrick asked. He needed to prepare for her. He needed sorbet.

Soren! He would know where sorbet was. He knew where everything in the various realms was.

That settled the issue. Soren would help him get sorbet and pizza.

Konrad smiled.

Meldrick smiled.

Everything was okay.

“I believe she knows her way around,” Konrad insisted.

Why had he smiled? He was a cat, praying on Meldrick’s soul. Except Meldrick liked cats. Konrad was a weasel or something slimy wiggling its way through pores in Meldrick’s mind.

If Giana returned she would return to her bedroom. This was the living room. Meldrick needed to be in the living room so she could find him.

“Thank you for the offer,” Meldrick replied. “I’d like to be here.”

He felt a wave of fuschia brush over his mind. If he was going to get sorbet he couldn’t leave.

Konrad had trapped him.

“Will you answer some questions downstairs, then?” Konrad asked.

“You think I hurt her?” He studied his hands. Had these hands committed a murder, after all?

What had he freed her from? There had to be a reason hidden beneath the layers of disorder.

He couldn’t have hurt her though; she had vanished. Death was not vanishing it was ceasing to be alive. Vanishing was travel packs.

Something there. Something loud was pounding against his brain like the prisoner he was about to be.

“The circumstances are odd,” Konrad explained. “I would like to ensure that you didn’t, so that we can focus on finding what or who did.”

“Fine.” Meldrick wanted to focus. If Konrad had focus, everything would be right. Clarity. He closed the door behind them. Something could get in if he didn’t.

“Thank you.” Konrad walked, his stride like skis alternating legs.

He would take Giana to the mountains if they reunited. He could attach a small flag to a stick and insert it into her sorbet, along with a small toy skiing figurine. She would enjoy it. The lemon… it would be something. They could wear yellow when they skied. Yellow skis. Yellow boots. Was lemon sorbet yellow? Some flavors, like mint, often did not come in the associated color.

Colorless.

“What happened, from the time you went into the room, until the time you left?”

That was the wrong question. Meldrick wanted to inform Konrad of his error, but he didn’t know why it was wrong and it was Konrad’s job to ask the right question.

Meldrick must have been wrong.

He rubbed his head while Konrad was a stride ahead.

From when they entered the apartment. “We came home. I took a shower. I started to break up with her, and she vanished.”

“What prompted the desire to separate?”

“The dinner. She was attached to me the whole night. Quiet. I couldn’t think.”

Her scent lingered in his mind. Too much linen, and something strawberry.

“Did she argue?” Konrad asked.

They were moving into the dungeon. Like the eloquent skier, Konrad wove his way through the interrogation in a way that stunned Cato.

“A little? But she vanished before we could really talk about it.”

“Has she behaved oddly at all?”

He had been the one to behave oddly. He hadn’t wanted to ruin Giana’s life. He would reprise himself.

“I don’t believe so,” he replied for Konrad’s sake. It was the question after all. “Being with her… she’s different than I expected. I wanted her to be happy, not to compromise herself for me.”

He couldn’t remember when he stopped enjoying touch. Their morning had been spent immersed in one another and he hadn’t minded it.

“You love her?” Konrad opened a cell door, one with a table and a bed. The rooms were nice. He doubted he would get steak in the room but he enjoyed the decor. The room had sheets with a salmon and pale blue pattern printed on a grey background with a grey wool blanket.

“Yes.” Meldrick loved her. “I love her.”

He moved into the room, after not moving into the room for a hesitation. “I want more for her.”

Life. He wanted life for her.

When he’d lost Maisie, his life had been in ruins. It wouldn’t be long, things would be right soon.

“Have a seat, we’re nearly done. I have one more line of questions.”

Meldrick sat.

“I noted this afternoon that Tarragon and Annatto seemed to recognize you.”

“I’m the king. Why wouldn’t they?”

Aside from the entire kingdom forgetting his existence often. Aadya, the queen of their dreams, was unforgettable though.
“To know you.” Konrad leaned back in his chair and waited.

“I don’t know them. How could I?”

“Tell me about when you killed your mother.”

“I went to kill her, and I did. Not. She was already dead.”

She was dead, but he had gone and her death had been fulfilled.

“Who have you been visiting then? You never were close with your aunt.”

His aunt? He didn’t remember her as anyone worth remembering. That. Hmm. He had an aunt.

“Visiting?” he asked, with no proper response to the aunt comment. “The estate. I’m here most of the time, though.”

He loved Giana’s estate. He wanted to commision a painting of it for the new apartment before they moved. He wanted the acres of her home, a mist blanketing the background as trees and the shaped shrubs of the garden framed the foreground. He wanted it to be the second thing they hung on the walls, after their lantern from their last trip.

“Which estate?” Konrad asked. “Where have they secreted themselves?”

Did he mean secret-ed or secreted, as in oozed.

He said secret-ed.

But, the subtlety was too small. Subtle differences in language mattered.

“Giana’s estate.” He splayed his hands on the table. “I don’t’ know them. If I did, we would have recovered them before now.”

“Tarragon says otherwise.”

“Then he’s lying.” This argument had nothing to do with Giana. Where was Corban? He would be an asset in this conversation. He would see how futile discussing his family history was, at the moment. Still, he needed the questions to end. “He’s been raised by Ionia, and you’re taking his word against mine?”

“You were raised by Titania,” Konrad pointed out.

“You know me,” Mel countered.

“I cannot reconcile the facts with my own experience of you. Some piece is missing. Until I discover what it is, I prefer that you remain here.”

“I have children to tend to. Aadya isn’t around. What are you going to tell them?”

“That you are busy elsewhere. Endymion and Dreya will tend to the children while I investigate.”

“No.” Meldrick stood. Unarmed against an armed man.

“The hall is full of guards,” Konrad said from his chair.

“I am not afraid of my guards,” Mel almost spat. Spitting was abhorant and so he only imagined it.

He opened the door and began to walk out. As he took a step, he heard Konrad slip his sword from his belt. He saw the hall, filled with guards ready to die at Konrad’s command.

Ready to die at Meldrick’s hand

“You’re going to murder your king?” Mel asked.

“Will you force my hand?”

“Why a cell?” He would have been content to sit in the living room and enjoy the company of a cat, not a cat-like-person but a genuine feline.

Konrad let the sword move in front of Meldrick. It wanted to hurt him. It wanted the end to come.

“If anyone is attacking this family, separate from the coming attack, your presence in the cell will prove your innocence.”

Meldrick pouted. “I have requests.”

“Yes?”

Something clear, the focus that was promised to him when he left his room. Pizza or meatballs.

“A book or two,” he said instead. “ I had one in my office.”

Konrad’s sword dropped and Meldrick re-joined him in the room. This time he sat on the bed. If he was going to be stuck in the room, he was going to sleep.

“Which books?”

“I don’t care,” Mel replied. He wanted to read for pleasure. Whatever he figured out would be a bonus.

“Alright. Anything else?”

“That’s all.”

Whoever delivered the book would receive a secret message, informing them that Konrad was not focused on the queen consort and was losing his mind again.

“Thank you,” Konrad said. “We’ll keep you as comfortable as can be achieved.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. As comfortable as reasonable.” He had fared worse than the finest cell Konrad could muster. Not finest, but a decent cell. The sheets were nice. He needed his own set like these. He would have to ask where they came from, once he was free again.

“Alright,” Konrad replied. He left the cell, the door open.

Typical.

Meldrick rested his head on a pillow and hummed himself to sleep. He had no sorbet for Giana, no Giana, no cats, no Corban or Soren or any of the things he wanted out of the conversation.

But he had a bed, and he was in desperate need of a nap.

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