From the Private Reckonings of the King: On the morning of the hunt, the light was so thin my men carried torches. There, beyond the stables, I was granted a vision. The sky above Saint-Germain-en-Laye opened to me, and a marble hall appeared. A thousand candles burned among the clouds. And there was music too—the sort my father once bid his court musicians to play. I heard the sound of a harpsichord. A dreaming melody. I thought of my wife, still in our bed. During the night, she’d complained of spirits on the stairs. They woke her, she said, moving stealthily on bandaged feet. They were children, teeth bare and gleaming. They wore garlands of the sepulture. Their once bright lips and eyes were black and crusted with the brine of decay.
I did my best to soothe my wife. “There are no such children,” I said.
“How do you know, my lord?” she asked.
“Because I am the king,” I replied. “And I would not allow such a thing.”
But on the morning of the hunt, I learned that I did not control the world. For I watched the sky reach down for me. A giant’s finger pressed against a blue membrane. Something wanted to break through. A thing that lived there in the sky. My men had already released the hounds. The hawk made circles above. We were at the edge of the Woods of Marley. Shadows fell from the turning blades of a windmill on the hill. Sheets of silence moved. It was as if day and night were one.
I did not pursue the stag that morning. Nor did I use my longbow. Instead, the creature emerged from the woods of its own accord, its great rack of antlers the color of ivory. The stag knelt delicately before me. I used my sword to pierce its muscular throat. My blade sliced through its flesh. The color of the animal’s pelt was the color of the palace I would build one day on that very spot: a pure and regal cream. And the blood of the stag was marble blue. When its throat was finally open, I saw a hall of mirrors shining there amongst the creature’s precious bones. I remembered my father once saying, “Take heart—for I have conquered the world.” I let him hold me then in his arms, and I wept at such a thought. I wondered if I too would one day be so strong.
“I will build a new palace,” I told my wife when I returned from the Woods of Marley that day. “A glorious thing.” My wife did not immediately respond. Perhaps she was still thinking of her dream, the children on the stair. “The gods,” I said, “they’ve always hunted. But none, I think, has ever hunted as well as me.” I was still covered in the stag’s glorious blood. Covered in gold and mirrors. I didn’t tell my wife about the sky. Or how it had reached for me. I didn’t dare.