Over the years, Henry had settled into a comfortable situation with the monster. At first it had become more grotesque, but it eventually began to take on a more recognizably human form. As it did so, it started to become more troublesome, wanting to go outside during the day to enjoy the sun’s light. Henry learned he could distract it the same way as any other child: with toys and treats. Even a match produced enough light for it to snack on, so that was easily taken care of. His neighbors put together a trunk full of toys using what they had left over from their own time as children and what they thought the creature might like from shops around town. After coming by drunk and seeing it hungrily snacking on the golden light that reflected off of a plastic crown, Harvey called it “the Princeling.” The nickname stuck. The first time the monster spoke, it repeated the name back to them.
Seeing it play with toys and eat treats, Henry couldn’t help but think of it as a malformed child more than anything. Yes, he had to keep it hidden, but he could not hate or fear it any longer. This was only helped by the fact that it became more beautiful as it grew into what he assumed was adulthood for its species. Its hands grew so that they were more proportionate to its fingers, even if they still had that unsettling extra joint. Though its nails never changed in length or sharpness, Henry learned to avoid cutting himself on them. He had never seen it fly, so he mostly ignored its wings, even as they grew with the rest of it. Its legs became longer as it quickly became taller than Henry, though it learned to hide them behind an old red bed sheet wrapped around its waist. Its teeth remained needle-like, but they came to fit better inside its mouth, making them look somewhat less intimidating. From its head, curly golden locks began to grow, which Henry had to cut every so often to keep from getting tangled.
In a rather disgusting display, its milky blister-eyes one day burst while it was devouring the light from another matchstick. Feeling more worry for the thing’s wellbeing than he ever imagined he would, Henry rushed it to Father Owen. They bandaged its eyes, though they could only speculate about whether it even used them to see. After all, it had no trouble tracking down its favorite foods without them. When they finally removed the bandages, however, they found a pair of perfect spheres of white porcelain with bright red irises staring back at them. That they looked lifeless compared to human eyes barely seemed worth mentioning considering what an improvement they were over what had come before. In time, its lips turned the same shade of red, making it seem a little more alive, even if its chest didn’t rise and fall, its heart (if it had one) didn’t beat, and it only spoke words it heard earlier the same day.
Fifteen years after his discovery, Henry sat at a folding card table in the living room of his two-bedroom house. Jane, Harvey, and Father Owen came by to play cards. There was little worry that they would be found by the neighbors, so the Princeling was allowed to come out from his attic hiding place. Even so, Harvey kept it busy with a cigarette lighter. They had never pieced together why, but it reacted slightly differently to light from different sources. Those cheap plastic things Harvey picked up at the convenience store put it into a trance. It sat perfectly still at the edge of the room, staring into the flame. Its shadow, however, moved along the walls as if prowling for something. From time to time, a tiny circle of light would appear on the wall, as though cast from a penlight, only to be chased, caught, and devoured by the shadow of the monster. It never seemed to notice them while in that state, and they found it easy enough to ignore while they played their game.
A little past midnight, after a few too many drinks, Jane was the one to draw their attention back towards the creature. “You know,” she said, “I’ve gotta admit, Henry, when you refused to kill that thing, I thought you’d doomed the whole town. I had half a mind to leave with Hugh that night.”
“I still say we could make a good buck off it,” Harvey said. “More now than back then! It’s not just a freak now. It’s pretty on top of it. Looks like some kind of fucked up doll, sure, but in a good way.”
“Wow, thanks,” Henry answered, laughing. “I’m sure he’d love to hear you say that, Harv.”
“He?” Jane asked, arching a brow. “All these years and now you decide it’s a he? You find four dicks behind those eight legs or something? It is two balls each or do they have to share the one pair?”
“No, hold on,” Harvey said, glancing over at the still figure. “I can see it. It’s not like it’s grown tits or anything, right?”
“Is that what makes it female? All that beer’s been putting a pretty big pair on you, Harv.” Jane shot back. “If it starts getting a pair of its own, maybe we’ll luck out and end up the same size. Bras are like everything: cheaper in bulk.”
Harvey and Henry both laughed in response. The former answered, “We’re gonna have to buy in bulk either way. You think it’ll have four dicks but not four pairs of tits? You always did suck at biology, Jane.”
Once the next round of laughter died down, Henry chimed in again. “I guess we worried a lot about nothing back then. It’s not like I’m planning to show him off to the town or anything—it would help if he ate the flames off the torches instead of just the light, and I don’t know he’d do much about the pitchforks at all—but I’m glad he just ended up being kind of a weird pretty boy instead of a monster.”
His hands shaking with the tremors of his frankly venerable age, Father Owen set down his cards. “Henry, I owe you an apology.”
With the good humor of the night already starting to die from the priest’s tone alone, Henry put down his own cards. “Yeah? What for?”
“For never putting some of that tithe money towards the night’s booze?” Harvey offered, trying and failing to reignite the mood. When three pairs of eyes silently turned towards him, he muttered an apology and took another sip of his drink.
“When you found the creature—the Princeling, as you all have decided to call him—I put an unfair burden on your shoulders,” Owen said. “Small though my congregation may be, I should have taken the beast myself.”
Letting out a short and awkward laugh, Henry shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not a big deal. Hiding him’s cut into my social life, but he turned out pretty harmle—”
“No,” Owen interrupted, standing up with his hands on the card table and fixing Henry with a serious look. “No, my friend, it is not harmless.”
Jane stood up, putting a hand on Owen’s shoulder and guiding him back down into his seat. “Father… I know it might seem like we don’t take it seriously, but we’ve all been watching the Princeling grow. We’ve seen what it does all day. For heaven’s sake, Harvey keeps it busy with a lighter every time we need it to give us some space! I’m sure Henry knows what he’s doing.”
“Yeah,” Harvey agreed. “Doesn’t exactly take a rocket scientist to figure out that giving it something bright and shiny to… uh…” He looked over at the wall, seeing the creature’s silhouette grab another glimmering light between its fingers and pop it into its mouth. “…hunt, I guess, will shut it up for a while. Unless you’ve seen it do something different?”
Owen sighed as he settled back into his seat. “I have not. I simply… hm… I feel concerned for you. You take it too lightly, Henry. It isn’t a child you are raising. It’s a monster you’re keeping occupied, but it should not be your responsibility. In a way, I cannot condemn Hugh for deciding he didn’t want to be a part of this. If you ever decided the same… I would only ask that you come by the chapel and tell me, even if only me, before you go.”
Henry crossed his arms in front of him and leaned back in his chair. He looked back over at the Princeling, humming to himself as he considered the priest’s words. “I’ll keep it in mind. Still, I think I’m pretty happy. Things haven’t changed as much here as down by the docks, so it’s not so hard to keep him busy and hidden. It beats being alone, and I think he’d scare away anything dangerous.”
Nodding his head silently, Owen picked his hand of cards back up. The group played for a few minutes in relative silence before Henry managed to change the topic.
“So,” he began. “I heard that Jake’s selling his old trawler.”
“Yeah?” Harvey replied without looking away from his hand. “He getting a new one?”
“And how much is he asking?” Jane added.
“You remember his sister?” Henry asked.
“Jessica.” Owen wheezed out a laugh and tapped a trembling finger against his forehead. “See if Father Red remembers his flock like that!”
“See if Father Red chips in on th—Ow!” Harvey muttered, only to be cut off by an elbow from Jane.
Henry nodded his head. “Jessica lost a hand to a coyote a couple weeks ago. You know she had two more kids after she moved to New Whernside. Since Dan left, she’s… uh…”
“Shorthanded?” Harvey asked, a wide grin on his face.
Jane rolled her eyes. “Glad one of us is enough of an ass to say it.”
“Yeah,” Henry said. Before they could start bickering about Harvey’s crude comment, he added, “He’s asking eleven for it. Not in bad shape, though it might need a little work done to the exterior. It’s got room for all of us and… you know. Not like he sleeps in a bed or anything anyway. Out on the water, maybe we can even get him some sunlight.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jane said, putting down her cards. “I’ve got three saved up.”
Harvey put his cards down as well, prompting Henry and Owen to do the same. “I’ve only got fifteen hundred. Maybe I can stretch it to two thousand if I cash in that CD a little early.”
Henry smirked. “I can put in five, but you’ve gotta let me pick what we rename it.”
“Done,” Jane and Harvey answered.
“A fair trade,” Owen agreed. “I’m not certain about your plan to get the creature into the sun, but I think I have two or three thousand squirreled away for a rainy day that I may be able to put towards this. I’m having lunch with Kevin tomorrow. I’ll ask what he can pitch in, though I wouldn’t expect much if his tithes are anything to go by.”
This got a laugh from Harvey. “If we’re going by tithes, might as well count the whole group out. Ever think of hanging around the people actually keeping you afloat?”
“I like to think,” Owen responded, his mouth turning to a thin line and his gaze shifting towards the Princeling again, “that we have a special bond between us. You all give in your own way, even if some give more than others.”
“He also thinks the Andersons are a bunch of ass kissers,” Jane said. “Doesn’t matter if they’re the ones who give the most.”
Soon, the conversation shifted to the relative merits of some of the families in the neighborhood and to the question of whether or not it was virtuous to be overly involved in the life of one’s priest. Eventually, though, things died down again and the group began to leave for their own homes.
Father Owen was the last out the door. As he went, Henry helped him get his coat back on.
“Remember,” the old man said, “if it ever becomes too much, you are free to go. I will never keep you here, Henry.”
“I know, Father. You have a good night, okay?”
Henry watched as the priest nodded his head and disappeared into the night. Once Owen was out of sight, he felt long fingers wrap around his forearms, taking special care to avoid cutting him with those fingertips, though still pinning his arms to his sides without any real effort.
“Go?” the Princeling asked.
“Ah. You heard that? Father Owen means well, but I think he worries more the older he gets. I’m not going anywhere without you, alright?”
He felt the fingers loosen their hold on him. Only once the Princeling pulled his hands away entirely did Henry turn around. The once-monstrous thing was looking down at him with a puzzled expression. His smooth black hand now held onto his own opposite arm as he seemed to consider what to say.
Henry reached out, putting a hand on the Princeling’s shoulder and giving him a reassuring smile. “Trust me. I’ve stuck with you all these years. I see you every damn day. The other guys can talk all they want, but I know you, right? You know me too, don’t you?”
The silence continued for a few seconds longer before the Princeling replied, “I know you. You know me too.”
“That’s right!” Henry laughed and turned back around to shut and lock the front door. “Man, you’re getting quicker to pick up what we’re saying! Just wish you could string it together a little better from one day to the next.”
“String it together?”
“Yeah. Like… huh. Well, today, right? We talked about maybe going out on a trawler—a boat—and getting you a little sunlight!”
The Princeling’s eyes grew wide and his red lips stretched into a wide smile. “A boat. Sunlight!”
“Thought that’d excite you!” Henry turned back with a grin of his own. “I kinda feel like I’m feeding you junk food with all those matches and crap. I know you like getting light from the windows, but it doesn’t seem like you get enough with the blinds closed. Nobody’ll be around if we’re out at sea. You can soak in all the sun you want!”
“Sunlight!”
“Yeah. I’ve gotta admit though” Henry rubbed at the back of his head, feeling a little nervous admitting his fears to the literal monster he kept in his house. “…even if I think Owen’s worrying too much, I still hope I’m not being stupid. I don’t really know what you’d do if you were in the sun for a long time? Maybe I stunted your growth or something and you’d turn into a huge spider monster if I let you outside too long. So, how about we make a little deal, alright?”
“A little deal?”
“Uh-huh. I’m gonna work on getting us the trawler, but you’ve gotta work on stringing those words together. It’d make me feel a little better about this whole thing if I didn’t feel like you just repeat words you like back at me all the time. I can tell you’re smart. You just… I think you just need a little motivation, right? That’s what they told Dan about his kids. They got to go to the city for a weekend if they got good grades. You hold an actual conversation with me, and we’ll all go out on the boat and get some sun. Think you can do that?”
It was the pause and the way the Princeling’s eyes darted back and forth that made Henry certain his words had been understood. The way those nails tapped against that unnatural sin, making a clinking sound as they did, left him a little nervous, as it reminded him how little he could do if the thing ever turned on him. Still, he had hope.
“A little deal,” it finally said. “A little deal. Sunlight. Don’t feel like you just repeat words back at me. String it together a little better. Sunlight. Hold an actual conversation with me. Motivation. Boat. Sunlight.”
“Yeah! I think you’ve got it! The important parts at least! So, is it a deal?” Henry asked, offering his hand.
The Princeling stared at the hand long enough that Henry started to think he had lost him. Finally, though, he watched as the tall creature took that human hand into his own and raised it up to his lips. Henry flinched, sure that those teeth were about to sink into it, only to feel those cold, hard lips against his skin, the Princeling’s eyes shut as he kissed the hand.
“Is it a deal?” the Princeling repeated. “Motivation. Boat. Sunlight.”
Pulling his hand back, Henry tried to laugh off the odd behavior and nodded his head. “Yeah, I think it is. It’s… it’s a deal. Maybe we’ll use the time to work on your handshake a little. Not sure where you picked that up, but it’s not a great way to make friends around this town! Uh… I guess you don’t need to worry much about it either way, though. Still! We’ll work on it!”