3: The Mad King, ReduxBeri awoke in a too-bright room with his brain fuzzy and full of glittering fog. His thoughts came too slowly, as if they were being forced through a tea strainer before he was allowed to access them. His mouth felt dry, hangover dry, and his teeth were covered in soapy film.

  Wait. That didn't make sense.

  He hadn't touched dishwashing detergent since he was a boy. Eighth-grade Katie had insisted on teaching him to wash dishes because she ‘would not be responsible for weaponized incompetence.’ He hadn't bothered to remind her that any person with whom he cohabitated would have access to staff that would perform those chores for them both. Instead, he'd spshed Katie with suds and from there it had turned into kitchen warfare that left them both soaked. He remembered the annoyance on Marty’s face as he taught a prince how to use a mop, even though he considered Beri much too old to be learning something so basic. Katie, with her drying rag, had snickered from the floor.

  His head felt so terrible it took a while to realize his wrists were bound to the bed with a pair of soft fabric restraints. That he was in a bed at all was also fairly peculiar. Beri yanked once against the cuffs, but they were stuck fast, and the metal bed frame gave not at all.

  “There ya go.” The voice was too rough and too loud, echoing through the chambers of his head like the sound of waste metal dumped out in a cavern. “Time to wake up, pal. You’re getting a visitor this afternoon.”

  The man spoke English. Beri understood him but couldn't determine why this inconsiderate person would be doing such a nonsensical thing at such an unholy volume. It was an effort to annoy him, surely.

  “What visitor?” Beri slurred. He swallowed and tried again. “Who’s coming?”

  “A representative from the Faerie embassy.” When Beri tried, he could just about focus on the hulking person, who was wearing the wrong color of blue. He remembered something about that.

  The man continued, “I know you're tired. I need you to get moving, though. She's a very busy dy.”

  Beri asked, “Will you untie me?”

  The man in blue answered with a query of his own. “Are you going to magic me if I do?”

  That was a ridiculous question if Beri had ever heard one. “I don't need the use of my hands to bespell you.”

  “That's fair, I guess.” The man chuckled, echoing. “If you wanted to hurt me you would have done it already. Look, you promise not to magic anybody, I'll untie you.”

  Beri shook his head. “Your terms are too broad. I instead offer my word that if you untie me now, I will not attack first.”

  “Okay, buddy, you got it. I'm gonna trust you.” The man appeared above Beri. He had a broad, bluff face dusted with beard stubble. Well. That expined why he spoke English. He was human. But how had Beri come to be among humans? It made no sense whatsoever.

  The concert, he remembered. The Romuns.

  Gasping, he tried to sit, but the cuffs held him still. He demanded, “Did you–did they find Katie? Is she all right?”

  “Take it easy.” The human grasped his shoulder kindly, as if to offer comfort. Despite himself, Beri settled under the rge hand. “I don't know who that is. You were doped on ketamine when you got here. I only knew you spoke English on hearsay.”

  Beri’s eyes filled. He did not usually cry in public but today was an exception to that rule. “She's–I love her and she's gone. They took her, and no one will help me find her. She's very small, you see, and she's very brave but very–she’s very small.”

  The man tsked. “Terrible how people act these days. Let's get you a shower and see if your head clears up any, huh? Then maybe you can remember where your girlfriend went.”

  That sounded reasonable, so Beri subsided long enough to let the man in blue unfasten the cuffs. His unlikely human compatriot helped him to sit upright, then hovered while Beri stood and regained his bance by leaning against the aluminum bed frame. After that the man accompanied him through an austere room full of people Beri didn’t know doing things his tired mind couldn’t understand. He smelled antiseptic cleaner. They made it to a bathroom with benches and too many shower stalls. It certainly wasn’t like the one in his house, which, now that he thought on it, Beri could remember very clearly.

  All of the tile here was a rather disgusting industrial shade of mint. He could not figure out how to remove this odd robe he found himself wearing, either, as he could not determine where it opened. He gave up and colpsed onto a wooden bench to pull the braids out of his hair.

  The man in blue said, “I bet it takes a long time to do those.”

  “It does,” Beri agreed, realizing it did. “Hours. Every day.”

  The man whistled, low and impressed. “Do you do them yourself?”

  Beri snorted. “No. There are women. Two. They make more money than the Secretary of Transportation.”

  The man ughed. “I don’t know how much money that is, but that’s a lot of money. Probably save a little if you left the braids in for a couple of weeks like my wife does.”

  “I can’t. It would be as if I’d re-worn the same clothing. The three kingdoms would riot. There would be bloodshed in the streets as the popuce prepared for imminent economic catastrophe. We’d run out of milk and toilet paper.” Beri made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “And they’re traditional.”

  “People are really invested in your hair.” Trent sounded impressed.

  Beri nodded. “They’re really invested in everything I do.”

  By the time he finished bathing Beri’s brain was clearer, though not exactly clear. The robe he’d struggled with was a hospital gown. When he was dry he accepted a pair of soft pants and a shirt, as well as a thin, white bathrobe. There was no belt with which to tie it closed, so Beri just left it open. He tried to straighten his hair out with a flimsy pstic comb. Eventually, he gave it up and pited the whole thing wet. He finally understood that he was in some sort of hospital, and the man in blue was wearing medical scrubs.

  He remembered being determined mad by a small woman with a pen in her hair and assaulted by hospital staff. They’d won, apparently. Fighting his way free just now seemed an insurmountable task.

  The man (Orderly? Nurse, perhaps?) had said a representative from the Faerie Embassy was on the way. He remembered asking for one and being told one could not arrive until business hours. That was–Beri started. That was on a Saturday night. He’d lost days while under the influence of their human drugs.

  He buried his face in his hands. Katie was dead. There was no way she’d survived those iron-armed creatures this long without help. His mind whispered, She was alive when Aynia said she was dead. She’s stronger than you think. He lifted his head, then slid his feet into the ill-fitting terry cloth slippers the man in blue had gifted him.

  “You okay?” The man was still hovering.

  Beri asked, “What do they call you?”

  “Trent.” He smiled a little, pointing at the name badge he wore pinned to the pocket of his scrubs. “But everything I read on the internet said not to give you my name so don’t do anything weird to me, okay?”

  “You didn’t give me your name.” Beri leaned against the ugly tile wall behind him. “You only told me what people call you. It’s considered bad manners among my people to ask for your name.”   “So is all that true, that you can hurt me with my name?”

  Beri nodded. “Yes. Are you a nurse? An orderly?”

  “Psych tech,” Trent said. “You stayed under the ketamine longer than you should have. I’ve been watching you since yesterday afternoon when they finally figured out you were going to come back up.”

  “I’m not human. Drugs don’t affect me as they do you.” It was a very good thing for these people that they hadn’t managed to kill him by accident. That would have been embarrassing for the United States. “How long until this embassy representative arrives?”

  Trent checked the time on his phone. “Should be any minute now. What do they call you?”

  “Beri.” How was he supposed to have a second conversation after this one? He wanted nothing so much as to go back to sleep.

  “Like the fruit?” Trent asked.

  Beri shook his head without lifting it from the tile. “No. Am I in a sanitarium?”

  “Acute Treatment Unit,” Trent said. “But yeah. Pretty much. You’re on a seventy-two hour hold.”

  “Until they determine I’m not a danger to myself or others,” Beri remembered.

  “That’s right.” Trent paused, studying him with a clever, narrow expression. “You seem pretty lucid, though, even through the ketamine. Do you remember breaking a guy’s ankle Sunday morning?”

  A memory swam up through the fog: the sick crunching sound as the orderly he’d levitated hit the ground. “I didn’t break his ankle. The woman with the bell broke his ankle.”

  Trent smirked. “Yeah? And what were you pnning to do with him before she rang the bell?”

  Beri closed his eyes. “Probably break his ankle.”

  Once he had brushed his teeth, Beri followed Trent back through the rge room, which, upon inspection, he determined to be some sort of common area. People dressed simirly to him pyed cards in groups. A few sat on thread-worn sofas watching a ft-screen television. One man shuffled back and forth, pacing and muttering under his breath. The sanitarium’s inhabitants studied Beri in turn, but their eyes were wide and gssy, their movements slow and precise, as if they had to reach for drinking gsses and pying cards through very deep water. Drugged. Beri shuddered. If the way his head felt at this moment was any indication of what these ‘medicines’ would do to him, he wanted no further truck with them.

  When he finally made his way back to his room, a small, pstic cup holding two white capsules waited on a rolling table. There was food beside the cup, something odd and pressed from meat, covered in brown sauce. His stomach made it clear none of the tray's offerings would be passing his teeth now.

  “Ooh, lunch.” Trent rubbed his hands together theatrically until he caught the expression on Beri's face. “Tough crowd.”

  Beri frowned. “Why do people keep saying that?”

  Trent snorted amusement as he shook his head. “No idea. Here, take your meds.”

  “No.” Beri held out his palm, stop.

  Trent stopped, pstic cup in hand, expression dismayed. “Come on, Beri, don't be like that. We're friends, right? I wouldn't steer you wrong.”

  Beri crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. “Absolutely not.”

  The psych tech lowered his hand, expression turning serious. “Look, I'm not trying to be a jerk, here. It's just that you're not allowed in the sunroom if you're not on your meds. Rules are rules.”

  Ah. So, there was the rub. “Are you saying that if I don't agree to take drugs which I do not need, from people with a proven track record of failing to account for my physiology, I will remain a prisoner in this room?”

  Trent sighed. “Oh good. The ketamine is wearing off.”