Page 70 - The Grotesque Children's Book

all the way round the palace's eight sides, looking for an advantage over the
Gold Demon. She was hoping to find a place to spy on him while he did his
transformation, so she would know the answer. She didn't want to guess.

Just to remind you of the respective height of the palace: You are
perhaps visualizing a place as enormous as the Palazzo Vecchio, and while it
was as grand as that perhaps, it was not nearly so enormous. The Gold
Demon, you might recall, stood only a mere four feet tall, so Citia's brothers
and sisters, with their legs fused into single poles perched on pedestals, they
held the palace roof respectably high enough.

As you can imagine, it was rather emotional for Citia to see her brothers
and sisters standing sentinel at each of the eight corners. I'll not cry out. I'll not
weep. I have a job to do. There will be time for sadness later if I fail, and if I
succeed, then there will be no need for sadness. First the task at hand: spying
on Diavolo. Oh!, she thought loudly, seeing something high, near the roof. It
was a window. It was, in fact, eight windows, on each side of the octagonal
room which sat atop the second highest level of the building. Windows! she
thought.

It wasn't long before Citia had shimmied up to the second level, using
her eldest brother's armless torso, shoulders and then head as a stepping-
ladder, and sat at one of the windows, looking in and listening. She herself
hadn't made any sound louder than her loud thoughts, naked and shoeless as
she was.

Well, as luck and storytelling would have it, Diavolo was indeed in the
octagonal room, transforming object after object into gold, one after another.
Citia pressed her ear to the glass of the window, but she could hear nothing.
Her heart sank. How could she learn what his process was if she couldn't hear
him? He had the objects lined up on an eight-sided table next to him,
predominantly small bird skeletons at the moment...and he was making some

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