Chapter 8 Claret
I lie in lapping waters.
Their gentle movement lifts me like a breath, depositing me on to something soft and squishy.
For a second, before my eyes flutter open, I think I’m still in Agamemnon’s bathtub, locked in a subtle dance with his dead body, negotiating our new power dynamic – him dead, me breathing freely for the first time in a decade.
But then my eyes open, and I see the moons.
So many moons, scything a pearly path across the sky.
I blink, thinking my eyes are still adjusting to my new surroundings, but the moons remain, impossible and round, a necklace on a sombre night’s neck.
Where am I? As the thread of memory unspools, so do my senses.
I smell salt, and I remember running. A briny breeze is dancing on my hair, and I remember dancing through a darkened sky.
Darkened … There was a creature made of shadows and rosewater, whispering sinister nonsense as it chased us.
And before that, there was white, and doors, and her.
Anassa. The would-be queen without a name who held my hand, convinced me not to slaughter her, all forest eyes and pretty lies … She must have brought us here.
Only, she couldn’t have. It was our hands together that unlocked the door, and then –
A sound like the fiery river of the Underworld, burning and screaming and flowing –
The raven curtain of her hair, glistening in starlight, obscuring her from view as she –
… She fell. We fell. There was no dancing. We were running for our lives and we opened up that door and by the gods, the fall that followed should have ended us. I attempt to move my fingers but they’re buried, stuck in a substance that is cold and wet. I push harder. They come free.
Slowly, testing for any injuries and broken bones that would prevent my moving, I raise them to my face, examining them in that multiplying moonlight.
My hands are whole, unbroken. Caked in moist sand.
I venture to move my head next, and it complies.
On my right, jutting black rocks and shiny pebbles give way to volcanic sand laced with frothy waves, which are currently washing me ashore.
Something glitters in my line of sight, just out of reach.
My knife. I must have dropped it as we fell.
This little blade was supposed to be my one-time accomplice, a sharp tool to cement my rule.
I didn’t think it would become such an extension of my will that I’d feel lost without it.
Then again, nothing of my previous life could have prepared me for this long, long day.
White fogs, and disappearing doors, and falling through the starry sky …
And landing in a world that once again is not my own, going by the number of opalescent orbs above.
At least I’m not entirely defenceless. With great effort, I push myself to the side and crawl away from the waters, the black sand soft and strangely warm under my nails.
When I’m on solid ground, I push harder, willing my body to resist this sudden urge to rest, to let the waves claim me once more.
To stop fighting. Who am I, if I stop fighting?
I pray I never find out.
Eventually, I hold myself upright once more, although my feet have sunk into this sand way past my ankles, turning every step into a struggle.
I make my wobbly way towards my knife, plucking it from a nest of seaweed, shells and pebbles, under a rock.
I hold it in both hands, pressing the blunt end of its blade on my chest, the cool steel reassuring on my skin.
I feel unmoored, directionless, further away from Mycenae than before.
But if I’m stuck on these black-sanded shores, at least for the night, I’ll need some shelter from the moons’ relentless gaze.
I decide to use the vantage point of the rocks in front of me to orient myself.
Carefully, I climb on the least sharp-looking boulder, turning my back on the waters to explore the land.
No signs of human dwellings anywhere – just jagged rocks, growing more impenetrable the further inland it gets.
Higher up, a cliff. Above that, the sky, weaved with peculiar constellations. Gods! Is that …
I squint, craning my neck upward, to better discern the familiar shape amid the stars.
An open door of distant light, its ethereal frame growing fainter by the minute.
The door we fell from …
The realization hits me like a stone: lest I sprout wings and fly, there is no going back the way we came.
I fight the urge to fall apart, admit defeat.
I am alive, and have my knife – that’s more than most of us can say.
I have defeated Agamemnon, survived that realm of ashen shadows.
At least here, I can see clearly. And there’s no hint of roses in the air, that would betray the shadowy creature’s presence. I’m safe for now.
I’ll find a path, even if I have to carve one through these black rocks in the distance.
I turn my gaze once more to the waters, in case there are any ships or lights ahead, pointing to a friendlier shore. The sea is pretty, I suppose, glittering almost silver from the many orbs above, ebbing and flowing in a calming –
Oh.
There is a spot the moonlight doesn’t touch; a spot where screaming darkness blooms. I can barely hear the cries in the distance; I had mistaken it for winds hitting the rocks.
Like a poisoned cloud of tar, the wraith hovers above the waves, its ghostly arms outstretched, pushing something under the water’s surface.
Something or … someone. Someone struggling to survive.
Anassa.
A strange impetus takes over, numberless needles pinching through my skin, filling me with a fresh determination.
I find my way back into the waters as if heeding a siren’s call.
The waves are cold enough to keep me alert as I splash on, weaving my way towards that ghastly apparition and the queen I haven’t yet got round to murdering.
It soon becomes apparent that I can’t swim holding a knife; it messes with my balance and tilts me to the side with each lap, making me swallow salty, silver foam.
And I can hear the screaming clearly now – there isn’t time to waste.
I force the knife’s hilt into my mouth, biting down hard so I don’t lose it in the sea, and charge ahead with furious strokes, my muscles burning with exertion. Eventually, I reach them.
The screeching darkness hovers over Anassa’s body, bone-coloured hands scratching her face as she fights to stay afloat, screaming and crying and gargling, her skin so red it’s almost blue.
Wild rivulets of blood flow from her cheek, tinting the silver waters pink.
She’s losing. For a moment, I consider leaving her to it.
I could do nothing. While I promised not to kill her earlier, I did not say anything about risking my neck to save her.
Maybe this shadow fiend will be easier to deal with after it finishes her off.
Or maybe it will be harder, then; for all I know, taking her life could strengthen it.
If that thing followed us here to kill us, I won’t be safe until it’s dealt with.
I can’t trust this spectre’s appetite to be sated after just one kill.
The moment passes. My decision is made.
I take my knife in both hands, pedalling faster with my legs to keep me from submerging.
As a wave lifts me up, I use the momentum to plunge myself into the darkness, stabbing as I go.
I don’t question how or why I can cut a shadow; my knife has found purchase on the spectre’s back, and that’s enough for me.
Releasing my left hand, I grab the spectre by the throat, tilting it backward and away from Anassa.
It screams, trying to turn around to face me.
Up close, it reeks of rotting roses, sweet and sour like poison.
I keep going, stabbing and slicing, frantically pedalling to keep myself upright, burying my knife to the hilt and twisting it, until –
A different sound, like dry bark ripping from an old oak, cracking the tree in two.
Then, a dying rasp, so coherent that it gives me pause. ‘O happy dagger, this is thy sheath: there rust, and let me die.’ It sounds almost like a young girl, relieved, thankful.
Perhaps I set her free from her rose-scented prison of existence.
I wait to see if it’s a trick to gain my sympathy, attack me.
But nothing. Only silence and my thundering heart as the shadow vanishes, leaving a leather rectangle behind, pierced through with my knife.
I grab it with one hand, instantly recoiling – I can almost hear echoes of screaming, screaming that sounds like a name – and dislodge it from my blade.
It floats sadly for a second, then sinks into the foamy depths.
There is a strange residue left on my fingers, black as tar but not as sticky.
Oily, almost, carrying a sense of wrongness I can’t name.
I wash it in the waters, rubbing my hands, my knife.
Finally, it evaporates. The rose scent dissipates, replaced by the sea’s salty ordinariness.
I lie back in the waters to slow my breath, waiting for Anassa to thank me.
After a while, it becomes obvious that she won’t. Fine. Ungrateful woman. I rise up to let her know she can find her own way ashore … and understand what’s wrong about her silence.
Anassa is not screaming any more; she’s drowning. Her pale hands are all that’s left of her over the water’s surface, her own fingers charred black from where she grappled with the shadow.
This time I don’t need a moment to decide.
Taking the deepest breath I can, I dive into the moonlit waters with my eyes open, feeling the sting of salt.
That sinking shipwreck of a queen stands out in her black dress, a chthonic reed descending into Tartaros.
Not if I can help it. I pedal faster, wrapping my knife-holding hand around her slender waist, thanking the gods she weighs as much as my hair wet.
With my other hand, I propel us upward, until we both resurface.
Cold, delicious air attacks my nostrils, and I open my mouth wide, my breathing laboured.
Anassa doesn’t cough. She doesn’t breathe, doesn’t open her eyes.
It’s possible I’ve saved her twice for nothing. She’s already gone.
But as I look into her waxy face, the angry crimson streak carving a path of caked blood from underneath her eye to her jaw, I know I can’t allow her body to become food for the fish.
Dead or alive, she should be brought ashore.
Someone needs to give her a due burial, sing her a lament.
Everyone deserves a proper send-off, even Agamemnon.
I shake the thought and steel myself for one last round of physical exertion, grab Anassa once more by the waist and bite into my knife again, to free my hands.
I slowly swim us back, bringing her with me.
I’m getting tired. My knife’s blade reflects the moons above, shining an almost blinding silver.
My eyes blur and fail me, filling my vision with strange shapes, colourful afterimages and shifting shadows.
At one point, as I adjust Anassa’s limp body so I can use my other hand to swim, I swear I see a big, black-spotted cat perched upon the same boulder I climbed on earlier.
The cat stands up and stares at me, ivory fur glistening in the moonlight, mouth open – with teeth that look as sharp as my knife.
The black spots on its fur hurt to look at, as if I’m glimpsing a carnage of constellations, orphaned dark circles where stars should have been.
As if this cat devoured these stars, and now is poised to feast on us.
The piercing needles from before return, waking me up, filling me with an anger hot enough to break the sky.
I don’t know why, but my whole being screams that this cat is wrong, as wrong as that screeching shadow.
And she should not leer at us so, like we’re her dinner slowly making our way to her stomach.
I growl at her, unable to do more with my knife in my mouth.
The steel reverberates in my teeth like a rattlesnake.
As if I wished it so to scare her off, a stab of lightning cracks above, followed by thunder.
The boulder shakes. The cliffs ahead too, so much that I worry it will cause an avalanche, burying me under rocks with Anassa’s dead body. But the shaking stops, thankfully.
When I look back to the boulder, the cat is gone.
Vanished. The rock is empty, proof that I imagined the whole thing.
I chide myself for putting stock in hallucinations and continue my arduous swim, with Anassa’s empty shell in tow, until I reach the shore.
I deposit her on that volcanic sand that’s almost the same colour as her hair, and collapse beside her, heaving.
There is a fire in my ribs, a salty sorrow in my teeth, and entirely too much bile on my lungs, getting worse with every breath. I turn the other way and retch, my shoulders shaking from exhaustion. I’m not crying; this is merely the salt, leaving my body.
When I’m able to compose myself again, I turn around to face what’s left of Anassa.
Her eyes are open.