Chapter 13 Anassa
We’re doused in darkness. Then a voice descends on us. Distorted, sibilant. The cave’s walls constrict around me, a mouth about to bite – one that sounds eerily like me.
‘Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be what thou art promised …’
‘What –’ Claret spits from somewhere in front of me. ‘What in the Tartaros was that?’
‘You heard that too?’ I don’t know if this reassures me or upsets me further. It’s getting hard to think. ‘That wasn’t me. Rather … it was my voice, but not my words.’
Yet these words did cross my lips once. Back in my castle, when my husband’s letter first informed me of the witches’ foretelling.
When I first gazed upon our endless possibilities, in cursive words swirling in ink.
Now all I gaze upon is darkness; the darkness of the ink bottle’s bottom, and I the fool who drowns in it.
‘Your voice but not your words,’ Claret repeats, as if trying to understand. She probably furrows her massive brows while at it. ‘I see. Let’s just keep going. Can you keep going?’
I want to laugh at the indignity of it all.
What would he say, my lord, should he gaze upon me now?
The Lady of Glamis and Cawdor, the would-be queen on her knees, fumbling her way through the bloody dark, hunted and haunted by her own past declarations …
I manage a weak laugh. But these walls are gripping me so tight, making every breath a labour.
‘Talk to me, woman!’ Claret insists.
‘Yes, yes, keep going, I heard you, let us keep marching on to our own de—’
‘Απ’ ?λα που ?χω πριν απ? σκοπο? ειπωμ?να, δε θε να το ντραπ? να πω τα εν?ντια τ?ρα.’ More whispers, this time attuned to Claret’s timbre. The words are not in any language I can understand, yet the malice in that voice is translation enough.
‘That … wasn’t you, was it, Claret?’
A growl, echoing through the walls like beasts awakening. ‘You’re godsdamned right that wasn’t me! This stupid cave is trying to trick us, but it’s slipping. This didn’t sound like – I’m not that pompous.’ She’s hyperventilating, almost wheezing. ‘Ignore it. We. Keep. Going.’
‘But how, when I can’t see anything? You had to drop that torch, didn’t you? And the walls, Claret, the walls keep squeezing us, don’t you feel it in your ribs? The teeth? The pain?’
‘I’m sorry you’re in pain.’ I didn’t know what I expected her to say, after I accused her of dropping the torch – but it was certainly not that.
Her voice is calm now, blood dripping slowly from a cooling wound.
‘Anassa, this cave is trying to kill us. The whispers are messing with our heads, and the walls are messing with your breathing. I’m sorry.
But if we stop now … We deserve a better death, if nothing else. ’
‘Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full of direst cruelty! Make thick my blood –’
‘… Am I right to assume that wasn’t you?’ Claret’s voice overlays mine, or should I say, the ghost of mine. I don’t remember being so loud about my wickedness, so vainglorious.
‘Yes. I sound … different.’ A giggle. Is it mine or the ghost’s? So uncouth to giggle now. I wonder if my ghost can recall her name, if she delights in keeping it a secret from me.
‘Fine. My point still stands. Anassa, I’m going to keep crawling forward and I need to make sure you’re following me. Can you grab my cloak? Can you reach it?’
I fumble in the darkness for something other than bloody walls, something more solid than the souls who’ve clearly died here.
Is it our souls? Did we die here? Are we doomed to die here in perpetuity, our voices echoing one another?
But then I find it – fabric, sturdy and true.
I could cry with relief. ‘I’m holding it,’ I confirm.
‘Good. Don’t let go. We’ll move slowly, and we’ll keep talking to each other, yes?’
‘Yes.’ The cloak tugs at my grip as Claret moves.
I force my body to unfreeze, to follow. The ground has got sharper, stabbing my knees with every crawling step ahead.
My calves are getting numb – a blessing, really.
For a while now, I’ve had this sensation of things slithering unseen on the soles of my feet, reaching up to my calves, the back of my knees.
Whether it’s drops of blood from the ceiling, or ghost hands teasing me, I’m better off not knowing.
‘Claret … What did that mean? These strange words from earlier?’
‘Nothing, it’s nothing.’
I don’t need to see her face to know she’s lying. ‘You can tell me.’ Please, distract me.
‘It was a speech; the beginning of a speech I was preparing. For after.’
‘After?’ Crawling and holding on to a cloak and trying to speak is taxing for my lungs. But I can’t trust the silence right now. So I cough, and then I repeat my question. ‘After what?’
‘After the deed was done. When I would have to face the council of my elders, and admit that I just killed my husband – their king – in his own bathtub.’
The bathtub … Images of our first encounter flash through my mind. That broken body, floating in a bathtub’s bloody waters. ‘Was that … your husband’s blood you had on you?’
‘He hadn’t been my husband for a long time, if that makes a difference. Not since he slaughtered our own daughter like a lamb in sacrifice.’ Claret stops moving for a second.
He slaughtered their – Good God, what kind of hellish world has she come from? I want to cry, and recoil in terror, and possibly beg her forgiveness. Just the other day on that beach, I teased her about never having children. No wonder she tried to kill me. ‘I’m sorry,’ is all I manage.
‘It’s done,’ she says after a while. ‘Or, almost done. A problem for another time.’
I want to ask who that young woman was, the one she was about to murder when I found them, but even with the cave blinding me and the whispers whisking away my sanity, I can still count to two. I don’t need to ask. Not now. ‘I misjudged you,’ I say simply, because it’s true.
Claret huffs, both with exertion and exasperation at my words. ‘You wouldn’t be the first to do that. And I can only hope you won’t be the … Wait.’ She stops abruptly, and I almost fall.
A string of curses follows. Then a wet slap, accompanied by grunting.
‘Claret, what –’
‘That.’ Thud. ‘Wretched.’ Thud. ‘Cave.’ A deep sigh. ‘It’s a dead end, Anassa.’
‘What do you mean, a dead end?’ Fluttering panic in my throat makes my voice shrill.
‘There’s nowhere left to go. I’ve hit a wall. I’ve even tried to slice it open with my knife, but it’s more slippery than a seal’s skin. I can’t find any purchase.’
The fluttering becomes so pronounced I feel I’m bursting at the seams, as if a flock of frantic birds inside me wants to get out. It’s terrifying – but not as terrifying as us being trapped here.
I try to tune into this chaos of crows, see if they have any words of advice like the ravens earlier, on that beach, when they declared I should share Claret’s path.
But there are too many voices to detangle, a cacophony of statements reverberating through my bones, my teeth, clogging my nostrils and my eyes.
Something whips my head to the left, a movement too abrupt to be my own. Then, silence.
‘I think …’ I start, uncertain. A small, encouraging flutter in my chest. This must be it, then. ‘Claret, I think there might be a turn ahead that you can’t see. Can you follow the wall with your hands, turn to your side? If this is indeed a dead end, we’ll collide soon enough. If not …’
I don’t dare to hope too much.
Silence. Then I hear Claret’s fist, pounding the wall to my right, inching closer to where I am. I stretch my arm to show her where I am, lest she punches me by accident. ‘That you?’
‘Yes. Try the other side?’
‘Fine.’ I can tell she thinks my suggestion hopeless, yet she obliges. The pounding sounds veer to the left, then grow more distant. Claret’s cloak slips from my fingers.
A terrifying second passes. Then … ‘By the gods, you were right, Anassa. The tunnel turns sharply to the left. You need to brace yourself, it’s very tight. But …’
‘But?’
‘I think I can see something flickering ahead, after this curve.’
I thank whatever feathery omniscience lurks within me. ‘Wait for me,’ I tell Claret.
Crawling into that tighter space almost ends me, but breath by breath, I manage. And when I clear the turn, the darkness loses its omnipotence. A pinprick of light, closing in. An end to this ordeal. ‘Claret, I see it! We’re almost out!’ I tug on her cloak frantically, dizzy with hope.
The whispers return then, both her not-words and mine.
‘… too full o’ the milk of human kindness …’
‘… και με δυο β?γγου? π?φτει παρ?λυτο κορμ? …’
‘O, never shall sun that morrow see!’
‘… και το α?μα του, με μα?ρε? στ?λε? φονικ?? δροσι?? με ρα?νει …’
I whip my head like a cow batting away persistent flies. ‘Silence, whatever god or demon rules this cave! You won’t trap us here, we’re almost out!’ I scream.
The cave starts rumbling like it’s about to collapse.
And then, another scream; high-pitched and hideous, a harbinger of pain.
I turn around now that my eyes are of use once more, only to see darkness unfurling, spilling towards us like angry ink.
Another wraith has found us – this one resembling less a cloaked creature and more …
‘The Erinya,’ Claret rasps. ‘How did she …’
That hideous statue from before, wings unfurled, snakes hissing, only now made of shadow. I much preferred her in her frozen blood form, when she was immobile.
‘Didn’t you say she’s sent to punish humans for their crimes?’
Which one of us is she after? Claret confessed to killing her husband, and I …
‘No matter. We need to move faster, Anassa. Hurry!’ Claret urges, while the winged shadow screams, its fingers reaching for my foot.
The walls shake, booming like thunder.
And so I hurry, crawling as fast as I can, with furious darkness nipping at my heels and walls wanting to crush us, feeling the wraith’s scalding fingers in my calf.
I scream and kick and crawl, matching the cries of Claret, this mad woman who has both tried to murder me and save me, this red tempest who now spills out of the earth’s too tight embrace, flowing faster and faster towards the light.