Chapter 26 Claret
When my hair has dried and my attitude has moulded into something passing for submissiveness, Helene finally releases me from that chair, removing the pins that held the cuffs in place – that held me in place.
The sound they make as they fall on the floor causes us both to bite our lips, nervous of drawing its attention, but the golden-masked wraith keeps its distance, happy to be a harmless ornament, as long as I behave.
The tiniest bit of shadow shimmers at its edges.
I rub my wrists, skin chafing, tender from my former bonds of gold.
Helene hasn’t offered any real information during this time – only that I now have leave to walk and wander but with her by my side at all times, my most unlikely guard and gaoler.
At least the wraith doesn’t seem to follow us, for now. We exit the anointing room, heading to what looks like a bathing chamber with a steaming, shallow pool. ‘See, isn’t this nice?’ she comments, sounding almost sincere. ‘So similar to home.’
I nod, not fully trusting my throat to make any proper sounds to feign agreement.
Because she’s not entirely wrong. But she’s so far from being right.
Our ‘proper place’, so graciously bequeathed to us by Shepherd, could have been any palace from my world; tall columns rising up to vaulted ceilings, structures of stone and marble, soft rugs and softer pillows.
Yet even as we walk, Helene’s hand on mine like another shackle, nails sharp enough to mark my skin, I can feel the otherness. The wrongness.
These columns are too tall, too glistening, too white – like a mirage of sun on sand, blinding me when I look too close.
Their texture is wrong, too: less solid stone, more porous …
something. As if they’re made of sponges left long enough outside the sea to harden, to calcify.
If I sank my fingers into them, would they crumble like that skull did?
Would I be able to break Shepherd’s spurious world to pieces?
I catch Helene’s narrowed gaze, her pursed lips, and surmise I shouldn’t try. Not yet.
Instead, I follow her lead, sitting by the edge of the terracotta-tiled pool, among several women who apply copious amounts of oils on their skin, braiding each other’s hair, or swimming languorously in the shallow waters.
Such picturesque lascivity brings to mind painted vases of nymphs, gathering in rivers.
Only there are no vivid colours anywhere; no bold patterns in dresses, pottery, the walls.
Everything is in shades of cream or white.
Even the waters have the faintest tint of blue, like melting ice.
And when I look closer still, the wrongness becomes manifest.
They’re like Helene – all of them. Skeletons, wrapped in convincing flesh and fabric that flickers in and out of sight as I watch in horror.
A moving sea of death and bone, assembling itself to an approximation of existence.
Familiar faces, yet not quite. Real, but not entirely so.
Like echoes of ancestors long since passed, and me the only one with eyes that work both ways.
Despite the balmy atmosphere and soothing, scented vapours from the pool, I shiver. I hold on to the pool’s edge, trying to find a solid surface in this shifting world.
A hand squeezes mine, almost shyly. I stare at it.
Bone shifts to skin shifts back to bone in the time it takes me to find strength to blink.
‘It’s best if you don’t think about it too much.
No need to be as sharp-gazed as a hawk. Soften your eyes,’ Helene whispers, and for the first time I consider whether she sees what I see.
Whether she’s also screaming on the inside, sweating clammy dew, while her mind tries to find ways to handle this collapse of sanity, this monument to the macabre we’re both observers and exhibits at.
Then my pale cypress of a sister undresses and dives into the waters, and I have no choice but to follow, swimming cordially with skeletons.
I find myself looking for glimpses of gold everywhere, proof that we’re being watched.
But the waters are warm, and the women-skeletons look happy and carefree, eager to treat me like I’ve always been in their midst. So I indulge them. I relax for a moment.
And then I see Shepherd’s reflection, shimmering on the water’s surface.
Golden fur. Black spots that swirl and become snake-like, as the water moves.
A pair of all-too-knowing feline eyes, rimmed with black malar stripes that seem set on me.
I stand still, planting my feet on the pool’s bottom as I consider what to do next.
Everyone around me – my sister included, although with a moment’s hesitation – gushes and coos.
They hurry out of the waters to get dressed and approach their goddess, seeking her favour.
I’ve always been a fearless swimmer, but in this moment, I consider whether the wisest thing to do would be to sink into the pool’s depths, never come out again as my lungs burn and my breath bubbles out and my flesh slowly boils away.
Until I become yet another skeleton to adorn Shepherd’s halls, a skull for her to stack up as she sees fit.
Maybe I’ll wear a golden mask too, stretching my features hideously.
I tighten my fists underwater. What are these craven thoughts? They can’t be mine.
I didn’t let my life with Agamemnon break me.
I won’t allow this afterlife, if that’s what it is, to succeed where he failed.
Not even with his golden spectre watching me.
With renewed determination, I raise my eyes from the water and turn them upward, facing Shepherd’s leopard form.
A black paw shuffles, nails flashing, and even though our previous altercation has convinced me that its blade would be no match for her, I feel a yearning for my knife.
Instead, weaponless but not weak, I make my way out of the pool and clothe myself.
By the time I approach the throng of women, resume my place next to Helene, Shepherd has changed into her human form.
‘My children,’ she begins, and I try not to look at her teeth, still too leopard-like for a human mouth.
‘It pleases me so to see you all so welcoming to our newcomer.’ A smile flashes my way, brilliant, beatific.
The faces of the skeleton women reflect Shepherd’s light, becoming whole and human, not a flickering fibula in sight.
Even their clothing looks more vibrant near her.
It’s almost restful; I understand now why they flock to her.
Perhaps they can all see their uncanniness, the way they’re but a hollow column of what they once were.
Perhaps they’re yearning to become more.
My gaze is once again drawn to the key pendants Shepherd is adorned with, shimmering promises of a new start.
Helene didn’t tell me what they’re for, but it cannot be a coincidence.
They must be a way out, like the keys Anassa and I have.
It hurts my eyes to stare at them for long, but an idea takes shape.
If we all worked together to overpower her, if each of us could grab a handful of keys, enough to try our luck with different doors, then maybe –
A low growl, too low to register to others, reverberates within the caverns of my mind.
Shepherd’s eyes are on me, burning white hot, and for a second everything around me fades into her blinding light.
I’m given an image, then, a vision of a scorched wasteland, a terrain of endless drying doom, where desiccated corpses lie with jaws open wide, as if begging for rain to fall on their long-dead mouths.
Endless wraiths circle them like vultures, their shadowy forms slithering in and out of ribcages, as if they’re eating them from the inside out.
This is what I’m guarding this world from, Klytemnestra, Shepherd’s voice rumbles. Without me, this is what happens to these poor stories. The monsters of this realm will have their fill of them, should I not be around to keep them leashed.
The world around me reverts to what it was.
I wipe away the errant tears, swallow my bile. No one seems to have seen or heard what I saw, what I was shown. Shepherd is back to smiling to her rapt audience, her point made, her warning unmistakable. She isn’t in control of all the monsters in this world. Indeed she’s not.
For the remainder of her visit, I try to keep my thoughts benign.
Shepherd departs, taking with her two of the women who seem ecstatic to be chosen – for what, I do not know.
Helene only shakes her head when I ask. Eventually, deeming me docile enough, she informs me it’s time to repose for the day and leads me to a bedchamber.
This room is smaller, more intimate, with heavy drapes on the walls that, although white, keep this world’s unnatural light at bay.
Soft candlelight creates inviting shadows, promising starry nights outside – if there was an outside to aspire to.
If we weren’t trapped in what my mind tells me is a tomb.
The room has two beds, and my sister claims the one that’s closest to the door.
‘Seshat considers you important, so we’ll be sharing this for now – but maybe, soon, when I’ll be chosen, all this will be just yours,’ Helene says, with such grandiosity you’d think that she just offered me Mycenae.
‘We should consider ourselves lucky, you know. Not all the stories live in such palatial comfort. Seshat is favouring us. Blessing us.’ Then she stretches, catlike, on her sheets, and opts not to say the rest out loud.
That any blessings from Shepherd are extra links to our long chains, to be pulled taut at a moment’s notice, choking us if we try to run.
I sit sullenly on the remaining bed, studying the walls for marks of gold, for unseen eyes both closed and open. Nothing. The wraith is not here, or not visible.
I lie down on the white sheets. I suppose they’re soft enough.
Yet hours later, I still toss and turn in bed, my body refusing to relax despite the endless pit of my exhaustion. No kind dreams await me when I close my eyes – only eyelid-spasming terror at the vision Shepherd showed me. Where do I go from here?
Within a day I’ve gone from shackled prisoner to one whose leash is longer and intangible but always there.
From hoping this would be where my woes would end, where Anassa and I would get our answers, where we’d be safe once more like in that meadow …
to whatever this charade of high-arched columns and subdued hues and half-hidden bones is.
Trapped in a nightmare of Shepherd’s making, forewarned not to interfere.
With Anassa nowhere to be found.
With my own sister enforcing the rules of my ensnarement, and my dead husband’s spectre sometimes looming, sometimes not, forever keeping me on edge.
And there Helene sleeps now, a perfect vision of reclining beauty on a bed two feet away, blocking my pathway to the door.
Her face doesn’t shift much in sleep; if I don’t squint, I could pretend there’s nothing hidden under her unblemished skin, her blonde eyelashes.
I listen for her breathing as it slows and deepens, a sign she’s falling fast asleep.
I close my eyes for a few breaths, allowing everything that happened since she took my cuffs off to solidify in my mind, every twist and turn we took as we made our way across the rooms allotted to us, in hopes that I can map out my surroundings.
But the directions fade into a maze the more I try to grasp their thread, buried under the true horror of what I saw.
So be it, then. I’ll have to trust my gut to take me where I need to go.
As quietly as I can, I get up from my bed, walking towards the door of our deceptive, open-door cage.
I reach the door and hesitate, just for a second. What will happen to Helene if I’m not here when she wakes up? Sister or not, no one deserves Shepherd’s hot breath of wrath. I turn around to make sure she’s still sleeping soundly – and my eyes fill with claret.
My cloak. She has it hidden underneath her bed.
I cannot leave it here. The cloak was Clotho’s gift; it has protected me at every turn. And it contains not just my knife but my key as well. Whether the Moirai deem me ready yet to use it or not, it’s a potential way out; a way out that does not rely on Shepherd’s supposed benevolence.
I take a greedy step towards Helene’s bed. Two big, blue eyes snap open.