Chapter 28 Claret
I reach for my cloak under Helene’s bed – and so does she.
Like vultures diving head on, eager to sink their talons into a carcass while the blood still flows, warm and inviting.
My sister’s skeleton contorts as she bends over, not wasting any time by getting up.
Instead, she dives head-first from her supine position, to secure the piece of clothing she must have hoped I wouldn’t notice.
Her skull is back in sight, the illusion of flesh dissolving right before my eyes, skeletal hands burying themselves in claret.
But I’m no slower.
I grab that garment as one grabs a hand to save them, when they’re falling from a cliff.
And I do not let go, locking us in a game of push and pull, of bloody tide ebbing and flowing.
This so resembles when Helene and I were little, arguing over who would get to weave a dress from the best cloth, that I would laugh – if I was not preoccupied with getting back my property, and killing her.
If one can truly kill a moving skeleton. I aspire to try.
‘Let go, you idiot, you’ll get us both in trouble!’ Helene hisses.
‘Why, sister mine, have you never met me?’ I widen my stance, bracing my knee against her bed, using it as leverage while I pull with all my strength.
‘I … tend … to not … let go … of things!’ With the sound of fabric being ripped, the cloak is mine.
Yet I don’t have time to revel in my victory before Helene jumps up from the bed, launching herself at me, a blonde hyena who will not give up on promised morsels.
Her momentum is too much for me and I fall back, losing my balance.
We both tumble to the floor, the cloak between us like a curtain, in a mess of limbs and fabric and protruding bones and –
A knife.
My knife. Blade first I find it, buried as it must have been within my cloak’s mysterious depths.
But still I grab it, wincing as its steel cuts through my palm, as the pain shimmers with a certainty that has my every extremity on fire.
I push and twist, trying to shake Helene off me as I snake my hand upward.
The last thing I need is for her to notice and attempt to grab it, so I kick her.
In the belly, first, but skeletons do not have bellies so my kick does nothing but frustrate me.
Then I aim for her knee … and that makes her scream.
For a brief second, the world around us shakes, walls rumbling like the cliff did on that black beach, like when I challenged Shepherd. That needle-like feeling flushes over me from head to toe, and I can almost feel the air around us crackle, as if thunder’s about to strike.
But Helene rolls away from me, clutching her ailing leg, and the shaking, the impending storm stops.
Once more she flickers in and out of flesh, which gives me just enough time to reach for my knife’s hilt.
My hand is slippery with blood, but that won’t be the first time this precious helper is anointed with it.
I smile, feeling more like myself than I have all day.
Wrapping the cloak in a quick bundle, I get up, pointing my knife to Helene’s throat.
Her eyes are wide, outraged and terrified, two stormy seas about to spill their waves ashore.
What fear could she have of death when she’s already dead? Doesn’t she know that this existence, half-cloaked in skin and going through the motions, never setting one foot outside of Shepherd’s clearly marked perimeter, is not the way a queen should live?
I push my knife harder, nicking the skin, if such a thing as skin existed. I’m doing her a favour. My sister, my real sister, wanted to be loved and to love freely; she was a creature of impulse and passion, of lust and glorious laughter. She never would have settled for this prison.
‘No, wait, stop, you don’t understand,’ she begs. ‘I was hiding it to keep it safe! To keep you safe, from her.’ Her gaze roams to my cloak, as if she thinks there’s still a way to snatch it.
‘Thank you for your concern, sister mine. I feel extremely safe now.’ And will be much more so, once I find Anassa and get us both out.
‘If you do what you consider doing, you condemn me. She’ll kill me. Or worse. I was supposed to take care of you, make sure you weren’t causing any trouble.’ Helene sniffles, and if I was two decades younger and my heart was still unshattered, I would probably feel bad.
Yet her words interest me; this is the most honest Helene has been since Shepherd dragged me here, foot-first. ‘What do you mean, or worse?’
What passes for a fate that’s worse than death in this gods-forsaken realm?
Helene hesitates. Her eyes roam left and right, as if checking the room for interlopers – or Agamemnon’s shadow.
I follow her gaze, but we appear to be alone.
So I press my knife harder still, forcing her to speak.
‘The shadow furies … Claws that burn, voices that peel your spirit from your skin … You’ve seen what they can do.
They can attack at any minute, emerge from thin air. ’
My hand trembles, but not enough for her to notice. ‘You mean the wraiths?’ I sneer. ‘They’re nothing. Even when they wear my husband’s face. I’ll admit it unsettled me, at first, but it wasn’t my first one. I’ve already escaped one and killed another. With this very knife.’
Her mouth hangs open. ‘You … you have? But … Seshat herself, in all her glory, can barely save us from them. She tries, if we’re worth saving, but it’s not always possible.’
Helene lowers her head, and I don’t know what possesses me, but I relax my knife. Mustn’t decapitate her now, while she’s sharing information I can use. Yes. That’s why I take a measured step back, keeping the threat present, but not imminent. To encourage her to go on.
‘So you’re saying, even Shepherd, Seshat, is not stronger than the wraiths?
’ This echoes what her vision showed me, of hungry shadows taking over.
And could explain why she was so quick to show a force of strength, to incapacitate me.
Perhaps she knows I stabbed one of these shadows – perhaps she’s seen everything that’s transpired since I left Mycenae.
I shake the sudden cloud of fear that threatens to engulf me, the implication that no moment I’ve experienced since has been as private as I thought.
I focus on the current problem. ‘Where do the wraiths come from, then? Who controls them, if not her?’
‘Seshat calls them “mistakes”, “abominations”.’ Helene’s voice is so soft, barely more than a whisper.
I understand it’s not prudent to speak of certain things out loud, even if we appear to be alone.
So I shuffle closer, to ensure I hear her.
‘She claims they were once like us, stories who lingered here too long, who disobeyed her. Refused their keys and did not step through their doors when it was time to leave. She says …’ Helene gulps, an impressive feat for someone who doesn’t really have a throat, or saliva.
She almost looks perfectly human, again.
‘Seshat says that if we misbehave, if we refuse to step through the door she will unlock for us, when our time comes, then her protection will lose its power and the magic of this world will twist us into shadow furies. Or wraiths, as you call them. Sentient harbingers of ruin, cloaked in shadows, carrying only fragments of the self we were before.’ Helene stares at me.
‘Like a funereal mask, forged from Mycenean gold. If, say, a king had died. If his death caused enough ripples.’
She does not ask me, which softens something in me.
My sister wouldn’t have to ask. She’d know. Even approve of my work, perhaps.
I nod, regardless. ‘So that was truly Agamemnon. Or a fragment of his corpse.’ And all he could do to me was wheeze, and observe me ominously.
What a pathetic outcome for the lord of men.
‘Why did he stay here for so long, then? Why couldn’t he let go, if Seshat offered him a new door, a new existence?
Why didn’t he pass on before he was turned into … this thing?’ Who was he waiting for?
‘No way to tell why some choose to linger although given a way out. Some of us have tried asking them, tried to reason with them – but it’s like talking to the midnight fog.
They’re stripped of everything that kept them solid.
If they’re able to speak at all, it’s only a sentence, at most, and they repeat it as they try to kill us.
So we aspire to be good. To stay in Seshat’s Light.
To be chosen. Earn our key, and not become like them, when our time comes.
’ Helene’s eyes glaze over, most of her intensity forgotten.
She smiles a dreamy smile. ‘We all have one, you know. A key to a new story; a glittering chance at a new life. Seshat knows which one is whose. I bet you have one too, sister. Wouldn’t it be nice?
A fresh start? A door that opens just for you? ’
My mind is filled with golden pendants, wrapped around Shepherd’s torso. People’s fresh starts, and she hoards them on her person to disperse at whim. How very … godlike.
It truly is my fault, what happens next. I’ve been distracted, immersed in Helene’s tale, in her personality blooming a bit more alike to the sister I’ve so missed. So when she pounces, I’m not ready. My cloak slips from my grasp.
And my key, my real key, the one Clotho created for me, falls to the floor with a deafening clang. Helene’s pupils widen, her blue rims drowning in a pool of darkened focus. A predator’s eyes – so similar to Shepherd’s that I flinch.
But this sack of sisterly pretension is no Shepherd. So I regain my poise and, by the time she’s thrown my cloak aside to make for the key instead, I’ve covered it with my foot. My knife goes to her throat once more. This time she’ll get no mercy from me.
‘You have a key already?’ She almost mouths the words, the barest of whispers. ‘Seshat was right about you; you are a danger to this realm, to us all. Did you steal this key from her?’
Interesting, that an almighty goddess would so seek to target me, to turn these skulls against me.
Almost as if … ‘Do you not think, sister mine, that perhaps you’ve placed your worship in unworthy gods?
If Seshat is able to give life, as you say, why would she fuss so much over a human woman, even if I once was the ruler of Mycenae? ’
Helene shakes her head madly, unwilling to listen to my words, to the truth she must suspect they carry.
‘I won’t let your heresies confuse me. I deserve a key!
I deserve a way out of here.’ She tries to bypass my knife; I spill more of her blood.
She doesn’t seem to care. ‘Please,’ she cries, so frantic, so feral.
‘I’ve waited here for so long for Seshat to honour me with one!
Yet you … How did you get this, how could you have possibly deserved this more than me? ’
Ah. So there it is; sisterly jealousy, twisted into sharp edges, fed on by falsehoods.
I hesitate. Should I reveal my key’s true origins, in the hopes of making her shed Shepherd’s influence – or will that cause more chaos? Yet there’s no time for such deliberation.
Because from one breath to the next, we are no longer just the two of us.
Another skeleton appears, as if conjured out of thin air.
Water drips from its skull. Its empty sockets are adorned with white flowers, their petals drenched as if they’re shedding tears.
I remove my knife from Helene’s throat, pointing towards this new, perplexing threat. ‘Reinforcements?’ I ask my sister.
But Helene doesn’t look like someone who has just been saved by an accomplice. Her illusory flesh blanches, her mouth opens in dismay. ‘Please, don’t hurt her,’ she pleads. ‘She has nothing to do with this. She is an innocent.’
An innocent …
I relax my gaze, trying to see what Helene sees, to look beyond this floral skeleton for the story wrapped around its bones.
Slowly, like dripping water, she becomes whole.
A young woman, with gentle features and cerulean eyes, dressed in a swathe of river-coloured fabric.
Hair like dawn’s rosy light, long enough to cover her like a second gown, but dripping murky darkness at the ends.
A splatter of pink on her cheeks, on her nose, like she’s blooming with embarrassment.
She raises her hands to show she’s not a threat, clearly frightened by my knife.
My heart burns like a wraith has clutched it.
Because in one hand, the woman holds a rose so claret it could put my cloak to shame.
And in the other, a raven’s feather – the exact shade of Anassa’s hair.