Chapter 31 Anassa
Like pilgrims on a promenade of past successes, Shakespeare and I are strolling through that graveyard garden.
I take polite stops to supposedly admire the white roses, to pretend I do not see the bones strewn all around us.
I wonder what Shakespeare sees – if he only sees the triumph of the flowers, not the surrender of the skulls that keeps the whole structure upright.
But I don’t have the time to ask. Ophelia’s eerie whispers find us.
‘As if he had been loosed out of hell to speak of horrors – he comes before me.’
Her voice reverberates through rose petals, cuts us through thorns.
It shakes the ground so subtly, I imagine the skull that I unearthed before is sighing.
Shakespeare, lost in recounting the intricate power struggles that led Macbethad mac Findláech to make a play for Scotland’s throne, winning Gruoch’s hand in marriage after he slayed her first husband, stops in his tracks.
His hand, holding my elbow, trembles something fierce.
I give it an affectionate, reassuring squeeze, while making sure he doesn’t flee.
Not even when Ophelia’s disconcerting odour hits us.
‘My Bard, don’t be alarmed. It’s only your most loyal creation, trapped in the rivers of your words, eager to greet you.’
And what specific rivers she has chosen this time! Words deep enough in symbolism to drown him. Horrors, hell … I almost nod in admiration when the girl appears, her dress only partially wet, some mild moss on her temple, as if she’s made an effort to appear coherent.
Whole. For him.
‘My sweet prince.’ She curtsies. Then, as an afterthought, when she’s already halfway up, ‘My queen. I did as you asked.’
Something soft and unbidden strokes my face; an unseen raven’s wing. Relief floods me. ‘I trust my message was delivered, then?’
‘’Tis in my memory locked, and you yourself shall keep the key of it,’ she croons, becoming slightly transparent.
The key? I cannot parse her words – but Shakespeare seems … pleased.
‘I say, you do recall your lines still. Ophelia, it fills my heart with joy to see you look so … So … But what is this message you speak of?’ interjects Shakespeare, and I don’t know what irks him more, not being able to come up with an adequate compliment for Ophelia’s semi-liquid state, or realizing he’s the one who doesn’t hold all the information, all the dialogue, for a change.
That we can scheme and plot and plan without his say-so, without his pen anticipating or alluding to it.
How much to tell him? How much to withhold?
I don’t trust him not to run along to Shepherd, inform her that I’m smuggling messages to Claret.
‘Ophelia here is blessed with a unique gift, my Bard. She can appear and disappear at will …’ Well, almost at will.
‘… In different corners of our Shepherd’s realm.
Spot other stories, as well as our goddess herself.
I asked her to deliver me a message to Shepherd, to assure our goddess I was well, thriving in my new domain.
I know she worries about each and every one of us. ’
Shakespeare can’t possibly deny that, not without insulting his cherished deity.
And if Ophelia blushes at the way her truth is twisted with my lies, thankfully her bluish undertones conceal it.
Her drowning habits can be irksome, but they are not without advantages, I’m finding.
There is a certain beauty to it all, this dissolution of the self, this trust that she will be resurfacing …
So different from my own experience with sinking underwater, with fighting for my life against that wraith.
There is something there to be explored, a seed of thought. A wild notion, really. Perhaps –
‘Be that as it may …’ Our Bard’s baritone voice takes me out of my pondering.
‘I don’t see how such a feat could be achieved,’ he insists.
‘Apparitions? Ghosts, perhaps, as an allegory for conscience, but the characters themselves having uncanny powers … Magic was never such a part of Hamlet’s play.
Not like …’ Turning from Ophelia to me, he grants me his most scathing look, as if I am the wicked weed that has polluted his pristine, angelic garden.
Let him continue making me the villain, if it helps him sleep at night.
‘Who can tell, my Bard, how Shepherd’s kingdom shapes us after your departure? In any case, let me cater to this child of yours. She seems to need assistance.’
Indeed, Ophelia’s going through her cycle of vanishing and reappearing drenched, and daunting as it is to see – and smell – the possibility is too precious to discount.
For if she safely transferred flowers, feathers …
why not people? Now that I’ve proof she can return unharmed …
If my feather made it to Claret, is it such a wild leap to think the rest of me might, too?
I only have the bare beginnings of a plan, and enough dogged determination to uproot this whole ghost garden if I must. I approach Ophelia, grab the girl’s arm and hold on tight, trying to ignore the squelch of bone and empty sleeve. ‘Take me to her,’ I whisper.
‘Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,’ is all Ophelia murmurs in response.
That phrase, again. A threat, or prophecy, or just the ramblings of a madwoman – no time to ponder which one it is before we leave a stunned Shakespeare behind, before Ophelia’s waters claim us both.
Drowning is drier than I thought, this time around.
I see the running river but I’m not submerged in it; rather I float on raven wings – or is it my cloak – right above its surface.
Only my hand, holding Ophelia’s, is attacked by angry spray and frosty foam; the oddest, saddest bird, black claws latched on to this dramatic brocade salmon as she takes us both upstream.
Yet it’s a weightless, wondrous struggle.
Everything shimmers as though I’m underneath thin ice; everything sparkles as I soar amid celestial flames, carnation pinks and belladonna purples painting the sky the colour of a dream.
It reminds me of the sky in that meadow, where I almost kissed –
‘Doubt thou the stars are fire …’
Ophelia’s voice reaches me although her face is underwater; it pierces through the burble of the current and the whooshing of the wind.
The flames around me pulse in tandem with her words, their colours growing iridescent as she talks about the sun and about love, until everything blooms in this bizarre, deathless domain of poetry and drowning where Ophelia’s word is law, where she is the goddess of the river, a pensive Persephone swimming in asphodels – and I the soul who trusts her to deliver them to the beyond.
Then, everything bursts into black.
An unkindness of ravens wraps around me, thousands of feathers keeping me protected, grounded even in mid-flight.
I thrive within this susurration, within this certainty of seeds blooming at midnight, of powers locked so tight within me for so long, yet now finding their way upward, from root to ribs, from ribs to wraith-like fingertips.
A path forever mine, a tale told in shadow.
I almost cry, forlorn, when the ravens flock away; when Ophelia lands us back into the light.
As the world once more takes shape around me, I lose my grip on Ophelia’s sleeve – and my balance.
I fall on marble floors, on a hallway that looks ancient yet untouched by time.
Two women stare at me from an odd angle, both frozen halfway through approaching.
They look so different, side by side, like columns built in different eras.
One of them tall and blonde and fair, exuding aristocracy and poise; the other short and stout and blazing, a sunlit carnage, a sword that I would guide straight to my heart and let it pierce it, a holy heresy of hips and hair and –
‘Claret,’ I whisper, and if this be the last word that I utter, it’s a good one.