Chapter 32 Claret
Ophelia blinks into solid existence, her blackened bundle falling on the hallway floor.
My eyes are drawn to it – to her. A mess of tangled hair and lithe limbs, her raven cloak immersing her in shadows, her scar carving a liquid trail of moonlight.
Anassa.
She sees me and she smiles and I don’t know what to do – help her get up and hide her before the skeletons or the wraiths come, wage war against a goddess for attempting to divide us, or flee until this thump inside subsides, until I’m in control of which direction my blood flows and doesn’t feel like it will leave my body from my teeth, flow at her feet.
‘Claret,’ she says with that small mouth of hers, and I’m undone.
‘Sister! Snap out of it, or you will get us caught.’ Helene’s voice; next to me, aimed at me, yet missing me by miles. I take a step back to steady myself while she and Ophelia help Anassa to her feet. She wobbles but remains standing.
I watch as if I’m under vapours, clogging my thoughts, turning my movements languid, while Helene and Ophelia hurriedly guide Anassa to our chambers, away from curious eyes.
Perplexed, she follows them, looking back at me, her earlier smile tinged with uncertainty.
I follow, slower than I would like, trudging through waters I can’t see, each step sinking in sand.
I know what Anassa will find when they enter our chambers. A pile of petals scattered on the floor, like yet another confirmation of my crimes – and my saving grace, a single feather on my pillow. I pick up the pace until I reach the rest of them.
They’ve placed her in my bed, Helene pressing a wet cloth to her forehead.
How long has it been, really, since we crossed that arch together with Shepherd?
Why does it feel like an eternity has passed?
Anassa looks more frail than I remember; thinner and brittle, with dark circles clouding those forest eyes of hers, with fading bruises all around her slender neck.
Bruises …
Something stirs in me, a force so chthonic, so long buried it takes time to recognize it. A fury – at whoever, god or man, did this to her. It’s so intense it turns my innards into licking flames, coiling like a dragon’s tail soon to strike.
‘The walls … are shaking,’ someone mumbles, but their words mean nothing to me.
I’m blind to everything that’s not Anassa.
I breathe through my nose, trying not to explode while I observe the rest of her.
No blood or other wounds that I can see.
But her hands … Her hands look more like Shepherd’s now – obsidian, all the way up to her palms.
Did she have to fight more wraiths while we were parted? While I was not there to stab and slash at anything that threatened her?
That guilt does it, in the end.
I snap out of my trance, reach the bed in a few brisk steps, and snatch the cloth from Helene’s hands. ‘I can take care of this,’ I bark at her.
Wisely, Helene retreats without a word. She seems relieved.
I lose myself in the work of washing Anassa’s face, cooling her temples, smoothing her brow.
The scene is reminiscent of that night, on the black-pebbled beach, when her scar was fresh and our tentative alliance fresher still; the night I first saved her life.
Yet now, she’s not passed out or confused.
She doesn’t think I’m someone else as I use the cloth gently, lingering just above her lips.
Smiling, awake, she lets me take care of her – as if she knows that this is what I need to do.
My breath is an inferno as I trace the rosebud of her mouth, reaching her jaw, her long, pale neck that someone dared to circle with their fingers.
My hand must be shaking, or the world is, because her hand finds mine, the barest cooling touch of blackened fingers on my wrist. ‘I’m fine,’ she says. The shaking stops.
I nod, tossing the cloth aside.
‘You need to get back.’ Helene’s voice comes from behind me – and though I’ve grown to tolerate her, I’m prepared to pulverize her skeleton.
‘Get back?’ I bark. ‘She only just got here!’
But my sister isn’t talking to Anassa, or to me.
Her whole attention is concentrated on Ophelia’s shaking shoulders as gouts of water spill from her mouth.
‘I didn’t even know that you could do that,’ Helene marvels, as the girl who is a pond at heart starts rippling, liquifying.
‘That you could carry someone else with you.’
‘Doubt truth to be a liar,’ Ophelia manages, one last coherent sentence in between her drowning. I don’t know what she means by that. Not that it matters much; the girl is gone again.
To my immense relief, Anassa doesn’t vanish with her.
I turn my gaze back to the bed, where she is only half reclined, her torso up and propped against the wall.
‘I’m fine,’ she repeats. ‘It was a curious way to travel, but one grows quickly accustomed to a certain curiousness. Ophelia did well.’ Green, searching eyes land on Helene.
‘Who is your friend?’ she asks, and I can hear the implication. Can we trust her?
And I’m surprised at how swiftly I respond, how willingly I’m sharing.
‘This is my sister Helene. Twin, if you believe it. Our nursemaids used to joke that I had taken all the space within our mother’s belly, leaving Helene with no choice but to squeeze into a corner, coming out long and lank like a reed.
’ Is this a chuckle that comes out of me?
What’s happening? Why do I babble like a nervous hen?
Helene’s hand lands on my shoulder, an anchor.
‘See, I was told a different story,’ she begins.
‘I was told that when Zeus impregnated our mother, a part of his divinity was left dormant in her belly, even after she gave birth to our brothers. That I was drawn to it and lapped it up, leaving none for my sister who had to rely on human fluids to grow. And that this meant I was supposed to guard her; take care of her. I did my best, for a while.’ Helene smiles, turning to Anassa.
‘If you know Klytemnestra, you know she is impossible to rein in.’
This is the most she’s ever spoken about me. In other circumstances, I would cherish it. But now … ‘We need to hide her,’ I tell Helene. ‘Before people – or worse – notice.’
‘People will have already noticed.’ Anassa’s voice is dry. ‘Let’s say my exit, while subtle and quite cunning if I do say so myself, was a memorable one. Much better than the one he wrote me, though certainly still ambiguous …’
‘What are you saying?’ She makes as little sense as Ophelia.
Did Shepherd do something to her mind?
‘Never mind that now.’ Anassa gets up awkwardly, like a fledgling learning to fly. ‘What matters is I have a plan. Look, I can get us out of here!’ She takes out her own key from her cloak, and I can hear Helene’s breath catching.
I don’t want to fight my sister. Not now. I grab my knife inside my cloak, just in case.
‘I used this already once,’ Anassa continues, clueless to the impending danger. ‘It took me to the Bard’s study; it gave me answers. Remember what Clotho told us about using them?’
Helene gasps at the mention of Clotho’s name. I ignore her. ‘She told us that we shouldn’t. Until we are prepared to save an innocent. As if such a thing as innocence exists.’
‘But that’s just the thing. I know exactly who I am supposed to save. And I know where to find her – more or less.’ Anassa’s eyes are filled with such enthusiasm it scares me.
If she knows how to use her key …
‘Did you come all this way to say goodbye, then?’ I spit. ‘You didn’t have to. I got your farewell gifts.’ I point to the petals on the floor.
Her gaze flickers. She hesitates. But then – the most preposterous laughter bubbles out of her.
‘You … you thought the rose and the feather meant goodbye?’ Two long, bird-like arms close around me before I have a chance to get my bearings.
Anassa squeezes lightly, yet she might as well have been a boa grinding my bones to dust for all I’m able to resist or breathe.
‘Oh Claret,’ she whispers in my hair, my tense spine stretching at her voice like a cat who has found sunlight.
‘I was just trying to tell you I’m alive.
That I’d find my way to you.’ She ends the hug, and I can get air in my lungs again.
‘I like your new hair, by the way,’ she adds.
‘It suits you, both the colour and the style. Now, shall we?’
I haven’t felt more lost in my whole life. ‘Shall we what?’
‘Get out of here, of course. See, this place I need to go is, to quote the Bard, “a bloody cesspool”. I won’t make it ten steps on my own, I don’t think.’ She reaches out a hand.
‘You need my knife,’ I say, as realization hits me.
‘I need your strength, your courage, your fierceness. I need the way you can give people one look and make them cower. And yes, your knife is also very sharp.’ She smiles.
I stutter. ‘How are we even going to –’
‘Trust me,’ is all Anassa says, and I do.
Gods help me, but I do.
I turn around to see Helene watching us, an odd expression on her face.
Longing? ‘You should go ahead,’ she says, as if I asked for my big sister’s permission.
‘Quickly, before someone comes.’ A wind ruffles her hair, a wind that wasn’t there before.
Something white – ash? – lands on her nose. Helene blinks.
Alarmed, I turn around. Anassa stands in the chamber’s doorway, the one that I know leads to the washing room.
Only now an ornate, raven-hued door is there, made of something shimmering, soft and slippery.
Like ink, or feathers. But it’s a door, real enough, half open, a gust of freezing air advancing through it.
The petals on the floor are its first prisoners.
They start floating, then swirling in this new, astounding climate. I didn’t know such cold was possible.
Anassa’s head is tilted at an odd angle, as if she’s deep in conversation with herself – or with the door.
I don’t know if the odd light emanating from it, or the wind, or that frozen ash is to blame, but she seems …
unsteady. Like she’s about to burst into a million feathered somethings.
It’s the wildest thing, but for a second I think I can see beaks, and beady eyes protruding from the curtain of her hair.
Then, she nods as if pleased, and the perhaps birds vanish.
Her outline solidifies.
‘It’s good we’re both still wearing our cloaks,’ she mutters, then turns to me. ‘Hurry up, then!’
For the millionth time today, I find myself unable to spring into action. The immensity of what she has achieved, a solid way out of Shepherd’s grasp … And she did it with the ease with which one shoves a fly aside. ‘How?’ I ask.
Anassa huffs, a rosy hue spreading on her cheeks and nose.
Her breath mists. ‘I had some help, just now. But it makes sense. The door doesn’t matter; our intention does.
It’s all about being certain of your destination, and believing without doubt that the door will get you there.
That an innocent awaits you on the other side …
Or something like that. Now, will you stay there and gawk while my fingers freeze off on this doorknob, or will you join me? ’
I can feel Helene inching closer. My hackles up, my knife firmly in my grasp, I consider my next steps. But all my sister does is give me a firm push, nudging me forward. ‘Go, you silly swan. I will never forgive you if you give up on this chance to get away.’
I must be going mad. Because I let go of my knife, and I grab my own key, turning around to give it to Helene. ‘Take it. Use it. You deserve it.’ I place it in her hands.
Her blue eyes turn so big and wet I fear they’d even drown Ophelia, let alone me.
Hurriedly, before she does something despicable like hugging me, before what little scraps are left of my senses start demanding I take back what’s mine, I leave Helene behind and rush to the black-clad woman at the door, that curious crow once more inviting me to realms I know nothing about, to realms I shouldn’t cross.
Anassa gives me her hand and I take it, stepping out of Shepherd’s sphere and into a snowy blizzard.
I dare a last look back and spot Helene, crying. Behind her, a mask of gold emerges from the wall, wheezing something that sounds like ‘why’ or ‘wife’, its furious shadows rushing to –
The door makes the softest thud as it swings shut behind us.