Chapter 42 Claret
Gruoch’s bedroom window breaks with a curl of Shepherd’s finger, a rain of glass shards falling out, cold night air rustling in. I should be relieved that I can breathe, that the mad queen’s ritual hasn’t killed or suffocated us.
Instead, I’m furious. Shepherd is here, in Gruoch’s palace; they have been working in tandem, through dreams and visions, all along. And look how well we fell into this web!
I dig my hands into my cloak, tearing it with my nails, searching for the familiarity of my blade, of its cool hilt …
Nothing. It feels as if I’m scraping my own skin.
Fire and blood pull underneath my fingertips, fresh rivulets of rage about to burst, engulf the world.
I don’t care what this means, what the message from the Moirai is, why they’re so keen to keep me from my knife when our lives are on the line. I want to tear this cursed cloak apart.
I want to tear Shepherd apart.
I see Anassa, in my addled state – or I think I do.
The shape of her has changed, no longer contained in a single, human form.
I gasp. Are those … ravens circling around us like a shadow fury?
I’ve witnessed hints of this before, the birds within the woman stirring, but …
How am I supposed to comprehend this, this complete metamorphosis when everything is ending?
Are we to dissolve in fire, burst into birds?
How will that help us withstand Shepherd?
The feline goddess smiles, then, and I know whatever forces stir within us are too late.
Not enough. The night sky outside loses its colour, turning into that awful white that signals Shepherd’s realm is within reach.
Shepherd tells us to follow her, and her voice wraps around my body like it did before, rendering me immobile.
Or, almost. I can fight it, I try, I push back – until a leopard tail curls around my ankle, twisting like a chain.
I’m once again at Shepherd’s mercy, my body pliant, unresponsive as she drags me through the open door into that milky void.
I can’t even move my head, cast a last frantic look to that room of smoke and sacrifice, make sure Anassa is with us in some form or other. I can’t scream for her.
All I can do is listen to the frenzied flapping, the flock of black birds drifting further and further away from me. The light devours me.
When I can see once more, when the white light parts, my circumstances aren’t much of an improvement. I’m falling. In dust and rubble, in a broken world.
But I can move again, so my hands cushion my fall, fingers scraped raw scrambling to find purchase.
A slab of once white rock, solid but for a crack in the top corner, vaguely familiar.
I hold on to it, gingerly getting up, testing my ankle.
That leopard tail was so relentless that the leather of my boot has melted, stuck on my skin.
I bite my teeth and remove my shoe slowly, peeling it off.
My ankle is swollen, inflamed, but not broken.
I can bear weight on it. I remove my other boot, tossing it aside, feeling a fraction better now that I’m barefoot.
I barely have time to rejoice in the freedom of my limbs moving again, of Shepherd’s influence lessening.
A blur of bones and golden hair tackles me, hugging me so hard I hyperventilate.
Helene.
‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ she blubbers between sobs. I pat my sister’s back cautiously, trying to disregard the skeletal truth of her shape that my hands are warning me about, to focus instead on what I know. Her essence.
‘Why are you still here?’ I scold her. ‘I thought the key –’
A small and gilded object is pressed into my hand. My key! Helene takes a step back and I look at her, really look at her, face even paler, lips tight, wrists marked with golden cuffs.
‘It didn’t work for us. We were caught,’ is all she says, and all the things she doesn’t say burn in my eyes, my temper rising.
Us, we. She tried to leave here with Ophelia, just as I tried to leave with Anassa.
And if these golden cuffs are anything like the ones I had on me when I first got here, Shepherd is punishing her.
‘Is your friend all right?’ I ask and it surprises me to find I really want to know. Ophelia was kind; she helped us.
‘Yes. Shepherd’s more lenient on her. She finds us, older stories, more of a threat.’
This confirms my own thoughts; it feels like an important thread to pull. But first … ‘What happened here? And have you seen Anassa?’
Helene takes my hand, helping me out of the mess of stone. ‘Watch your step. This used to be one of the columns that held the hallway, between the dining room and the pool. At least, I think it was. It’s hard to tell what’s up or down these days.’
I observe the stone again; I knew it seemed familiar. ‘Our prison is broken?’ I whisper, hope finding me unbidden.
‘All the … enclosures are broken, not just ours. The world has barely stopped its shaking, since you left. It’s only now settling again.
Watch your step.’ She guides me under a half-collapsed ceiling, sitting at an odd angle on the floor, a fallen thunderbolt turned to stone.
I don’t know what to make of it; I’ve felt this world tremble before, when I fought with Shepherd, then with Helene.
But this … Everywhere I look is the same, dust, debris, demolished walls, as if Enceladus awoke and shook the earth.
And people, more people than I can count, with different clothes and hairstyles, all wearing the same mask of subdued terror, subtle hope.
‘Are they –’
‘Children of different creators, yes. Different storyworlds. One good thing that came out of this; Ophelia doesn’t have to go through her ordeal of drowning to traverse the realm. She can just walk to me.’
‘But how? Why? Shepherd would never let this happen.’
Helene gives me a small, mischievous smile. ‘I never told you this, but when our goddess first delivered you to me, she gave me very specific orders. Of course, unworthy subject that I am, I failed to carry them out.’
My heart goes still inside me. ‘Specific orders, you say.’
We emerge into a big, central opening, like a town square with half a staircase in the middle.
Shepherd is there, already gathering a crowd.
It should surprise me more, how we stepped through the threshold of Gruoch’s world together, yet I landed so far away from her.
But every time I’ve tried to predict her movements, she’s always been four steps ahead.
I feel Helene’s hold on me tighten, skeletal fingers cold on my skin.
‘Tell me what Shepherd’s orders were,’ I whisper to my sister, and I could swear I see Shepherd’s head whip in my direction, leopard eyes tracking my every move.
Helene doesn’t speak. Her face takes on a serene expression, and so does everyone’s around me.
All eyes are on Shepherd. ‘Shh, our goddess speaks,’ someone whispers.
A hushed silence falls across the crowd.
People sit down, as comfortably as they can in this mess of fallen boulders and cracked floors, like children gathered round the fire, eager for a tale.
Whatever spell she’s got them under, it doesn’t work on me. Why doesn’t it work on me?
I shake my sister’s hands, trying to snap her out of it. ‘Please,’ I say under my breath, ‘wake up. I need you. What were the orders?’
Nothing. Like talking to a living, breathing statue. I let go of her, unsure what to do next.
Then, something. The tiniest tug on my cloak.
Once, twice, three times, each time a little stronger.
Her little private earthquake. Helene is fighting Shepherd’s influence, timidly, but enough.
Showing me, without words; reminding me of our fight when I tried to escape that night. When we fought for my cloak …
Could this be it? Could Clotho have woven me a weapon against Shepherd? And what about Anassa’s cloak, then? Is that a weapon too? How could a cloak kill a goddess?
So many questions churn in my head, all of them unable to create concrete answers. And the main one, the question that’s been weighing on my heart since I crossed over from Gruoch’s world: what happened to Anassa? Did she ever make it back with us? Did Shakespeare?
‘Anassa will be saved. If you do as I say.’
A thought, spoken inside my mind, but not mine. Shepherd’s.
‘That key your sister gave you. The one you must have stolen from me, when you dared to grab me – on your first day here, no less. Take it and leave us. Go back to where you came from.’
Stole from her? I shake my head, as if to stop the words from forming.
How is she doing this? I can see her talking, out loud, telling her subjects tall tales about how the evil forces of this world tried to destroy us, about how she’s expending all her power to keep the structure from collapsing.
I recall the vision she gave me, back at the pool, of an endless desert and her the only thing keeping the world from running dry, the wraiths from winning.
This is not the first time she has rummaged around in my mind.
She’s not even the first goddess to do so.
And if it worked with Clotho …
No, don’t think of Clotho, of my key’s true origin – let Shepherd think I stole from her. If she can’t see the Moirai’s plans, there may yet be a chance to win this fight.
Make me, I think at Shepherd, really loudly.
There, a flinch, a twitch of those fig-coloured lips. I can reach her just as she can reach –
A deafening roar knocks me off my feet. My ears are ringing; I grab my skull to make it stop. Something hot and wet drips from my earlobes. Blood.
‘You gnat. Stay still and don’t talk back, unless you want your brain to burst like a pomegranate.’
An image of my husband’s head, its contents spilled on the floor like ruby seeds, flashes before my eyes.
‘Good. Now we have an understanding,’ Shepherd continues in my thoughts.
‘You have destabilized this world since you got here. I know you think this is a prison, that I’m a despot, but look around you.
These people need me. These poor stories, from so many different cultures, languages, time eras, so many characters that keep appearing here …
It used to be much simpler, when I was first given this world to guard. So little was written, back then …’
Her voice breaks, and for a blessed moment, my thoughts are mine alone. She’s struggling to maintain order in this world, Shakespeare told us as much.
Damn it, don’t think of Shakespeare, don’t think of Anassa.
‘Things have changed so much,’ the voice continues.
‘These greedy humans keep creating, stories upon stories upon stories … So I set up a system. A way to keep the population stable. Some stories stay, until I can find a way to mould them into something more palatable, until I can find an author who can be inspired by them, instead of crafting something new. Only when I feel that’s done, the stories are bestowed a key and their door appears.
They can leave, get a second chance at life, a second telling by that author’s pen.
It all worked adequately, with only minor problems. Nothing I couldn’t handle, with some sacrifices.
Until you two showed up, and the tremors started.
And now look what you’ve done, coming and going as you please, fraternizing with stories that shouldn’t be yours to touch, making the ground shake with your tantrums. This mess is all your fault.
Fix it. LEAVE!’ The last word is so deafening, I fall to my knees.
Why do you think, I push back, my eyes burning with the effort, my vision blurring, that I will ever do as you say?
She leaves me hanging for a moment, while she wraps up her other speech, the one given out loud to her audience, and stands up. I manage to stand up too, to see what’s happening. The crowd parts briefly, and I catch a bundle of black skirts next to Shepherd’s feet.
Anassa – no, Gruoch.
My heart thunders so much, everyone must surely hear it.
‘Because,’ Shepherd drags out the word like she’s skinning live prey with her teeth.
‘You walking out that door will restore my power. And I’ll be able to keep your sister alive.
Give those poor souls another chance. And most importantly, I’ll be able to rescue Anassa from the chaos magic that consumes her.
Tell me, have you noticed she’s turned into a flock of birds, lately? ’
The sarcasm stings, but so does the truth. Is she all right? Will she be … back to herself?
‘I’m working on it, as we speak. But things will go much faster if you remove yourself from the equation. Trust me, your presence is grating. Can’t you see how the world shakes?’
I would laugh if I still had any strength left. If you think I can trust you –
‘Do. Or do not, and watch them all die.’
A rumble, then, shaking everything. ‘Another earthquake,’ someone yelps in front of me.
I try to hold on to the sea of people, to Helene.
‘I. Wasn’t. Kidding.’ Shepherd’s voice spits, anger mixed with strain. ‘I can’t hold everything together for too long. Go! Away!’
I feel the last two words like punches, pushing me backward. I lose my grip on Helene. The crowd moves like one mind, a throng convulsing, getting closer and closer to Shepherd, to her supposed protection. I’m left behind, alone.
Then, a door appears amid the rubble, stark white but for its doorknob, dripping red.
‘Go,’ Shepherd’s voice insists, now pleading. ‘If you love them, go.’
Another earthquake, this one more pronounced, felt through my every bone and squishy bit. Could be my heart that’s breaking along with the world. The door shakes, half-vanishes. A sign it won’t be there for long.
Fine, I think at Shepherd. But if you don’t take care of them, I will come back to haunt you. I take my key, grab hold of the blood-stained doorknob, and unlock it.
I can hear Shepherd exhaling in relief, then leaving my mind with a whoosh. The change in my inner circumstances propels me forward, away from all the shaking instability of Shepherd’s realm. I fall again, this time into a world of gold and ancient grudges.
It’s only when the door slams shut behind me, that I regain my balance.
And I can feel my knife back in my hand.