Chapter 46 Claret #2
The girl doesn’t answer, only shakes her head solemnly.
The screams and shouts around us have become a constant buzzing, blurring in the background as the four of us make our way onward, avoiding red snakes and erupted earth.
I don’t know where we’re headed, where ‘back there’ is, as any semblance of walls or dividing structures has collapsed – but from the way Anassa’s eyes widen, the way her hand flies to her neck, I can imagine this must be the place where she was kept.
Where that wraith attacked her. I give her waist a squeeze, to anchor her.
‘I’m here,’ I tell her, hoping this will suffice to soothe her worries.
‘That’s why I keep going,’ she whispers and it’s her most moving declaration yet.
We step over what once must have been a fireplace, black soot mixing with these black veins erupting from the earth, soaking everything. I’m barefoot but find I don’t feel threatened by this muck. Yet what I see beyond it …
Shakespeare and Shepherd, pinned on the ground like butterflies, both still alive but barely.
A long, metallic rod seems to have fallen from the ceiling, crushing them both.
And a few feet away, a fallen golden mask cracked in the middle.
I don’t need to check closer, confirm whether it’s Agamemnon’s.
I did ask him to spare Shepherd no suffering.
Against all odds, he must have listened.
I just wish he was less absolute in his wrath, that he hadn’t also caused an innocent, a friend, to suffer.
But when was Agamemnon ever capable of subtlety?
‘Like I said,’ Helene whispers in my ear, ‘both good and bad.’
‘We had to bring you here to help us,’ Ophelia says, and for a bit I think she’s drowning again – but it’s just tears, falling freely from her cheeks. ‘We need to save him,’ she adds.
I don’t need convincing. Especially when, in a way, I am to blame for this.
I run to Shakespeare’s side, fall on my knees next to his face, trying to ascertain the damage, how best to help him. ‘Dido, Queen of Carthage,’ he mumbles when he sees me. ‘Not mine but … Marlowe’s.’ His voice falters. His brown eyes, usually so piercing, have a glassy quality about them.
‘Will …’ Anassa whispers, like a lament.
‘We’ve been through this, friend,’ I tell him, to keep him talking, keep him from drifting away from us. ‘My name is Claret. Remember when you handed me my boots, that morning at the barn, when you found us? That was the moment I decided.’
‘Decided … what?’ He coughs, spitting blood.
‘That you’re not going to die from my hand.
That you’re not going to die at all, if I can help it.
’ I try to brush the hair from his face, because I know he’d do that now, if he could.
But I don’t dare. His face and scalp are filled with tiny cuts, small shards of glass claiming his skin like stalagmites.
‘The garden …’ Anassa says behind me, breath caught in some fresh horror we do not have time for. ‘The graveyard garden, the greenhouse, it exploded. A fitting end for you,’ she concludes, and from the sudden cruelty in her voice I can only assume she addresses Shepherd.
A weak, feline growl comes in response. The metal rod vibrates slightly with the sound, causing Shakespeare to wince in pain. ‘Will you stop that,’ I say, emboldened by her weakened state. ‘You’re hurting him.’
‘I …’ Human voice now, dripping blood and honey. ‘I didn’t mean to. Save him if you can. Take him back to his world. I have … his key …’
Helene huffs. ‘We tried that already.’ I turn my head to see she’s stepped back, holding a sobbing Ophelia in her arms. ‘I tried to get to her necklace, remove any keys I could see. I couldn’t touch them. They all slipped like fish from my fingers.’
‘Because they’re not meant for you, you ungrateful harpy,’ Shepherd hisses. But she uses a small voice, staying still. Perhaps she truly cares for her Bard’s survival.
I get up, assessing the situation.
It’s carnage – weirdly poetic and macabrely beautiful, but carnage still.
There’s so much blood, both red and black, swirling together underneath their bodies in a way that feels too intimate, too tender.
A glass wall must have exploded, raining down shards on them.
But the most bizarre sight of all is the flowers from that garden to our right, stretching and moving and crawling towards them, as if aiming to entomb them in rose stems and thorns and something else, something white and upsetting, resembling a ribcage.
‘Your works are coming to pay tribute, Will,’ Anassa tells our fallen friend.
I want to hug her, comfort her.
I also want to slap her.
‘We don’t have time for this!’ I yell. At her, at the flowers, at this crumbling world in general. ‘We need to remove this rod first, or push it up partially at least, so we can move him. One of you help me lift this, hold it long enough until the rest of us get him out of there.’
My words stun them out of their grief. Even Ophelia stops crying. Wiping the tears from her face, she nods.
‘I’ll help you,’ Helene offers. ‘Like when we were kids and tried to move that boulder, to prove to our brothers we could be as strong as them.’
‘Just like that.’ My heart is strangely warm. ‘All right, let’s hurry. The rod is hollow inside, see? If we grab it here and here –’ I point to both its ends ‘– we should be able to …’
I don’t say the rest. I don’t want to think about my friend’s torso, flattened under so much metal.
Will he be in one piece, or are we removing the one thing still keeping him together?
Helene heads to the other side of the rod, squats and locks her fingers on the hollow part, her thumbs on top, knuckles white with effort. ‘On your signal,’ she manages.
I turn to Anassa and Ophelia. ‘Are you two ready?’
Anassa nods. Ophelia mumbles, ‘Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven.’
I’ll take that as a yes.
A sole red rose in the periphery of my vision inches closer, a beating, blooming heart. Shakespeare’s face has an ashen colour, his lips moving non-stop, reciting poems only he can hear. We don’t have much time. ‘Signal,’ I say to Helene, and we both lift the rod.
A burning pain, as if my wrist is slit open anew. I stagger but don’t drop my burden. I taste something metallic in my mouth, something like fury, power. It sustains me.
‘Argh. This. Is. So. Heavy!’ Helene must be in as much torment as I am.
I grit my teeth, let furious tears fall.
‘Hurry up!’ I urge the other two. I can hear their hands shuffling, pulling gently, Shakespeare’s murmuring turning to groans then to screams. I can’t do anything but ignore the noise and pain, both inward and outward.
I keep holding on to my end of the rod, my vision blurring at the edges. Then, finally, Anassa’s voice.
‘We removed him. You can let go now.’
‘Quick, Shepherd is trying to crawl out too,’ Ophelia adds.
That’s all the motivation I need. I drop the rod with a clang, hoping it will crush her fully. A second later, Helene does the same, a savage smile on her lips.
‘May you choke on my death, you vultures,’ Shepherd comments. How is she still alive and lucid? The rod has fallen diagonally on her, from shoulder to hip. It must have decimated all her internal organs, if she has any. Perhaps if I slice her throat –
‘But if you don’t get him out of here, he will die,’ she adds, eyes on me as if she heard my thoughts again. ‘And if he dies here, while I’m in no state to heal him, he dies everywhere. All my work with him will be for naught. And your two friends here … poof. Disappear.’
What is she saying?
I look at Anassa, but she avoids my gaze. ‘Is that true? If he dies you die?’
Ophelia sniffles. ‘We are not sure how it works. Nothing might happen. We are our own people now, both of us. But if not for him, I wouldn’t have existed. I wouldn’t have come here, I wouldn’t have met …’ She blushes, her eyes finding my sister.
‘And if we don’t get him help, I don’t know how long he has,’ Anassa says, and only then I notice she’s applying pressure on a deep wound in Shakespeare’s chest, trying to keep his breath from leaving him.
Damn it all. I take out my cloak on a whim, wrapping it in a bundle and pressing it over Anassa’s hands. ‘Let go, I got him.’ Maybe the cloak will stop his haemorrhaging. Maybe it will thread his wound together. But the fabric sits on him idly, glutting on his life’s blood.
Anassa gets up and starts pacing, hands erratic.
I can see raven wings in her shoulders, as if she yearns to shed this human form, to leave all this behind.
‘Keep it together, please,’ I whisper, both to her and myself.
My eyes flit from Shakespeare’s wound to Shepherd’s face, to Helene and Ophelia, to Anassa.
I don’t know what to do next. I don’t know how to save him.
Anassa stops pacing mid-stride. ‘I’m such an idiot,’ she says. With a triumphant flourish, she takes her key out of her pocket.
Flashes of me trying to unlock the prison cell in Gruoch’s dungeon come to mind. That key was useless, then. ‘Do you think this will work?’
‘I thought Gruoch was my innocent, the one I had to save,’ she responds.
Then, turning her back on us, Anassa takes three steps to the left, following a path from memory.
‘Needless to say, I was wrong. About her. And about Will. It should be …’ She closes her eyes, lifting her hands blindly, trying to feel for the air. ‘… Right here.’
I hear a click, and a door appears, ornate and black and framed with a red curtain on both sides. Anassa opens it. A humble room, similar to that inn in Tomnavoulin. His room, perhaps.
Anassa holds the door open, not without struggle either. It fights her like a mule, kicking wildly, red curtains rising ominously. ‘There is … a bed there,’ Anassa directs us. Then, as if to herself, ‘The bed wasn’t there before.’