28. Ofelia
28
Ofelia
I t was happening again.
She was dying again.
I raced down the spiral steps, out into the gray garden beyond. There were hedges like in the palace gardens, but all through these grounds were high-pitched whistles, the roaring of beasts, low, shuddering sounds—animals but not quite.
Sprinting down the straight path, I saw the Shadow King standing there at the end, taking notes on his scroll. Behind iron fences, Shadows of all sizes fluttered and slithered and crawled within their pens. One took on the appearance of a horse with its jaws opened, far too wide, and its eyes pure white and utterly frightening.
The god sensed my presence, turning his bright eyes upon me. “Ofelia?”
I clung to the black, silky fabric of his sleeves. “He’s killing her,” I rasped. “King Léo, he’s killing Lope!”
“I’m sorry, child.” His words were soft and true but utterly useless to me.
I glared up at him, my hands tightening into fists. “We can’t let this happen! You’re a god , can’t you help me?!”
“I do not have that sort of power, Ofelia.”
All my strength was sapped away, and I fell to the stones of the path, clutching his robes and sobbing. “Please, please save her!” I begged. “I’ll give you anything, my blood, my heart, my life, any of it; it’s yours, just spare her!”
I could see her face so clearly in my mind: her blue lips, her closing eyes. That awful gurgling sound as she lost her breath again.
She died for me. Just as she always said she would. She came to the Underworld for me. And then she gave her life, fighting for mine.
I wept so profusely that I could barely breathe. When I tried to imagine a world where Lope, beautiful, valiant, marvelous Lope, was gone, every inch of my body grew ice-cold with grief... and with rage.
A hoarse scream tore its way out of my throat. Cursed be the gods who turned their faces from us, cursed be the king who’d taken her from me, and cursed be the Shadow King who treated us like prizes he’d won in a game.
But his arms wrapped around me.
His limbs were crooked and bony. He held me too gently, like he was afraid he’d break me.
I sobbed into his robes, and his hand gently passed over and over against my hair.
“When you saw her,” said the Shadow King, “when you kissed her—I had not seen a human smile, not like that before. When you were together, there was such brightness in your eyes. I have heard of that feeling. Joy, it’s called?”
I nodded, my throat burning from my cries and from every ragged breath that scraped against my lungs.
“And that was love, when you stood side by side, when you kept reaching for her hand.” The monster brushed his fingers through my hair again. “We gods do not know how to love. It is a human invention, you know. And it was so beautiful to...”
His voice trailed off. Somewhere to my right was a soft, slithering sound. When I lifted my head, I saw a little Shadow, its head cocked at me.
“We have guests,” said the Shadow King. “King Léo, a woman, and—and a girl.”
Lope. Please. I sat up straight, still clinging to his robes. “Take me to them.”
He snapped his long fingers.
Suddenly, the menagerie was gone, and we were on a grassy plain. A few steps from us, Lope stood, very pale, with a heavy band of bruises around her throat. Eglantine was to her left, and the king was in her grasp, a blade pressed against his neck.
Peace, gratitude, and utter joy washed over me in a flood, and it felt as if my heart could finally beat again. I darted toward Lope, slamming into her and burying my head against her heart.
“Oh, gods,” I sobbed. “I thought you were dead!”
“I promised I’d come for you.” She kissed my hair. My pulse raced. I couldn’t believe she finally touched me like that, looked at me like that—that I could hold tight to her and speak my love to her at last.
I drew back just so I could look into her eyes again, see the vitality in them. The prettiest gray, like the feathers of a dove. I cradled her face between my hands, my thumbs brushing her soft, warm cheeks. “I want to look at you for a thousand years,” I said, my voice pinched.
A grin spread across her normally solemn face. “Then I will live a thousand years for you.”
The Shadow King drifted close, grabbing King Léo by the throat. His eyes flew open, and he gasped, clutching at the hand coiled around his neck.
“No!” he choked. “We—had—a—deal!”
“I have a deal with her,” said the Shadow King, pointing to Lope. “Lope de la Rosa. And you have broken your deal many, many times.”
Lope bowed at the sound of her name. “Sire,” she said, looking to the Shadow King. I perked up. I recognized that tone of her voice, one I rarely heard—it said she had something up her sleeve. “There’s something I found curious. All this time, King Léo said that it was the gods above that had blessed him. That they had gifted him with youth and prosperity... in fact, he never mentioned you.”
The Shadow King hissed, throwing Léo onto the grass. From the blackness around him, Shadows rose, wrapping around the king’s legs, his arms, his neck, holding him in place before us, lifting up the king as if he were a painting on the wall. His eyes were round with fear—and with vicious hate.
“Loathsome mortal,” growled the Shadow King. “I want you to see those you sacrificed so that you could sit upon your throne. See the ones you loved and know how they hate you. Let them show you .”
Once more, the Shadow King snapped his fingers. Thin clouds of black smoke arose, and from them stepped the others: King Augustin, Prince Philippe, the queen mother, Francoise, Sagesse, and my mother. She ran to me, sweeping me into her arms.
Sagesse caught sight of her daughter. She covered her mouth.
Eglantine threw down her knife and ran, throwing her arms around her mother, who could now have been mistaken for her sister.
“I missed you every day,” Eglantine said, her voice thick.
Sagesse hushed her and rocked her in her embrace, back and forth, like she was still a young girl. “I never ever forgot you, my Eglantine.” They spoke for a moment, weeping, embracing, laughing. And then, after a few more heartbeats, Sagesse whispered something in her daughter’s ear, and Eglantine released Sagesse from her hold, a smirk crossing the librarian’s face.
Sagesse turned to approach the king, her head held high. Her eyes narrowed at him. “You.” Sagesse growled the word.
She promptly rammed her fist into his stomach. He let out a loud cry. She spat in his face.
“I missed my daughter’s life,” she said. “You wasted all my years because you thought I’d be a suitable payment. Bastard.” Sagesse spun on her heel, her eyes gleaming with tears and fury. “Are you going to kill him?” she asked the god.
“No,” said the Shadow King. “There is no death here. He’ll stay here, preserved.” He lifted a finger. “On the other hand, it was by my power that I kept him young above. And, Lope, you say he never credited me for this. Never thanked me for it.”
In a blink, the Shadow King was standing at Léo’s shoulder, his hand around the king’s jaw. “I think instead you shall age, Léo, age and decay, but never die. I’ll build you a hall just like the other one, a hall of mirrors, where you may forever look at yourself...”
Fear glimmered in Léo’s eyes, but he clenched his jaw. “The gods will not stand for such treatment of their chosen king!”
The Shadow King’s face split in a wide, crooked smile. “The gods have never cared about you.”
The monsters clinging to King Léo hissed delightedly, their claws digging deeper into his flesh. Blood stained his gold brocade and satin.
“I’ll send him away,” said the king of Shadows to us all, “if you’d like to bid him farewell.”
King Augustin turned his back. His son did the same, and the queen mother, trembling with tears, hid her face against her husband’s shoulder.
Francoise shook her head and stood at my side, holding tight to my hand. “I never want to see you again,” she whispered to him.
Sagesse waved her hand in a strange symbol. “May your every moment be agony,” she said—a promise. A curse. Eglantine held her mother’s arm, smiling triumphantly.
I had no words. And neither did my mother. The king was my father, but only in the barest sense of the word. He didn’t want me. He didn’t love me. He was a liar, a coward, a foul mockery of a father and a king.
Lope took a stride closer to him. I wanted to reach out, to pull her back, to protect her—but her head was held high. She grinned, looking him fearlessly in the eyes. “Long live the king.”
He spat in her face. She laughed.
Rage thundered through me; an inarticulate sound of fury ripped from my throat as I made to claw at him, but Mother and Francoise held me back.
“Please,” said Mother to the Shadow King. “Take him away from here.”
With another snap , Léo and the Shadows that had bound him were gone. A memory that would never touch us again. As Lope cleaned her face, I marched over to her, pulling her back into my embrace where she belonged.
“You’re unbelievable,” I said, muffled against her shoulder. “And perfect.”
Her ribcage reverberated with the sound of her laugh. She wound her arms around my middle, both of us pressed close, warm and glowing like embers.
“Your Majesty?” Lope called to the Shadow King. “With King Léo gone, what will become of the door he made?”
“It is useless now. No one can open it, from your world or from mine.”
She exhaled, almost as if she didn’t believe him, and she held me even closer. “How—how many other doors remain? That allow Shadows into the world above?”
“Just your own, Lope de la Rosa.”
“Then the Shadows—”
“They will stay here with me and with the king’s beloved.”
A beautiful, relieved smile crossed her lips.
The Shadow King twisted his head toward my mother. “Now then. The bargain is complete. Three of you may return to the world above. Ofelia, Marisol, Sagesse—would you like to say goodbye to the others?”
King Augustin, Queen Caroline, Philippe, Francoise. They had showed me such kindness and warmth, even in this cold, desolate place. And they’d remain here forever. All of these people doomed by the greed of the king.
My father had sacrificed them all to get what he wanted.
I could not be like him.
A plan began to bloom in my mind.
“You’re concentrating,” Lope murmured. “You’re going to bite your lip raw.”
“I have an idea,” I said. “We must talk a little farther from the others.”
I asked the others for ten more minutes. Though I knew time moved strangely here, that above seconds or days or years could pass in such time, I needed just a moment in private.
A moment to gently break the heart of my beloved.
She followed me to the beach. I pulled her down to sit side by side with me, the waves before us, the crystalline moon above us.
“Whatever your plan is,” said Lope, “I’ll gladly partake.”
Her loyalty made my heart soar—and then sink as I thought of the pain I would soon cause her. I squeezed her hand tight and hated the words forming on my tongue. “I can’t go above with you.”
“What?”
Her voice broke in two. I dared to meet her gaze, but the despair there made me crumble. Tears spilled from my eyes, and she hastily brushed them aside.
“You—you don’t have to go with me, if you don’t want to,” Lope whispered. “I can go my way, and you can go yours—”
“I love you,” I said, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “I want to go with you. But what I want... it’s not the only important thing.” I pointed to the others far behind us. “They have been trapped here forever. Separated from time, separated from their loved ones. They don’t deserve this. So I will make a trade with the Shadow King. I will stay here, and he will release all of them to the world above.”
“Then I’ll stay here with you.”
I clenched my eyes shut. I knew she’d say such a thing. Dependable, beautiful Lope.
“Listen to me,” I whispered, and she was utterly silent, even though her eyes were burning. “I meant what I said. You deserve the world, my love. You deserve to go out and see it.”
“I don’t want it.” She shook her head, tears tumbling down her cheeks. “I don’t want the world. Just you.”
I hushed her again, cupping her cheek in my hand. She canted her head, kissing my palm.
“I am all you’ve ever known,” I said, “and all this time, I’ve been your mistress. I don’t want to be that anymore. I don’t want to order you about.” My finger carefully traced a strand of hair, placing it back behind her ear. “I don’t have a title or money or gifts, but I want to give you this choice. I want you to decide for yourself if I am all that you want. Go. See the world above. Drink in all its beauty. Write ten thousand poems.”
“And if I decide that it’s you that I want?”
I laughed at the certainty in her voice, and then ached, because I had never felt so confident before that somebody loved me. And I was about to lose that love.
“In a year’s time,” I said, “if you choose me, I’ll be here. I’ll be yours. This world below will pale in comparison to the one above, but it’ll be ours. But please, Lope. Give yourself a chance. Go and live. And not for me—for yourself.” I wrapped my arms around her waist and desperately tried to hold back tears. “I just want you to know how much I love you.”
“I know it,” she whispered. “But do not ask me to leave you like you did before—”
“I ask nothing of you.” I bowed her head close to mine and pressed a kiss to her brow. “It’s your choice. You get to decide what you want.”
Lope slowly drew back from me. She gazed at the giant crystal, suspended over the smooth obsidian waters. A small smile flitted across her lips—fond and nostalgic.
“I want... another moment,” she said. “We have been running and fighting for so, so long. All I want right now is to sit on this shore with you, for just a little longer.”
We rested next to each other, watching the dark waves lap over themselves. The seafoam was like lace and would cling to the sparkling sand for a moment before it faded away.
We listened to the waters, like rushing winds or the sound of a lullaby.
“This used to be my dream,” said Lope. She delicately fit her hand in mine. “I’d lie on a beach somewhere, and you’d be there, too.”
“Do you want to lie down?”
She smiled, bending close to nestle her head against mine. “It is difficult to tell you what I want. All the silly things my heart aches for.”
“They’re not silly,” I promised her. I tucked her hair behind her ears and cradled her face, admiring the white and purple reflections against the steel gray of her eyes. “May I speak honestly with you?”
“Yes.” Lope pressed a kiss on my forehead. “Titles and stations and pretenses. Can we let them all fall away?”
“Please.”
She kissed my temple and my cheekbone and the corner of my mouth. I wanted to melt into her touch, to let her sweep me away like the tide.
“I—I am afraid of saying the wrong thing,” I murmured. “For so long, I was used to... how things were before. I’m frightened that my old self, or perhaps my true self, will burst forth, and I’ll say something hurtful to you and not know it. Or that you won’t feel safe enough to tell me something.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “In truth I... I simply have no idea what I’m doing. I want to love you well. I want to give you all that you deserve.”
Lope carefully tipped my chin toward hers, and another kiss from her made the worries in my mind fizzle away for a moment.
“Here’s my truth,” she said, her words tickling my lips. “I am utterly clueless when it comes to love.”
I laughed, soft and sad. “I wish we could start over.”
“I don’t. We have come so far. We have earned our scars. We have changed. I loved you before. I love you now. And I wager I’ll love the person you’ll become, too.”
I shook my head at her. “You deserve someone perfect.”
“Isn’t that for me to decide?”
My cheeks grew warm. “Well, yes.”
“Then I want someone imperfect. So we can grieve at our own weaknesses. And perhaps strengthen each other, too.” She tipped her head, her dark hair falling in a beautiful wave down her shoulder. “Will you accept me, then? Will you look at my flaws and love me anyway?”
“Gods, yes.” I grabbed the lapels of her coat and pulled her close for a deeper kiss.
After another and another, she slowly reclined on her elbows until she rested her head in my lap. When I brushed the hair from her brow, her eyes drooped shut. She looked more serene than I’d ever imagined.
She felt that way with me.
“There,” she whispered. “This is my dream.”
For so long, Lope had been watching over me. Constant vigilance, constant fear. To see her be so still and so at peace was a sweeter gift than I could imagine. Divorced of the pain and the fear, she was simply a girl. A beautiful girl, who I loved.
I wanted days and days like that for her. I wanted her to rest under millions of stars or on a gently rocking boat or in a meadow in some distant forest.
But like all moments, this one had to end.
“I’ll go,” she said. “And I’ll miss you every day.”
Together, we left that shore.
I prayed one day we’d see another.
Just before we joined the group waiting for us, Lope drew me into an embrace—and then whispered in my ear.
“The girl I love,
Worth more than a thousand crowns,
Than all the kingdoms,
Beyond precious
Is the one my soul calls its own.
You are my own,
My own,
Let my heartbeat ever call it so.”
A poem. A poem just for me.
“Thank you,” I breathed.
We parted from our embrace, and she kissed me again, brief but firm. “I will write to you,” she said. “I will burn letters to you and send them here below. And the Shadow King—he could share your messages with me when I pray.”
I traced my finger along her cheekbone. “I wanted you to experience a life away from me.”
“And I think that’s nonsense.” She smiled. “Some distance, I can allow. But I cannot live as though you do not exist. We have spent so many years choosing our words carefully and hiding our hearts. If I am to leave you, even for a moment, I will reach for you, no matter what. I want to hear all your thoughts, even when I cannot see you.” Her shoulders sagged, and she sighed, making a lock of hair on her forehead flutter. “I think that’s the most forthright I’ve ever been.”
I squeezed her hand. “I quite like it.”
Hand in hand, we approached the king of Shadows.
“Are you ready to return?” he asked in his sweet, soft voice, nothing like how a monster’s voice should be.
“Not quite,” I said. “I would like to make a bargain with you.”
Mother’s eyes widened. My grandmother gasped and whispered anxiously with her husband, the old king.
“You have me very curious,” said the god.
“I want you to release all of the king’s beloved back into the world where they belong,” I said.
“What?” whispered Philippe. Hope glimmered in his brown eyes.
The Shadow King tilted his head and wrung his long fingers together. “Why would I do such a thing?” he asked. “I’d be left here... alone. With no new stories of the world above.”
I gave Lope’s hand a final squeeze before I took a shaky step closer to him. “I’ll stay here. I’ll be your storyteller. Forever.”
Mother gripped my arm so tight, I thought she’d break it. “Ofelia, no!”
The god’s eyes narrowed. “One soul, only to lose six? It is not an equal bargain.”
What did he want? He wanted to understand humanity. He wanted to know our stories. He wanted to know about our emotions, about joy, about love...
I had nothing to give. Nothing to give but love.
“King of Shadows,” I said, with all the authority of a princess, “if you free these souls, I will tell you stories. And I will prove to you that human love is real. Not some selfish thing like the king made it out to be. I’ll tell you all I know about the world above. You have heard my stories once before. You know they are spectacular indeed.”
His eyes brightened like a flaring candle.
Mother stood in front of me. “I’ll stay in her place.”
I clung to her arm, glaring at her. “Mother, no—”
“You are my daughter,” she snapped. “It is my duty to protect you —”
“This is what it means to grow up,” I replied. “Instead of reading stories, I can write one now.” I nodded to the Shadow King. “You have my proposal.”
“I accept your bargain,” said the king of Shadows.
Mother’s arms fastened around me. “Then I’ll stay with you, too.”
He snapped his fingers—but nothing changed. Nothing felt different. Though I’d accepted the price I’d pay, I let out a long sigh.
The bargain was made. They were free.
I turned to Francoise and all of my family. “It isn’t right, what’s happened to you,” I said. I looked at them, some smiling, some with tears in their eyes—some with both. “I cannot undo what King Léo did. But you deserve life .”
“You are nothing like the king,” said Francoise. She curtsied deeply to me. “You are as brave as you are good.”
The others approached me, keeping their gazes shied from the god watching over us.
“Bless you, my child,” said the queen mother, kissing me farewell.
King Augustin embraced me, and so did his son.
Sagesse crossed the dark grass toward me, her daughter’s hand in hers. She reached into the pocket of her gown and held out the small, magical hand mirror.
“Since I am with my Eglantine again,” she said, “you can use this to speak with your love, even while you are apart.”
I pressed the mirror against my heart. “Thank you,” I said.
She was right. I could see Lope still, even for a few minutes each day. We could continue to speak. Like Lope had said, it would only do us good to stay in correspondence with each other.
Lope stood close by. With her bruised neck and her tangled hair and her scar and the scabbard at her hip empty.
I remembered—she’d given up her strength to open the door to me.
“Sire?” I murmured.
“Yes, child?” asked the Shadow King, kneeling so he could look me in the eyes. His were brilliant white, like snowflakes suspended against a dark sky.
“I don’t have anything to give you,” I said, “but I ask most humbly that, when you send my Lope back into the world above, you give her back her strength, so that she can protect herself from unkind people. And the Shadows that are still above—I don’t want them in the world, bothering her or anyone else.”
“I will call on them to return through Lope’s door. I no longer need Shadows in your world,” he said, his thumb brushing my cheek. “I have you here, to tell me a thousand stories. There are so many things I want you to teach me.”
Another good thing to come of this. How swiftly, how easily, he could rid the world of his monsters. The world would become bright again, like everyone was waking from the same nightmare.
“Of course,” I told him. “I have so many stories for you.”
His eyes sparkled with his smile. “Then I will return Lope’s strength to her, as well as this gift.” He pinched his fingers together and drew them in a line. Out of the darkness, a thin, shining sword appeared, reflective from tip to hilt, as though it had been made of melted mirrors. He offered the sword to Lope. “To my favorite poet. A god’s blessing.”
Lope knelt in the grass before us and accepted the blade. She curled her hands around it gently and looked up at the Shadow King.
“Thank you, sire,” she said. She admired the shining sword. “It is a treasure. But I pray I will never have to wield it.”
The Shadow King’s eyes glinted. “You can use it as... what’s the word? Decoration? For memories and beauty.”
There was not quite forgiveness in her gaze but something settled. She gave him a nod and a small smile, and then turned to me.
She lifted her head, beaming up at me, and in her fond, warm gaze, I felt like I was standing in a sunbeam.
“I love you.” Her gray eyes shone with tears, brimming with an adoration that I wanted to fall into forever. “A thousand cities, a thousand mountains, a thousand kingdoms won’t change that. I’ll come back. I’ll come back with a thousand new poems for you.”
My own tears began to fall as I dropped onto the grass in front of her, and Lope took the chance to anchor herself to my sleeve, pull me close, and press her lips to mine. I tangled my fingers into her braid as I held her to me. If I kissed her long enough, kissed her deeply enough, perhaps this moment would never end.
The ones the king had sacrificed ascended the slow, spiraling staircase back to the door Lope and Eglantine had made. Mother stayed behind with me, her arm around my shoulders.
Lope was the last one, finally rising from the grass only when I gently pulled her to her feet. She gave me one last kiss, and then our hands slowly slipped from each other’s grasp.
She climbed the winding staircase, up onto the landing far, far above. She stood in the doorway, a rectangle of beautiful, amber light—what was now the last place through which Shadows could enter our world. As she gazed at me from above, hundreds of monsters scurried past her, pouring down the stairs like someone had spilled a giant inkwell. Just as the Shadow King had promised. Finally, they became fewer and fewer, drop by drop, scampering through the tall grasses or disappearing into the hills of this vast world below.
Lope and I looked at each other through the doorway, so, so far away.
I imagined her running carefree through a sunlit world. Her smile when she’d see a mountain for the very first time. Her hands slipping gently through sand or the turquoise waters of the ocean.
I didn’t regret my choice. Not for an instant.
The door between worlds shut like the cover of a book.