Chapter 11
XI
They were fighting again. I only heard Ophelia, but I could feel Gunnar growing frustrated and angry.
I didn’t just interpret how he felt; somehow, I experienced his curdling rage as if it were my own.
Ophelia’s behavior and her capricious inclinations were washing away the beauty he had once been so drawn to.
Now his energy was pushing her away. She sensed it and fought vigorously, refusing to accept that their time was coming to an end.
Sylvie had once told me the same thing, that maybe our time was over, and we only made sense for a while.
She told me she felt as if we were only held together by the house. I’d refused to believe it.
But Gunnar and Ophelia were different. There was no potential to be found there.
Like two old spouses, they moved in inertia while one of them drifted away.
I was not sure which one. I wondered if Gunnar would just leave one day, leaving Ophelia and me alone in a house that stood on bones, with the ghosts of people we had killed.
The skulls were aloof today, all except étienne. He was a gentle boy, and neither time nor death could wash that away. We had grown so close and shared so much. Even though he resented Gunnar with all that remained of him, he still loved him.
étienne whispered to me. He told me how tiresome it had been to always carry the earth with them, how he had had to wear it on his body and return to the soil of his home during the day to restore himself.
It all made sense then. The lockets Gunnar and Ophelia wore held soil that bound them to their homes.
I retreated to my own room and shut the door. I curled up on the bed and traced the dark folds of the sheets, trying to still my thoughts while the mood of the house pressed in.
Not long after, Ophelia slipped in, damp and disheveled from the storm outside. Her eyes were rimmed with tears that glinted in the dim candlelight. She didn’t say anything at first. She just stood there with her chest heaving. Then she spoke, her voice low with a dangerous lilt.
“I’ve had enough,” she murmured, and I could only guess what lay behind those words.
She stepped closer. I sensed the hunger in her, but it was not just for blood.
It was for control and for release, for something that had slipped through her fingers over centuries.
I took the brush and sat her down by the mirror, then gently untangled her hair.
It had not grown an inch in the months since she’d arrived.
I traced the shape of her head with the soft bristles and thought about how Gunnar would do it, if he would even do it at all. Because he had had enough, too. She finally relaxed, and the tears ceased. She caught my hand and cradled her cheek in my open palm.
“Agatha,” she whispered like a prayer, and then she said nothing else.
In that quiet understanding, I felt a dangerous kind of satisfaction.
The balance was shifting.
Ophelia didn’t come back until almost dawn, but Gunnar showed no signs of worry.
We had never been close without Ophelia’s arrangement or direction until recently, and it was strangely arousing.
We were back in the bone sanctuary, and I had suspected he liked them watching.
Not that they could judge. They were dead.
Yet there was something intimate, more intimate than the sex itself, in lying among his former lovers, forcing them into a kind of silent voyeurism.
We lay on the floor, my hand trailing across his skin where the dark hair felt coarse under my palm.
It was so human that it felt staged, as if he fashioned himself to pass for a man.
I had always had thick black hair on my body, too. At school, girls had laughed at me during gym class. Growing up poor, I had never dared ask my parents to spend money on something like a razor. They would have said no. But I had also been ashamed, too embarrassed even to ask.
So I'd stolen a razor from the local shop and used it for two years, even after it had gone dull and begun tearing at my skin.
Periods, hair, cramps, childbirth, bowel movements—I had hated everything that made us human. It had all seemed so crude, so humiliating.
Sylvie had been the first to teach me to accept myself, to stop flinching from my own body. She had told me pubic hair was normal, that I didn’t have to remove it. So I stopped. Periods were simply a part of life. There was nothing wrong with them. They did not make me dirty.
Everything, absolutely everything that had to do with bodies had been beautiful in her eyes. She had loved people. And for a while, I had loved them too.
It was a notion I found myself reconsidering as I studied Gunnar.
He was naked; the only thing on him was his pendant. He noticed me looking, and didn’t withdraw when I traced it with my fingers. “The earth from my motherland,” he said.
He wrapped my hand in his and squeezed, pressing the pendant into my palm until it hurt.
“Do you feel it? Do you feel the cold?”
The metal didn't warm beneath our hands. On the contrary, it seeped like frost into my skin, as though Gunnar kept a piece of winter there.
“The land was stone and hunger. The air smelled of salt and blood. We built our houses from whale ribs and prayed to gods who did not listen. The nights lasted months. The sun returned, but we never trusted it.”
He closed his eyes, and I did the same as he continued.
“The fjords. The black water beneath the cliffs. The way we pushed our dead into the sea and watched the current carry them away.” His fist tightened around mine, but I made no sound.
“The soil remembers too. And the soil you call home remembers you. You cannot leave it unless you carry some with you. Wherever you go, it must stay with you.”
His confessions must have roused him, for he was on top of me then, his girth edging me to the brink.
Gunnar watched me closely as I came undone, and afterward he studied me, waiting for me to betray even the slightest flicker of thought.
The balance between the three of us was shifting, something subtle beginning to fracture. What would I do about it?
Nothing. I would do nothing at all.
When it was over, and the skulls had borne silent witness to our union, I slipped out for a bath, leaving him alone. We were keeping secrets from Ophelia now, and I didn’t know what to do with that knowledge.
At the sharp clap of the front door, I stirred and pulled myself out of the tub, hoping Ophelia wouldn’t smell him on me.
The water had gone cool faster than expected. Late autumn was seeping through the walls, and the house held the cold like a mausoleum. A new leak had opened in the roof, but nobody cared about the drip of water. What was another rotting wall when the entire world had already spoiled?
Dripping, I plucked one of Ophelia’s nightgowns from the vanity where she’d shed it like skin.
She wore them and abandoned them wherever she pleased.
This one bore faint bloodstains, but I didn’t mind.
If anything, it softened my scent. The silk clung to my damp limbs, raising a scatter of goosebumps.
I hurried to compose myself, but also to go to her. I knew she needed me.
At the top of the stairs, I froze again, not daring to descend.
A man. I could smell him from here. His deodorant, his aftershave, the warmth of his skin. Musky, substantial, like a bowl of thick beef stew left to simmer.
The scent stirred something within me, like a snake lifting its head at the promise of prey.
I knew this man’s fate, that before dawn I would be dragging his corpse through desanctified halls, racing the first light.
And yet, his presence filled me with a quiet thrill.
His voice, his laughter, warmed the house for a fleeting hour, giving it the fragile illusion of life.
I felt a feverish pulse of excitement, knowing he would be unmade soon.
Drawn by the scent, I went downstairs, flying over the steps with ease. I stopped in the murkiness of the second-floor hall, a vantage point where I could watch them clearly without being seen.
He was tall, nearly Gunnar’s height, with a robust chest and rugged hands. At first glance, I could have mistaken him for the bone whisperer himself. Ophelia had brought this one as a petty act of defiance. A provocation. She intended to have him killed right in front of her companion.
I almost groaned in disdain. Her games were shallow.
“You live here alone?” the man asked, marveling at the house. Only a few candles lit the hall where he stood.
“My sister lives here too,” Ophelia said. She tipped her chin toward the gloom of the upper landing, where I remained a hidden presence.
He flicked the light switch on the wall, but nothing happened.
“The power’s out,” Ophelia explained.
“What’s that smell?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she guided him upstairs.
His footsteps dragged. I sensed the shift, the unease unfurling in him.
Ophelia quivered in anticipation as the darkness gathered around them.
Part of me wondered whether it was a presence she and Gunnar carried, or a being of its own.
The comforting warmth of candlelight seemed to snuff out beneath its probing tongue.
“Hey, ah—” he faltered, his brow knitting as he fought to dredge her name from the fog of alcohol. “Olivia. Right. I think I should go.”
Ophelia snapped a sharp, “No!” Then, she forced a smile and poured honey into her voice. "Stay. It's going to be so much fun."
He faltered, trying to pass her, but she blocked him, pressing him back until his spine collided with the railings.
“Agatha!” she called.
She knew I was there, lingering on the precipice.
I stepped into the trembling circle of light.
The man jerked back, eyes wide. “What’s going on? Let me go, you crazy bitch!”