‘Not too long now,’ Claret mumbles. ‘It cannot be much further.’
It’s the second time she’s said this, and I think she knows. She sounds bemused and furious alike, clutching that knife of hers like it can cut through the illusions, show her the true path ahead. If only it were so – alas, it’s just a knife, albeit wielded by a fiery force of nature. And if this eerie, moonlit world echoes that endless castle corridor, if all the doors are stretching left and right of us, just out of sight …
‘Wait,’ I say, catching my breath. I must have hit my head; there’s no other excuse for not realizing this sooner. ‘I think I know what’s happening.’
Claret turns to look at me, her brown eyes almost yellow in this light, a bird of prey whose plumpness must not be confused for lack of sharpness. ‘Speak,’ she hisses.
I second-guess myself but, prompted by her gaze, I start. ‘It must be like that other place. We can’t see where we’re going –’ Claret makes an annoyed noise, about to interrupt. ‘Not in the sense that our surroundings are invisible, but in the sense that they’reunchanging. Look around you. We have been walking, what, all night? Yet we’re in the same place.’
Claret huffs. She knows I’m right, though it must painher to admit it. ‘Fine. Our surroundings are unchanging, as you say. And day is clearly breaking. Soon, the need for shelter will be moot, unless this realm also features endless suns. Then, we burn alive. Any thoughts?’
I hadn’t thought of that. What a terrifying notion to be added to our heap of terrors. ‘All the more reason for what I’m about to suggest. Before you protest – it worked in the other place, it might work here.’ I extend my hand to her.
Cursory confusion brings her brows together before understanding dawns. ‘You’re joking. That ridiculous hand-holding again? The gods must truly hate me.’
I don’t have time to be offended by her words, because she grabs my hand with such ferocity I almost fall. My fingers tingle. ‘You needn’t be so brutish about it,’ I scold. But anything I may have planned to say next evaporates. Because I was right. With our hands clasped, the secrets of this world retreat like the tide. And what emerges … ‘Do you see them?’
Claret whips her head around. It takes her mere moments to confirm that I’m not crazy. ‘Yes,’ she whispers, her voice filled with awe.
There’s a peculiar bonfire, a few steps ahead. A cauldron bubbles over purple flames, supported on a tripod made of blackened iron. And around it, cackling merrily, sit the banes of my existence – the ones who set me on this goose chase and have caused boundless suffering.
The wicked witches three.
10. Claret
For all the blood I’ve shed, I knew I’d meet my Fate eventually. I was prepared.
I was not prepared to meet all three of them at once.
Yet here they are, the Moirai, huddled together over purple fires between cliff and sea, guarding the entrance to the cave we have been walking towards all these hours.
Bright-faced Clotho, motherly Lachesis, wizened old Aisa.
I don’t know what to make of this. Have they been here all along, cloaked from our view, laughing at us as we kept walking, never reaching any new terrain? Are they the ones who wove my thread and Anassa’s together in this journey? Was the spotted cat I saw their creature? For once, my courage steps aside, leaving muddled hesitation in its wake.
Do I need to kneel and beg for mercy? Or retain my pride and hope whatever they have planned for us will not be worse than this?
Before I can make up my mind, Anassa does. Still holding my hand, she rushes forward with such rage I lose my footing. Stunned, I do my best to follow.
‘You witches, wicked harbingers of doom! I see you, with your rotting teeth and your ambiguous words, taking advantage of my guilelessness, burying me in my ownbed – I’m done, you hear me?’ She grabs a pile of pebbles with her free hand and throws it at their fire with a scream before I can stop her. The pebbles ricochet on the cauldron, like hail falling on armour. I flinch. ‘Done playing by your covert rules, your silly rhymes. Restore me to my world at once!’
‘Stop it, you idiot. Do you mean to ruin us?’ I say under my breath, hoping she’ll listen.
Doesn’t she know that they can kill us with a thought? Cut our life’s thread this instant?
The Moirai look at us with ancient eyes, none of them speaking. They’re humbling to behold; their robes are iridescent, at once darkest blue and dazzling ivory, as if their mother Nyx has lent a hand in weaving them. And their faces … their faces flow like water on a mirror, prismatic and transparent. Aspects of the same woman, at all three eras of her life; non-linear, ever present. It hurts my mind to think what all this means.
But I won’t let Anassa condemn us to their wrath.
Not letting go of her hand, I fall to my knees, wincing as the rocks dig into my skin. I’m well aware my dress is torn to shreds; Anassa’s is too. Somewhere during the fight with that shadowy spectre she lost part of her covering, leaving her right arm naked from the shoulder down – and as for my dress, it’s steeped in so much ocean water it’s turned brittle, resembling more the cured hides my scribes use for parchment making. Some sight we are. Two queens who must appear like beggars and like beggars must behave, to get back our crowns. ‘O exalted three,’ I start, coaxing my voice to project a certainty I do not feel, ‘forgive us.’ I tug Anassa’s hand, signalling for her to kneel too, but that birch of a woman doesn’t bend. What a wrong time togrow a spine! ‘Our hardships have been many, and mind-addling. We did not mean offence.’
‘Didn’t you?’
‘Shouldn’t you?’
‘Couldn’t you?’
Their voices echo separately and all at once. It’s dizzying.
