‘Fine. My point still stands. Anassa, I’m going to keep crawling forward and I need to make sure you’re following me. Can you grab my cloak? Can you reach it?’
I fumble in the darkness for something other than bloody walls, something more solid than the souls who’ve clearly died here. Is it our souls? Did we die here? Are we doomed to die here in perpetuity, our voices echoing one another? But then I find it – fabric, sturdy and true. I could cry with relief. ‘I’m holding it,’ I confirm.
‘Good. Don’t let go. We’ll move slowly, and we’ll keep talking to each other, yes?’
‘Yes.’ The cloak tugs at my grip as Claret moves. I force my body to unfreeze, to follow. The ground has got sharper, stabbing my knees with every crawling step ahead. My calves are getting numb – a blessing, really. For a while now, I’ve had this sensation of things slithering unseen on the soles of my feet, reaching up to my calves, the back of my knees. Whether it’s drops of blood from the ceiling, or ghost hands teasing me, I’m better off not knowing.
‘Claret … What did that mean? These strange words from earlier?’
‘Nothing, it’s nothing.’
I don’t need to see her face to know she’s lying. ‘You can tell me.’Please, distract me.
‘It was a speech; the beginning of a speech I was preparing. For after.’
‘After?’ Crawling and holding on to a cloak and trying to speak is taxing for my lungs. But I can’t trust the silence right now. So I cough, and then I repeat my question. ‘After what?’
‘After the deed was done. When I would have to face the council of my elders, and admit that I just killed my husband – their king – in his own bathtub.’
The bathtub … Images of our first encounter flash through my mind. That broken body, floating in a bathtub’s bloody waters. ‘Was that … your husband’s blood you had on you?’
‘He hadn’t been my husband for a long time, if that makes a difference. Not since he slaughtered our own daughter like a lamb in sacrifice.’ Claret stops moving for a second.
He slaughtered their – Good God, what kind of hellish world has she come from? I want to cry, and recoil in terror, and possibly beg her forgiveness. Just the other day on that beach, I teased her about never having children. No wonder she tried to kill me. ‘I’m sorry,’ is all I manage.
‘It’s done,’ she says after a while. ‘Or, almost done. A problem for another time.’
I want to ask who that young woman was, the one she was about to murder when I found them, but even with the cave blinding me and the whispers whisking away my sanity, I can still count to two. I don’t need to ask. Not now. ‘I misjudged you,’ I say simply, because it’s true.
Claret huffs, both with exertion and exasperation at my words. ‘You wouldn’t be the first to do that. And I can onlyhope you won’t be the … Wait.’ She stops abruptly, and I almost fall.
A string of curses follows. Then a wet slap, accompanied by grunting.
‘Claret, what –’
‘That.’Thud.‘Wretched.’Thud.‘Cave.’ A deep sigh. ‘It’s a dead end, Anassa.’
‘What do you mean,a dead end?’ Fluttering panic in my throat makes my voice shrill.
‘There’s nowhere left to go. I’ve hit a wall. I’ve even tried to slice it open with my knife, but it’s more slippery than a seal’s skin. I can’t find any purchase.’
The fluttering becomes so pronounced I feel I’m bursting at the seams, as if a flock of frantic birds inside me wants to get out. It’s terrifying – but not as terrifying as us being trapped here.
I try to tune into this chaos of crows, see if they have any words of advice like the ravens earlier, on that beach, when they declared I should share Claret’s path. But there are too many voices to detangle, a cacophony of statements reverberating through my bones, my teeth, clogging my nostrils and my eyes. Something whips my head to the left, a movement too abrupt to be my own. Then, silence.
‘I think …’ I start, uncertain. A small, encouraging flutter in my chest. This must be it, then. ‘Claret, I think there might be a turn ahead that you can’t see. Can you follow the wall with your hands, turn to your side? If this is indeed a dead end, we’ll collide soon enough. If not …’
I don’t dare to hope too much.
Silence. Then I hear Claret’s fist, pounding the wall to my right, inching closer to where I am. I stretch my armto show her where I am, lest she punches me by accident. ‘That you?’
‘Yes. Try the other side?’
‘Fine.’ I can tell she thinks my suggestion hopeless, yet she obliges. The pounding sounds veer to the left, then grow more distant. Claret’s cloak slips from my fingers.
A terrifying second passes. Then … ‘By the gods, you were right, Anassa. The tunnel turns sharply to the left. You need to brace yourself, it’s very tight. But …’
‘But?’
