‘Home, you say. I must admit, some of my memories are fuzzy, but this does not resemble Dunsinane. Too many … flowers.’ And wraiths, waiting to emerge from the walls.
‘I mean your real home. The place where all the characters are meant to come to, once their stories end, before they can perhaps begin again.’
‘Must we go on in circles? Why do you call usstories, Shepherd?’
Perhaps I raised my voice too much, was too flippant. Because Shepherd suddenly jumps up from the chair and heads towards the door – the one the Bard disappeared through. Just as I thought, no wraiths emerge to stop her as she opens it and leaves. She bangs it shut, a sound not unlike the lid of a coffin closing. My coffin. But as the fear of being trapped in here, alone and with no answers, starts clawing through my insides, the door opens once more and Shepherd returns.
She holds a book. Or rather a collection of pages, flimsily bound together, yellowing.
‘You can read, can’t you?’ she says, placing the pages on the table. ‘It will be easier this way, than me trying to convince you of the truth. Familiarize yourself with the text first, and I will come back when you’re ready. For now,there’s other matters to tend to – a young author making their first trip here, and I want to ensure their visit is a fruitful one. Don’t tell the Bard – and do not show him this folio, should he return before I do. I shall know if you did.’
I blink, barely focusing on Shepherd’s latest threat, my whole attention on the pages. Dark, gothic script catches my eye, adorned with intricate designs. It’s difficult to make out the words at first; they move like leopard markings on the vellum, making my heart beat faster. My brain struggles to translate what my eyes see.
‘The Tragedie of Macbeth,’ the title reads. And above it, close to the page’s end, in smaller print, ‘Mr William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies,page 121.’
My whole body shivers as if I’ve stepped on frosted grass above my own grave.
‘What is this?’ I ask, but Shepherd isn’t there to answer me.
She has vanished.
22. Claret
Fragments of human skull fall through my fingers as I sway on my feet.
I do not scream. I gasp, perhaps; I would dare anyone not to, when so intimately acquainted with what used to be another person’s head, another person’s empty eye sockets. I want to wipe this hideous dust off my hand, but there’s no time to move. Because my gasp, combined with the hollow sound the bone made as it crumbled, was enough to alert Shepherd.
She turns around and reaches for me, lightning fast, a predator that doesn’t miss.
What happens next makes little sense. The walls tilt. I fall. I’m being dragged across the hallway by my foot, a leopard’s tail wrapped around my ankle. When did Shepherd slip back into her feline form? And why am I again as powerless as a torn tree branch carried by the wind?
Fear floats thick around me, a frigid cloud that clogs my skin and turns my limbs to stone. From this angle, I see more of my horrible surroundings: skulls are stacked up from floor to ceiling in a baffling feat of architecture, macabre building stones for Shepherd’s halls. Countless empty eye sockets looking down on me, urging me to witness them. Gods help me, I do. Some of the skulls are pristine, bone yellow; others are marred by viscous rivuletsof black, as if in death they’re weeping charcoal tears. I am aware of all this, but not in charge of my own body and its movements. Why can’t I grab my knife, sever that shackle made of fur, break free?
Leopard-again Shepherd growls as if she’s heard my thoughts.
I want to ask what’s happening, where she is taking me. If I committed some variety of sacrilege breaking that skull, and I am now being taken to where my punishment awaits. But though I urge the words to leave my lips, repeatedly, nothing comes out. She didn’t order me to ‘stay still’ this time, yet the result is very much the same: I’m being moved against my will, a lifeless ribbon on the floor, in a paralysis of cartilage and courage. My cloak has pooled under my head, its crimson colour like the promise of spilled blood.
I think of Agamemnon, then, and how his own blood pooled under his head, his own skull crumbled by my actions. I don’t find joy in this red-tinted recollection; the hunger to hurt him feels further away, a whisper of a tale that took place before my time. But I do not find sorrow in it either. If this is after all the Underworld, and I am being dragged by Shepherd to atone for crimes perceived and real alike, no remorse lightens the dark waters of my heart. If she’s to strip my spirit from my flesh, separate muscle from the bone until I look no different from this assorted litany of death around me, she’ll find no penance there. Only refusal to repent, righteous indignation, and thoughts of raven hair dancing in rainy skies.Anassa.I hold that thought as tight around me as I can, while Shepherd drags me to my final fate. Above me, all the skulls are watching, silent andunyielding, their yellowed teeth uttering no more words than I am.
If they proclaim me guilty, they keep that judgement to themselves.
Perhaps they’ll weep black tears for me.
I close my eyes – to stop seeing those sorrowful skulls, avoid what’s coming, or simply relish the movement of the only body part I still seem able to control. No one can witness their own annihilation without blinking. Not even me.
My eyelids flutter every time Shepherd takes a sudden turn, my body hitting walls at an angle. Yet I’m so drained, the thought of opening my eyes again feels laborious.
A death-like slumber falls on me, and I don’t fight that either.
When life sings back into my veins, a million needles pinching me awake, Shepherd is gone and I’m no longer on the floor.
I’m left alone in an enormous room, facing an arched opening. Alone, but not free to flee – I’m shackled to an ornate wooden chair, gold armbands digging into my wrists. My feet have been submerged in scented, lukewarm water. I can move my toes, enough to make the waters slosh within the copper basin, but I refrain from making any sudden movements.
Shepherd might still be lurking somewhere, just outside the room.
This is a different place, again; not a hallway, more akin to the private halls back in my palace. The vaulted ceilings, the careful masonry, the wooden columns rising high, wafting with smoke – even the carvings on the golden bandskeeping me prisoner, eagles and snakes and lions – none of these things would look unseemly in Mycenae. For a split second, I wonder whether Shepherd’s punishment was simply to return me to my world and, in my absence, the court has turned its tide against me. It would explain the water basin; no queen would walk to her demise unpurified, especially if the gods are watching, eager to be appeased.
Especially if I’m being sacrificed.
