I feel it, then. The slow dripping of something warm and sticky from my head, as if my hair has been anointed with oil. Droplets of russet-coloured liquid dot my shoulders, slithering down my naked arms, like those red ribbon snakes haunting the fields outside of Shepherd’s arch. I’m wearing the same dress I left my world in, the one I used to lure my husband to his death, the one that’s been through so much blood and salt and stains throughout my journeys in this realm. Only my dress is now pristine white, shiny and unblemished.
And my cloak is nowhere to be seen.
No. They can take my life, but they can’t take away what happened. The things I’ve done; the things I’ve witnessed and experienced. The stains from crawling through that bloody cave, the sweetness of that meadow rain, the part of my dress I tore up to clean Anassa’s face.
I will hold on to those until I can no longer hold on to my breath.
I won’t make my slaughter easier for them. Even if I don’t have my knife, I can still fight.
I try my wrists first, squirming to coax the bands to give, but they hold tighter than Agamemnon’s angry hands when he wanted to confine me, to keep me inmy place in more ways than one. I let the bands be, for now – even the stubbornest of metals can surrender given time and patience, this I’ve learned. I have more luck from the waist down: slowly, making as little noise as possible, I remove my feet from the basin and shove it aside. The ground is strangely warm and somewhat softer than it should be, like caked sand after a long day under the sun’s ruthless rays. Still, I plant my feet and push upward, locking my knees. The chair is heavy, threatening to tumble me, but I manage to stand up. If I move fast enough, before any guards arrive, maybe I can bang the chair against the wall. Break its arms, free myself that way.
Maybe even use the splintered wood to take out someone’s eye.
But I only manage a few steps before my death approaches, darkening the door.
A wraith, a thing of shadow like the ones I’ve fought and run from – only different. This one doesn’t reek of roses, it doesn’t have the form of a snake-headed Erinya. Yet I would take both those others in a heartbeat. Because this wraith wears a gold mask, stretched out like the funerary masks my goldsmiths made in Mycenae, its ears both facing me like its eyes do, its lids both closed and open, its pointed beard as sharp as any sword. Even in this grotesque, gilded depiction, there’s no mistaking the resemblance. My husband’s face stares back at me.
Conflicting instincts rage within me: the need to flinch, to cower, to stand my ground, to attack, to open my mouth wide and tear this shadow with my teeth, if I have to. He doesn’t scream, the golden Agamemnon of this world, only wheezes – a dreadful, accusatory sound.
‘I would stay very calm if I were you,’ a voice says. Not his. But not Shepherd’s either.
The wraith that wears my husband’s face takes a step back, revealing yet more horror at the doorway. A skeleton, spondyls pristine and swanlike connecting what must once have been a long neck to a clavicle, a sternum, a spine, a pelvis locked between two long femurs, papyrus-coloured cartilage keeping the knees bent, the toes moving. Approaching me.
I can’t retreat – not without falling into Agamemnon’s arms.
Erect and animate, the skeleton walks towards me, holding a bowl of blood in bony hands.
23. Anassa
I’ve reached the end of this foul folio, and neither Shepherd nor the Bard have yet graced me with their presence. All for the better. I do believe I’d try to gouge their eyes out.
Him for penning these words, her for delivering them to me.
I flip the pages back to the beginning and read again, only to reach the same, inevitable end. ‘…Of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen, who, as ’tis thought, by self and violent hands took off her life …’ So filled with sour horrors is my throat that I can’t tell if that’s a laugh or a scream that escapes me.As ’tis thought, as ’tis thought, as ’tis thought.
I keep repeating these three words, this thoughtless verdict on my unknown fate, over and over as the hours go by. Within these pages, I’m presumed dead – without much ado given to the why, the where, the how, merely a leaf that may have blown in one direction, or may have not. Within these pages, any hopes I had of lasting legacy are squashed. I tap on the first page, where the name Macbeth insults me with its presence, wraith-blackened fingers indistinguishable from ink. The thin, deteriorating vellum offers me no answers, only condemns me in uncertainty. I scratch it absent-mindedly, the way I used to scratch my hand’s offending claret stain, until the page is smudged and torn.
There. Now we shall both have scars to match.
Trembling, I sit back on my chair, my gaze leaving this macabre collection of markings that claims to be my only reason for existence. There’s a fireplace on the wall in front of me, tucked snugly in between the two strange trees – yet another reminder of the absurdities that Shepherd’s realm is built on. The flames burn low, although I see no logs or coals sustaining them. Must be her power, then. Her magic. She’s already shown me how she has control of every element, of every being here. For every move I make that’s out of turn, she ensures there are consequences. If I threw these pages on to the hearth, how long until my skin caught fire?
I get up, unable to contain my mind’s tempest any further.
‘Maybe that’s how the wraiths are made,’ I say out loud, to challenge the silence, to prove I’m capable of independent, unscripted thought. ‘Shepherd gives you a book that holds each word you’ve ever uttered, each silence you once wielded as a weapon, each plan you deemed unique and brilliant. And it all becomes too much, seeing your essence stripped into this tiny, crawling script, each ugly semicolon of your soul forever printed on the page for all to see, so that you can’t take it any more.’ I approach the fireplace, hands tentatively reaching for the flames. ‘You set the book on fire, to escape your fate. And by doing so, you burn – until you’re nothing more than blackened smoke, forever screaming.’ The ink-black mortar where the wraith dissolved glimmers silver in the firelight, as if in confirmation. ‘Isn’t that so?’ I whisper. ‘“To be, or not to be, that is the question” – isn’t that what you told me? Is that what you meant?’
No answer.
I shake my head. Behold the depths of my descent. The briefest queen of Scotland, talking to bricks and hoping they talk back.
I turn away, heading for the only open doors available to me: the entrance to the greenhouse. Perhaps some time among the plants will do me good. Perhaps I can withstand the smell of roses, now that I’ve seen that not all wraiths carry their scent. I walk purposefully, regally, forcing myself to not afford this cursed manuscript another look. I take deep breaths, the cloying floral aroma dominating everything, as my naked feet leave carpeted floors for grass-lined plinths and fresh-tilled soil. The garden looks immaculate, well tended: neat rows of dove-white roses climbing high up to the ceiling, draping around supporting structures that seem to have been made from ivory – or bone. Something about them makes me shiver; as if I’m bound to witness human skeletons, trapped in the foliage, should I look too close.
My mind is playing tricks on me. Human skeletons … The thought is preposterous but does raise another: would it be accurate to call myself human, when I am but an invention of a man’s imagination? If someone were to tear my bones apart, would they find a heap of words inside, my marrow made up of long monologues and ink?
Lost in self-wallowing as I am, I don’t hear the whisper for a while. But as I walk towards a rebelling red rose, the only one of its kind for rows and rows, a bloody queen amid a court of colourless pretenders, the whisper becomes louder. And it makes sense – as much as anything does, in this world of plants and monsters, of shifting shapes and sure-printed sentences.
‘Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven,’ the whisper says, again and again.
‘Who’s there?’ I ask. ‘Show yourself.’
