A wraith in different dress, but still as deadly?
With a wallowing, gurgling sound, the girl resurfaces – her face now has a bluish tint, as if she drowned in waters I cannot rightly see, the ginger arches of her eyebrows scrunched up in pain, her soft cheeks spasming. Her thigh-long hair moves with a wind that is not there, its ends dripping with brown, repugnant water. Musty, rotten notes waft from her; the rose scent of the garden that surrounds us barely covers the decay. I would step back, if I weren’t worried my retreat might give her cause to vanish.
‘My thousandfold apologies.’ The girl eventually regains her colour long enough to speak. She curtsies, spilling more water everywhere, some of it on my feet.
I stand very still, not wanting her to notice my disgust. After all, she’s hardly the most loathsome creature I’ve encountered in this realm. ‘My name is Anassa,’ Iventure. My other name, printed in that infernal manuscript, taunts me with steadfast consonants and sly vowels, rhyming with death, death, death. ‘What’s yours?’
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Anassa.’ Another curtsy, spilling mud and moss, yet it’s the honorific that annoys me most.
‘Just Anassa will do.’ I clear my throat, grit my teeth and try my best to stop this anguish in my chest for Claret. ‘It means queen.’
‘Oh, a new queen! How splendid! You must be from his later works, then?’ When I don’t respond, she adds, as if in afterthought, ‘He named me Ophelia. It means, to be of help. Valuable.’ A tear drops, tracing a path amid her freckles, tinting them green with algae.
‘Who … named you?’ I ask, bile rising on my tongue, mixed with the aftertaste of all that aqua vitae I had earlier. I hate that I now know the answer, that the answer walked with me, wearing my husband’s face, before passing me on to Shepherd like a package no one wants.
‘My sweet prince,’ Ophelia repeats, her eyes turning so watery again, I fear she will dissolve into a murky puddle. But she shakes her head. ‘Although … he was not as sweet the last time I saw him. It had been so long, I feared he had dissolved in silver smoke. It happens, sometimes. But still he walks among us, though his wine has soured, his cup run half empty. The years have caught up, it would seem, carving new passages in the vast forest of his face …’
If I had any doubt Ophelia was the Bard’s creation, her florid speech puts it to bed. Is that what I sound like? No wonder Claret tried to slit my throat when first we met. ‘Ophelia,’ I begin, not even certain if this is a good idea, ‘do you … know, then? What you are?’ I almost say ‘whatwe are’ but catch myself. ‘Have you read your book? Did Shepherd show it to you?’
Is this what drove you half mad, half drowning? Is this my future?
She bats copper eyelashes, bejewelled with fresh moisture. ‘The Goddess … His Muse … I met her even longer ago, I think. Time is like petals, isn’t it? Always another time folded inside the first, twisted and waiting for an eager hand to pluck it.’ Ophelia fiddles with a white rose close to her, tracing its long stem gently. ‘Yet we make such a pretty garden.’
I take a look around me, at the endless rows of alabaster blooms, threaded by rare red. ‘How long have you been trapped here, all by yourself?’
She blinks. ‘My lady – my queen,’ she hastily corrects, ‘I do believe you are mistaken. I am not by myself; we are all here, all the creations of our brilliant, beloved Bard. Do you not see us?’ The confused expression on my face is all the answer I can muster. ‘Oh. Perhaps you didn’t notice us. You mustn’t blame yourself, your part was written thusly: queens only notice what’s of use to them. But we are allhere, I assure you, all our creator’s children, if forsaken. It’s just that most have gone quiet by now; have gone to sleep.’
She points a dripping finger all around us.
My stomach plunges to my feet. Because I see it, now: the support structures, the ones so eerily resembling bones. I see the ribcages riddled with high-climbing roses, punctured with thorns and petals; I see the skulls emerging from the soft earth, so easy to mistake for rocks. I see the hands extended towards the heavens, holding the heavy growth of flowers as if in surrender.
How could I be so blind to all this silent sufferingaround me? Is this the future of our kind? This fertilizing festering amid flowers, with nothing we can call our own but death? Is this how we’re meant to rot and rest, all of us figments of one Mr William Shakespeare’s fantasy, conjured from air, imprisoned into paper, and doomed to bloom forever in this fragrant garden?
I refuse to play this part. Or, if I have to compost here, let my fluids drip from crown to toe with cruelty; let me become a plant that crawls, constantly conquering new ground, until it reaches Claret – until it chokes the life out of anyone who’d get in my way.
Let me become a wraith, if I must. Perhaps that first one, reeking of roses, emanated from this garden. Perhaps it wanted to escape.
I turn my attention back to Ophelia, whose eyes are now brimming with something unspeakably like compassion. How dare she. ‘Is there no way out of here? Do the wraiths come for you if you try?’ A phantom pain pulses in my neck.
Ophelia narrows her eyes, her face lit with a secretive, playful expression. ‘There is … and there isn’t. When I vanish …’ Her fingers tremble, losing their substance for a second to the point that I can see through them, skin and cartilage melting into water. ‘… It’s like falling through the rivers of this world. I enjoy floating around this way; others don’t see me, but I see them. Children of different minds, different creators. Not all of them are still like us, feeding the same grounds.’ She smiles, as if she just remembered something. ‘Some of them are quite rowdy. I can see why our creator yearns to spend time with them. They’re … inspiring.’
Shepherd’s words come to mind then, from earlier. ‘Ican be here with you, this instance, and at the same time guide other stories to their appropriate resting places. I’ve done the same for Klytemnestra. She is with her own folk now.’ I observe Ophelia more carefully, looking past her bashful naivety and her revolting odour. If she is able to traverse unseen through Shepherd’s realm, find Claret’s people, confirm she is unharmed …
‘Could you –’ I swallow my next words, reconsidering. I am a queen, at least in her eyes. ‘I want you to do something for me. Search for someone. Deliver a message.’ I gaze imperiously at her, consciously opting not to ask if she is able, or even willing. How did she put it earlier? Queens only notice what’s of use to them.
‘I … can try, my queen, if I must. It’s quite unpleasant, you know, returning after. So much muddy water in my lungs …’ She looks at me, hoping perhaps to find some warmth, some reassurance that I feel her predicament and do not wish to cause her undue suffering. We are akin to siblings after all, aren’t we? Both creatures of the same pen, both gifted with familiar phrases. But she seems much more chained to the trappings of her story.
And yet not so chained that she’s not able to escape this garden.
I offer her a smile that’s sharp as bone. ‘Your queen thanks you for your service. The person I need you to find …’ Where do I even start? Do I say she has a voice like fresh drawn steel and eyebrows that can put thunderclouds to shame? That when the light changes, or when her skin is coated red, her eyes take on a golden orange hue, like sunsets over seas of blood? And do I speak of her nose, that’s only second to her knife in sharpness? Or of the way her grip on my wrists makes my pulse multiply,makes all the birds inside me rustle? Ophelia stares at me, and I realize I must saysomething. ‘She wears a deep red cloak. Her name is Claret, but people around her will call her Klytemnestra. She has curly hair, and is short of stature. She is a queen.’
Ophelia’s eyes widen. ‘Oh, I think I’ve seen her … She arrived recently, yes?’
Hope snakes around my ribs like jasmine, sweet and terrible and overarching. ‘Yes.’
‘What is the message, then, my queen?’
Ophelia’s voice is cooler, more accusing, but I don’t care. Without stopping to think whose heart I may be ripping from their chest, which one of Shakespeare’s stories I am plucking – or whether skeletons can still feel pain – I grab the sole red rose in my vicinity, snapping it off its branch. Its petals pulse, and for a while I fear it might ooze blood, or wither. But even an imperfect message is better than no message at all. A claret rose, for Claret.
