My blackened fingers waver over the collection of candles, considering it. It would be sweet revenge – for all the madness, all the murders he bestowed upon us. It would destroy him utterly, of that I’m certain.
And yet …
Something ambiguous flutters in the barren expanse of my heart. The birds chirp of some tenderness; not towards him, not ever, but despite him. Because he may have written my first sketch, but in his carelessness he left more room in my margins for improvisation, more off-page passages that deft hands can twist and turn, opening enough space for the Three Fates to find me.
For Claret, to find me.
Perhaps the sweetest revenge is to remain alive; to rebel against the telling of my story, to take charge of each subsequent chapter. To have a name, when he gave me none.
Determined, I sit on his chair – and begin reading.
I have to light a candle in the end. Not to burn, but to see. The words have started dancing on the page after hours and hours of perusing. I’ve gone through every manuscript, bound or loose or flailing on his desk, yet have discovered nothing that could help me. A stack of lovely poems; mountains of drab recounting of the lives of English kings, all of whom are bafflingly named Henry or Richard; a not negligible pile of decent jokes. Hidden in a drawer like a dirty secret, one or two scenes that mention Ophelia – that poor girl has truly suffered in his hands. And carved on the wood of the drawer itself, I find the phrase that the first wraith uttered, ‘parting is such sweet sorrow’. Perhaps she was another girl he chose to torment on his pages.
But nothing about me; nothing about the name Macbeth.
The thought that we were insignificant to him, my true husband and I, barely a hill in the vast landscape of theworlds Shakespeare created, bothers me more than it should.
I get up, my body protesting the long hours of idleness, every joint stiff and sluggish. No wonder he’s resorted to the spirits in his glass so often; this is no work for sober minds. I take in the walls more carefully this time, stopping at every pinned-up page just enough to ascertain its relevance. There is more madness here, angry scrawlings half-buried in ink stains, phrases repeated like a sad chorus of themselves, long lists of names that seem copied from some town’s old register, as if Shakespeare was seeking inspiration for his characters and thought it prudent to plunder real people’s likeness.
What a vampire he is, all grandiose and self-assured, until you catch his true reflection. Acting like he has our best interests at heart, while mining our memories for further gain, future success … These people deserve better. They deserve to rest in peace, not share our fate. I grab the page, determined to tear it to shreds – when I see it, further up. Two words, like lighthouse beams emerging through the fog to guide me, to promised shores I’d never thought I’d reach.
Gruoch Macbethad.
28. Claret
I reach for my cloak under Helene’s bed – and so does she.
Like vultures diving head on, eager to sink their talons into a carcass while the blood still flows, warm and inviting. My sister’s skeleton contorts as she bends over, not wasting any time by getting up. Instead, she dives head-first from her supine position, to secure the piece of clothing she must have hoped I wouldn’t notice. Her skull is back in sight, the illusion of flesh dissolving right before my eyes, skeletal hands burying themselves in claret.
But I’m no slower.
I grab that garment as one grabs a hand to save them, when they’re falling from a cliff. And I do not let go, locking us in a game of push and pull, of bloody tide ebbing and flowing. This so resembles when Helene and I were little, arguing over who would get to weave a dress from the best cloth, that I would laugh – if I was not preoccupied with getting back my property, and killing her. If one can truly kill a moving skeleton. I aspire to try.
‘Let go, you idiot, you’ll get us both in trouble!’ Helene hisses.
‘Why, sister mine, have you never met me?’ I widen my stance, bracing my knee against her bed, using it as leverage while I pull with all my strength. ‘I … tend … to not … let go … of things!’ With the sound of fabricbeing ripped, the cloak is mine. Yet I don’t have time to revel in my victory before Helene jumps up from the bed, launching herself at me, a blonde hyena who will not give up on promised morsels. Her momentum is too much for me and I fall back, losing my balance. We both tumble to the floor, the cloak between us like a curtain, in a mess of limbs and fabric and protruding bones and –
A knife.
My knife. Blade first I find it, buried as it must have been within my cloak’s mysterious depths. But still I grab it, wincing as its steel cuts through my palm, as the pain shimmers with a certainty that has my every extremity on fire. I push and twist, trying to shake Helene off me as I snake my hand upward. The last thing I need is for her to notice and attempt to grab it, so I kick her. In the belly, first, but skeletons do not have bellies so my kick does nothing but frustrate me. Then I aim for her knee … and that makes her scream.
For a brief second, the world around us shakes, walls rumbling like the cliff did on that black beach, like when I challenged Shepherd. That needle-like feeling flushes over me from head to toe, and I can almost feel the air around us crackle, as if thunder’s about to strike.
But Helene rolls away from me, clutching her ailing leg, and the shaking, the impending storm stops. Once more she flickers in and out of flesh, which gives me just enough time to reach for my knife’s hilt. My hand is slippery with blood, but that won’t be the first time this precious helper is anointed with it. I smile, feeling more like myself than I have all day. Wrapping the cloak in a quick bundle, I get up, pointing my knife to Helene’s throat. Her eyes are wide,outraged and terrified, two stormy seas about to spill their waves ashore.
What fear could she have of death when she’s already dead? Doesn’t she know that this existence, half-cloaked in skin and going through the motions, never setting one foot outside of Shepherd’s clearly marked perimeter, is not the way a queen should live?
I push my knife harder, nicking the skin, if such a thing as skin existed. I’m doing her a favour. My sister, my real sister, wanted to be loved and to love freely; she was a creature of impulse and passion, of lust and glorious laughter. She never would have settled for this prison.
‘No, wait, stop, you don’t understand,’ she begs. ‘I was hiding it to keep it safe! To keepyousafe, from her.’ Her gaze roams to my cloak, as if she thinks there’s still a way to snatch it.
‘Thank you for your concern, sister mine. I feel extremely safe now.’ And will be much more so, once I find Anassa and get us both out.
‘If you do what you consider doing, you condemn me. She’ll kill me. Or worse. I was supposed to take care of you, make sure you weren’t causing any trouble.’ Helene sniffles, and if I was two decades younger and my heart was still unshattered, I would probably feel bad.
Yet her words interest me; this is the most honest Helene has been since Shepherd dragged me here, foot-first. ‘What do you mean, or worse?’
What passes for a fate that’s worse than death in this gods-forsaken realm?
