Helene hesitates. Her eyes roam left and right, as if checking the room for interlopers – or Agamemnon’s shadow. I follow her gaze, but we appear to be alone. SoI press my knife harder still, forcing her to speak. ‘The shadow furies … Claws that burn, voices that peel your spirit from your skin … You’ve seen what they can do. They can attack at any minute, emerge from thin air.’
My hand trembles, but not enough for her to notice. ‘You mean the wraiths?’ I sneer. ‘They’re nothing. Even when they wear my husband’s face. I’ll admit it unsettled me, at first, but it wasn’t my first one. I’ve already escaped one and killed another. With this very knife.’
Her mouth hangs open. ‘You … you have? But … Seshat herself, in all her glory, can barely save us from them. She tries, if we’re worth saving, but it’s not always possible.’
Helene lowers her head, and I don’t know what possesses me, but I relax my knife. Mustn’t decapitate her now, while she’s sharing information I can use. Yes. That’s why I take a measured step back, keeping the threat present, but not imminent. To encourage her to go on.
‘So you’re saying, even Shepherd, Seshat, is not stronger than the wraiths?’ This echoes what her vision showed me, of hungry shadows taking over. And could explain why she was so quick to show a force of strength, to incapacitate me. Perhaps she knows I stabbed one of these shadows – perhaps she’s seen everything that’s transpired since I left Mycenae. I shake the sudden cloud of fear that threatens to engulf me, the implication that no moment I’ve experienced since has been as private as I thought. I focus on the current problem. ‘Where do the wraiths come from, then? Who controls them, if not her?’
‘Seshat calls them “mistakes”, “abominations”.’ Helene’s voice is so soft, barely more than a whisper. I understand it’s not prudent to speak of certain things out loud, even ifwe appear to be alone. So I shuffle closer, to ensure I hear her. ‘She claims they were once like us, stories who lingered here too long, who disobeyed her. Refused their keys and did not step through their doors when it was time to leave. She says …’ Helene gulps, an impressive feat for someone who doesn’t really have a throat, or saliva. She almost looks perfectly human, again. ‘Seshat says that if we misbehave, if we refuse to step through the door she will unlock for us, when our time comes, then her protection will lose its power and the magic of this world will twist us into shadow furies. Or wraiths, as you call them. Sentient harbingers of ruin, cloaked in shadows, carrying only fragments of the self we were before.’ Helene stares at me. ‘Like a funereal mask, forged from Mycenean gold. If, say, a king had died. If his death caused enough ripples.’
She does not ask me, which softens something in me.
My sister wouldn’t have to ask. She’d know. Even approve of my work, perhaps.
I nod, regardless. ‘So that was truly Agamemnon. Or a fragment of his corpse.’ And all he could do to me was wheeze, and observe me ominously. What a pathetic outcome for the lord of men. ‘Why did he stay here for so long, then? Why couldn’t he let go, if Seshat offered him a new door, a new existence? Why didn’t he pass on before he was turned into … this thing?’Who was he waiting for?
‘No way to tell why some choose to linger although given a way out. Some of us have tried asking them, tried to reason with them – but it’s like talking to the midnight fog. They’re stripped of everything that kept them solid. If they’re able to speak at all, it’s only a sentence, at most, and they repeat it as they try to kill us. So we aspire to be good. To stay in Seshat’s Light. To be chosen. Earnour key, and not become like them, when our time comes.’ Helene’s eyes glaze over, most of her intensity forgotten. She smiles a dreamy smile. ‘We all have one, you know. A key to a new story; a glittering chance at a new life. Seshat knows which one is whose. I bet you have one too, sister. Wouldn’t it be nice? A fresh start? A door that opens just for you?’
My mind is filled with golden pendants, wrapped around Shepherd’s torso. People’s fresh starts, and she hoards them on her person to disperse at whim. How very … godlike.
It truly is my fault, what happens next. I’ve been distracted, immersed in Helene’s tale, in her personality blooming a bit more alike to the sister I’ve so missed. So when she pounces, I’m not ready. My cloak slips from my grasp.
And my key, my real key, the one Clotho created for me, falls to the floor with a deafening clang. Helene’s pupils widen, her blue rims drowning in a pool of darkened focus. A predator’s eyes – so similar to Shepherd’s that I flinch.
But this sack of sisterly pretension is no Shepherd. So I regain my poise and, by the time she’s thrown my cloak aside to make for the key instead, I’ve covered it with my foot. My knife goes to her throat once more. This time she’ll get no mercy from me.
‘You have a key already?’ She almost mouths the words, the barest of whispers. ‘Seshat was right about you; you are a danger to this realm, to us all. Did you steal this key from her?’
Interesting, that an almighty goddess would so seek to target me, to turn these skulls against me. Almost as if … ‘Do you not think, sister mine, that perhaps you’ve placedyour worship in unworthy gods? If Seshat is able to give life, as you say, why would she fuss so much over a human woman, even if I once was the ruler of Mycenae?’
Helene shakes her head madly, unwilling to listen to my words, to the truth she must suspect they carry. ‘I won’t let your heresies confuse me. I deserve a key! I deserve a way out of here.’ She tries to bypass my knife; I spill more of her blood. She doesn’t seem to care. ‘Please,’ she cries, so frantic, so feral. ‘I’ve waited here for so long for Seshat to honour me with one! Yet you … How did you get this, how could you have possibly deserved this more than me?’
Ah. So there it is; sisterly jealousy, twisted into sharp edges, fed on by falsehoods.
I hesitate. Should I reveal my key’s true origins, in the hopes of making her shed Shepherd’s influence – or will that cause more chaos? Yet there’s no time for such deliberation.
Because from one breath to the next, we are no longer just the two of us. Another skeleton appears, as if conjured out of thin air. Water drips from its skull. Its empty sockets are adorned with white flowers, their petals drenched as if they’re shedding tears. I remove my knife from Helene’s throat, pointing towards this new, perplexing threat. ‘Reinforcements?’ I ask my sister.
But Helene doesn’t look like someone who has just been saved by an accomplice. Her illusory flesh blanches, her mouth opens in dismay. ‘Please, don’t hurt her,’ she pleads. ‘She has nothing to do with this. She is an innocent.’
An innocent …
I relax my gaze, trying to see what Helene sees, to look beyond this floral skeleton for the story wrapped around its bones. Slowly, like dripping water, she becomes whole.A young woman, with gentle features and cerulean eyes, dressed in a swathe of river-coloured fabric. Hair like dawn’s rosy light, long enough to cover her like a second gown, but dripping murky darkness at the ends. A splatter of pink on her cheeks, on her nose, like she’s blooming with embarrassment. She raises her hands to show she’s not a threat, clearly frightened by my knife.
My heart burns like a wraith has clutched it.
Because in one hand, the woman holds a rose so claret it could put my cloak to shame.
And in the other, a raven’s feather – the exact shade of Anassa’s hair.
29. Anassa
Gruoch Macbethad. Gruoch Macbethad.Gruoch Macbethad.
The world around me spins, Shakespeare’s writings on the wall blurring. But I narrow in on these two words, surely the inspiration for the name Macbeth, like thirsty flowers holding on to rain. I study the pinned-up page more attentively, searching for any clues that this resemblance means something. There is a line drawn near the name, pointing to the paper’s margins. I shift closer, struggling to read the chicken scrawl. Holin-shed, whatever that means. And underneath it, Chronicles, Scotlande, along with a smudge. A number, perhaps? A year? It’s not a lot to go on, but I hold on to this thread, however frail: Gruoch Macbethad must have been a person once. A real person. I need to find her; if her fate is anything like mine, if Shakespeare didn’t borrow just her name to mould me, if Macbethad is her husband’s name like Macbeth was mine …
I need to warn her. She should run for the hills before he starts discussing prophecies and glory. That way only madness lies; only dark deeds and unrestrained ambition and invading forests.
