I would be flattered if I wasn’t so perplexed. Who is this young woman? How does Helene know her? And how can I get near enough to threaten her without losing possession of my key, still firm under my foot? I could kick it aside, but I’m not certain of my so-called sister’s heart. Would she try for the key, or try to save her friend?
‘I …’ the girl, Ophelia, squeaks, ‘I just came to deliver a message. From my queen.’ Slowly, as if holding the world’s most deadly weapons, she lowers her hands, placing the flower and the feather on my bed.
I do not like the frantic dance my heart is doing. Not when I’m in the middle of a fight, outnumbered by skeletal enemies.
‘What queen?’ Helene asks – the same instant as I ask, ‘What message?’
Ophelia opens her mouth to answer, but hesitates between the two of us. She blinks, observing Helene and me, as if unsure of what she’s stepped into.
Just a bit of casual murder between sisters.
‘Speak up, girl, or this knife takes flight. Lands in your chest,’ I add, in case she needs further encouragement.I doubt my blade would do much damage on her flesh, which seems as fickle as Helene’s, but I can always hit her breastbone.
Ophelia’s face turns blue. She gurgles, spitting water on her dress. Her hair becomes suddenly drenched, as if she had been swimming.
‘Oh no, it’s happening again,’ Helene mutters. She looks genuinely sad, yet not alarmed by what we’re witnessing – a young woman, who just flickered into existence in our chambers, drowning now in front of us when there’s no water in sight. ‘You need to get back,’ Helene tells her, the same way she would scold our kitten when it climbed too high up the olive tree and would start meowing, terrified to come down.
Who is Ophelia to her?
And why do I care?
‘The message …’ the drowning girl manages between coughs, ‘was these. From Queen Anassa.’ She points to the two items on my bed, her fingers dripping brown water.
I have so many questions, mostly revolving around ‘why’ and ‘how’ and ‘where is she’ but I do not get to ask them. With a shimmer and a splash, like someone threw a pebble on a lake’s surface, Ophelia vanishes.
‘Ophelia …’
Helene’s voice echoes in the room, a sculptor rummaging through rock and marble for shapes of gods hidden within, and finding nothing. A sad and heavy silence settles on my shoulders, weighing me down. The floor claims me, and I decide to let it. A strategic armistice; not because fighting disappearing spirits feels futile, or because Anassa’s farewell gifts have found my pulse and squeezed and won’t let go. But because getting answers, while Heleneis in such a state of sorrow, will be more impactful than stabbing bones.
Besides, Helene can’t get to my key if I’m sitting on it. Saddened or not, now that her friend is gone, I assume this key will once again become her focus.
Yet my sister doesn’t come near. Instead, she sits at the foot of my bed, her gaze locked on the strange assortment of red petals and black promises of flight.
Maybe I’ll kill her anyway, if she tries to steal those for herself.
‘I’m very tired … aren’t you?’ she asks, her voice softer than that feather.
I grunt non-committally.
‘Ophelia’s episodes have got worse. We were able to converse, before. She could stay longer – sometimes whole nights, before her body started doing that dreadful, drowning thing.’
‘Who is she?’ I don’t add ‘to you’. That much is now clearer in the way Helene lingers; close to where she last saw Ophelia, close to what her dripping hands last touched.
‘A friend,’ Helene responds after a while. Her fingers trace a path of reverence around the water drops Ophelia spilled; the proof that she was really present. ‘She’s been here a very long time, same as me. Her first visit scared me so!’ Helene chuckles softly. ‘Her strange attire, the way she would leave water everywhere … I thought she was some kind of naiad. But she’s merely another story, like us, only doomed to drown forever, because her creator wrote her so. And the longer she remains here, the tougher it becomes to shake it off, the yoke her story has on her. I’ve seen it happen with others. People become like Hephaistos’ automatons, only able to repeat a set of movements,a set of words … Can you imagine? Not that much better than a wraith.’ Helene turns around to look at me, eyes entirely human in that moment. Entirely sad. ‘That’s why your key is so important. And that’s why I went feral when I saw it.’
I don’t respond, and she does not apologize.
Good. I would respect her much less if she did.
Helene gets up from the bed, picking up Ophelia’s presents –Anassa’s presents– ever so gently. She approaches me and leaves them on my lap; a victor’s spoils. ‘That queen of yours must have good taste,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry you won’t get to see her any more, but it was nice of her to do this, to show she hasn’t forgotten you. That’s all we can hope for, in the end.’ She touches my face, tucking a stray curl behind my ear, like she did when we were kids. Then with a sigh, she goes back to her own bed and lies down. ‘You can wear that stupid cloak if that’s important to you. Just don’t try to run. Seshat will find you; she always does.’
Muffling a sound that could have been a sob, if skeletons could cry, Helene turns her back on me and goes to sleep.
I stay on the floor for a long time.
Eventually, when no more skeletal apparitions show up, my fingers relax around my knife. I leave it on my thigh, close enough to grab again if needed. I try to reach for the rose, but my hands are cramping and my fingers tremble and some petals come loose.
A russet spill, resembling flakes of dried blood. A parting gift from the first person who beheld me, the only one who made me wonder whether softness could be possible. I grab the rose in both hands, squeezing with all my might, wishing I could draw blood, or tears, or Anassa’s pulse.Anything besides this quiet fury. This sense that I have played by Clotho’s rules, only to have the game reversed on me, to end up in a pit with no way out. Trapped in the shadow Shepherd’s realm has cast on all of us, confined in tidy corners under threats of death or wraiths or drowning. ‘No more unsanctioned, senseless crossovers,’ Shepherd had said. How stupid of me to assume this was about us; that Anassa and I were the first rebels, the only ones who tried to find new paths that fit us both. I squeeze and squeeze, and feel the tiniest spark – until the rose explodes in claret petals. That’s one gift spent, one goodbye acknowledged.
