42. Claret
Gruoch’s bedroom window breaks with a curl of Shepherd’s finger, a rain of glass shards falling out, cold night air rustling in. I should be relieved that I can breathe, that the mad queen’s ritual hasn’t killed or suffocated us.
Instead, I’m furious. Shepherd ishere, in Gruoch’s palace; they have been working in tandem, through dreams and visions, all along. And look how well we fell into this web!
I dig my hands into my cloak, tearing it with my nails, searching for the familiarity of my blade, of its cool hilt … Nothing. It feels as if I’m scraping my own skin. Fire and blood pull underneath my fingertips, fresh rivulets of rage about to burst, engulf the world. I don’t care what this means, what the message from the Moirai is, why they’re so keen to keep me from my knife when our lives are on the line. I want to tear this cursed cloak apart.
I want to tear Shepherd apart.
I see Anassa, in my addled state – or I think I do. The shape of her has changed, no longer contained in a single, human form. I gasp. Are those … ravens circling around us like a shadow fury? I’ve witnessed hints of this before, the birds within the woman stirring, but … How am I supposed to comprehend this, this complete metamorphosis when everything is ending? Are we to dissolve in fire, burst into birds? How will that help us withstand Shepherd? Thefeline goddess smiles, then, and I know whatever forces stir within us are too late. Not enough. The night sky outside loses its colour, turning into that awful white that signals Shepherd’s realm is within reach. Shepherd tells us to follow her, and her voice wraps around my body like it did before, rendering me immobile. Or, almost. I can fight it, I try, I push back – until a leopard tail curls around my ankle, twisting like a chain. I’m once again at Shepherd’s mercy, my body pliant, unresponsive as she drags me through the open door into that milky void. I can’t even move my head, cast a last frantic look to that room of smoke and sacrifice, make sure Anassa is with us in some form or other. I can’t scream for her.
All I can do is listen to the frenzied flapping, the flock of black birds drifting further and further away from me. The light devours me.
When I can see once more, when the white light parts, my circumstances aren’t much of an improvement. I’m falling. In dust and rubble, in a broken world.
But I can move again, so my hands cushion my fall, fingers scraped raw scrambling to find purchase. A slab of once white rock, solid but for a crack in the top corner, vaguely familiar. I hold on to it, gingerly getting up, testing my ankle. That leopard tail was so relentless that the leather of my boot has melted, stuck on my skin. I bite my teeth and remove my shoe slowly, peeling it off. My ankle is swollen, inflamed, but not broken. I can bear weight on it. I remove my other boot, tossing it aside, feeling a fraction better now that I’m barefoot. I barely have time to rejoice in the freedom of my limbs moving again, of Shepherd’s influence lessening. A blurof bones and golden hair tackles me, hugging me so hard I hyperventilate.
Helene.
‘I thought I’d never see you again,’ she blubbers between sobs. I pat my sister’s back cautiously, trying to disregard the skeletal truth of her shape that my hands are warning me about, to focus instead on what I know. Her essence.
‘Why are you still here?’ I scold her. ‘I thought the key –’
A small and gilded object is pressed into my hand. My key! Helene takes a step back and I look at her, really look at her, face even paler, lips tight, wrists marked with golden cuffs.
‘It didn’t work for us. We were caught,’ is all she says, and all the things she doesn’t say burn in my eyes, my temper rising. Us, we. She tried to leave here with Ophelia, just as I tried to leave with Anassa. And if these golden cuffs are anything like the ones I had on me when I first got here, Shepherd is punishing her.
‘Is your friend all right?’ I ask and it surprises me to find I really want to know. Ophelia was kind; she helped us.
‘Yes. Shepherd’s more lenient on her. She finds us, older stories, more of a threat.’
This confirms my own thoughts; it feels like an important thread to pull. But first … ‘What happened here? And have you seen Anassa?’
Helene takes my hand, helping me out of the mess of stone. ‘Watch your step. This used to be one of the columns that held the hallway, between the dining room and the pool. At least, I think it was. It’s hard to tell what’s up or down these days.’
I observe the stone again; I knew it seemed familiar. ‘Our prison is broken?’ I whisper, hope finding me unbidden.
‘All the … enclosures are broken, not just ours. The world has barely stopped its shaking, since you left. It’s only now settling again. Watch your step.’ She guides me under a half-collapsed ceiling, sitting at an odd angle on the floor, a fallen thunderbolt turned to stone. I don’t know what to make of it; I’ve felt this world tremble before, when I fought with Shepherd, then with Helene. But this … Everywhere I look is the same, dust, debris, demolished walls, as if Enceladus awoke and shook the earth. And people, more people than I can count, with different clothes and hairstyles, all wearing the same mask of subdued terror, subtle hope.
‘Are they –’
‘Children of different creators, yes. Different storyworlds. One good thing that came out of this; Ophelia doesn’t have to go through her ordeal of drowning to traverse the realm. She can just walk to me.’
‘But how? Why? Shepherd would never let this happen.’
Helene gives me a small, mischievous smile. ‘I never told you this, but when our goddess first delivered you to me, she gave me very specific orders. Of course, unworthy subject that I am, I failed to carry them out.’
My heart goes still inside me. ‘Specific orders, you say.’
We emerge into a big, central opening, like a town square with half a staircase in the middle. Shepherd is there, already gathering a crowd. It should surprise me more, how we stepped through the threshold of Gruoch’s world together, yet I landed so far away from her. But every time I’ve tried to predict her movements, she’s always been four steps ahead.
I feel Helene’s hold on me tighten, skeletal fingers cold on my skin.
‘Tell me what Shepherd’s orders were,’ I whisper to my sister, and I could swear I see Shepherd’s head whip in my direction, leopard eyes tracking my every move.
Helene doesn’t speak. Her face takes on a serene expression, and so does everyone’s around me. All eyes are on Shepherd. ‘Shh, our goddess speaks,’ someone whispers. A hushed silence falls across the crowd. People sit down, as comfortably as they can in this mess of fallen boulders and cracked floors, like children gathered round the fire, eager for a tale.
Whatever spell she’s got them under, it doesn’t work on me.Why doesn’t it work on me?
