But even my worst thoughts couldn’t prepare me for what really happens next.
A door bangs open, hinges screeching. A door that wasn’t there before, cutting through the wall behind the bathtub. And through the door’s dangling frame, I can see the fires of hell, hear the screams of the damned.
46. Claret
‘What in Tartaros …’ I rise with shaky steps, holding on to the bathtub for support.
What was that sound? Like spirits knocking from the great beyond. I glance at Agamemnon’s corpse but it holds no secrets; no ashen fists risen in post-death fury to strike me down for my betrayal – for all my betrayals. He hasn’t moved, hasn’t transformed into his gold-masked wraith self; of course he hasn’t. I shake my head, blaming my loss of blood for these bizarre thoughts. There is a real and present danger here, and I’m distracted by daydreaming phantoms. Could it be that the elders are creating a ruckus in the courtyard? Could they have learned about Cassandra’s disappearance? Could my guards have betrayed me?
No, the knocking sounds as if it’s coming from –
The outline of a door, cut in a fiery halo, appears on solid wall. Not a threat from this realm then. Has Shepherd come to kill us off? ‘Pass me my knife,’ I instruct Anassa. I can barely hold it in my state, but she saved my wretched life and there’s no way I am surrendering it again. Not with her beside me. Not without a fight. I will be her guardian ghost, rise from the dead as many times as she needs me to protect her.
My love hands me my blade, and I do my best to holdit steady. A small trickle of energy spreads, from head to toe, needling my skin with warmth and glorious purpose.
The room takes on the colour of a burning sunset, casting long shadows on the two of us, fools who ventured too close to the sun. The door bursts open, like something begging to be born. But unlike last time, there is no otherworldly golden light, no eerie silence, no cautious, corvid-clad observer. The sounds of battle, of men and women screaming, of a world collapsing, reverberate around us – loud enough to wake all of Mycenae from her slumber.
Are we fated to die fighting two enemies at once?
Two shapes appear at the door then, hair singed and clothes soot-stained and faces streaked with smoke and shock. Two women, both fair-haired and water-eyed. I stumble at this sudden turn of fate. ‘You …’
Ophelia, more solid and wild than I’ve ever seen her, holds the door open, lips pursed in effort, hands trembling, her long hair covering her like liquid flames. And Helene … Helene’s hands are free from Shepherd’s golden bands – her arms are not skeletal any more. In this war-lit moment, she seems to glow from within, like a cloud lit by lightning. She only casts a cursory glance around: at the walls, at the bathtub, at Agamemnon’s body. Searching for threats, or allies, like a queen would. Then she waves frantically, ushering us to hurry. ‘Come quickly, we don’t know how long we can keep this door open!’
I’ve never felt the need to hug my sister more than I do in this moment.
And I don’t need to be told twice. Such second chances at escape speak of divine providence – or luck that, for once, gave us a feral smile. Grabbing Anassa by the hand, ignoring the sharp pain that shoots up from my ruinedleft wrist, I rush us both out of this cursed palace, leaving Agamemnon and his legacy of gold and guilt behind.
This time, hopefully for good.
We step into a world more earthquake ravaged than I left it, the door closing behind us so abruptly, Ophelia’s hair is stuck in it – like the tail-feathers of theArgowhen it crossed the Symplegades. I offer her my knife and she nods, letting me cut her long tresses, set her free. Something about using my knife to help, not to hurt, makes my eyes misty. I’m not crying. It’s the air that’s thick with dust and smoke, smelling of ravaged woodland and flesh burned to coal.
‘Thank you,’ Ophelia says, fingers combing through her shorter strands. ‘I feel lighter.’
I nod, then turn my attention back to Anassa, who’s doubled over coughing. My raven needs clean air to breathe. I find my sister’s eyes. ‘Is it this bad everywhere?’
‘The air clears towards the square, away from the main site of impact,’ she says, and I think the smoke must be getting to me as well.
‘What site of impact?’
‘A thunderbolt. Or something like it. I just remember being dazed by Shepherd’s light, when suddenly the world started shaking again, only this time there was a booming sound as well. And it felt …’ Helene clutches her chest. ‘It felt like something broke inside me. Some kind of hold Shepherd had – not entirely, but enough. One of my bands broke, too; I hit the other with a stone.’ She smiles, and shows me a wrist that’s bruised and bloody, and oh so human.
‘Sister mine,’ I mumble, without a trace of irony. I want to focus on Helene’s words, to understand what’shappened to her, why she’s suddenly all flesh and I don’t have to squint to see her flickering form superimposed over a skeleton. I want to rejoice at her realness, and possibly pull her hair to test it, as I did when we were little. But everything around me is chaos, everything screams for my attention. That thunderbolt couldn’t have been my fault, could it?
Craters have opened on the ground, making it hard to find a steady surface to walk on. We’re balancing over the belly of a beast whose innards have erupted, spilling blood black as ink. I spot red ribbon snakes, like the ones we saw between the reeds before entering Shepherd’s arch, the ones Shakespeare called ‘harmless’, and ‘hungry to mark their place in a new story’, as if these two things can be true at once. They slither slowly amid crevasses and debris, circling people’s feet, so similar in colour to my cloak, to this jagged, rough-sewn line on my wrist, that they make my head spin with the implications. Could it be that this realm is so much bigger, so much wilder, than Shepherd made it out to be, secluding us all in our neat pens, making sure we can’t talk to one another?
Our ragtag group makes careful progress, climbing over the worst ruins, heading towards a clearing in the midst of all the fallen structures. ‘How did you find us? How did you know where to look?’ I ask Helene.
‘I found your key amid the ruins. It was as if someone removed the wool from my eyes,’ my sister tells me. ‘Suddenly I could see so much clearer, every little detail that was previously obscured. I was no longer an amalgamation of antiquated verse, of ideas about Helene of Troy – but my full, substantial self. And I knew I had to come and get you.’
She hands me my key back and I take it, too dazed to pay attention. Where would I use it anyway? It’s done its job, saved an innocent. Absent-mindedly, I let my cloak’s depths swallow it.
I focus on the frantic crowd around us. How much they’ve changed!
Where they were dazed by Shepherd’s words before, moving together in joint purpose like a beehive around their queen, now they’re clear-eyed; scattered. Combative, some of them. Humans and creatures that are human-like but not quite, push each other to get out of the way. People with different attires weep in each other’s arms. Some fight, some …
‘Oh!’ Anassa says, sounding scandalized.
I avert my eyes from the copulating couple, giving them privacy they didn’t ask for. There is such frenzy in the air, fear and despair and anger and a lust for life pulsing together. Perhaps this is what a revolution feels like; a union in fragmentation, a thousand different threads unspooling, all determined to carve a different path for themselves.
