by Rae Else
The Arete Series
The All-Seeing Eye
Rae Else
Copyright © 2018 Rae Else.
All rights reserved.
First Edition
raeelse.co.uk
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is fictionalised or coincidental.
WHO WAS THE SCULPTOR AND WHERE WAS HE FROM?
FROM SIKYON.
AND HIS NAME?
LYSIPPOS.
AND WHO ARE YOU?
TIME WHO SUBDUES ALL THINGS.
WHY DO YOU STRIDE ON TIP-TOE?
I AM FOREVER RUNNING.
AND WHY DO YOU HAVE A PAIR OF WINGS ON YOUR FEET?
I FLY WITH THE WIND.
AND WHY DO YOU HOLD A RAZOR IN YOUR RIGHT HAND?
AS A SIGN TO MEN THAT I AM SHARPER THAN ANY SHARP EDGE.
AND WHY DOES YOUR HAIR HANG OVER YOUR FACE?
SO THAT HE WHO ENCOUNTERS
ME MAY GRAB IT.
AND WHY, BY ZEUS, IS THE BACK OF YOUR HEAD BALD?
BECAUSE NOBODY, ONCE I HAVE RUN PAST HIM ON MY WINGED FEET WILL EVER CATCH ME FROM BEHIND, EVEN THOUGH HE YEARNS TO.
WHY DID THE ARTIST FASHION YOU?
FOR YOUR SAKE, STRANGER, AND HE PLACED ME UP IN THE PORCH AS A LESSON.
EPIGRAM BY POSIDIPPUS IN ANTHOLOGIA GRAECA 16.276, TRANSLATION J.J.POLLITT
- Chapter One -
Rites
The chest of drawers had spewed its contents across the room: clothes were strewn over the bed and floor. It was as if the destruction of downstairs had wrestled its way up. El set down a pile of sheets on the bed. This was the last room to deal with, and she couldn’t put it off any longer.
She collected and folded the clothes. Opening the cupboard, she stood on tiptoes and returned the jumpers to their shelves. There were a couple of hoodies slung over a chintz armchair. She placed them in the trolley bag on the floor. It was June and would be at least twenty degrees in Greece. She doubted she’d need any of the thicker items but with only shorts and T-shirts, the luggage looked strange: an alien wardrobe. She packed some jeans too, before returning the rest to the drawer.
Wondering what to tackle next, her eyes lit upon the poster on the wall: Florence and the Machine, Lungs. The singer’s lungs were a huge necklace, suspended on her chest. Her red hair, cheeks and lips stood out. Behind the woman, a blue tapestry fell like water, reminding El of Millais’ painting Ophelia. The last hues of life clung to the woman’s skin, about to be washed away.
El’s best friend, Ingrid had brought this poster back from a festival a couple of years ago. She remembered how pleased she’d been with the first present she’d ever had from a friend. As she stared at the poster, it seemed like a cadaver being dissected. It was no longer the singer in the poster but her grandma, and the highlighted lungs conjured to mind the sound of her final ragged gasp. El sprang at the poster and tore it from the wall, scrunching it up and stuffing it in the bin.
She cringed. She’d ruined her most treasured gift from Ingrid. Reality descended, diluting her guilt: Ingrid would never find out. El’s best friend barely remembered that she existed. El had had to manipulate her. She’d erased herself from Ingrid’s mind so that she would be safe from the arete world, from its danger … and death.
The bulky furniture in the room meant that there wasn’t much available wall space. The only other item on the wall was a large sign, hanging by the door. El stared at its words: “Life is better at the barn”. A lump rose in her throat as she fought the urge to go to the stables to say goodbye to her horse, Rika, one last time.
She set to work again. A pile of notebooks rested on the desk. Flicking through a History textbook, she relinquished it to the drawer, along with all the pads. Her finals were next week, but she wouldn’t be here. Free of clutter, the surface now only held a framed photo of her mum. In it, Anna had the same smile she’d worn in the catacombs. The one that she’d shown to El just before she died. El clenched her jaw, seized the frame and tossed it into the drawer.
She shook a bedsheet over the desk, draped one over her dresser and then the bookcase. Finally, she covered the bed. The sheet sloped from the headboard to the bottom posts. It looked like a shroud as if someone might be resting beneath. The image of a white body bag shot through her mind. She hadn’t been there when her grandma had been removed last night but she could imagine how it had passed. Grabbing her suitcase, she dragged it from the room and, without looking back, jerked the door shut.
Moving down the hall, white squares and spirals rose from the wine-coloured carpet. She stared at their geometry as if it contained hidden meaning. She took the small back staircase down to the library.
El entered to the sound of Alex snoring gently. He was slumped in the wingback chair, his mouth open, fast asleep. Otherwise, there was no one else in the room, or so it appeared. El’s eyes drifted to the deep-recessed window, the sun’s rays skipping over the seat cushion. A hazy shape appeared as if a cloud of smoke were collecting. It could almost be dismissed as a trick of the light: the sun playing with motes of dust. But the definite profile of a figure now hovered in the window.
It reminded her of early black and white photos that avowed to have captured a spirit on film. If she were to take a snapshot, would Janos’ shadowy form translate to the camera? What she wouldn’t give to be able to dismiss him as a figment of her imagination, to chalk him up as an illusion. But the graeae, shifting in and out of the moment, was all too real: a state that he’d occupied for the last two hours.
El focused on what she reckoned was Janos’ head, willing him to return to the present. She wanted answers. Luke had been gone for hours. After Luke had left, Janos had muttered something cryptic about timing their departure correctly. Then, inexplicably, he’d shifted out of the present. El surmised he was looking for future danger but his silence annoyed her. They were meant to be meeting Luke at Braintree Airfield at eight o’clock this morning. It was almost eight already, and there was no hint of their departure.
Earlier, Janos had been keen for all of them to leave, warning them that the Order would be coming. The only reason he’d remained was for Luke to make overtures to his family. Luke was meeting with his brother to inform him of their plan to find allies in Greece. His brother would, in time, relay the information to their father. But what if the meeting hadn’t gone well? What if Luke had been turned over to the Order?
El had called to Janos many times. She narrowed her eyes. She’d kick him if she thought it would help but there was barely any of him left. Did he take his sense of touch with him when he left the present too? Alex snored loudly. How could he sleep, let alone be completely unfazed sharing a room with a spectre-like man? Perhaps Janos was stuck. Stretching out a hand, El edged closer, then stopped. The thought of reaching through him made her skin crawl.
Instead, she moved her case into the entrance hall. The pungent scent of the living room pervaded the air: burnt wood, fabric and chemicals. Hesitantly, she glanced into the blackened room. The sight of the piano jarred her. Scorched black at one end, the main keys merged with the black sharps and flats. She thought of her grandma’s fingers flying over them. As soon as the image was born, an angry heat burned in her as if the fire which had gutted the room moved through her.
Backing away, she gazed at where the front door should have been. It had been smashed when the Order had entered to capture her grandma, and now lay slumped against an outside wall. Two Opposition members guarded the driveway, looking innocuous in the daytime compared to how they had last night. Dan was somewhere amongst their ranks. Likely, he was as far away from her as
possible.
She recalled how he’d begged her to forgive him for lying to her. He’d made her believe that she had the full power. He and Janos had: a lie that had been spread to draw the crowds of Order members to the London Olympia. Lies that had enabled the Opposition to assassinate the Triad, except for Janos, who was working with the Opposition.
Last night, Dan’s pleading look had turned to anger when she’d refused to go into hiding. Dan had expected her to leave, now that she’d played her part. But he didn’t get it. She was part of this now: part of the Opposition and the fight against the Order. She wouldn’t leave him to fight alone. No matter how angry she was with his lies, she still cared for him.
She fished her phone out of her jeans, not so much a phone as a glorified clock. She’d taken the precaution of disabling it, in case the Order used more human methods to track them. Not that they would need to look hard; she was exactly where they would expect her to be. Despondently, she glanced at the phone as if by some miracle, a call or text might come in. El wished that Luke hadn’t gone off alone. They should have stayed together.
Doubts about Janos forced their way into El’s thoughts. She knew so little about him. She’d asked Dan to tell her more about him this morning. She knew that Janos had been working with her mum from within the Order for the last six years. Without him, they’d never have been able to get into the Olympia and take out the rest of the Triad. But why had Janos wanted the Triad removed? What were his reasons for wanting to destroy the Order when he’d been part of its hierarchy? Dan was certain of Janos’ allegiance. After all, Janos had been giving his blood to the Opposition all this time. El wanted to talk more to Janos about it before leaving but it didn’t look like there’d be time.
She paced before an old wooden church pew, running her hand over the walking sticks resting upon it. They’d been displaced from a broken stand. Lots of the furniture in the hall had been damaged by the Order’s break in and Louisa’s attack. El took up a walking stick as if it were a sword. Louisa. El pictured her merciless expression as she’d squeezed the life out of her grandma. Louisa was still out there somewhere. Probably safely among the lines of the Order.
El’s fingers ran over the smooth walking stick, its top adorned with a deer shed, and Louisa receded from her thoughts. Instead, El’s granddad took precedence. When she’d been little, he’d let her use these sticks in their games. They’d sparred with them, pretending to be Perseus or some other Greek hero.
The one she held had been her granddad’s favourite. It didn’t ache to think of him anymore. Like the smooth handle, time had softened her grief. She could picture him right here, pushing his heels down into his boots, reaching for the stick on the way out. His movements were so regular, repeated so often that they had become a ritual. Her memories of him were strong, happy, so unlike those of her grandma, or her mum. El tried to embrace her grief when she thought of them, but whenever either of them came to mind, any tenderness she felt warped.
Shame twisted her insides. Don’t speak ill of the dead, wasn’t that the saying? But she couldn’t help it. The urge to leave was strong. Every article and room was laced with a thousand associations, and everything seemed intent on waking the dead. She’d been trying to block them out, to ignore everything and just … exist.
She wrapped her arms around her, hugging the walking stick to her. Her grandma’s ugly crocs that she’d worn for the garden caught her eye, then the crumbling roses on the armoire. Her grandma would have cut them last week. The bouquets in the house were one of the ways she’d navigated the rooms, the fragrances shaping the darkness. El closed her eyes. How could death be so empty and yet so full?
She marched back down the corridor, the tap of the walking stick on the rug accompanying her. In the library, everything was the same as before. Janos was barely there. The stillness of the room pressed itself against her. It was as if no time had passed. She wondered if Janos was causing this sensation. When she strained her hearing, the ticking of a clock from the kitchen punctured the stillness. Time still passed. But she felt frozen: a bystander, waiting for something to happen.
Wood creaked. She jumped.
Alex let out a yawn. ‘Must have nodded off.’ He stifled another one. ‘How long have I been out?’
‘Not as long as Janos.’
‘Still nothing?’
She shook her head.
‘Have you slept?’
She shook her head again, her lips twitching. Even sleep-deprived, Alex was straight to thinking about her. He’d worked tirelessly throughout the early hours of this morning: making arrangements for her grandma’s burial, talking to the estate manager in preparation of their departure, dealing with the rooms that she couldn’t face. She hadn’t had to do anything, only sort out her own belongings.
‘Luke’s still not back,’ she said.
‘I’m sure he’s fine – Janos would have come back if anything had happened.’ He glanced at the insubstantial figure in the window.
El nodded, hoping that he was right.
‘I was thinking, we could put your mum’s ashes in the crypt.’
The urn on the mantelpiece called El’s gaze. Anger simmered just beneath her skin.
‘We could say a few words—’
‘There’s nothing to say,’ she snapped. She looked at Janos’ distorted outline, wishing she could disappear too.
Alex paused. ‘It’s okay to be angry. It’s understandable … natural—’
El seized the walking stick and jabbed it through the lower part of the shadowy figure.
‘El!’ Alex leapt up.
Removing the walking stick, she watched. The distorted form didn’t alter. ‘Natural?’ She pointed with the stick at the morphing figure. ‘Nothing about this is natural. Natural is that Granddad’s in the crypt.’
Alex’s eyes filled with understanding, annoying her even more. He misunderstood. She didn’t just mean that her mum shouldn’t be dead.
‘El, your mum loved you—’
She laughed. ‘Had a funny way of showing it, didn’t she?’
‘I know it may not seem like it … but you were always her top priority.’ He looked like he might hug her. She didn’t want his sympathy or to be cajoled into giving up her anger.
She gripped the stick. ‘Do what you like. But not the crypt – that place is for family. And whatever Anna was, she wasn’t that to me.’
The lines of Alex’s face deepened and she felt as if she’d struck him.
Without waiting for a reply, she strode out of the library and through the front door. Crossing the lawns, she tramped into the gardens. Sculpted walls of Leylandii framed different sections. She passed through the kitchen garden, where ripening runner beans wound around canes like snakes around staffs.
The perfume of the flower beds assaulted her. Summer had wrought its change since she’d last been here. El had always found summer flowers too much, preferring the gentler spring blossoms. The scent blotted out everything as if the air was saturated with ambrosia.
A couple of crows cawed and flew off, startled by her sudden appearance. Where the hedges ended, the garden path veered into the woods. She stamped into the forest, the trills of birds swelling the trees before their branches pulled them back in.
A clearing opened out and El was brought up short. She blinked at the elegant colonnaded building: the Devereux Crypt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d visited. Maybe at Christmas, to bring a Holly wreath for her granddad. In a few days, her grandma would lie here too. Although she was angry that her grandma had kept so much from her, she was okay with the thought of her being laid to rest here. Perhaps because she had lived a long life … and given so much of that time to El.
She picked her way over to the crypt, sat down on the top step and plucked a dandelion. The weeds were thick around the clearing, the earth littered with feathery seeds like cobwebs. She thought of her granddad ripping them up as he had regularly over the years. Looking at the space now
, his exertions seemed meaningless. The nettles and brambles reached for the crypt, their creep imperceptible but their triumph assured. She pulled at the petals of the flower, examining her anger.
El understood now. Her mum had saved her, but not out of love. Instead, it was to get the empousa blood into her system. She’d saved her so that the Opposition could get into the Olympia and take out the Triad. She’d saved her to be a weapon in this war. She hated that death meant that she couldn’t berate her mum for her choices. She hated that she’d never be able to confront her for not being around. El had fantasised for years about meeting her. She’d wanted to hear how much her mum had missed her, that she would never leave her again. But that would never happen: Anna was gone, and the few memories she had of her were all there were ever going to be.
She absent-mindedly pulled out her phone again, staring at the time: 08:00. Where was Luke? What were they still doing here? Why hadn’t Janos bloody well come back? She stood up, gripped the walking stick and struck the weeds. Dandelion seeds erupted, their white parachutes spinning through the air. El rained down blow after blow on the thicket. She hit out at the nettles and the brambles, paying no attention to the thorns that snagged her hoody. She relished the sound of the snapping stalks and mulching leaves until she stopped, gasping in the clearing. With her hands on her knees, sweat running down her back, her thoughts finally stilled. For a moment, there was only the sound of her breath.
She started back along the path, whacking the odd branch that got in her way. When she slipped through the gardens and came around the side of the house, someone was in the manor’s doorway. Janos was back. She bolted across the lawn, not stopping until she reached him.
‘Janos, what did you see?’
‘We have to go.’
Hearing the hum of an engine, El looked down the driveway, her heart quickening. The Order … had they come?
The Opposition members standing on the driveway looked back at Janos. He nodded and they moved out of the way, onto the grass.