by Jeannette Ng
And there was so much blood.
That metallic aftertaste welled up again at the back of my throat and I felt my stomach lurch. I brought up what little I ate.
It was no messier than murder.
I stayed inside my tower.
Perhaps it was rooted in a desire for punishment, or to finally abide by Ariel’s frequent warnings to stay inside. There were times when I manically laughed and told the memory Ariel that she had indeed won, I was finally obedient to her instructions, placing not a single foot outside this room. I flung my voice against the stone walls until I was screaming and not laughing, but they continued in their silence.
Or perhaps it was fear, or even a refusal to be reminded of her, of Mab. The castle was so full of memories, and even faded as they were, I did not want to confront them. I did not want to sit again in the solar or dine in the great hall.
It could equally be that I was sick of the pretence of the castle, knowing that it was built of falsehood and folly. I was no longer unable to not notice the facade.
Perhaps, perhaps.
Excuse after excuse, I gave myself, reason upon reason. But in the end, it didn’t matter why. I simply did not want to be outside. Hour after hour, I would bolt again the doors, barely thinking about why they so often seemed to slide open again.
At times, when I did this, I would linger by the door, press my face against the warm wood and, hands lingering on the handle, I wondered if I should leave, if I should take a step into the beyond. I would try to imagine what lay outside, what lay behind and beyond the door. There was another life behind that wood, another place. I would only need to step through.
I counted my heartbeats, one after another until I lost count. My arm began to ache, so tightly was I gripping the door. Heaving a sob, I crumpled. Wearily, I beat my fists pathetically against the wood. I could not step outside.
I was too afraid.
Falling would be nothing like flying.
So both doors remained shut under my hands. I stepped through neither of them and continued in my self-imposed imprisonment.
The disorder of my mind came to be reflected in the disorder of the room.
I had not thought I had brought enough objects within my trunk to fill the space, but I had.
The shawl that Ariel had gifted me was draped over the back of a chair in the middle of the room, where I could see it at all times if I choose to look.
I had avoided putting away my winter clothes since the departure of Mab and her winter. Whilst I did not want to endure its presence, I equally did not want to relive that time by revisiting those garments, so they remained in several woollen heaps. I left out the books and papers that I meaninglessly leafed through over and over, scattered about. I would read them in half sentences, adding to the maddening tangle of my mind.
I thought more of praying than I did on my knees with pressed palms and silently moving lips. For all that prayer had brought me strength in the past, it could no longer illuminate my rayless mind.
I had wondered before on why Ariel had abandoned the faith, but now I understood. Why should one without a soul worry about its cultivation?
And after what I had done, I could no longer hold within myself a hope for heaven.
Catherine Helstone’s brother diligently brought me food. He did not ask if I was going to leave the room or when; he recognised this childish habit already. I had done it after the funeral of Catherine Helstone’s sister when I was seven and a half, then again for a little while after her father’s. I remembered counting the threads in the quilt, willing my world to be just that warm, soft embrace. He had taken care of me then.
Together we tidied the mess I had made and, though the room still reeked of vomit, he stayed with me for a little while, the silence almost painful between us.
Though unassuming in his manner, I could tell he was brooding still. I could see it in the set and the shadow of his eyes. Whatever tempests raged in his soul, he kept them to himself, and I had not the heart to intrude. He still gazed at me in hunger when he thought I wasn’t looking. I yearned for that closeness, that reality, but I could not bring myself to deserve it.
Day after day, I ate because he bid me to.
I only vomited once more after the first time, but it felt unnatural to eat again. The tastes seemed muted and textures more pronounced, making the food nothing but slimy and leathery and heavy in my mouth.
“I’m not sure I like food,” I said.
“Arcadian food is strange at the best of times.” He gave a wry smile. “And the Salamander has strange tastes.”
I mirrored his smile without thinking, the warm flutter in my stomach having nothing to do with food or lack thereof. It was only after that I realised to remember to feel guilty, to push the feeling away.
I stopped counting the beat of the pendulum sun, but I knew well enough that the two-week deadline had come and gone. Days were growing dimmer. Catherine Helstone’s brother simply never mentioned it, and it became yet another silence between us. Not prickly, precisely, but not entirely comfortable.
We were also waiting for Mab’s answer, even as neither of us was in any state to travel to inner Arcadia. I wondered at times if the summons would mean he would abandon me to the care of Mr Benjamin and chase absolution for his current sins in missionary work. But those were unwelcome thoughts and I laid them aside like how once I laid aside my lusts and hunger.
Most days he would try to make me smile or at least engage me from my catatonic state. He added to the material disorder of the room, as it grew to be further littered with curiosities he had brought me: a music box with a trilling bird; empty-eyed dolls; a grim-faced nutcracker; his old sketch book and half-faded paints; spools of bright thread and yards of linen. Most of these diversions were from around the castle, but a few were from his own belongings.
“You like dusty books, right?” he said as he presented me with an ancient-seeming volume.
“The spine is uninformative,” I said, trying to make out the faded text. “What is it?”
He shrugged. “Dusty, mostly.”
Upon my opening of the book, moths scattered from the pages.
Startled, I dropped the volume, squeaking.
“I didn’t plan that,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother immediately.
I shot him a suspicious glare.
“Honest! It’s just been sitting on my desk for weeks.”
As I picked it up from the floor, I heard something at the edge of sound. I said, “Pardon?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You should give some explanation.”
“Only bad presents need explanation,” he said. “And I’m even quoting you on that.”
The barest whisper grew louder even as Catherine Helstone’s brother spoke. I could just about make out the words: He… the word that spoke it… took the bread and broke it…
I whipped around, trying to catch sight of who had spoken, but the room was as it had been before.
“What are–”
I placed my fingers to my lips, and he quieted.
I noticed the newly liberated moths dancing in the light. Again, the whispering: that word did make it… I do believe and take it…
“Can you hear that?” I said. The words were almost familiar, though I could not place where I had heard them before.
“That word?” he said. “I do… take it?”
I nodded.
“Just about.”
The whispers continued: This is my body, thou hast said… this is my body, of that bread… like priests of old, we eat the sacrifice, but half the meaning is not told… We hear and do thy last command… our hearts adore thy words, but cannot understand.
And then silence.
The book lay open before me and it was blank.
“I thought it was a book of poetry,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother weakly.
On Sundays, he would bring th
e Bible to read with me. I endured that, dwelling more on the comforting sound of his voice than the words he spoke. He also told me a little of what Mr Benjamin was worrying about, given his own redemption or salvation of his people. The gnome felt a keen sense of responsibility for his own kind and was eager to assist in further missionary work.
“But still no word from the Pale Queen,” he said, dropping himself heavily onto my bed.
I glanced up from the knitting I was pulling apart, the yarn a tangle on my lap.
He sighed and, for the first time, Catherine Helstone’s strong, beautiful brother seemed broken. It wasn’t simply defeat but a sundering of his spirits. It pained me to see him so. He had hidden it so well since my outburst, and guilt stung, like a lost pin rediscovered, sharp, sudden and blooming blood.
In that moment, for more than any other reason, I hated myself for my own weakness. I had come to Arcadia to look after Catherine Helstone’s brother and now he was the one tending to me.
“I don’t know how long I should keep waiting before I write to her or…” he paused. “I shouldn’t deal with other Arcadian rulers, it would only be more difficult and she’d see it as a betrayal, but…”
“You’re not sure how long you can keep waiting?”
Mutely, he nodded.
I pushed the yarn to the floor, consigning it to eternal entanglement, and wrapped my arms around him. He tensed at my touch, eyes flickering to mine in disbelief before awkwardly returning the embrace.
He leaned his head against my shoulder, allowing himself to be enveloped. It was a closeness that made me ache.
“You shouldn’t have.” His lips mouthed the words against my skin, his voice almost too hoarse and faint for me to make out the words. “Thank you, but you didn’t have to. I’m grateful, very. Just–”
“Have to?”
“Ariel,” he said simply.
“No.”
“I could have–”
“Please,” I said. “I don’t think I could bear to hear you say that. She wanted to prove you are no better than her, than them. She wanted to show you that saints can sin. And I was to save you from that, so please. Don’t.”
He nodded, not answering.
I had wanted to hold him until our breaths were mirrored, but that didn’t happen.
“Cathy, Cathy!” Catherine Helstone’s brother burst into the room, eyes too bright and smile too wide. I heard the bark of Diogenes, jubilant and frantic. “You have to look out of the window!”
I did not want to be roused. I sat, curled up on the chair, both my shawls and the coverlet draped over myself. I had Roche’s journal in front of me, but I was not reading it.
“I’m not sure I want to move right now,” I murmured. My mind fumbled for excuses as I pulled the shawls tighter around myself. “Later.”
“Now!” he urged, his broad grin undeterred by my reluctance.
I shook my head, trying to retreat further into my bundle.
“You have to see this, Cathy.”
“Bother someone else.”
“There is no one else.”
“No.”
“Please?”
“No!” I was so bundled in the coverlet and the shawls that I was practically pulling them over my face. “I’m sleeping.”
“You aren’t sleeping,” he said, bringing his face very close to mine. “You’re talking to me.”
“Then goodnight! A thousand times goodnight.”
“You can’t trick me into quoting Shakespeare.” He laughed, tapping his finger affectionately against my nose.
I frowned at his levity.
And then it struck me. We had had almost exactly the same exchange the first Christmas after Catherine Helstone’s sister, Agnes, had died. This was but an echo of that childishness.
“I am very stubborn,” said Catherine Helstone’s brother. “You know that.”
“You don’t always win this.”
He sighed, got to his feet and strode over to the door to empty air.
“No!” I leapt to my feet. After my days of dark thoughts, I feared the worst.
He flung open the door.
“What are you doing?”
“You don’t want to move, so you can see it from your perch. If I open the door…”
“Close it.” I leaned a hand against the posts of the bed, still giddy from the rush of worry. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to ignore the dizzy white circles. I must have stood up too quickly. That was all. “I’ll look out of the window.”
Hearing the bolt slide into place, I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Aren’t you skittish?” he muttered. He smiled a gentle, tired smile and patted me on the head like I was a puppy. I resisted the urge to bite his hand.
I was breathing heavily when I allowed myself to be dragged towards the window.
He flung open the shutters and pointed downwards. A hill had rammed itself against the wall of the castle. Looking below, I could see it bulging from the land like a fist, abrupt in its sudden height. From the point where it met the wall, it sloped high and wide, momentarily endless because of the thick mists.
The hill was bristling with its dense covering of leafless brambles. I reached a hand down, but it was out of reach.
“What… What is that?” I asked. “And how did I not notice it…”
“Beaching?”
I nodded. “That.”
“You were always a sound sleeper,” he said. “I’ve seen you sleep through thunderstorms.”
“I wasn’t…” I bit my tongue. I didn’t want to tell him how little I slept, tossing and turning. And yet it was not nightmares that kept slumber at bay. It was always numb, black and dreamless.
“You used to crawl into my bed when there was thunder. I was always fairly sure it was just an excuse, you would fall asleep so quickly when you clung to me.”
“You were warm,” I muttered in half confession, avoiding his gaze. “And your bed smelt nice.”
“My bed smelt of me.”
My voice grew smaller and my fingers agitated. “Exactly.”
He grinned and turned his attention back to the mound. “So, what do you think it is?”
The mists had parted and I could better make out the surface of the hill. The brambles were even thicker than I thought as I could not see the ground beneath.
Squinting into the distance, I saw the rise and fall and rise again of this hill. It was too big to make sense of at first, especially with the mist, but then, slowly, it dawned. It was the forked fin of a fish tail.
“Is it…” I said, hesitation in my voice. “Do you think it’s a sea whale?”
He gave a half smile. “Named for the fact it contains the sea rather than the sea containing the whale.”
The great mass of shrubbery shuddered from the roots up and it rose, the ground swelling beneath it. The interlocking branches seemed to slide against one another as it rippled.
“Is it breathing?”
“I would assume so.”
“But it doesn’t breathe sea, or swim in the sea, it just has it in it?”
He nodded.
The hill shuddered as it deflated. And it heaved again, its tail giving a single determined thrash before stilling again.
“That makes… a sort of sense.”
“And I did say it ate the sea.”
“You did, but I can’t say I wholly believed you.”
“I’m wounded,” he said dryly, holding a hand to his chest in a half-hearted attempt at miming his injury. “Such an overwhelming vote of confidence.”
“So were you making that up?”
“Not exactly.” He sounded sheepish.
“Is it really full of sea, then?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But we should find out.”
“I thought we’d already established that it’s not in Father’s encyclopaedia.”
“I meant the other way.”
> “What other way?”
He didn’t answer, but the pin dropped soon enough. Diogenes gave another excited bark. Catherine Helstone’s brother wanted to go inside the whale.
Chapter 30
The Belly of the Beast
This proud tosser of the waves has another and still more wonderful trait. When hunger plagues him on the deep, and the monster longs for food, this haunter of the sea opens his mouth, and sets his lips agape; whereupon there issues a ravishing perfume from his innards, by which other kinds of fish are beguiled. With lively motions they swim to where the sweet odour comes forth, and there enter in, a heedless host, until the wide gorge is full; then, in one instant, he snaps his fierce jaws together about the swarming prey.
Thus it is with anyone who, in this fleeting time, full of neglects to take heed to his life, and allows himself to be enticed by sweet fragrance, a lying lure, so that he becomes hostile to the King of glory by reason of his sins. The accursed one will, when they die, throw wide the doors of hell to those who, in their folly, have wrought the treacherous delights of the body, contrary to the wise guidance of the soul. When the deceiver, skilful in wrongdoing, hath brought into that fastness, the lake of fire, those that cleave to him and are laden with guilt, such as had eagerly followed his teachings in the days of their life, he then, after their death, snaps tight together his fierce jaws, the gates of hell. They who enter there have neither relief nor escape, no means of flight, any more than the fishes that swim the sea can escape from the clutch of the monster.
“The Whale (Asp Turtle)”, translated by Albert Stanburrough Cook,
from The Old English Physiologus
Half-submerged in the ground and braced against the walls of Gethsemane, the sea whale rumbled. I heard the low, moaning whistle of air, and a splutter of gravel trickled pathetically from one of the gaps in the skin.