The Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 2014 (Volume 5)

by Kaaron Warren

  I didn’t see Chloris later, not anywhere around, even after the dinner started and most of the palace slaves gathered around the kitchen to share gossip about our guests.

  Prince Paris had not made an appearance at the dinner, and King Menelaos took this as a grave insult, though Queen Helen did her best to smooth things over with him with her usual deference and humour.

  I was sick with fear that the Queen would call me over to whisper privately about the return of the papyrus, and ask if there was some final missive from the bold, foolish prince.

  So I busied herself at the feast, making sure there were others around me at all times so there was no chance the Queen could summon me. Not without making it far too obvious that she had a secret.

  Later, as the feast settled in, I ran to the door slaves to ask if Chloris had returned to the palace. Both claimed to have seen her, which worried me. Why would she hide from me unless something had gone wrong? I hurried off to my nook in the chattel quarters and relief exploded in my chest when I saw the papyrus tucked into my sleeping roll.

  If I was quick, I would be able to take it to the queen’s rooms and leave it near her bed, so it would appear to her as if it had been there all evening. The previous word, ‘honey pears’, did not release any words. Either the magical papyrus was blank now, or the Prince had added his own lock upon the page. In any case, it should be safe from prying eyes.

  I hurried along the brightly painted corridor that led to the queen’s quarters, so engaged in my task that I barely heard the pot that broke, moments before I burst through the doorway.

  And there, oh. A sight I wish I had never seen.

  Queen Helen of Troy lay on her back in bed, sprawled beneath the flexing, sweaty muscles of a man who should not be here. Paris of the painted eyebrows and jewelled ears. Tangled together, they groaned and gasped with something that sounded more like laughter than passion.

  Shocked beyond all reason, I pressed myself into the side of the door, hoping not to be seen.

  Too late. Paris arched his back and looked at me over his shoulder, poised to thrust again into my mistress. “Like what you see, little one?” he snorted.

  Helen gave him a shove so that he fell, wet from her and still hard of phallus, back on to the bed. “She’s no use,” she protested, swinging a long leg over to straddle him like he was one of those horse gods the Trojans favoured, taking him deep inside her. “Little Hymnia is good as gold, and would never summon anyone to see her mistress’s terrible secret. Break another pot.”

  There was something in the way she said those words, a mocking tone that I had never heard in the mouth of the Queen. Still, it was familiar. My embarrassment overwhelmed me, red and hot, and yet I let my eyes fall downwards to the place where flesh met flesh. Coarse hair curled around her mound, hair that ought to be feathers. The creature fucking Prince Paris in the bed of my mistress was not, and never could be, Queen Helen of Sparta.

  I ran away, though I could not possibly run fast enough. A familiar laugh trailed after me as I scampered back down the corridor. Not the queen’s laugh. That sound was Chloris, through and through. Was it really the prince grunting beneath her, or had she wiped the prince’s face over that of a bath slave as easily as Helen and Paris had wiped letters on and off the Phoenician papyrus?

  I know a few secrets, Chloris had said. She was Phoenician herself, so she had always claimed. What other magics did she have?

  I hurried my step, but her words caught up to my mind finally. Break another pot.

  They wanted to be caught. Whether he was the real Paris or not, they were doing it in the name of that horrid prince. He was the only one who would benefit from Queen Helen’s reputation being sullied in her husband’s house. Did he expect her to seek refuge in his ships when King Menelaos lost faith in her?

  Chloris, Chloris, what have you done?

  Queen Helen was not in the main hall. I stared in horror at the Queen’s empty seat. If only she had remained here, under her husband’s eye, no man could ever accuse her. Perhaps there was still time . . .

  But no, there was already a shouting from above, and I could see the king noting the commotion.

  I turned and ran again, cursing the palace for its maze-like corridors. I fled to the east wing where the children slept and there, emerging from her daughter’s bed chamber, was Queen Helen at last.

  “My queen,” I gasped. “Danger. You are accused . . . ”

  “Why,” said Helen with a half-smile across her beautiful face. “Who accuses me? Have I committed some offence?”

  “One of your servants—wears your face—in your bed, my queen. With Prince Paris . . . ”

  Helen’s face went very still. Her smile faded into nothing. “There is still hope, Hymnia,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Catch up the babies—no, wait. Let them sleep for now. I shall find my husband and show him my innocence.”

  She took my hand, walking steadily, though I could see she was afraid of the outcry and bustle we could hear coming from the main part of the palace. Footsteps came running towards us, and Helen raised her voice to call the guards, only to realise that these armoured men were not hers to command.

  Trojans wearing the false colours of Sparta advanced upon us, weapons at the ready.

  “Come quietly, madam,” said one of them. “We would hate to ruin that pretty face of yours.”

  Helen shoved me suddenly towards them and I fell willingly, grasping at their blades in the hopes of taking them inside me, of saving my queen. Pain blurred through my body, and the last thing I saw was red and black and feathers.

  * * *

  Not dead.

  I was not dead, for I awoke again in the knowledge that I had failed. The ground swayed beneath me, back and forth, and bile rose in my mouth at the unnatural motion. I rolled over in the narrow bunk and opened my eyes.

  A ship, then. I knew this ship. It was the same cabin I had visited so many times, to deliver those wretched messages back and forth on the magic papyrus. If only we had it now, perhaps we could summon help.

  But who would listen to us, the captured queen and her slave?

  Helen sat on a packing crate, barely glancing in my direction as I made my state known to her. “All is lost,” she said softly. “By now, my husband thinks me a madwoman and a slut, run away to sea in my lust for a Trojan sword.” She said those last few words with great distaste. Whatever she had once thought of Paris as they exchanged flirtation and banter, he was not beautiful to her now. “I will never see my children again.”

  She wept then, and I did not dare to comfort her. There was nothing I could say.

  A Trojan sailor brought oils and fresh water to Helen, commanding her to make herself presentable for Prince Paris. My queen all but spat at him.

  The sailor smirked at her, darting out of range with a nimbleness hardly suited to one who pulls ropes all day. “A fine obedient bride my master has bought himself,” he chided her.

  I knew then who this was. No sailor at all, not with that prissy manner and the secret smile he hid behind the insults. “Chloris. Are you so ashamed of your real face now?”

  The sailor gave me an arch look. “My master thought it a sensible precaution if I was to live among his soldiers and sailors for a time. Women are unlucky at sea, you know. At the first sign of a storm, they’ll be demanding he throw one or both of you overboard.”

  “You’re the one, then,” said Queen Helen in a low voice. “The traitor who sold me to the Trojans.”

  The sailor passed a hand over his face and became Chloris, as snub-nosed and freckled as I remembered her. “I never served you, lady. I betrayed no one.”

  “You betrayed me!” I said, outraged. “You used me to get close to Prince Paris, and to wreck our lives.”

  Chloris scoffed. “How can I have betrayed you, Hymnia? You’re not a real person. You’re property, just as I was property. We don’t have feelings, or loyalties. We are just owned.” She sneered at my queen. “And n
ow she is going to know exactly how that feels.”

  Queen Helen leaped to her feet, striding towards the girl. Her golden hair tufted up like the feathers of an angry bird. “You little snake,” she breathed. “You have started a war, and orphaned my children, and for what? A prince who will never remember your name?”

  “He knows my name,” Chloris growled at her. She passed her hand over her face again and became Helen, that Helen I had seen in my mistress’s bed, the slightly too-perfect version of the golden queen. “He calls me Helen, and Wife, and Queen, and Mine. He calls me Ohhh and Harder and Do That and Bend Over.” She preened at the queen whose face she had stolen. “He’s already had you, in every way possible, without ever laying a hand on your precious skin. You really should have listened when he said you belonged to him.”

  The real Queen Helen hissed between her teeth. “He still wants me, though, doesn’t he? He wants the woman who said no, not the one who says ‘yes master’. He wants my ambrosia wrapped around his cock, not a pale imitation.”

  Chloris frowned at that. “I may be an imitation, lady, but if you don’t submit to him fast enough, I’ll be the one he carries home to Troy as a trophy. He told the whole city he was going to marry Helen of Sparta, and one way or another, it’s going to be true.”

  Helen’s face became very calm, which always happened when she was dealing with someone very annoying, or very dull. “Well, then,” she said. “I had better hurry up and submit to my new husband, hadn’t I? If nothing else, it will put you out of a job.”

  * * *

  So he came to her, Prince Paris of Troy, the doom of queens. To summon him, Helen slapped Chloris across the face and scrawled the words ‘I submit’ across the girl’s face in fiery words as magic as the ones that had once appeared and disappeared on the enchanted papyrus. Then she threw the girl out of the cabin, to be her messenger.

  The prince arrived, stinking of oils and scent, delighted with himself. Chloris came too, clutching at her master’s back, probably half-hoping that Helen had served the invitation in order to reject the prince.

  But no, Helen was the Queen of Sparta and had been a wife for many years. She knew what to do with a man. She placed herself on the narrow bunk, the picture of docility, with her gown artfully arranged so that he would look at nothing but her breasts.

  “Your highness,” she said in a voice that was neutral with only a hint of frost. “I hear that we are to be wed.”

  “Oh, my Helen,” breathed the lying prince. “I would not take you against your will.”

  She showed not even a flicker of distaste. “If this is our destiny, then indeed we must be married. You have given me little choice but to obey.”

  “Obey me in my arms, not with your mouth,” said Paris, flinging himself at her. “Though I will have your mouth too.”

  They sank back on to the bed, his mouth lapping at hers.

  Chloris stood as a statue, leaning on the closed cabin door as the sea gently rocked us, and Paris groped beneath the gown of his new wife.

  “You made this marriage,” I said in a low voice, gripping her wrist with my fingers, nails digging into her skin. “The least you could do is witness it.”

  There were cries coming from the bunk now, cries and groans, and I wanted to shut my ears to it, but I wanted more for Chloris to see what she had done.

  Her face changed, though, and I saw fear on her face. Then I, too, looked towards the couple.

  Paris struggled in the arms of Helen, and it was not pleasure that came out of his mouth now in those cries and groans. Her arms wound hard around his neck, and trails of white feathers burst from her skin from wrist to elbow, wet and spiky.

  She rolled him over and straddled him effortlessly, letting her gown fall away as she did so and feathers, there were more white feathers everywhere, sliding from her shoulder blades in the long dipping shapes of wings.

  Paris shuddered beneath her as her hands lengthened into golden claws and sank into his white, oily flesh.

  “You have burned my life,” she told him, tipping back her head and letting her scalp burst into bright white feathers, streaked with blood. “But I will eat yours.”

  Chloris cried out, turning her face into my shoulder so as not to see Helen’s face transformed into a streak of whiteness with a bright golden beak instead of a mouth.

  Swift and bright as the sun, she pecked again and again, tearing at his skin, his flesh. Then she caught him up, divine creature that she was, and burst through the side of the ship. We rocked back and forth, water pouring in the damaged side, and Helen of Sparta flew free of us, still biting at the ruined body of the prince. Finally, high above the water and far enough from the ship that no one would ever rescue him, she dropped the creature like a stone.

  We heard running and thumping from the sailors above us fighting to keep the craft afloat. My feet were wet. Helen was flying and flying, barely a dot on the horizon now. She was free, and she had left us long behind.

  There was a pounding on the door behind us. Paris had barred it when he thought this was his wedding night, but now it was only a few splinters between us and a crew of sailors we did not know.

  “Highness, Prince Paris!” cried out his men. “We must leap to one of the other ships, we are sinking!”

  Chloris and I, equally abandoned by our queen, stared at each other.

  “They will tear us apart,” I whispered.

  Chloris shook her head, and changed herself into the false Helen, the sprite she had worn for Prince Paris’ benefit. “Not me. I will be brought safely to Troy.”

  “You fool,” I hissed. “Do you think Menelaos won’t start a war over this?”

  “He will rescue me, then. I don’t care. I just want to live. Not one of them ever thought I was worth keeping alive, not even your precious queen.” She pouted at me. “If Paris is alive, Helen will be safe.”

  “Paris is feeding the fishes now.”

  “I know,” she said softly as the door shuddered behind us, again and again. They were trying to kick it in. “I need another Paris, to keep me safe. To keep us both safe. I won’t be a slave again.”

  I closed my eyes, and felt Chloris’ hand brush over me, transforming me with her Egyptian spells. “It won’t work, we can’t be them,” I tried to convince her.

  “We can be them more easily than they could ever be us,” she replied.

  It was painless and drugging, the illusion she wrought upon me. When I looked into the polished bronze, though, I could not deny that it was convincing. The sight of myself made me tremble down to my toes.

  When the sailors knocked down the door, they found Prince Paris of Troy and his new queen, Helen, waiting for rescue. Not once, as they pulled us along to alight from one ship and row to another in the fleet, not once did even a single sailor remember that Helen had been accompanied by a slave girl.

  Hymnia had disappeared entirely.

  I could not imagine my future, as we sailed onwards to Troy. This trick was not of my making, and yet I had agreed to it.

  I was a Prince, and Chloris was a Queen. If there was a war now, we would be at the heart of it.

  My heart broke for Helen, the real Helen, flying across the ocean in that monstrous form of beak and feathers. A mother without children, a wife without a husband, a Queen without a city.

  And yet, as long as I had known her, she had never been more magnificent as when she caught up that wretched, sorry excuse for a prince and let him sink into the waters.

  Whatever songs they sing of Helen—once of Sparta, now of Troy—whatever lies they tell, I shall always remember her as a swan, and flying, and free.

  Bridge of Sighs

  Kaaron Warren

  10 am/Client: Mr P/ Subject: His son (16) Overdose

  Terry needed a fresh ghost, so he dressed warmly and headed out, camera around his neck, syringes safely packed into the bag over his shoulder.

  There were many places to look. People committed suicide in surprising pl
aces sometimes, such as a change room in a large department store, or the car park at a primary school, or under the pier at the beach, but more often they jumped from the tops of buildings, from bridges, from dams.

  They jumped from the hospital roof too, staff as well as patients. But security could be tight, and once he’d been locked on a roof overnight and didn’t want to repeat that experience.

  He drove to Culver’s Dam instead. Some nights he had a feeling for where the ghosts would be; other times it was research and asking questions.

  He loved the hunt. He loved that there was a purpose to it but more than that, it proved time and time again that there was something BEYOND. That his mother did not blink out into nothingness.

  Terry parked his car near the entrance to the dam bridge, water noise nearly deafening him. There was one car already parked there; a purple sedan. The bonnet was damp with water spray and cold to the touch so it had been there for some time. It could belong to a hydro engineer, manning switches, checking equipment, or to a sightseer (although in this cold no one would stay so long), or the car was abandoned, its driver over and into the hydrodam.

  Feeling the cold, he gathered his camera and syringe bag and trekked to the bridge where he climbed the many stairs, feeling the tension in his thighs. A thick mist settled over the dam and in his hair and on his face. His hands felt frozen so he stuffed them into his pockets but found little warmth there.

  Reaching the bridge, he could barely see three steps in front of him. Here, the water roar was so loud he could scream and no one would hear.

  He set up his camera and looked through the view finder, seeking features amongst the water droplets.

  He didn’t think much of those who killed themselves here. Poisoning the water supply, hurting others. Like those who threw themselves in front of a train, or over a wall at a shopping mall, or onto a busy street, it caused trauma to strangers that surely eased no passing and perhaps led to further suicides among those who saw or who felt responsible.