by A. E. Shaw
Selina turns to Eliza and mouths TAKE THAT HELMET OFF as clearly as she can. She doesn’t need background knowledge to interpret the reactions these people had at the sight of Eliza, her face masked and potentially concealing anything, or anyone.
She can feel the ways in which their roles have shifted, hers and Eliza’s, that things spun upon an axis from the moment she put her hand to that gate. It occurs to her as a concept, rather than an a pathed thought, that in all this time of bravado and survival, Eliza has lived a life of sneaking in the back to everything, of theft in the night, lies and merging, and she’s never approached anything or anyone in quite this way, and certainly has never come to a new situation with anyone else. She’s supposed to be in front, not behind, but as she unzips the helmet from the neck of her suit, and removes it (taking tiny, measured sips of air, in case of what?) she nods, rather than bows, and the assembled crowd, increasing, perhaps, stray individuals here and there sidling behind others, this crowd eyes her with fascination.
One of the servants leans to the children and tells them quietly to go and play elsewhere, for now, for they need to speak in peace.
“I am Tabatha,” a tall, well-fed woman says, stepping forwards with a fixed and full look in her eyes. “What is your business here?”
Selina feels Eliza go to speak and leaps right in there before anything damaging can happen. “I’ve come from the Castle,” she says, out of the blue.
She didn’t mean to say that. She didn’t. She’s not sure if that will mean anything to them, or if they even know what a castle might be, much less her one, but it comes out of her mouth all the same.
Eliza brings her hands to her throat, ready to reaffix the helmet if needs be, because goodness knows she herself was ready to skin Selina and Alej when she found out that that was where they’d come from. She tries to imagine how these people might react if they also thought something that was a miserable fairy story to make the people behave was a genuine truth, that there were some who had not had to fight and scavenge for their every scrap of food: that they had not had to see murder on a scale so vast it could never leave the peripheral vision.
But, these people are nothing like Eliza. That becomes apparent to her in a moment. She shouldn’t be surprised, nor should she be disappointed, and yet she is both. These people drop their jaws, and stare, and yes, the Castle means something to them, and they are awed by that information, not appalled.
“Oh,” Tabatha says, and it is a gasp of sorts, an admission that there is something of considerable interest contained within this greeting of Selina’s. “Quick,” she says next, turning to an orange-haired man on her right, “go and get word to His Excellency.” And the man nods and shakes himself a little as if he can’t believe he’s not already doing that, and he runs with all the speed of a fall, back, back, into the distance, and their eyes follow him and where he’s going and then both Selina and Eliza see the sheer scale of the place they have wandered into.
It is vast. This castle, or perhaps palace, for it is as ornate and strange and beautiful as those palaces that Eliza saw in the south, spreading low with wings in all directions sprouting from a central hall fronted by great double doors, and yet still the whole complex takes up virtually none of the space that expands in front of them.
There are villages of outbuildings, circles of single-storey constructions, not houses as Selina would recognise them, made of wood? Maybe. There are lakes! And they’re clear, they’re silver, even, reflecting the shifting grey-yellow of the sky in places, and rippling like molten metal in others. And oh, the colours, sprouting up in contained clumps here and there, look at the colours, those colours are flowers, and neither of them have seen flowers in years, because flowers don’t grow any more, and even in their lifetimes they were rare as a square meal.
And then they both catch on that even the air in here is different: it has a scent and a taste, and how can it be that the air the other side of a wall is different from the air they’ve been breathing all this time, but it is, it’s rich with scents and strangeness and it’s exciting, it’s a real civilisation, and for Selina it is a burst of gratitude, thank goodness, perhaps, perhaps everyone is not gone after all…
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Tabatha says, and she goes forward to Selina and looks her right up close in the eye. Even after these days of travelling, covered in filth and mud and with her hair a clotted mess of the journey, she is still, to Tabatha, more majestic than anyone she thinks she has ever seen. It is immediately evident to her that this girl must be special. That she was chosen. Like His Excellency’s son, and indeed, with an air of His Excellency himself, and Her Excellency, let-us-not-forget-her, his girl carries herself like she is above and better than them all. “You were with Ai Den?”
The syllables push at all sides of Selina’s mind like an electric shock. “What?”
“Ai Den. He has also come down from the castle. We did not know that there would be more of you to follow. Are you the last?”
Selina has no words for this. Aiden…is known? Is…is he here? Her heart beats hard and she wants to know everything, immediately.
“I have to…” she says, and her eyes scan the doors to the palace, and its windows - windows! - to see if she can see any sign that they’re to be collected, that someone is doing everything they can to explain this as quickly as humanly possible.
She can’t even count how many days it has been, but she’s been worried for Aiden and she’s missed him at all the turns of this and he was so…strange, and then gone, and she had feared wolves or bears or the monsters of old times having come for him - the things she worried had happened are almost amusing to her now because he is Aiden and of course he would have survived, and if she made her way here, well, obviously he would have been able to and it isn’t surprising that he would have arrived here well before her and she wants to see him now, now, please, now.
“As soon as we can,” Tabatha says. “And how long has it taken you? How far away is the castle? What was it like out there?”
Selina can hardly focus on the words, her mind is buzzing, so. And she realises that she has drunk nothing in some time, and that she is empty, because she feels dizzy, and the air, yes, it is delicious, but it is also tickling at her skin, and she is becoming increasingly sensitive, and the sounds, there are sounds. She closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath, and holds it. And she does not faint.
But Eliza does. The strain of holding herself in, the fury inside her from the lack of anger at Selina’s revelation, all this coupled with the lack of food: her face cycles fast through red and then green and all the colours drain completely from her face. She falls to the floor like an empty sack cast aside, and Selina doesn’t see because she still has her eyes closed and she needs that moment to keep herself together.
So as Eliza collapses, and as Selina waits and hopes, the doors of the palace burst open, and then there is movement and shouting the like of which no-one here has ever heard before.
Selina opens her eyes again, and the sight is incomprehensible.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Meeting
Outside, people continue to go about their daily business. Aiden finds the little things they seem to excel in to be remarkably small. And yet, in the larger picture, they appear to be significant. The boy that chops the wood, the girl that strips the wood, the man that binds it into strips, the woman that beats the strips thin and weaves them into Aiden-doesn’t-know-what…these things are all magical, fascinating.
In the kind sunshine that fills the complex, there appears an idyll of easy, regular activity. Very easy. Very regular. Magical and fascinating, but small.
And look, there. The children. They run around, aimlessly. Perhaps in their own way they are learning some kind of skills. What they might be, Aiden can’t imagine. He is grateful that his smaller years were spent immersed in wisdom and learning.
The book is still looking at him. But he will not give into it. It
wants to push him down. Aiden is far more buoyant than that. It may say it is for him, but it is not about him.
Look, what is the waiting for? What’s coming? What’s the surprise?
The surprise, when it finally arrives, is heralded by the stop and turn and stare of the small people outside. Aiden can’t see the gate from his window. But as he watches, and then cranes himself around, face rammed flat against the thick, warping glass, he sees who’s come through it.
It is testament to Aiden’s absolute confusion that he remembers to dress before leaving the house. Ripping silks from their hangers, he hurls himself into them, and then out of the doors, charging through one set after another.
There are two guards at the final set of doors, but he doesn’t acknowledge them. His bursting out is so unexpected - for the guards cannot see the disruption that’s occurred outside, and there are no grand alarms here, no, only complacency and stupidity in abundance. One guard goes down immediately under the smack in the face from the heft of the door, and the other makes an instinctive grab for Aiden but the boy is too fast by far, and the guard only stares, no concept as to what he ought to be doing about this, if, indeed, he ought do anything at all.
Aiden dashes down the stairs, taking them two and three at a time, wild leaps down stone, out, out, what is going on.
He tears one way and another through a kitchen, then back up to the hall, which way out, corridor after corridor, and nothing yields the outside, because he was brought in tied in cloth and can’t find the way out, and now the guards are amassing, watching him dart from one place to another, none now daring to halt him, because he is, after all, still His Excellency’s son, and he might yet have a purpose that they are unsure of. This amount of looseness, something they are unprepared for, this is not what happens. This is not the way things are done around here.
Finally Aiden stops, shaking, deep gulps of the chill smoke-stale air of the halls doing little to quench his breathlessness.
“Which,” he yells, commands, “is the way out?”
A woman in rich maroon satin, sat, until moments ago, mending a great tapestry at the wall, gestures, open-palmed, to double doors so grand and high that Aiden hadn’t even seen them.
He nods, a half-bow, gratitude. Composing himself - shoulders back, chest as forward as it goes, be the one whose name is spelled out in the stars - he pushes at them. Nothing. Then he notices the handle, twists it, and pushes again.
Outside streams over him. But he hasn’t time to admire its warmth and freshness.
He runs, lopingly as an Aiden can run, propelled by fury, it isn’t the grandness he wants, but it is the urgency he means to convey. And so it is this vision of Aiden, dashing towards her, colourless hair now thick and gilt in the sunlight, hollow face filled out with his sudden surfeit of nutrition, body utterly lacking the gaunt eeriness that once defined him, it is this Aiden that captures Selina’s gaze, has her silent, open-mouthed, with Eliza’s body laid out on the floor behind her. She expects him to tackle her, his pace is such, but he does not, he stops, moments from her, so close she can scent things both old and new about him.
“Aiden…” she tries, but his name is uncertain on her lips, now, for this is not at all what she had expected, and yet had she hoped he might be here?
“What are you doing here?” Aiden is deadpan, furious in eyes and pose, but calm in the mouth, because he must be.
“You’re alive!” Selina can’t help but exclaim, in no way answering the question.
“Of course I am.” Unblinking, definite, instant response.
There, see, he thinks, there’s further proof of her stupidity, her contempt. That she’d doubt his continued existence when this world is only for me. Oh, silly, terrible girl. GET OUT.
His thoughts grind into nervous repetition of those words. Get out get out get out.
Guards. Aren’t they coming after him? Don’t they care that these others have broken in? Won’t they be stopped, removed, deleted for their uselessness?
But that isn’t how it works here, Aiden, oh, it isn’t at all how it works here, it might seem obvious to you but how is it that you still believe things turn on the shape and whim of your mind, and nothing else? This is not your place, this is your father’s world. Guards don’t act without his command, indeed, they are less guards and more…decorative people. Dutiful people, standing, watching, appreciating, in their turn. They have no war skills, no fighting prowess, save the few with the old athletic skills and disciplines.
They certainly don’t have orders for spontaneous break-ins: this world is supposed to be empty, for goodness’ sake! No, Aiden, stay calm, come now, your father’s going to have to rethink a few things on the hop when he sees she’s here. Aren’t you even a little glad to see her after all this time? Just be grateful you get a moment or two with her. Can’t you even try?
No, no, he can’t. Not at all.
The others, those who were going about their tasks until they were distracted from them have drawn back, for fear this is not their place, that they oughtn’t to see whatever might come next. All except Tabatha, who, as Selina is distracted, has knelt to Eliza, and is pressing at points at her temples and throat, checking her, massaging the circulation at her wrists, encouraging her back from her faint, which she does successfully, encouraging consciousness to return with a choke and a start.
Eliza’s response to coming around is that of the would-be watchful: she jerks, curls up, pounces to her feet, steadies herself in the dizziness that inevitably follows, taking in the details of the reality as if they were a checklist.
They opened the gate, and Selina began to talk, too much, to people who seemed to know nothing. It is hot in here and the air is new. And now, here is a boy, close, too close, to Selina. But he is not any boy. Eliza looks him up and down. Something about him disturbs her so cold that she fears she might vomit; she pushes at her stomach with the heels of her hands, encouraging it to stay right where it is. This boy is tall, golden, pale and dark all at once, lighter than he should be, shadowed where he oughtn’t to be, haunted by something…his eyes are mad, chill, and she knows something about him immediately, as soon as she registers that expression, she knows something terrible, so terrible that she is reeling backwards, feet only just catching her as she goes, her head pounding, sweat running down the small of her back, her mouth dry, so dry, no water, and look at him…look at him…look…
She moves a hand to her chest, as if comforting her heart, reassuring it to keep beating, or reassuring herself that it is still beating, that she is only the flesh and blood she has always been, whatever truths she might be facing.
Biting her lip to calm herself, she forces her gaze to fix on Aiden, there, there.
“Who are you?” Eliza asks, finally, all the words she might have chosen thrown aside for these most innocent ones.
Aiden’s eyes open wide, because this is even worse than it might have been. So much worse. Here is one who doesn’t know who he is. And she’s in his house. In his grounds. That response comes from nothing, nowhere, an illogical manifest based on the deep, deep sense of intrusion and betrayal he’s feeling. As yet, he doesn’t even wonder who she is: that she is another one who does not know who he is, is enough.
But Aiden, you’re wrong again. Eliza knows more about you than almost-almost-anyone else here.
“This is Aiden,” Selina says, not turning to Eliza, thinking she really ought to have figured that out immediately, for who else could this possibly be? Then, Selina finds herself wondering if she has said all that much after all. A part of her wanted to protect him, so maybe she hasn’t spoken so much about him as she’s thought of him, missed him, wanted to see him again, to make amends. And seeing him like this gives her the distinct impression amends must be made. Selina finds she’s forgotten the way she used to anticipate seeing him at their appropriate days in the cycle, the way she felt compelled to look at him just to check that she hadn’t imagined things in the time they’d been apa
rt.
For the first hundred days or more she was always surprised to find that she hadn’t imagined his fine and odd beauty. Indeed, she never truly remembered how striking and interesting he is to behold. So now the combination of surprise and familiarity of his face pulls something at her heart, and she wants to reach out and grasp it, but knows she mustn’t.
His hair is clean, too. The smallest and most trivial of details to grab her, distract her from clear dialogue. It’s something she’s never seen - Aiden only ever washed in cold water, and the lankness that ensued never shone and waved like this. He looks like a fable, like a man of old, like the portraits of the leaders he’d show her from his lessons. Aiden looks like someone now. Not like anyone in particular, but as if he ought to be someone very particular indeed.
Which he is, Selina, don’t you know that yet? Give it a little longer: we’ll all know everything in a chapter or two.