Tragedy

It's not a tragedy unless one of the characters dies. I know this now, but back then I was a fool running from a love that frightened me towards nothing in particular.

The Wight lay still. My candle burned low and wide, becoming a pool of wax with the wick balanced in the middle, flickering and guttering like an old moth.

I gripped the perfect white dagger in my two hands. The left had only two fingers and a thumb. I stuck out my dry tongue and touched the place on my lip where the two pieces of it were cut and the teeth showed through, the scar carving up and around my face, over my eyebrow, behind my ear, the ear half missing, the hair puckered up around it.

I thought of her.

I gripped the dagger.

I pulled it into my chest.

I have no clever words to describe the pain. It was purest agony. My heart raged against the point, twitching and squeezing as the blood burst from it, slippery, spraying across the room, across the blackened corpse that lay in the deeper pit at the centre of the chamber.

My vision faded around the edges and shrank, down and down to a point, and I saw the candle, burning, and through it I sensed the heat of a larger flame that burns eternally, and then there was nothing.

Nothing but words.

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The Old Kings sleep beneath their mounds,

And dream long dreams of sky and sea,

Unsound, the shattered world is riv’n,

by steel and greed, and men are bound,

to their dark destinies, the sound,

of war and violence unforgiv'n.

Yet soft, they wait, beneath the ground,

until the day, when we shall see,

them risen up, on that gold morn,

when, at last, our land is free.

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When I awoke, the candle had burned down, almost to the stones. The flame was a piteous blue soul clinging to the wick, a ragged sailor after the tempest, gripping the mast, adrift over a nacreous sea.

I felt different. I lay very still, trying to sense out the difference, trying to push my awareness into the edges of my body without moving.

I was afraid to move.

I was afraid I wouldn't be able to move.

Very slowly, I raised my hands and touched my fingertips together. They met perfectly, there were no gaps. I made a fist, I spread them. A handful of elegant fingers. The nails shone in the shivering light.

Stolen novel; please report.

Hesitantly, I touched my unbroken hand to my face, there was hair there, a little beard on my chin, further up, smooth skin, a curved lip, an ear. I pressed my palm into my face. I rubbed it around. The skin was smooth and soft. There were no scars.

A small cry escaped my mouth, and the voice was not my own voice. It was a melodic, masculine sound. A warm feeling welled up in my chest into my face.

I was whole, I was remade, I was worthy.

I climbed to my feet and staggered a little. My new body was lighter, and the balance was different. The corpse was sprawled in the pit, down in the deeper darkness at the centre of the barrow. It did not look peaceful. Its arms were splayed outwards, one leg hung down, the neck was bent. It seemed too big for the hole. It was dark, but in the shadowed light, it looked as though it was missing an ear.

I knelt quickly to deal with the candle. There was still wax in a round pool around the base of it. I mounded it up around the wick and the candle burned bright again.

Slowly, slowly I crawled up to the edge of the pit and peered over the edge. The dead face that stared back up at me was my own. My good iron was clutched between its two hands. The broken face was knotted with agony. The chest was soaked with sticky red blood. The white dagger was gone, and I could see no sign of it.

I stepped back, my new hand covering my new mouth, an elegant hand, smooth with pink nails. I felt my heel slip on the candle, and suddenly, I was in absolute darkness in a tomb with my own corpse.

My breath became ragged, loud and close in my ears. I knelt, scratching at the wax, but it had been crushed into the stones. The wick was gone. I fumbled for my tinderbox, but my clothes were unfamiliar, silk and the slippery coolness of chainmail.

I imagined the curved tunnel, spiralling up though the cold earth. Perhaps somehow I could feel out the little hole in the dark, then drag myself into it, hand over hand, fingernails scratching the slippery stones. Even the thought made me panic. Better to die down here than up there, pinioned in a shaft. Maybe I would eat my own corpe before the end, drink my own blood and sip the fluid from my mouth and my eyeballs.

I remembered the snake's disappointment when I had accepted its bargain so readily. The bitterness in its voice. "Very well," it had said. "If you insist."

Here I was whole, worthy. Worthy of something at least, trapped in a hole to die alone and never see another soul.

But then there was light.

High above me, a tiny little star that grew, and a scraping and clattering of stones. The light grew larger until it blinded me, and I covered my eyes as though they had seen naught but darkness for a thousand years.

A rope curled through the air and fell by my feet. I gripped it with all ten of my fingers, and began to climb, up and up, locking it between my knees, rocking and spinning in the centre of the chamber while the end of the rope brushed over and over across the face of my corpse. Up to the roof of the chamber where the smooth stones glistened, into a narrow shaft that rose, higher and higher, like a well ascending from the depths. I braced myself against the edges of it, pushing and pressing, up towards the circle of light. I hooked my fingers over the edge and heaved myself into the sun.

I was on top of the barrow. I backed away from the hole and sat, panting. The wind ruffled my hair and kissed my face. The little shepherd boy was standing there with a spade. I gaped at him.

"How..?" I said, and my voice sounded strange in my ears.

"Snake tole me to dig," said the tiny ruffian. "Gave me six shillings. Tole me to give you this."

In the scrubby grass behind him, there was a wooden object with strings and a long neck. Some kind of instrument.

"Thank you," I said, staring at it.

"Fuck off," said the charming little bumpkin, then he stomped off back down the hill.