She could not even cry any more. There didn’t seem any point.
Poison lay in Fleet’s bed, curled up in a foetal position with the blankets wrapped tight around her. She had been there for days now. Where Fleet slept, or even if he slept, she did not know or care.
At first, there were tears; constant, and unending. She felt as if her heart had been ripped out with a hook, and the hole that was left kept filling with sorrow and hurt and raw betrayal, so much that she had to weep it out or she would drown. Fleet was as bewildered as he was distressed by her condition. She would not speak to him about it. He would not understand. He was just a fantasy, like she was.
He doesn’t want to know. Nobody wants to know. I wish I didn’t know.
But what was learned could not be unlearned.
Fleet had put her to bed. She remembered Bram and Peppercorn swarming around her; it must have been quite a shock to see their indomitable friend reduced to such a state. She could not muster the effort to answer their questions. What did they care? They were falsehoods, just like she was. They were not real. Nothing was real.
And with that thought, Poison simply gave up.
It was easy. Those few words from the Hierophant had sucked all of the fight out of her, and now the most natural thing in the world was to go limp and stop struggling. The possibility that he was lying did not even enter her head. She knew, on an instinctive level, that he had been telling the truth. She knew the truth even before he had told her. Her subconscious had pieced the puzzle together long ago.
None of it was real. None of it. She was living in a phaerie tale, and she was just a puppet of the story, like they all were. All the choices she had made, all the effort and heartache she had suffered, all were just an illusion of free will. None of it had been her. She had simply been following the story.
Had anything she had ever done truly been her choice, or had she merely been given the appearance of independence?
It was too much for her. The ground had been pulled out from beneath her feet, and her entire world had toppled into the abyss that was left. Everything had become worthless. Nothing had a point. What use was anything if she was dancing to someone else’s tune? How could she ever make another decision without questioning whether she was simply doing the will of the author, that she only thought she was choosing for herself?
Truly, why bother?
So she stayed in bed. Most of the time, Andersen slept in the hollow of her stomach. Bram and Peppercorn and Fleet sat by her in shifts, talking to her all the time, asking her what was wrong, what had happened to her, why was she like this? She never replied. Bram seemed to have convinced himself that Poison had discovered Azalea was dead, and that the grief had broken her heart. Poison felt like laughing. Azalea’s death would be nothing compared to this. Why should she even care about Azalea now? She was just a fiction, like Poison was, acting out her little play.
But she did care. That was the crux of the pain. Even though she knew what she knew, her life – such as it was – continued on. She still felt the trails of the tears against her cheeks. She still felt the warm heat of Andersen napping on top of the blankets. She still felt the loss of Azalea, and she still felt that giving up on her sister would be a terrible betrayal. No matter how much her head told her that she was living in a fantasy, she could not convince her soul or her senses. Yet, painful though it was, it was not enough to give her the strength to move.
Days passed; though they could have been hours, or weeks, for who knew how time twisted in foreign Realms? Fleet read to her from the old books that she used to read as a child, not realizing the irony of telling her phaerie stories when they were living in one. Did the characters in his books also possess a life like hers? Did they also believe they were alive? And what about the Hierophant, the author of her world? Was he merely a creation of someone else, unaware? Wouldn’t that be a fine joke! Like two mirrors placed opposite each other, endlessly reflecting, worlds within worlds with no beginning or end.
Just to think about it bent her mind like a sapling on the verge of snapping.
Fleet gave her titbits of information now and then, hoping to spur her interest in the goings-on in the castle. Some of the Lords and Ladies were drifting away now, either angry or resigned, having realized that they would not get to see the Hierophant after all. Grugaroth had departed with his retinue of ur-people. Aelthar, however, was unbowed, and he had resorted to terrible threats now in his demands for an audience.
Poison barely listened. She had not eaten since she took to bed, and had barely drunk a thing. She was pale, her sweat smelled unhealthy, and her long black hair had gone limp and straggled across her face. She began to mutter in her sleep. Her friends – how hollow the word seemed now! – tried to convince her to eat something, anything; but the desire to eat had gone, and even the hunger was only a dull, distant ache inside her.
So wrapped up was she in misery that she did not notice what was happening around her until it was too pronounced to miss.
It was while Fleet was reading to her that she spoke the first conscious words she had said since she had gone to bed.
“Fleet,” she croaked. He looked up instantly, his eyes shining with hope. “Fleet, you’re sick.”
He was sick. She saw it now. His cheeks were sunken; his flesh was wasting off his bones. She could see the sockets of his eyes. It was as if he were the one starving, not her. And yet . . . it was more than simple lack of food. There was something else about his condition, something beyond illness or physical need; but she was too dazed by hunger to understand it.
“We’re all sick, Poison,” Fleet said.
“Peppercorn and Bram, too?” She felt a faint stab of concern. “Andersen?”
“Everyone,” Fleet replied. “The servants, the Antiquarians, even the Lords and Ladies. Even Aelthar has succumbed.”
“What is it?” she whispered. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know,” Fleet said. “It’s like the castle is full of ghosts. Everyone’s listless, everyone’s . . . tired. The doctors can’t find a cause. They talk of plague and disease, but it’s none of those things. . . It’s in the walls, too . . . even the castle itself seems weaker now, paler . . . less solid than it once was.” He sighed. “It’s like it’s all just fading away.”
“But. . .” Poison began. “How. . . ?”
“I don’t know. . . I don’t know. . .” he whispered. He seemed so weak then, an impostor, not the tough, wiry Fleet she had always known. He raised his head and fixed her with a weary eye. “Poison, I’ve heard you talking when you sleep. It doesn’t make sense. . . I . . . I can’t understand it . . . but you have to stop whatever you’re doing.”
“Me?” Poison was shocked enough to be indignant. “I’m not doing anything. Literally.” She surprised herself that she still had the ability to make a joke, however feeble.
“You’re. . . You talk about stories, Poison. What did the Hierophant say to you? What did he do?”
But Poison was remembering the words that Myrrk had spoken to her, back in his hut by the lake. How the world had gone wrong because he gave up his role and tried to make a different life for himself. I had a story myself, once, but I didn’t like it and I tried to change it. I’d advise against that. He had refused to tell her what he meant, saying that it was not the right time; but now, in a moment of sudden clarity, she knew.
“It’s me,” she said through parched lips. “It’s me. I am doing this.”
“What are you doing, Poison? Why?” Fleet’s tone of hurt was like a lead block on her soul.
“I stopped cooperating,” she replied.
“With who?” Fleet asked.
She levered herself up a little on her pillows. “You can’t see it, Fleet. You can’t see it because you don’t want to. But this is a phaerie tale; that’s all it is. Conjured by the Hierophant. I won’t be a
part of his game, like some chess piece for him to move. If I can’t decide for myself, I won’t play at all. If I can’t have free will –” she dropped her gaze – “I’d rather die.”
She could see Fleet glazing over as she spoke, but he was struggling to comprehend. She had presented him with an entirely impossible concept, one that was beyond his ability to grasp.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t. I don’t know how this is linked with this . . . malaise that has fallen on all of us, but I know it’s to do with you, Poison. What is so terrible that you have lost all will to live? Don’t you see that you’re taking us all with you?”
Poison would have shed a tear then, if she had any left. “You’re fictions, all of you. Just like me.”
“How can you think that?” Fleet cried, suddenly spurred to animation. “We feel, we love, we cry, we bleed, we sacrifice. . . If that is not life, then what is? What’s your definition, Poison? How can you think that the Hierophant is controlling you somehow? Don’t you make your own choices? Didn’t you choose to come on this quest?”
“Did I? I don’t know,” she said, sinking back to the pillows. “If ever I needed proof that my choices are illusions, you have just given it to me. Look what happens when I refuse to do as he wants. The story is fading around me. Why can’t I choose to give up?”
To that, Fleet had no answer. Poison turned over in bed, facing away from him, and eventually she heard him leave.
They came to her often, now that she had begun to speak again. They saw it as a good sign, but it really wasn’t. She merely wanted to tell them she was sorry for what was happening. Though they did not understand as Fleet had not, they pleaded with her to eat, to regain her strength. They were dying, fading, becoming nothing as the story unravelled around her; but how could she ever pull herself back from the pit into which she had sunk? How could she live on in the knowledge that she was reading off someone else’s script? She endured Peppercorn’s tears and Bram’s silence, not knowing which was worse. But she would not flex. She would fade, and they with her, and so it would go. It was the one choice she had made for herself; and if she could only thwart the Hierophant by her death, then that was what it would have to take. It was his fault for making her such a contrary character. The harder she was pushed, the harder she pushed back.
She lapsed in and out of consciousness, weakness periodically swallowing her and spitting her out. Day and night meant nothing to her. Time had fractured into brief windows of lucidity. She was starving and dehydrated. Sometimes she woke with moist lips, where one of her carers had dribbled honey or milk into her mouth as she slept, relying on the swallowing reflex to ensure she took it down. But it was not enough to stop the decline. She was dying, and she knew it . . . but at least it was her decision.
One night, she woke in near-darkness, to see Bram sitting by her bedside. A single lantern burned on a table nearby, casting its glow across one side of his face. His eyes were shadowed by the brim of his omnipresent hat.
“Bram. . .” she croaked, somehow managing a smile.
He was silent for a long while, and though she could not see his expression, she sensed that it was grave.
“Bram, what is it?”
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “And you’re going to listen to what I have to say.”
He tilted his head up and the lantern light fell across his face, and Poison gasped. She could almost see his skull through his skin. His moustache was thinning and limp. His bull neck had withered and hung loose with flesh. His eyes were spidercracked with blood.
“Oh, Bram. . .” she moaned. The sight of him was like a spear through her chest.
“Save your sympathy,” he replied, and his voice was harsh and brittle. “I’ve heard your apologies before. I’m not interested.”
Poison was taken aback by this sudden change in his manner, and too weak to form a retort.
“You’re a selfish girl,” he growled. “Look at what you’re doing. Take a good look at me. Have you seen Peppercorn? Fleet? Even that cursed cat? Have you seen what your principles are doing to us? You’re killing us, you spoiled little brat, all because you won’t stand up for yourself.”
Poison quailed at the raw anger in his voice. She had not known Bram to be capable of such. For such a kind soul to be so turned. . .
“You’re fictions. . .” she protested weakly.
“Yes, yes, I’ve heard that too,” he snarled. “Fictions. Ridiculous! I’m as alive as you, and you’re as alive as the Hierophant. We’re all alive, Poison. By any definition you have, we’re alive. Even if you think we’ve been given life by someone else. We all have dreams and ambitions, we all have plans and wishes, and you’re taking them all away from us.” He stood up, making a gesture of disgust with one gloved hand. “Didn’t you ever believe in a god, Poison?”
“When I was young. . .” she croaked.
“Then how is this different?”
“Because then I believed . . . I had control of my own destiny. . .”
“But don’t you see?” Bram cried. “You’ve proved your point! You do have control over your own destiny. You’re choosing to die, choosing to kill us all with you. Nobody has stopped you; nobody can stop you except yourself. It doesn’t matter what the consequences of your choice are, but you made it yourself.”
Poison was frankly surprised that Bram had thought that up himself. “That’s not . . . good enough,” she said, wiping the lank strands of her hair away from her face. “If the only way to make the world right . . . is to do what he wants me to do . . . then it’s no choice at all.”
“You don’t have the right to kill us all!” he cried.
“How do you know . . . you’re even alive?” she countered.
“How does anyone? How does anyone know anything? There’s never any true answers, Poison. Everything is uncertain. That’s life. We can only deal with the world as we are presented with it. Don’t you appreciate that? All I want from life is to get back home, to buy that house in the mountains, and to never have to think about phaeries and Hierophants ever again! You’re robbing me of that dream, Poison! What gives you the right to decide whether all of us deserve to live?”
“Because. . .” she whispered. “Because you’re all dying. Because you’re all dying because I’m dying. What gives you the right to make me live? How can you make me responsible for the whole world?”
“You are responsible for the whole world!” Bram said, suddenly triumphant. “And do you know what that means?”
Poison frowned. “I don’t. . .”
“It means this is your story, you fool!” he cried.
Poison was bewildered. She had thought Bram, like Fleet, had been unable to see the strings that manipulated him; and yet here he was, using her own logic to argue with her. It must have been a terrible stretch for a man as down-to-earth as he was to encompass the concepts that Poison was offering. Did he really believe what he was saying, or was he just using the architecture of her delusion to try and outwit her?
“It means you have power over it just like the Hierophant does!” Bram cried. “If I die, if Peppercorn dies . . . well, the world will go on as normal. But because you’re dying, the whole tale collapses. Don’t you see? You’re the heroine! This is your story. Without you, it doesn’t work.” Bram’s eyes were flashing now with manic enthusiasm. “So if this is your tale, then take control of it! Fight back! Do something!”
“Do what?” Poison said weakly. “How can . . . how can I fight?”
“I don’t know!” Bram said, stamping around the room. “You’re the clever one. You’ve overcome everything that he’s thrown at you so far. Fight back, and there’s a chance, a chance you can do something about your situation. Are you willing to throw away your life – all our lives! – without being certain? Try! And if you fail, you can always give up again.”
He was
right. He was right. The fact that she could bring the Hierophant’s world to the edge of ruin was proof that his tale was about her. All about her. So much so, that the entire story collapsed if she was not in it. There was power in that. There was influence. She felt a stirring of something long-forgotten inside her, something she had once known as hope. Perhaps she could do something. Perhaps she could turn it around.
Was she really alive? Was Bram? Didn’t everyone feel at one time or another that they were the only one who was truly alive, and that everyone else was an actor in a play put on for their benefit? Was there ever any way of telling?
No. Bram was right. She could never be certain until she was dead; and maybe not even then.
Whatever the truth about the manner of life she was living, it wasn’t worth dying for.
“Eat,” Bram commanded, proffering a bowl of cold soup that had been lying by her bedside since Peppercorn’s last attempt at feeding her. “Damn you, eat. Don’t be so selfish. Get up and fight and stop feeling sorry for yourself.”
Poison’s eyes flickered feverishly over the bowl. To cave in now, when she was so close. . . Was she sure that Bram’s words made sense?
But the faint sliver of possibility that Bram had presented her with was all her natural willpower needed to reassert itself. Nursing the spark of that tiny hope, defiance roared into flame inside her. She would not resist the Hierophant with her death; she would resist him with her life. She would not thwart him, she would beat him at his own game. There would be a way. Somehow, there would be a way.
She took the bowl from Bram, and spooned the cold soup into her mouth, and foul-tasting as it was, it seemed the most delicious nectar to her; for it brought her strength, and with strength she could fight.
Bram sat down with a long sigh of relief, watching her as she ate.
“You had me scared, Poison,” he whispered. “You had me scared.”
“Do you believe me?” she asked quietly, between mouthfuls. “About the story, the fantasy? About the fiction?”