Chapter 26
A mirror of water lies in front of me. It is crystal clear, and its surface mirrors a sky, endless and pristine, populated by foamy clouds floating in its immensity. I look up, my eyes searching the sky reflected in the water, but all I find is whiteness, vast and beyond definition.
The scenery is beautiful, and yet I sense there’s a dark mystery behind it. My mystery, the mystery of my family.
I turn to Wilhelm and Matt, my gaze questioning and pleading at once. Wilhelm smiles at me, and takes my hand.
“Be brave Iris, you have nothing to fear. We are here with you, but we cannot be you. You alone can read the secret words,” he tells me.
I approach the water, cautiously, observing its surface with anxious eyes. I expect something to happen, but the water lays immobile and silent before me. I squat in front of the water, and I begin talking to it. I cannot say if my words are resounding in my head or if I am speaking them out loud.
Please tell me, tell me…whatever it is, please tell me…
I close my eyes. Head hidden between my knees and hands tight on the base of my neck, I feel nothing but a small bunch of fragile bones. I start to sob, letting the tears dribble down my pale skinny legs.
I am still crying when I detect a whooshing whisper. I raise my head and through the tears still fogging my vision I see the water turn deep red and sizzle, letting out black filaments of smoke.
I gape at its evolution, mesmerized.
Then the bubbling subsides, and the surface turns into a smooth plane of darkness.
I see Arthur, standing in front of a woman’s bed and handing her a flask filled with a green fluid.
Drink, my queen
My queen
Queen
Een
The words echo around me, Arthur’s voice distorted and unfamiliar.
“Stop Arthur, stop!” I scream, covering my ears.
My eyes are wide open though, and I see, clearly and unmistakably, the queen take the flask and bring it to her lips.
I wish I didn’t have to see, and yet I am unable to divert my eyes from the scene.
The queen raises her eyes towards Arthur, as if to ask a question her lips cannot articulate. Then the tension in her body melts down, slowly and almost voluptuously, and seconds later she is fast asleep, lips parted.
With swift movements Arthur produces a small bag I hadn’t noticed till this moment. Holding a bottle under the queen’s nightgown he moves his fingers along her body, tracing patterns I do not comprehend. In her sleep the queen gasps, the lids of her closed eyes cringe, her face turns into a mask of despair.
I stare at her, holding my breath.
Arthur continues tracing obscure figures on the queen’s skin, till her body arches, her legs stiffen and her nails carve into the palm of her hands so hard that rivulets of blood drip on the white bedsheets.
Arthur lifts the bottle he had been holding under the queen’s nightgown. It is filled with the same green liquid the queen drank, but in it floats a small black entity.
Arthur observes it, as if amazed by its presence in the bottle, and I observe it with him.
I notice something in it is pulsing. It has a heart, yes, a heart, and it is then that I realize that I am looking at an embryo, albeit a distorted, sinister, unfamiliar embryo.
“And now, Ludwig, we’ll bring you to a place where you can no longer hurt us,” I hear Arthur say, smiling in calm satisfaction.
“Where, Arthur?” I ask, forgetting I am a spectator of a scene to which I don’t belong.
Arthur seems to hear my voice from whichever reality he is into, because he stops short, and looks first at the queen and then at the room, with an expression suddenly filled with apprehension.
“Iris?” he calls.
“Yes,” I have the time to say, before being drawn in a primordial world of blackness.