Drawn Up From Deep Places

Marcilla shivers, for all that the cloud-bound garden grows increasingly, oppressively hot. Thinking, yet again: But why not? And more importantly . . . why me? In, as you say—

(particular)

Though there is this, it suddenly occurs to her—Locusta was a mother too, once. Locusta has shared her grief, that indigestible stone which sits always in the pit of Marcilla’s stomach, changing everything she tastes to dirt. That strange power of hers again, perhaps . . . the power to make even her slaves feel sorry enough for her to jeopardize their own safety and freedom to help her. Or, yet more simply—

Where would I have gone, after all, anyhow? Marcilla catches herself wondering. This—

(she)

—is al

l I have left.

“Tell me what you need, Domina,” Marcilla answers, finally. And is mildly surprised to see Locusta’s weird gaze sadden slightly, as she does. Had you hoped for more of a fight, my lady? Should’ve asked Gnaius instead, if that was what you wanted.

But Locusta says nothing to confirm this nor disprove it. Only inquires, as Marcilla could never have expected her to—

“Does this world please you, Marcilla? Do you love it?”

What?

And here it is, in one cold flash: Every bad thing that’s ever happened to her sent flooding back at once like a sharp stick thrust between her legs, into the very softest part of her, the secretest wound. Thrust in deep, beyond its hilt, and twisted.

Marcilla swallows, hard. “No, Domina,” she husks. “I beg your pardon; no.”

“No, no, never apologize—you are right not to. This world is a cruel place; it always has been, from the very beginning.” Here Locusta pauses, allowing a tone that Marcilla has never heard before to enter her otherwise murmur-calm voice—not upset, not urgent, so much as definite. “But it will all change, Marcilla, I promise you. It will change.”

Can this be sympathy? It smells a bit like it, or like Marcilla remembers it smelling; perhaps she is simply fooling herself, one more time in a long string of times. Yet it feels good nonetheless, Locusta’s stainless fingers resting against her cheek, cupping her jaw. This unlooked-for feeling of . . . support.

“You are kind, Domina,” she hears herself say, voice cracking. “You do not have to be. I thank you for it.”

But: “Oh no, Marcilla. Thank you.”

And then—a movement, so fast Marcilla can barely register it before she hears Dromio gasp and Gnaius curse: a slim flash of polished bronze against her neck (Knife? Hair pin?), followed by searing pain. Marcilla falls forward, hands at her throat, powerless to stem the flood. She sees her own blood gush into the trench, drunk by the thirsty mud, and it hurts so badly, so badly . . .

. . . Until suddenly, with a snap, she’s outside herself, separated and apart. Locusta with her red hands, Dromio vomiting to one side, Gnaius hugging Chryse’s face to his chest—she still knows them, yes, but none of it means anything more or less to her than anything else: the cloud above, the wind in the trees, those same black-clad men slipping in across the fields again, making their way towards the apparently now-visible Villa. Or that endless road which, Marcilla realizes, spirals out around peristyle, bathhouse and mundus alike—smooth like blown glass, black like night-water, overhung at intervals with poplar-high iron trees whose single, double or triple clusters of fruit give off an eerily unblinking glow: scarlet, green, yellow, white.

And beyond that, even more marvels: great buildings looming wherever Marcilla looks, mountain-high, ten thousand phantom temples to ten thousand unknown gods. And light at almost every window, spilling forth in unbroken waves, pure and dreadful, implacable as the impending moment of death.

With only slightly more interest than she would have shown in anything else, Marcilla watches a coil of something ooze its way from the displaced mundus-cover to her discarded flesh, before thrusting itself—wormlike, with a subtle clockwise screwing motion—inside. Watches as the corpse straightens stiffly, humping up from the ground like a worm, its throat still gaping open. Sees it crouch again to lap its own blood from the shallow groove in front of it, smearing its—

(her)

—lips with dust and gore.

The black-clad men are very close now, moving crab-like, shadows on top of shadows. With such a far more significant show to witness at close range, however, Marcilla cannot count herself too surprised if no one inside Locusta’s garden notices their approach.

Locusta, voice even higher, that note of certainty more pronounced: “Speak, I constrain you. Is it now? Has it come? Is this it?”

The body looks up, wipes its mouth with the clumsy back of one hand, only making things worse. And from Marcilla’s flapping second mouth, a cold, pale voice drops words like lumps of rotting flesh:

“Too . . . late.”

Locusta’s hand goes to her mouth. Her eyes shine, wide and wet. “You lie.”

“No. Too . . . late.” It straightens again, seeming somehow taller—looming over her, almost, while its own shadow spills out around both their feet in a lapping flood.

“Who tells you so? My master—”