The Wings of Ashtaroth

Chapter 6: Visitors: Section III: Iridescia

Iridescia: The Palace: Ipsis: Indas

In the dream, Iridescia was fat and heavy with child, a dead weight in the little papyrus skiff she paddled down the palace canals. The boat was narrow, crafted from fresh green reeds. She'd stolen it after waiting for hours for the change of the guards outside her tower, certain the canals could ferry her to the town she watched outside her window. She thought she remembered walking in the town once, when she was a child, but that had been a very long time ago now, before the ruby-haired man. Auntie no longer allowed her to leave her room at all. She held the memory tight, reliving it every morning and before bed in case she forgot it like she forgot so many other things.

The canal water looked green in places, covered by the same virulent moss that crept up the sides of the palace's intricately tiered walls. She plunged her oar beneath the surface, barely disturbing the deep, charcoal-black waters or the pale blue lilies that dotted the surface. The flowers were beautiful, but also frightening, like dead flesh drifting on a dark ocean. Where the torchlight pierced it, the dark water glowed orange like the colour of papyrus, and she could see dust spiraling around the long, thick stalks, all the way down to the bottom.

Twilight cast its subtle shades onto the reflective gold detailing of the palace walls and the wet leaves of the papyrus forest that lay just outside the palace complex. A breeze stirred the wilderness, and it was as if the great fronds and stalks were soldiers in crested helmets, threatening to break down the man-made walls that barely kept the wilderness at bay.

Under the shadow of the hillside and the papyrus, the water of the canal became a place to hide. Even if Auntie caught her and caged her up again, it was worth it to sit in the boat, bobbing on the water and listening to the birds and insects.

Iridescia dipped her fingers just beneath the still, black water, dragging them through the algae in peaceful commune with the drift of the boat. She shut her eyes, smiling and breathing in the cool air. As she floated, the oar motionless in her hand, something tickled her skin under the water. She looked down, expecting reeds.

Bloodless, fleshy human fingers reached toward her. The empty eyes of the dead gazed through her as fish nibbled at their sockets.

Iridescia screamed, but she couldn't stop looking. She stared down and down and down to the very bed of the canal, where the dead men's feet were bound to a metal lattice.

"Ahhhh—" She slapped the stretching, waving hands with her oar, until she'd swatted them away and pelted the boat to safety.

"Tayri!" called a man, somewhere behind her.

She snapped her neck around, paddling more furiously. But the harder she paddled, the worse the boat turned in circles, trapping her. Her thoughts felt clouded and muddy. They weren't her own. How did one row a boat? It had looked so simple in the paintings in her tower.

A man in a skiff like hers appeared from around a hard corner. She didn't know his face.

The man was rowing closer, and her boat was spinning in circles. She stumbled to her feet and the oar slipped forgotten from her hand, smacking the water.

She clamped her hands over her ears. She wanted her tower: its solid walls, its unyielding stones. It was a safe place just like Auntie had always told her. The only safe place. She was wrong to have escaped. Wrongwrongwrong.

"Maaa—" she said, wobbling in the boat. Ahead of her, above the canal, a brick walkway bridged the moat. Voices and footsteps were approaching. "Ssss―Suh . . . ."

The second boat scraped alongside hers. The man in reed armour grabbed her calf. She screamed and tumbled back into the boat, but he scrabbled to hold her.