~ Caroline ~

It always seemed to be evening when she woke. Lily Day was always there by her bedside with heaped spoonfuls of oats and honey, which her parched lips gratefully accepted. After one mouthful, she slept again. When she awoke, once again to Lily’s offerings of breakfast, it was impossible to tell how long she had slept. Time just wasn’t passing. Or was it flying by days at a time?

Something hurt. Low down on her body, below the navel. It throbbed and pinched at her innards so much that she forgot any other pain. She thought it was her thigh, perhaps, but it was all just a fog of discomfort. Every one of her muscles ached, a dull ache—or was that just what muscles always felt like? She couldn’t remember not being sick. At times the pain would swell, darting the length of the scar where they cut her daughter from her. Each lash of agony was a cry for remembrance from her poor baby, an accusatory reminder of Caroline’s failure, Caroline’s loss. She thought she could see the little girl in that strange twilight between waking and sleeping, hiding beneath the faded white veil of the curtain that had been drawn around her bed. But she wasn’t there. She’d never lived.

That was Caroline’s fault. She wasn’t strong enough to be a mother.

Over time, the scene changed. Was it days that were passing? Weeks? Minutes? Then one time she woke to find Lily wasn’t there. Janna Davis was retrieving her bed pan. She called out for Lily, and got only apology. “She isn’t here at the moment, Miss Caroline.” Janna brought her that breakfast, and she ate surrounded by the smell of shit. Lily never came back.

Her head was in constant pain.

It was bearable at first. Sure, the ache was there, that dull ache that drew her to the brink of tears every time she so much as moved her eyes some. But there was the company of friends to take her mind off the pain. It wasn’t perhaps the friends she was used to, those from Borrowood, but Tema Caerlin and Emmeline Maynard always made time to talk. Janna brought naughty snacks pilfered from deep in the supplies. But the best times were when Lily was by her bedside.

Lily had two little handmade puppets, Callista and Grady. Often she’d use them to enact comic scenes at Caro’s bedside. She couldn’t have known, but the Heramey matron Jemessan used to do the same thing when Caro was small. She was transported home with every show, to the tiny five-year-old body she’d once inhabited, tucked in the rickety old bed that was once her grandmother’s, in a room the sun loved to kiss of a morning. She could nearly taste Mother’s special apple-cake. Nearly. It helped that Lily’s wry humour drove Caro to giggle often, just as Jemessan had.

But it hurt to giggle, so she tried not to do it too often. And in any case, Lily was apparently sick now too. She must have been, or she’d be here. The disease was clearly a contagious one. To think... Lily had to suffer all the same things, but there was nobody to give her a puppet show by her sickbed. All because Lily had devoted herself to Caro. She knew the risks, and she did it anyway.

The pain had entered her dreams now, too. It wasn’t always the case. To begin with, sleep was her respite. It would lap warm at her, brought on by either tired eyes or chemicals, and cushion her mind in a paradise of nepenthe and homely sensations. Now her dreamscapes were cold. They drowned her in a sea of pain and isolation. Better to stay awake, where at least she could observe. It helped her mind stay active.

From time to time a nurse would come by to sedate her, whichever nurse happened to be nearby. Oh, how she wanted to scream at them: “Leave me be! Leave me to my pain!” But she couldn’t find her voice.

Tema seemed to understand her best. Kind Tema. Of course she knew about that sort of pain, the pain that never subsided, night or day, but instead grew inexorably, until there was nothing else. When they were just out of Belaboras, it had been Tema who sought comfort, and Caro who served as a kindly ear. Tema’s own pain might have been mental, but Caro supposed it must have given her no less anguish.

When it was down to Tema to knock Caro out for the night, she’d take her time. She’d pull up a chair and sit, with a smile on her face that said everything will be okay. The others all wore masks to hide their faces. Tema did too, but she entered without it, and always took time to give Caro a smile before their time together ended. She always had a story to tell, one that was probably less than half true. And when she’d finished it, she’d administer the venom that consigned Caro to another cold nightmare, and stroked her forehead gently, to dull the pain for a second before sleep took her.

It was hardly ever Tema. The others didn’t take the same time and care. Just a single swift gesture and then it was lights out, in many cases without even a word of sympathy. Often she was left alone. When she did have company it was one of the newer nurses, Delphine Janley or Viola Watling or another of that ilk. They lacked the bedside manner of their more experienced colleagues, even if they meant well enough.

“Where’s Chris?” she’d ask, when she could say the words. He’d not been to visit for... how long was it now? Weeks? Months? Years, maybe? Time felt like it wasn’t operating in the same way for her. In her windowless room, permanently drifting in and out of sleep, seeing the same dozen always-tired faces, it was difficult to keep tabs on how much had passed. It was all the same in her hospital bed. But she knew it was a long time since he’d been to visit. Surely he’d come soon.

Nobody ever had an answer for her. Some would try to dance around the question, soften the blow of their inevitable non-answer. “The Governor is busy, I’m sure,” Delphine Janley had said, “but he’ll come as soon as he gets a chance. He’ll be here soon, when the time is right.” Others didn’t seem to want to give her an answer at all. When she’d asked Janna Davis, the girl had reddened and stammered something about “Doctor Maynard being the one who’d know.”

Doctor Maynard, for her part, curtly answered that he wasn’t able to visit her, for reasons of safety. And anyway, he was a busy man—it may well be that he simply didn’t have time to visit her. If it hadn’t hurt so, she’d have laughed in Emmeline’s face. Chris was the Governor. He had absolute authority. A heavy workload was nothing to him. If he wanted to see her, he could do so, and consequences be damned. Caro had tried for ages to get an audience with Emmeline. It irritated her to get an incorrect answer for her troubles.

Their evasions rankled. Caro was a grown woman. She could take a straight answer. Chris hadn’t come to see her, it was as simple as that. No doubt he had more important things to do. Who cares if the love of your life is sick, right? She’s in a hospital bed, she isn’t going anywhere. Meetings must come first.

He’d visited once, half a day after she’d been admitted to the hospital. That was before she’d fallen into the ouroboros of dreams and daydreams, when she was still lucid of the time of day. He’d brought along David Clifford and Oliver Wrack. The latter she scarcely knew, and the former had been as disconnected from her as it was possible to be while sharing a friendship group for thirty years. They’d lurked awkwardly off to one side while Chris spoke, and his words had been impersonal. Platitudes, the things society expects a man to say to his sick wife. Caro had lapped them up at the time. How could she be so naïve?

“I love you, Caroline.” That’s what he’d said. “More than anything else, I love you. I’d waste away beside you if I could.” She’d melted like a teenager when he’d said that, even though he was paraphrasing a poet from two centuries ago who’d stolen a quote from one of the Books of Lightness. His voice was a medicine for her then, the one thing that took the pain away more than anything else. If he’d been preaching from the Book, she’d have converted. But he was just making empty promises.

Empty promises like the one where he’d visit her every day, twice if time allowed.

Bull. Shit.

She already knew they were going to have a falling out when she got out. “You can’t let that happen again,” she’d tell him. “You’ve been remiss in your duties as a husband. You’ve let me down.” It was in the vows he’d sworn on their marital dais—’I will not let her down’. Perhaps he should have specified that the vow was contingent on it being convenient for him.

This morning was a daze. It may not even have been morning anymore. She’d been drifting out of sleep, only ever half-seeing, plugged in to the fever. The chiming of the machine behind her blared a backbeat to her stupor. Through the throes of slumber, she heard approaching footsteps. Breakfast, she knew—breakfast, then sedatives.

“Good morning, Caroline.” The voice was familiar. She squinted, to try and see better, but it was all half blurry.

“Who am I speaking to?” Her throat was dry. It cracked painfully as she spoke.

“What, can’t you see? It’s Ian. Ian Fitzhenry.”

Ian. She could see him now. The blurred form seemed to take on a better definition when she knew who to look for. He was stood beside her bed, with a tray of breakfast in his hand, and a pitcher of water which he practically poured into her mouth. It soothed her slightly.

“Thanks,” she rasped.

There was a mask on his face, one of the fancy ones. It had sculpted itself tightly to his face, so he looked as though he was simply wearing a layer of chiffon over his mouth. Those things were airtight, and in short supply. The hospital had been given no more than three dozen. She wondered how he’d managed to get one for himself. “They said I should bring you your breakfast,” he said. “I have to say, it all looks a bit bland. Remind me not to get sick. Somewhere like this, I’d starve.”

“I don’t really taste it.” Talking was making her tired. But she was always tired anyway. Seeing a friendly face made her forget about the pain for a little bit.

Ian stepped forward, close enough to touch her bed. “Caro, what’s happened to you?”

“Stay away,” she croaked. “You’ll get sick.”

“So what if I do? It’s the least I deserve.”

Ian pulled the curtain too behind him; it was just the two of them, alone in their cocoon. How long had it been since she’d been in such proximity to him? Not since they were children. Not since... It had been the night that Dani Carrigan died. Ian had arrived unexpectedly at the door, and Jemessan had let him in. Jemessan was the only company Caro had most of the time by that point. All that remained of her family, Armand and Tessa both spent their time away, only occasionally coming home. In their absence none of their friends came for Caro. Ian was the first friend she’d seen in a week.

He’d been sombre, and he’d pulled her in a tight hug. “She’s dead,” he’d said, “she’s gone. Everything is going to change now.”

Everything had changed. The Borrowood Dynasty had shattered. Armand was gone within the month, for good. Tessa had left by the year’s end. The others, for the most part, stopped talking to one another. They’d cross the street to avoid passing too close by. Only later, when Chris found a friend in Commissioner Irmden and set his sights on the future he wanted, had the group begun to come together. That was all Chris’ doing. Even now, it wasn’t quite the same.

Chris and Dani had been together at the time. They were the golden pair, the example of what the Borrowood Dynasty could be. They would be the king and the queen, and the rest would follow them. Everyone knew their wedding would be spectacular.

But Caro didn’t know. Nobody had told her. And so she’d gone, a stupid little girl who didn’t know better—she’d gone and asked Chris out somewhere. A dance, maybe? She couldn’t remember. Dani had been there with Chris at the time. Caro remembered the look they’d shared, remembered the amusement in Dani’s eyes as Chris had let her down—he couldn’t go out with her, he was with Dani, and didn’t she know that? He’d kissed Dani then. While Caro watched. Her heart had died and her bones turned to lead.

She’d run to Ian then. He’d been the only one who would comfort her. He’d let her cry for hours—and she hated that, because she was Caroline Heramey and she did not cry. But Ian hadn’t said a word in judgement. He’d given her his bed. She expected him to make a move, to take advantage of the fact that her heart was just a bloody mess, but he’d left her be. He was always gentle with her.

Whenever she’d cried, Ian was there for her. He always told her how stupid Chris was being, how one day he’d see sense and leave Dani for Caroline. After Freya Warlin died, a tourmaline ring had appeared on Dani’s finger. She and Chris had become engaged, before they lost what they had. Caroline had cried the whole night away on Ian’s shoulder after that.

Everything had changed, after Dani’s death. Just as Ian said it would. He’d been distant with Caroline, never allowing her to be alone with him. On her wedding day, Ian never said a word to her. He spoke to Chris, told Chris to pass on his messages of congratulations. They were never quite friends again.

Her mouth was dry again, so dry her lips had stuck together. She forced them apart even though it hurt. “Why did we stop being friends? Ian, what happened to you?”

She saw him freeze. He sighed then, and looked down at the ground. “I did it,” he said. “I’m sorry, Caro. I should have told you then.”

“Did what?”

“I killed her.” He looked up at her, and she saw his eyes were filled with tears. “That wasn’t the way it was supposed to go, you have to understand that. I wanted to scare her into running away. That way Chris would have no choice but to go to you.”

Dani. But she’d drowned... They said it was an accident.

She didn’t say anything. What was there to say, that was worth the pain?

“She was only supposed to be under the water for a minute, tops. Caroline, she wouldn’t stop thrashing. She was screaming something horrid, and I was just willing her to be quiet. ‘Shut up, stay still, it’ll be over in a second’. And then she did. I must have held her for too long. They say it hurts to drown, Caro. Tell me that’s a lie. Tell me she didn’t feel any pain.” Ian was practically screaming at her, his hands quaking.

But she was silent, and she knew he heard the volumes she spoke. He fell to his knees, and he was weeping.

Poor Dani.

His eyes were pleading to her. “Say something, Caro. Tell me I’m a monster, tell me to fuck off out of here, but say something. Anything will do.”

She looked at him through tired eyes. “Why?”

“Why?” Ian started to laugh. “For you, Caro. I loved you. I’d have given anything to be with you, to have you as my wife. But you wanted to be with Chris. You had your heart set on Chris. I had to do it, to make you happy. Dani was just in the way.”

How could Ian have loved her? He’d never sought out an argument with her, never tried to make her a queen. All he’d ever done was... was listen to her, give her a place to talk and cry freely. Kill for her.

And after all that, he’d had to watch her marry Chris, and live out her girlhood dreams.

But he’d killed Dani. Dani who had been her friend, who’d never done anything wrong. What about her dreams? Ian had stolen them away from her to make room for Caroline’s.

“I don’t want you to forgive me,” said Ian, standing. “I don’t want you to understand. But you needed to know. If you see Dani out there on those cold Hills, tell her I’m sorry.”

“I can’t do that.” She forced herself up, propped on her elbows, a mammoth effort she was already regretting. “I’m not going to die, Ian.”

He shook his head. “No. Of course you aren’t. Goodbye, Caro. I wish it hadn’t ended like this.”

She never saw him leave.

There came a time when she couldn’t stomach the oats, and the honey was too sweet for her to swallow. She threw it up and her throat closed. The next time she came to, she was hooked up to an intravenous feeding tube. The wound on her thigh was raging, and there was a dull ache in her forehead from too much sleeping. She could feel the sores that had begun to form on her back, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

From then on she ceased to be a person.

Hours melted into days melted into years, in a plasma storm of pain. In her better moments, when she had lucidity, she could think of nothing but how much it hurt and how much she wished it didn’t. In her worse moments, she couldn’t even remember her name. She was the woman without identity. The mystery. She had no sense of self.

Where was she? It was soft where she lay, soft and warm, though at times the firm metal ribcage reached to dig into her back. The noise never stopped—a clangour of beeps and crashes, a hundred voices talking in unison. Their words were lost to her.

Amidst the sound, the world came into focus. She was on the damp sandy shore of a windswept beach, alone. A dark sky was imbued with streaks of red. The sea was grey and broiling, each crashing wave spitting foam onto the sand. Cliffs rose up, walling the beach, and as she followed those cliffs to the sky she saw a white tower rising high above it. The sounds all faded away then. Only the song of a soaring nightingale broke over the heartbeat of the tides.

She closed her eyes, and tower and tide alike vanished. This is all a dream. I’ll wake up soon.

“Tiriotte,” said an indistinct voice, a hybrid of male and female calling out with a dissonant echo. A fanged blade slashed across her vision, and everything shone scarlet. The action brought her brain to focus. All thought of pain slipped away before the allure of a dream. They called her ‘Foresleeper’, she remembered. It meant something. Quite what she couldn’t recall, but there it was, emblazoned in her mind’s eye. ‘Foresleeper’.

The blade dissolved in a cloud of sand, and she was no longer lying down.

She was a young girl, running barefoot on a dusty beach, cooling her burning toes in the grey water that lapped at her. People watched her from the sea wall. Their skin was dirty and hard as leather, and they wore barely more than sacks. She called out to them, called for her mother, but they only regarded her sadly.

“Foresleeper,” a voice whispered.

She was he now, an old soldier with one eye gone. He limped through a stone cathedral, tears streaming down the cheek of his surviving eye. Ghosts danced around him, clammy and cold, and they chanted the names of dead men.

“Foresleeper,” whispered the same voice.

“Old blood,” whispered another.

An aged tree fell with a croak before her axe, and brought clouds of dry dirt up off the ground as it landed. Held within the stump, a book bound in leather. Its cover was a pale face, and the eyes lit up as she beheld it. She gasped and dropped the axe in her shock, and as it fell it took a chunk from her foot.

“Foresleeper.”

“Pure blood.”

And there she stood, alone, in a great hall. Trestle tables stood abandoned at the sides, and the wooden floor was slick with blood. A man carved from alabaster hung from a high ceiling, weeping onto the floor.

“Foresleeper.”

“Queen’s blood.”

She walked through a quiet valley. The land was submerged, and the buildings seemed to sway beneath the water. As she gazed up, she saw a dozen black stones on the mount around the valley. Behind each lurked a grey shade of terrifying and undefinable form. The shades beckoned her, and she was compelled to follow.

“Foresleeper.”

“Favourite of the Gods.”

Now she walked through the air, held aloft by a grey shade on each arm. Beneath her, a line of women walked into paradise, each one naked and shivering. A dark figure stood at the gate, lit only by the light of an uncaring moon. When the figure clicked her fingers, a bell rang distantly. Then half of the women were gone, and the other half bowed their heads in prayer.

The shades on each arm leaned in to whisper to her:

“Foresleeper.”

“Heramey.”

And she was stood within an endless tomb of stone, her hair blown by a cruel wind. Flames lapped at her feet, covered the walls, burned her lungs to breathe. To her left and to her right, a man and a woman stood. As the three stretched out their arms and touched one another’s fingertips, so the fire took hold of them, and the inferno was great to behold. Wherever it scorched, purity was born.

“Foresleeper.”

“Caroline.”

She was Caroline. It all came back to her now. Thousands of images surged through her head, but she could comprehend none of them. A solitary tear begged for the relief of home. It was as if the Gods were listening when they granted it.

Home was as she remembered it, long ago. She was sat against her favourite tree, the one that had been cut down after the lightning struck it. The rough bark pressed into her neck, as once she’d pressed her name into it. They’d all done that, her and Tessa and Armand.

Beneath another tree, she could see Nana Raine, there amidst a grove of the most brilliant starfire. She’d never looked this young, not while Caro had known her. She was a siren, tall and regal, with silky hair in the deepest black, and narrow, firm cheekbones. A little girl was dandled on her knee, an angel with a pure face who shared Caroline’s fiery hair and her emerald eyes, and who she knew was her poor baby. Alianor. Nameless in life, but not nameless forever.

Mother and Father were watching her from across the garden. That couldn’t be. They were gone now, taken by the green pox, but she could see them on the other side of the pond. Father was reading that old book of madrigals that he’d always kept by his bedside. The madrigals had smouldered when the book was consigned to the funeral pyre. Now they were unburnt.

She could see Tessa skipping on the lawn—Tessa when she was a little girl, not the headstrong woman she’d become. Caroline had never realised that Tessa was this sweet. She was just a child, with the dreams of a child, but her future was a mystery, lost in the ether. Did this mean she was dead? Had Caro been reunited with her family in the afterlife?

But surely not. Armand was there as well. Her brother was throwing his red ball, just the way he always used to. Armand hadn’t died. He was on Arvila, far away from danger, deputy to the governor there. He had no right to be here.

Her throat was dry, she realised, but there was no pain. She started across the lawn, towards Mother and Father, to drink of the pond. They smiled at her as she approached them, and she could feel her face growing sticky with tears. She’d never thought to see their smiles again. “Come back to me,” said Mother, a sparkle in her eyes.

“Come back, Caro,” Father laughed. He’d always laughed, when he wasn’t busy in his study. The fall had taken his mobility, but it had never dulled his humour. Now he seemed to be young again, younger than Caro was, and agile as ever he had been.

“Please come back,” said Chris. She turned to see him stood behind her, beneath the canopy of her tree. His eyes were in shade, but she could hear their call. That was what love did. If she chose, she could go back to him, to life. But perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to die. The garden was warm, and she was so cold.

She started to back away from Chris. He called out again: “I’ll see you happy again, Caro. You’ll be a queen.”

She shook her head and turned from him. Her body was pulsing like the tide, every wave drenching her with pain. If she’d had tears to cry, she’d have wept then, but her eyes were dry. She wasn’t even sure if they were open or closed.

Everything went icy cold for a minute, and the garden faded away. She was in her hospital bed, the only sound an incessant bleeping from the monitor hooked into her veins. Janna Davis was there beside her, watching her without a sound. The girl’s eyes were dark and bright and full of fear. Behind her, a man sat waiting. He wasn’t a man, not really. He was too long, too thin, and he was all in shadow. Caro had seen him before, in those dreams as he led her through the door of the big house on the hill. She screwed her eyes shut, so she wouldn’t have to see him now.

Her breaths were slow as the bleeps washed over her. There was no pain now, which was nice.

Then she started to warm up, and she felt the kiss of morning dew on her cheek. She was home again, back in her garden with Mother and Father and Tessa. Armand wasn’t here, though. That’s how she knew she was dead.

As a child, she’d wished she could stay in the garden forever. She’d hidden herself within the thickets and ignored her parents’ calls, so her playtime didn’t have to end. Now the wish had come true.

She ran into her mother’s arms, and cried bitter tears.