Page 28 of Arch Conspirator
No one ever recognized Ismene. There was something about her face—pretty, but forgettable.
“Idiots,” I said.
Her eyes dropped to my body, wrapped in fine white fabric, and my feet, bare and dusty on the floor.
“You’re wearing Mom’s dress.”
I cringed, pulling away. “I know. It’s stupid. I should leave it here for you—”
“No.” She shook her head. “No, you have to wear it. Imagine the look on Kreon’s face when he sees you in it.”
She turned me around so we were both looking at my reflection in the mirror, her chin just above my shoulder.
“Besides,” she said, “I don’t intend to marry.”
“Nor did I,” I said. I gentled my voice. It was different for Ismene than it was even for me, I knew. “We don’t always have a choice in the matter.”
“No, no, you don’t understand.” She frowned at me. “I intend to go with you, instead.”
“Ismene—”
“I’m sorry I didn’t help you,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears. “I’m sorry I didn’t knit our fates together like I should have. I’m so—”
I pulled her into my arms, fierce, our heads almost colliding. I could feel her jawbone against my cheek, her fragile shoulders under my wrists. Life had made us both spare, even living in Kreon’s house. We were very sharp to the touch, knife-edge women.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Do you think I want you to suffer the same fate as me? I’m so glad you didn’t help me, now.”
But she shook her head and pulled back from me.
“I don’t want to go with you so that I can redeem myself,” she said. “I want to go with you so that you won’t be alone.”
“Your reason makes no difference, I still won’t accept.”
“My reason makes all the difference,” she said firmly. “I am not a miserable sinner wearing sackcloth and dust. I am your sister, who would rather live a few years with you than many years without you. Is that so difficult to understand?”
In that moment, I wanted to accept her offer, and I felt ashamed. I didn’t want to die alone in the emptiness of space. I didn’t want to see and have no one to share with, to scream and have no one hear me. I didn’t want to be the first and the last of us to know what it was like to float among the stars. There was warm temptation in agreeing, like giving in to the desire to fall back into bed on a cold morning. But behind it was the horrible guilt I knew I would feel if I did.
She cupped my face in her hands.
“What are the years worth?” she said in a whisper, her eyes fixed on mine. “Let me tell you a secret, Antigone, something I have never told anyone: I amgladthe same blood runs in our veins. I’m like a bird that’s fallen in love with its own reflection; I am relieved every time I see myself in your face, and our mother, and our father. If I stay here without you, I will never be able to be what I should, I will only wear away at my time, waiting for the end.”
She smiled, and I realized my cheeks were wet.
“If I go with you,” she said, “we will have a beautiful, brief adventure. So let me give you this. Let me take this from you.”
I closed my eyes. My face was hot. I had heard, for just a moment, not Ismene’s voice, but the voice of our mother. And I wondered if maybe I was wrong—maybe immortality did exist, if my mother could speak through Ismene. If I could still hear her, even after death.
I couldn’t speak. I nodded instead.
15Eurydice
That morning I looked at Kreon’s razor, drying on the edge of the sink, and thought about the day Haemon was implanted in my body. How I had, for an hour, thought about the end. Maybe it was natural to think about death when you were making new life. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, procedure was what carried me through: I simply did what I was supposed to until the urge faded.
The Trireme was set to launch in late morning. It was poised at the edge of a clearing in the distance. The clearing abutted a gentle hill. A crowd waited at the top of that hill, in a bare patch of street hemmed in by buildings, not unlike the one where the whole nasty business had taken place the day before yesterday.
I went to the building that faced the Trireme and climbed up the fire escape to the balcony overlooking the square. I was careful to stand in the shadows where the crowd below couldn’t see me. They had already gathered. From a distance, it might have seemed like they were there for a spectacle. People had been gathering to watch executions since time immemorial.
I was sure that’s what Kreon would see. Just morbid curiosity, for most. For others, perhaps, pleasure. I knew the odditiesthat afflicted our species. Maybe that’s why my mother was convinced I was a prophet—because I saw things clearly.
