A Wounded Name (Fiction - Young Adult)

by Dot Hutchison

  “I can’t, not yet,” I tell them, beg them. “Not yet.”

  “Oh, Ophelia.” And when my mother finally looks at me, I can see the ghost of the sorrow she left behind, the memory that once she knew how to feel it, the truth that she would feel it if she could. “Time isn’t kind.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Dona eis requiem,” whispers my mother, and the words stab through me, make the fear worse. The thought takes breath, the breath takes shape into voice, the voice shapes into a prayer that stumbles from my mother’s lips and ripples across the surface of the water.

  I jerk away, nearly fall in my haste to scramble back onto the questionable safety of the grass, and she watches me with eyes that remember too much sorrow.

  “Oh, Ophelia.”

  I keep backing away, and then my back fetches up against a great metal basin. The silver burns wherever it touches, flowers of frost blooming across its outer curves. The bean nighe study me with empty grey eyes, their bare arms buried in the sudsy water.

  I’ve only ever spoken to the morgens before, and only because Mama is among them, but there’s so much fear the very air reeks of it. I swallow hard and curl my hands against the rim, feel the frost that burns and blisters. “Whose clothes do you wash?”

  “Ophelia, no!” cries Mama. She shakes her head, a great fountain of night-purple hair. “Do not ask anything of the washerwomen! They always answer!”

  One of the women studies the dark blue blazer in her hands. Strands of grey hair—not silver, but a true grey like dull iron—stick to the sides of her face where her damp arms have brushed them from her eyes. She reaches out to one of the other women, who surrenders her scrap of cloth without a murmur and hands it to me.

  It’s a faded white, or it would be if blood hadn’t splashed through folds in patterns like batik. Embroidered squares march haphazardly along the edges, the stitches lumpy and either too loose or too tight, the wandering borderline of silver thread showing where squares grew too tall or didn’t grow enough. Silver and dark blue and ice blue—dead blue—and in one corner, curling initials where the thread didn’t quite cover the thin marker beneath.

  PCC.

  My fingers throb with the memory of needles, of tearing away tiny flaps of skin as I accidentally stabbed myself again and again. I was barely six, but one of the maids patiently taught me how to sew, to embroider, and I made a handkerchief for …

  PCC.

  Polonius Cassian Castellan.

  Father.

  The scrap of cloth drops back into the water, and I race away from the basin, from the bean nighe, from the morgens that dance in the lake and Mama who stands apart and watches me with eyes that want to be worried but can only summon the echo of concern.

  Father was going to hide himself in Gertrude’s room.

  Father was going to listen to her conversation with Dane.

  Father was there.

  Father was …

  I sprint into the gardens, so much fear, so much death, but I can’t go back into the house, not the house that crawls with people grieving, people scared. A blue-white flicker dances before me and a hand extends, compassion and sorrow and patience.

  Hamlet.

  Not the Hamlet that prowls and paces and roars, not the Hamlet that rages or asks more than should ever be asked. This is the Hamlet who has only ever stayed in the cemetery, sitting against the angel that guards his grave and waiting for the long nights to end.

  “This way, little one,” he sighs.

  I follow him around the bends and curves. He never hesitates at the branches and intersections, never stops or looks back to see if I’m still there.

  There’s no reason for me not to be.

  I have nowhere else to go.

  The star blisters my lungs, great gaping wounds that make it impossible to breathe.

  Here he died.

  Here he was murdered.

  Here Jack found a syringe of milky-white poison.

  Here Horatio spilled a secret.

  Here Ophelia birthed a lie.

  Here Dane …

  Dane …

  And Father …

  Here Father lies, blood a brilliant blossom against his white dress shirt, dark against his rumpled navy blazer. Here the handkerchief, stained with blood from the bullet in his heart. Here the look of astonishment on his face, the realization that Dane was only ever partly playing mad, the shock that he was wrong.

  Here the man the bean sidhe keen for, here the man whose clothes the bean nighe wash, here the man Mama would mourn if she could, for all that she hated the ties he bound her with. The man she would mourn for my sake.

  Here Hamlet.

  Here Father.

  Here the endless scream that shreds my throat as it rips through the fear-drenched night.

  PART V

  CHAPTER 34

  They won’t tell me where he is.

  They tore me from his body and locked me in my room, and they won’t tell me where he is. The maids weep when they bring me food, and they weep when they take it away again. But they won’t tell me where he is. Horatio would tell me if he knew, but he doesn’t know, and they won’t tell him, either.

  They won’t tell him about Dane either.

  They won’t tell me about Dane.

  But Dane told me himself, off for his own little cold place, off to England with the Toms on either side, off to Claudius’ friends and the chance he might die before he can return, but he promised.

  He promised.

  To come back.

  To make this up.

  Because when he made that promise, he’d just hidden my father’s body in the gardens, positioned him where and how his own father had died, murdered just the same. Poison and bullets, it’s just the shape of a thing, the form of the death, but the death is the same.

  Because Dane pulled a gun, pulled a trigger.

  But they won’t tell me that either.

  They won’t tell me anything.

  They lock me in my room and bring me food, and only Horatio tells me anything, but he knows so little.

  It was an accident, he tells me.

  Dane thought it was Claudius spying, he tells me.

  Dane thought he’d finally kept his promise, he tells me.

  But Dane already knew the truth: he destroys the people he loves the most.

  Horatio comes in the morning with the maid and begs me to eat.

  He comes at lunch and begs more.

  He comes in the afternoon and walks me to the shower, tries to take me to the gardens, but they always tell him no and take me back to my room with no tub and no ceiling fan and a lock on the window.

  He comes in the evening and then he’s so tired and so close to tears that I eat with him, the food ash and stone in my mouth, and he holds back my hair when my stomach rebels.

  I know I’m hurting him, but I don’t know how to stop.

  Dane never knows how to stop.

  Mama cries my name from the lake, over and over, a clarion, a siren, and even though she can’t feel, I think she still needs.

  Needs to see that I’m all right.

  But I’m not.

  They lock me away and don’t tell me anything, and Dane pulled a trigger and traced love into my skin.

  Even now, the words tremble and sob and whisper in the star that blazes through every part of me iloveyouiloveyouimsorryiloveyouiloveyouimsorryiloveyou.

  In the darkness, I can hear Claudius yell, hear Gertrude weep, hear Horatio turn up his music to drown it all. And then, while the music is still playing, he leaves his room and comes to mine, picks the lock on the door to come and sit beside me on the bed and hold me through the long night, because he promised Dane.

  He would have done it anyway.

  Because Horatio is the best of us.

  And then he leaves to shower and change and comes back with the maid who brings breakfast, and that’s the only way I know anything has changed.

  Because nothing else does.


  Jack lights a candle, but he doesn’t know where to burn it, doesn’t know where the body is so the soul can leave it and follow the flame up to wherever it goes. So he burns it in the gardens where the body was found and where it disappeared and sobs with great heaving gasps that wrack his entire body because there’s just so much death in autumn and winter.

  Because all the flowers are dead and dying.

  Because he knows the hothouse flowers have only borrowed life, unnatural and out of season and never as strong.

  Because everything dies.

  All the pills are gone.

  Dane threw them away, I threw them away, and the others are locked away in Father’s office. Hidden away like the rest of him.

  Horatio is so tired.

  For his family, he keeps up with his classes, forces himself through the work and the tests and the applications.

  For Dane, for me, he stays with me through the long nights when even the endless murmur of the star can’t drown the keening lament from outside the walls.

  He falls asleep stretched out on my bed, his face too pale with fatigue, and sometimes I can stay next to him and watch him and stroke his dark auburn hair and be grateful.

  And sometimes I have to walk away, to find the door he’s left open and wander through the halls as the ghost no one sees, no one talks to.

  All my life I saw the ghosts, the only one who did.

  And now Horatio is the only one who sees me.

  We destroy the ones we love the best.

  Father’s bedroom is locked, and the boys never showed me how to pick locks. Horatio took all my keys for all the places we were never supposed to go. He asked and he begged, tears in his eyes, and I gave them willingly because there are so many accidents waiting to happen.

  Not scared of me.

  Not scared of what I could do.

  But scared for me, and what might happen.

  Even his eyes give me that distinction, give me that truth for comfort.

  Because Horatio is the best of us.

  Father’s bedroom is locked, but his study isn’t, so when Horatio falls into fitful sleep, I leave my room and walk through the halls and down the stairs to the room that Father spent so much time in. I sit in the heavy leather chair with the awkwardly shifted padding and trace my fingers over the worn, discolored patches. It matches his hands, his elbows, the back of his head, nearly in place with mine, because Laertes got Mama’s height and I didn’t, but Father didn’t have it either, and we’re so nearly the same size.

  The papers are scattered across his desk, disrupted by people looking for something they didn’t know how to find.

  They won’t tell me anything, but have they told Laertes?

  Laertes, who hasn’t written, hasn’t called?

  Laertes, who disappeared into Paris and may never come home?

  Laertes, who maybe did what Mama never could and found a way to cut the ties that keep us held to Elsinore Academy?

  I separate the papers into piles and tap them against the scratched surface of the desk to line up the edges of the pages. I don’t know how to sort them, but I can stack them.

  This is the room Father loved, the room that held everything he thought he was. The room he always came back to. The room he hid in. He buried himself in work and the school, but he was at his happiest here.

  He loves—

  Loved.

  —his children, respects—

  Respected.

  —his duty towards us, and I know he felt a true affection towards us, however clumsily the expression might be, but we were accidents. We were the chaos in his life, our mother’s legacy, her children far more than we were his.

  My mother’s daughter burns with the touch, with the kiss that’s been banished to England.

  My mother’s daughter sees too much.

  My mother’s daughter remembers the lake and the promise and the emptiness that only Dane’s star fills—the only things that keep me from the drowned city.

  He trembled to give it voice, as though voicing it would make it real, but always the truth was there in his eyes: I am too much my mother’s daughter.

  And now I always will be.

  “Ophelia, you know better than to disturb me while I’m working. Out of the chair now and back to your bed, be a good girl.”

  The papers drop from my grasp, spill over the worn wood of the desk. A blue-white flicker fills the room, and I slowly lift my eyes to the pale pillar that stands between the visitors’ chairs on the other side.

  There’s a slightly darker glow against his rumpled shirt and coat where the blood flowed, the edge of the handkerchief sticking out of the chest pocket. His short hair is mussed, his beard needs a trim, and his face has such fond exasperation that, for a moment, I can almost believe that the color is just a trick of the moonlight.

  But it isn’t.

  It can’t be.

  “Father …” I whisper, and he flaps his hands at me.

  “To bed, Ophelia, now. I have a great deal of work to do.”

  “You’re dead.”

  He takes a step back, one hand rising to adjust the reading glasses he isn’t wearing. “That isn’t funny, and the time for games is done.”

  The time for games will never be done.

  Not until Claudius is dead.

  Not until the rage of Hamlet finally sleeps.

  Not until Dane keeps his promise.

  Which promise?

  The tears choke my throat, blind me to everything but a bluewhite field of light, and I run away.

  But I can never run far. I run up the stairs, up to my room, up to the bed where Horatio needs the sleep so badly, and shake him awake anyway, because he’s the only one who sees me.

  Who hears me.

  “He’s here,” I sob, and even before his eyes open he’s squeezing my hand to give me comfort. “Horatio, he’s here—he shouldn’t be here, but he is, and you have to tell them! You have to tell them because he shouldn’t be here, but he is and he doesn’t even know it; you have to tell them.”

  “Tell them what, Ophelia?” he asks, his voice still scratchy from sleep.

  “Father! You have to tell them about Father!”

  “What about your father, Ophelia?”

  I can’t force the words through the sorrow, but he holds me and strokes my hair and waits for the storm to pass, because he’s always sure that it will. For Horatio, there are no gates to breach, no key to foolishly give away so the tide can enter. For him, the walls always stand and the storm always passes.

  “Father’s in his study,” I manage finally. “He’s in his study, and he doesn’t know he’s dead. You have to tell them so they can fix it.”

  “They can’t fix it,” he tells me gently. “They won’t see him, and they won’t know how to fix it. They can’t fix it.”

  They can’t fix anything.

  They won’t tell me where he is.

  I squirm out of his grasp and back into the hall, down a single flight of stairs to the second level where the Danemarks live and throw myself against the door of Gertrude’s private suite. My fists pound against the locked door until the skin cracks and bleeds, but there’s no answer, even when I call and sob her name. One door down, Hamlet used to sleep, until he slept forever and his brother took his place, and though it was Claudius who started all this, who formed the first ghosts and set the stage for the second, I pound on his door too and beg and plead.

  Horatio follows me and tries to pull me away, but he can’t bring himself to bruise me, and he can’t tear me away without gripping too hard and marking my skin, the only one who ever cares about the marks and scars he leaves behind and one of the few I would always forgive.

  They won’t tell me anything.

  They won’t even listen; they can’t hear.

  And despite the star, I can hear the murmur of the lake, feel its liquid whisper in my bones, a thin layer of darkness between water and flame.

  CHAPTER 35
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  Through the days that follow, I try and I try and I try, but I can’t find either Claudius or Gertrude. They leave a room before I can enter it, they lock a door with me on the other side. They won’t see, they won’t listen, they won’t …

  They won’t anything.

  And Father stays in his study, ghostly papers in his hands because he can’t touch the real ones, but he doesn’t realize that it’s all awash in blue-white light. He never believed in the ghosts in life, and he doesn’t believe in them in death. He doesn’t believe in himself, in his own existence.

  Restless in his years of service and his hidden grave, he returns to his office and his duties, nothing out of the ordinary. When dawn comes, he flickers away, back to Purgatory or nothingness or wherever, but when the sun sinks into the lake, earlier and earlier every day, he flickers back and goes about his tasks, creating them to fill the void left behind by his death.

  I’m the only one who sees him; I can’t let them lock me in anymore. Horatio kisses my cheek and leaves for classes—something that grasps at normal in this madness—and I reach for the heaviest book in my room: my Old Testament Studies text. It’s a comforting weight in my hand, solid and familiar. I lift it over my head and bring it smashing down on the doorknob, again and again, until I hear a great crack in the wood. The knob sags in its carved hole, then drops down to the floor, and I can see through into the hall. The lock falls after it, a perfectly innocuous piece of metal on the thick carpet. My door drifts open and won’t fully close, won’t stay closed.

  But they can’t lock me in anymore, and with this small freedom I race downstairs to throw myself into the flood of people.

  Gertrude and Claudius don’t see me, but there are many others Claudius must see, and they in turn see me. Parents and members of the Board, students who want to know what’s going on, who connect the crack of the gun in the middle of the night to Dane’s absence, to Father’s absence, to my absence. I don’t know with what pretty words Claudius soothes their fears—as if such a thing can be soothed when it’s a living force that prowls through the house and the dead gardens—but they come out of his office looking relieved or thoughtful or, for some, uncertain.