by Jenny Trout
If something horrible had befallen Ophelia, Hamlet would feel responsible, just for having seen the vision. How would Romeo feel if Juliet stepped through the corpseway and met a second death?
Hamlet decided the best way would be to say everything as plainly as possible, so there could be no misunderstanding. “We don’t know that Juliet will have a body on the other side. So prepare yourselves, both of you. Her soul could be destroyed. Let’s go.”
Romeo grabbed him and shoved him against the triptych, beside the portal. “What do you mean, her soul could be destroyed?”
“Romeo, let him go!” Juliet shouted. The enraged Italian ignored her.
Since Romeo was the one who had such a violent hold upon Hamlet’s person, it was Romeo whom he addressed. “Well, how should I know? I saw my father pass through the portal, but he was a ghost. A wraith of blue light that could barely pass for human. I don’t know what will happen to Juliet.”
“You don’t know? And yet you brought me here to find her?” Romeo could display surprising strength when angry, for someone as frail as he was. He shook Hamlet and slammed him against the wall again.
“I brought you here? You manhandled me through that portal against my will!” Hamlet huffed. “May I remind you that just on the other side of that corpseway, you could be executed for laying your hands upon my person in this impudent manner?”
“You’re not helping!” Juliet scolded and forced her way between the two of them. “Now both of you, calm yourselves for one moment. Hamlet, what makes you think my soul could possibly be destroyed?”
He shrugged. “I was trying to prepare you for the absolute worst case scenario. I was trying to be helpful.”
“As helpful as a stick in the eye,” Romeo muttered, but a single stern look from Juliet silenced him.
“If your father’s soul could pass through the portal, it stands to reason that mine should be able to as well.” Though she addressed Hamlet, she appeared to be speaking more to Romeo. “We have no reason to fear. If I cannot remain in corporeal form in…Midgard,” she struggled visibly with the term, “then I can come back through the portal.”
“I will not leave you here,” Romeo vowed.
She sighed her resignation. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, much as my nurse used to say on our walks.”
Hamlet blinked at her.
“There are a lot of bridges in Verona,” she explained, and paused again. Then she dropped her gaze and muttered, “I thought it was very funny.”
“Hamlet, you go through first,” Romeo suggested, a muscle in his jaw flexing. His eyes darted to the portal. “Then Juliet. I will stay behind, lest we become separated.”
“And what?” She frowned up at Romeo. “I’ll come back through and you’ll stay here?”
He glowered. “I won’t leave you behind. It was my love for you that brought me here, and it is my love for you that will keep me here, if I must stay to be at your side.”
“I’ll go through then? To spare myself having to listen to any more of this,” Hamlet said, cheerfully, to buy him time before they comprehended the biting sentiment.
He stepped through, his breath held. If it was Midgard he entered, he wanted his first breath to be free from the stain of the Afterjord.
Hamlet’s boots touched stone and rushes. The warmth from the fire burning in the hearth at the end of the hall made him suddenly aware of the lack of temperature in the void. It had been neither cold, nor warm, lending more of a feeling of unrealness, wrongness, than he’d noticed at the time.
He took a few cautious steps. The hall had a low ceiling, intricately carved with indistinguishable scenes that did not reveal themselves in the flickering of the firelight. The long table was heaped with food, but no one seemed to be present to eat it. Whoever lived in this castle would no doubt be along at any moment, and it seemed vital that the three of them be gone before they were noticed by a servant, or the lord of the manor himself.
Hamlet stuck his head through. “Quickly, we haven’t much time.”
Juliet looked at Romeo, the briefest glance, before stepping through. She slid through the portal with a gasp, and looked about herself with wonder. She lifted her hand, turned it this way and that in the firelight. “Did it work?”
Hamlet reached out and pinched her shoulder, hard. She slapped his hand away with a shout of indignation, but that affront changed to joy in a heartbeat. “It worked, didn’t it? I feel more…alive.”
Romeo came through. He did not blink before he reached for Juliet. He wrapped his arms about her, and she went easily into his crushing embrace. “Praise God. Praise God, you have returned to me.”
“She came through the corpseway unscathed,” Hamlet agreed. “But we do not know where we’ve come to. And I am not in a position to be kidnapped. If this castle belonged to an ally of my uncle, or an enemy, it would not matter. They will seize me upon sight.”
“They might not know you,” Juliet said in a whisper, her gaze searching the room. “They might be able to help us get back to Verona.”
“And they might murder us on sight for breaching their walls.” Something bothered Hamlet, pricked at the back of his mind like the tip of a knife. “The corpseway remains.”
Romeo looked over his shoulder. “That it does, the evil thing. Do you think this might be the domain of a sorcerer?”
“Do you believe in sorcerers?” Juliet asked, leaning back in Romeo’s embrace. “The boy I remember did not believe in such nonsense.”
“Says the dead girl,” Hamlet muttered under his breath. He did not begrudge the two their happy reunion. Something had indeed taken place when Juliet had stepped through the portal. There was more life to her, more warmth. Having not known her when she was alive, he could not say whether she was back to normal or not. Romeo seemed satisfied that she had been restored, and she did, as well. But something wasn’t right.
He hated to cast a pall over their joy, but he could remain silent no longer. “Whoever possesses a corpseway in Midgard is a formidable enemy, indeed. We should proceed with extreme caution.”
Footsteps sounded beyond the two carved doors on either side of the fireplace.
“Hide!” Romeo whispered fiercely.
The only source of egress seemed to be the doors that now creaked open, both at the same time.
Guards, Hamlet reasoned, sent to find the cause of the disturbance. They had been found out.
“Under the table,” Juliet mouthed frantically, rushing to the narrow end, where no trestle bench would block them. She ducked beneath the tabletop and scrambled forward on her hands and knees, and Romeo followed.
It was the first place a guard would look, Hamlet lamented, but he had no other choice. The doors were opening, and he would be spotted. He climbed beneath with them, wishing for a tablecloth to conceal them. Perhaps the darkness and the long, low benches would do well enough.
Feet plodded in, slapping against the floor. Wet, white feet, like those of a drowned corpse. Hamlet wondered at that. What kind of guard wouldn’t wear boots?
Then he saw the expressions of Romeo and Juliet beside him, her eyes wide with fear, his mouth in a grim line.
Someone had to see what was happening. He motioned with a finger toward the tabletop above them, and slowly lowered himself flat to the floor. He pulled himself forward as silently as he could, but the horrible wet, smacking sounds of the seemingly hundreds of feet thundering in the room would have covered the peeling of church bells. Worse still were the sounds that followed, worse than the sloppy eating of the most uncouth noblemen at a celebratory feast. Hamlet gagged as a bitten plum bounced off the rushes and a slimy white foot crushed it. More food fell, chicken skin and chunks of masticated fruit, great globs of spittle-covered pastry crusts, as though the men feasting were merely chewing the food and tossing it down. Without dogs to gobble up the scraps, the disgusting banquet remained splattered on the floor and the feet, and Hamlet could no longer stand not knowing to who
m those feet were attached.
He rolled to his back, looked up, and dodged a falling lump of thoroughly chewed beef and glistening fat. He retched at the sight before him. The creatures were a mockery of the shape of a man, two rubbery feet on long tubes of legs that rose up in an arch. Two arms, reaching and grabbing at the food on the table, were connected beneath a long, horrible oval of a head. Where the eyes should have been, only two empty holes, like thumbprints in dough, gaped sightless above the wide, formless mouth. As the creatures devoured their food, it fell out. There were no parts to swallow it down to.
Hamlet quickly slid beneath the table again and mouthed, “Don’t look.”
Of course, the other two did not heed them. He may as well have cautioned them not to touch a hot dish. Romeo drew his sword and caught the reflection of the creatures in his blade, and Juliet covered her gasp with her hand.
“Do you think they’ll eat us?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. It is certainly nothing I would wish to test!” Hamlet hissed back.
Romeo’s chest rose and fell rapidly, his jaw tight, eyes ticking from side to side as he watched the rows of feet and spindly legs swaying like a demented forest beyond the bench. “I can cut a path for us.”
“Don’t be foolish, Romeo, there are too many of them!” Juliet’s hand came up to cup his cheek.
Hamlet almost looked away. Open displays of affection always made him uncomfortable. Perhaps because he could not think his way around the emotions, or convince himself to feel them.
Then he thought of Ophelia, how it had been to watch her drown, and he thought perhaps he felt a little of what they did at the moment. “No. I’ll do it.”
They both looked at him as though he’d turned into a giant maggot serpent. Romeo sputtered, “Hamlet, you’ll die.”
“You’re not the only person alive who can wield a sword, you know. I’ve been taught by the best fencing masters in all of Europe,” he argued.
“Fencing, yes!” Romeo shot back, straining to keep his voice low. “But have you ever fought in a melee? In close combat with other men who want to kill you?”
“No, because I’m not a brutish thug!”
“Will the both of you shut up?” Juliet admonished, putting a hand on Romeo’s chest, as if to hold him back from lunging at Hamlet. “You’re arguing about which one of you is better suited to be torn apart by those things!”
“I can clear a path through,” Romeo snarled. “To the corpseway. We can get through it. It’s no better on the other side, but we could at least wait until they leave.”
“What if they come after us?” Juliet asked. “If I could pass through the corpseway, they might be able to as well.”
“We’ll stand a better chance out there. There were no physical restraints in that place, and there are here,” Hamlet admitted. “He has a good plan. Godspeed, Romeo.”
Giving Juliet a quick, hard kiss, Romeo put one hand on the hilt of his sword and slowly, clumsily crawled to the head of the table. There was a large chair there, like a throne, and he heaved his weight against it to knock it back. It clattered to the floor and the ring of legs around the table widened. Everything went suddenly quiet, as though the creatures had been shocked at Romeo’s sudden appearance. Then, a deafening shriek went up, and the things skittered away, their moist soles slapping against the stones.
“I think that answered our question,” Hamlet told Juliet with an arch of his brow. He climbed out, reaching down to take Juliet’s hand and help her up.
Romeo walked to them, sheathing his blade. “They ran away.”
“Then they must be fairly harmless,” Juliet said with a smile of relief. “But now where do we go?”
“Out the doors after them?” Romeo suggested. “I don’t think the answers lie through that corpseway. We’ve made progress.”
“No, we believe we’ve made progress. For all you know, we’ve gone backward.” Hamlet frowned at the table. None of the food was missing. Everything had returned to the way it had been. “Don’t touch anything. It could be a test.”
“What do you mean?” Juliet asked. “I knew you were being tested with the girl in the water. Why wouldn’t I see that this was a test, as well?”
“Because you’re different here than you were in Sheol,” Romeo said softly. “You weren’t yourself there. A part of you was missing.”
“That’s impossible, I don’t remember any bit of me going missing,” she argued. “I feel as normal as I ever have.”
“But there was something…” Romeo looked almost ashamed. “I owe you a debt too large to ever repay, Hamlet.”
That took him aback. It was rare that anyone thanked him for anything. Perhaps because he’d spent so much time worrying about his own concerns, rather than the concerns of others.
“We aren’t in Sheol anymore,” Hamlet announced, only partially for the change of subject. When the other two regarded him with quizzical expressions, he gestured around them. “This place is different, so you’re different. You’re dead, so your soul will be affected by the Afterjord in a way we will not.”
Romeo put his arm around Juliet’s waist and pulled her to his side, looking hopefully to Hamlet. “What if you’re wrong? What if she’s just getting better, becoming more alive the closer we get to Migard?”
“Better than what?” Juliet pressed her hand to her chest, her shoulders slouching forward as though she would become as empty as the hollow souls they had seen but a moment before. “I don’t remember being any different. I cannot bear the thought of another corpseway stripping away a piece of me, without me knowing the absence of it. If I go through another portal, what will happen? Will I become someone else without ever knowing?”
“We can’t tell.” Hamlet met Romeo’s despondent gaze. “I warned you that this journey would be difficult. Did you imagine it would be only fording rivers and traversing deserts? I told you that I didn’t know what would happen when you got here.”
“Was there no way to find out, before you did this to me?” Juliet asked, her large brown eyes full of hurt. “The two of you never thought that a bit more preparation might have been required before tampering with the forces of life and death?”
Neither Hamlet nor Romeo supplied an answer. It seemed they both felt foolish, confronted with their oversight. It was a dire thing to unite them, Hamlet thought grimly.
Romeo tried to comfort her, his hand rising to touch her shoulder, but she pushed him away.
“I can’t go back to Shoel. We can’t go back to that, not now that I know the difference.” She pointed accusingly at the corpseway. “There will be another way out of this room, we simply must find it.”
Her gaze dropped to the table, and Hamlet followed the line of it to an apple gleaming red and bright on the dark wood. Juliet snatched it up, and Hamlet shouted, “No!”
She paused, clutching it in her hand.
“Don’t eat that. You don’t know what will happen. You might become one of those things. We don’t know what the test is. Juliet, this isn’t the way,” Hamlet warned, stretching his arm toward her, trying to look unthreatening. They didn’t know what the test was, that was true, but it seemed unlikely it had nothing to do with the banquet laid before them. He could not let her take a single bite.
“Eat it?” She frowned at him. “I was going to throw it at you.”
He gaped at her in disbelief.
“I’m not stupid.” She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Just…angry.”
Hamlet laughed. He couldn’t help himself. It was true, he and Romeo had been tampering with forces they knew nothing about, and Juliet had every right to be furious with them. But the idea of vengeance for cosmic transgressions coming in the form of a tossed apple was simply too amusing for his exhausted mind.
Juliet’s frown relaxed, and she laughed as well. Not as hard at first, but soon her mirth grew, and Romeo was the only one among them still angry. Or worried, it seemed, as he looked between Hamlet and Juliet a
s though they were both utterly mad.
But even he could not resist a break from the tension that continued to drain their hope and sap their wills. He snickered, then said, “All right, we’ve had a bit of fun,” but he couldn’t get through his sentence in seriousness.
It was not an easy peace they had found. Hamlet had not entirely forgiven Romeo for trapping him in this place and abandoning him in a time of dire need. Still, it seemed a far better plan to remain a whole than fracture apart.
At least Romeo could be amusing with his insults.
The thunder of slapping feet reverberated through the floor, and they all turned their heads towards the doors at the end of the room.
“They’re coming back.” Romeo unsheathed his sword.
“They were harmless,” Juliet reminded him. “Maybe they’re just over their fright and coming back for their food.”
She looked at the table and screamed.
The heaps of fruit and roasted meat were gone, replaced by mounds of putrid, glistening organs. Ropes of entrails hung in rotting loops spilling off the tabletop. Arms and legs, unmistakably human, lay among the livers, hearts, and lungs in the festering feast.
“Perhaps not,” Hamlet said under his breath.
“Take this,” Romeo ordered Juliet, pressing the stiletto from his belt into her hand.
Hamlet drew his blade. A true leader should be both a scholar and a warrior, his father had counseled him shortly before his death. He should rely on his mind as much as his sword.
It didn’t do him much good now, Hamlet reflected, to have ignored the latter part of his father’s advice in favor of the former.
The doors burst open, and the hollow souls flooded in. Their appearance was not so benign now, if Hamlet could have called it so before. He did much prefer the toothless, eyeless horrors to these creatures. Their shape was much the same, but in the empty sockets, burning red lights glowed for eyes. Their mouths had become ringed with predatory fangs, seemingly made of steel, like knives that gnashed horribly as they rushed toward them.
