Her Sword

She comes alive at night.

A scroll of ridged and patterned paper, cautiously folded into the shape of a woman. Two-and-a-half towering metres of beauty and power and quiet judgement.

By day, she’s stoic in her rightful place above us all, her hand stretched toward the ceiling, knelt in mock servitude as if she could ever be governed. At night, life explodes from her pages and she dances between the boundaries of her podium.

We met here. Besides her sculptor’s musty flat, the Other Art Museum is the only place she’s ever seen. They brought her in a box, and I dragged myself from my dark corner amongst the broken and out-of-fashion just to throw my body at her feet. Now, my ritual is nightly.

I love her. And, despite the strict demand of natural hierarchy, she loves me too.  

The museum is closed when I make it up to the atrium, but the lights are still on. Usually, we don’t run the risk until it’s dark and the halls are quiet, I’m breaking the rules because hesitation has stolen too many years from me, and tonight is special. I have a gift for her.

I gather up a handful of my trousers to keep my foot from scraping the tiles and cross the atrium floor as quickly as I can. The polystyrene knights exchange glances as I pass. Their barbed wire crowns shift with concern, but they won’t speak while the lights are on.

The portraits on the staircase aren’t as concerned. They’ll be too afraid to move, even when all the others leave their places, and life in the museum erupts as it always does. But they summon up enough courage to whisper their little comments as I climb.

The eyes in the hurricane think I’m a fool.

Four squares of block colour tell me that my plan won’t work. “He doesn’t like it when we roam. He likes his pretty statues to stay pretty.”

“I’m not a statue,” I manage between the effort of each step.

“You still belong to him. Even down in those caves of yours, he owns you.”

“He won’t know until it’s too late. He hates the basement.”

“She’ll slow you down.” They’re trying to keep from giggling. “He’ll catch you and he’ll punish you both.”

I ignore them and keep climbing. The staircase is three flights of eleven, broken up by marble landings where children with little horns and skin the colour of bruises are stacked on one another’s shoulders. It takes me a long time to climb, especially weighed down by her gift, but it's worth it just to see her shape again. I’ve never once quit my climb, despite the sweat and the cramps. Cowards never prosper.

At the crest of the last step, I throw myself down exhausted at the foot of her plinth. By now, the lights are extinguished and she dares to unfurl from her majestic pose and twist herself towards me, and I look up quickly so I don’t miss a movement.

“You’re early.”

She takes my gift when I offer it and heaves it with great difficulty onto her pedestal.

“It’s a sword. A symbol of your liberation.” I say through my panting breath. “Like the one your sculptor intended you to have.”

She considers the sword I drew from the heart of a willing basement centurion and the paper wrinkles around her eyes. “I think she decided the implication of a sword made more sense. Like I'd been robbed of it.”

“Then it’s a symbol of our liberation.”

Fear dominates her face. “I want to, but I’m so scared.”

“Of what?”

“You know.” She looks at me like half the fool I am and says it quietly, as if his name might summon him. “He’ll tear off more pieces.”

She leans to show me the rips on the back of her arms, but I can’t bear to be reminded so I rise to my knees and rest a hand on the sword. “I don’t want to be apart anymore.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then, let’s run tomorrow. All the way to the basement. We’ll be safe there.”

She looks into my eyes and softly shakes her head with a defeated sigh, and I know I’ve won her. A phoenix soars from the depths of my rotten soul.

“Okay,” she says, hugging her sword to her chest, “tomorrow.”

We stash the sword out of sight while the jubilation in the corridors and down in the atrium reaches its raucous crescendo. For the rest of the night, I watch her sway and twirl until, eventually, I fall asleep at the base of her podium to the song of freedom stolen from a fleeting chance.

At the first sign of dawn’s approach, my ears prick up to the click of Argyle’s cane against wooden floorboards. My heart thumps my ribcage. The museum is silent again besides those two sounds. He’s somewhere in the Modern Curiosities wing but moving quickly towards me.  

I steal one last look before I go. My leg is throbbing and my spine aches like I slept with the posture of a mangled corpse, but I need a snapshot. Something to keep my courage from wavering.

She’s already stretching to the sky, hope kindling in her eye that wasn’t there this morning.  

I soar.

#

Tomorrow comes and I ascend with a giddiness I’ve never felt.

The atrium is silent. Every hallway is empty. No-one dares move or breathe. They sense my intentions and they won’t risk any chance of association.

Tonight’s revelries are cancelled.

The portraits whisper in overdrive, none of it supportive. If they didn’t already know my single-mindedness, they’d catch on from the way I disregard their warnings and attack each flight of steps with my head down.

“You’ll kill us all.

You’ll kill us all.”

At the top, she’s waiting with her sword stretched to the high ceiling and struggling keep it aloft. We laugh, intoxicated by the potential of our impending rebellion, and I help her down.

My legs threaten to spasm when I touch the soft dryness of her hands for the first time. She’s delicate, and it takes longer for her to get down from the pedestal than I’d imagined but I’ll wait forever if that’s what she needs.  

Arm-in-arm, we cross the landing. Her steps are tentative, which is understandable being they’re the first ones she’s ever really taken, and I support some of her weight. It’s all I can do to keep from staring at her.  

Before we reach the top step, Argyle’s cane clicks against the tiles. Every muscle in my body seizes. Too late, I realise my mistake.

Her fingers dig into the flesh of my forearm. “He should be gone. It’s too early.”

“Go,” I whisper, “go.”

#

We move as quickly as we can. Each step is a new canyon, but we traverse them all and eventually, we’ve navigated the first flight of stairs.

Mercifully, the portraits keep their whispers to themselves. Perhaps they’re in awe of her.

At my side, she takes it all in with the craned neck of a mesmerised toddler. “I never knew all this was down here. It’s beautiful.”

“But you’ve been here for years.”

“I arrived in a box, and I’ve never left my pedestal. I can’t see past the first three steps from up there.”

I look at the wrinkles of her skin and how they crease with joy. She looks different now we share the same ground, like some of her glow has faded since she’s touched down with us mortals.

Above us, Argyle’s wounded roar decimates the silence. He’s found her empty podium.

I pull her into the shade between the stacked children, who giggle quietly at all this fuss. We can hear Argyle’s frenzy building as he demands to know what the portraits’ watchful eyes have seen but, to their credit, they refuse to answer.

We hear him shuffle off into the Mind’s Eye Wing in search of her, and we breathe out. When the sound of his cane recedes completely, she dares to speak.

“You’re amazing,” she says to the children, “I had no idea you were down here.”

They giggle at her compliment, and she relishes in their adoration, but I can see from the slouch in her posture that she’s tired from only the first flight. The sword rests against her powerful thigh.

“I can carry it, if you need me to.”

She shakes her head. “I’m strong enough.”

Argyle’s footsteps approach the landing and recede again, into the Observatory this time. He’d only one more corridor to check before his search would force him down the staircase.

I lean in close and ask her a question that makes a surging river of my blood. “I’ve been wondering, for a long time now, if you might want to hug me.”

“I do,” she says with a hint of disappointment in her voice, “but I thought you’d ask for a kiss.”

“I would, my love, but my lips are thin and mangled. And you,” I suppress my laugh, “you don’t have any lips.”

She thinks about that, then she laughs too, and it sounds like music.

With more strength than I’ve felt from her, she pulls me into the first embrace of my life. Warmth spreads from my chest into the very fibres of my limbs, and I know I’ll never need another.

On every side of us, the children rejoice.

#

Argyle makes the revelation in his search and turns towards the steps.

I hear his cane hit the marble, and my anger at his relentlessness flares.

“Leave us be, you tyrant.”  

“He has nothing else. Don’t hate, my love, it only slows us down.”

She grips my hand, and the anger subsides. But his presence swells behind us like a rolling stormfront.

I keep us moving forward, across the landing, supporting more of her weight as we descend to the last flight.

All we need to do is reach the basement. I’ll cock the front doors open, and he’ll think that’s where we’ve gone. No-one in their right mind would choose the basement over the real world, but it’s massive and dark and Argyle fears the thousand discarded tongues that would curse him if he ever crossed the threshold. We can be happy down there.

He's gaining on us. His mocking voice floats down from the first landing. “If you’re looking for freedom, you won’t find it out there,” he says, the cadence of his voice almost melodic. “Tell her, boy. Tell her what they do to freaks out there.”

We touch down on the last landing and the final flight of stairs. The atrium ahead of us is steeped in gloom and punctured by a solitary crescent of moonlight, but we can see the exit now.

Large mahogany double doors embossed with brass occupy the front wall and open to the outside. Several paces to the left, the white maintenance door with the stainless-steel knob leads to quiet, eternal sanctuary.

I lead her by the hand onto the first step of the last flight but she pulls back. When I look at her, she’s gazing longingly at the double doors.

“That’s the way to the outside, isn’t it?” Her voice is distant, and my heart sinks.

“We can’t, my love. It’s not for us.”

“Now, you sound like him.”

“Don’t say that.”

She touches my elbow gently and my soul stops in place. “Maybe we don’t need this place. Maybe it just feels that way, because it’s all we’ve ever known.”

“But I do know the outside, my love, and it’s cruel to us.”

“Well, you needn’t worry about that.” With a hearty grunt, she swings the sword up to rest on her shoulder. “I’ll keep you safe.”

I smile at her conviction. Of course I’d follow her anywhere. She has no reason to fear the world. The museum has been her world and it’s shown her nothing but cruelty. Outside could only be better. Perhaps it will be.

Argyle is on our heels.

We’re almost at the bottom, but he’s faster. He’s just beyond the last curve of the staircase. The portraits all watch in petrified silence, a myriad of eyes all tracking his movement.

Five steps left. Too many. I feel his presence on my neck like sour breath.

“We won’t make it.” I whisper, but I can’t believe they’re my words.

She grips my hand. I look at her and calm floods the creases of her face. “Then, we jump.”

Before I can protest, she swings the sword in a great overhand arc and lets the momentum take her. With all the strength in my solid leg, I launch myself from the step alongside her.

It’s awkward, as it was fated to be, but we manage to slip the bonds of the museum’s heady atmosphere and float weightlessly for almost a full second.

Argyle’s cane brings us crashing down. The tip pierces a tab on her paper heel and pins it to the step behind us.

I’m powerless to watch as she comes apart. A rip runs the seam of her leg and all the way up her back until her intricate insides are exposed and unravel too. Her hand turns limp in mine, then she’s gone.

I spin slowly through the air and slam into the cold atrium floor while ribbons of her float down around me like nuclear ash.

Behind my head, her sword clatters against the tiles.

#

“No. No.”

I kneel amongst the tattered strings. She’s in my hands and strewn across my thighs. Moonlight frames the parts of her littering the floor between me and the staircase. She wasn’t free up there on her pedestal but at least she was safe. This is my fault.

The basement door is a yawning maw haunting my peripheral vision. I want to crawl inside, to my place with no plaque and no plinth, and allow those depths to swallow me.

“Oh.” Argyle’s voice is ice on my spine. He stops on the third step from the end so he’s still above me. “How tragic.”

“She’s not dead.”

“But we can agree she’s ruined.”

I try to meet his hard, black eyes, but I flinch. Her beauty, her joy, her laughter. All extinguished. “You did this.”

He turns away, tutting like the whole thing could’ve been avoided. “I’ve no need for that pile of pathetic rags. The basement can have you both.”

Anger rises in me, and I rise with it, snatching up the sword as I do. The blade must scrape against the tiles because Argyle looks over his shoulder and scoff, but there’s too much blood rushing in my ears to hear it.

I could do it. I could hobble up those steps and cut his skinny frame clean in half. I want to, God knows I want to. Every fibre of every muscle sear with the urge and I even raise the sword over my head in both hands.

But it’s strange. The grip doesn’t feel like wrath or vengeance or reparation against my palms. It feels light, unburdened, like watching the horizon devour a storm.

Anger drains from my core and seeps out through the soles of my feet.

“You’re wrong, you know?” I let the sword hang limp at my side. “People only came here to see her. Your museum won’t last without her.”

I crouch and lay the sword amongst the ribbons of beautiful ridged and patterned paper. It’s only now that I notice the writing on each piece of her is distinct and, as I cautiously lace them around the hilt and the blade, I take the time to read every word. I’d repeat what they said here, but I’m fairly certain they were meant for me alone.

I wrap as meticulously as I can, trying to stay symmetrical and overlapping the ends so they’re tight and won’t unravel.

Once I’ve retrieved every piece of her, I tie her off in a bow and nurse her in two firm hands. My work isn’t art, but it’s neat and I’m pleased with the results. She looks like her. “I liked your old form,” I whisper, “I like this form too.”

On the steps, Argyle is scowling down at us, all the smugness drained from his pallid face. “What’s that? What have you done?”

When I don’t answer, he takes another step down and thrusts his cane up the staircase. “Put her back on the plinth. She belongs to me,” he snarls, but I’m turning towards the doors, the tall mahogany ones embossed with brass.

To be honest, my foot is aching too violently to take any notice of his whining. He looks small on those steps, and he hasn’t noticed the little-horned children gathering up behind him, or the knights on the atrium floor, brandishing their iron knives and wrapping their barbed wire crowns around their knuckles. They’d seen our altercation, and my defiance, and now they didn’t seem so afraid of associating with me.

That’s the thing about Argyles. They make you think you need them, and the museum they’ve built, but you don’t. Argyles are the ones that need us and, if the cost of what they offer grows too high, we can leave them behind. When we realise that, it can be damn near impossible to unrealise.

I push open the doors and we feel the cold on our skin. I take a moment to soak it in, I’d forgotten what midnight smells like.

Beaming with anticipation and clutched to my chest, she leads us across the threshold. Morning won’t break for hours, but now we’ll crash through it headlong, whatever form it takes.

#