It was a phrase she had heard enough times in the milieu of liberal politics, and she never paid much mind to it, but now she was questioning what had led her mind to conspire such a vivid, gruelling depiction of a boring service job nine-to-five? Was she so domesticated that she could only dream of labour?
"You've done great, lassie," Felicia said with a smile when she saw Ophelia come in with a basket full of clean glasses from the backyard. "I thought a princess like you would have trouble with this sort of thing, but it seems like you've been doing this for years!"
Ophelia thought that perhaps the dream wasn't quite about labour, but of a life where she was actually acknowledged by the people around her. Normally, upon meeting her, people had made very little effort at continuing a conversation past the opening lines, somehow catching that unheard directive of the universe that she wasn't quite supposed to be in the room. But since she had arrived in that strange world, people talked to her normally, and even seemed interested in her. It was daunting, and a bit exciting.
"I'm not a princess," she corrected her new boss.
"Oh?" Ophelia looked into the cauldron by the fire; she'd been told earlier that by the end of the night they could scrape what was left and eat it, and if it was too much, leave it for the next day's breakfast. She served bowls for the three of them.
"Oh, get us some more," Felicia said. "The Phrygians wanted to have some food before heading out."
The new employee did so dutifully, and the elder woman ushered her and Lucio back into the main room of the tavern with the bowls. It had emptied out naturally as the fishermen and the merchants went back home to retire for the night. Only the guests of the inn were hanging about with her hands still full of ale, and this time they were all to join for supper.
"I hope you slept well," said the tavern owner in a heavy Phrygian accent as she took a seat next to Ophelia, across from Phobos and Aristides.
"It would have been better with a woman by my side," complained Ajax, which earned him some stern stares from the leader of the troop.
"You've moaned enough, we'll go after this," the small warrior said. "Are you coming, Il?"
"I'll go for the drink, I'm not in the mood for that."
"Where are you going?" asked Ophelia, more so for the sake of the conversation than out of any real interest.
"Maybe the princess would like to come," Ajax replied slyly. "She can recommend some women, perhaps?"
Ophelia was a bit lost and it showed in her face, which prompted a few laughs around the table. "They're going to a brothel," explained Remulus, trying to be helpful. Ophelia pulled a face. Ajax smiled.
"Is it not something that the people of Londinium do? Perhaps their men carry their wives in their pockets?"
"They don't," Ophelia answered, "and they certainly do go to brothels. But are you not afraid of catching disease?"
"Disease?" Ajax snorted. "Warriors don't live long enough to worry about that."
She turned inquisitive eyes towards the rest of the men, landing on Phobos last. "Are you not going?"
"I'm too tired," replied Remulus.
"I'm too old," smiled Aristides.
Ophelia was curious about the stern prince's response; he refused to meet her eyes as he answered, "I don't enjoy those places."
"Lord Phobos hates merry company," Ajax interjected. "He'd rather spend time sharpening his swords."
He snickered at his own innuendo, followed by Ilmarinen and even Remulus. "You can keep him company if it worries you, lady," quipped the former, looking for all intent and purposes like a teenager trying to be witty.
Ophelia had but a moment to find a way to put into words what she was thinking. Somehow the stars aligned and she rebutted them with an "at least with him I'll be able to walk out of bed without suffering for it", which earned her some whistles as Ilmarinen shrank back into his seat. He clearly was not expecting a comeback at all.
"Hibernian women sure are all that they're said to be," Ajax said over the rim of his glass, appreciatively. Phobos, however, had had enough of the schoolchildren talk, and cut through drily with a warning: "with the way you're talking one would think the war was not over. Do what you must, but remember there are many eyes watching, and we don't know when we're going to come across an ambush."
"In foreign lands one should never spend the night in the bed of a foreign woman," Aristides interjected, looking pointedly at Ajax.
"Do you want me to come snuggle you, old man?"
The good-natured bickering continued for some more time. The trio of would-be lovers soon made a hasty exit, trying as they would to add more men to their cause. After that things seemed to die down; Remulus retired for the night, and Lucio soon followed as well. Phobos, Aristides and Felicia remained in their seats, wanting to catch up. Ophelia just sipped at her ale, silently listening in, not really feeling tired enough to sleep.
She learnt then that Aristides and Felicia had known each other for a long time; the tavern owner had been briefly married to a cousin of his who had passed away due to a plague some fifteen years before. Although far from the Phrygian kingdom, she still kept regular correspondence with her husband's family, and had been watching the developments with some concern. From her limited place there was little she could do but offer them some sanctuary; it was a risky move given that the exiled prince was a person of interest to the Elysian authorities, which held in writing absolute control over the government in Caudiceum.
"My Phrygian is going rusty," she complained, winking at Ophelia. "It's good you can speak so fluently, I'll be able to keep practising it. But, how did you come to learn it?"
The topic kept coming up, and Ophelia just felt embarrassed that she had to keep lying. Wasn't that such a cliché trope in fiction? A comedy of errors and misunderstandings, one building on top of the other, like a castle of cards that will fall at the smallest breeze. Aristides commented something about the mysterious tutor she'd somehow gained in the last day, and she felt like she couldn't take it anymore.
"I didn't have a tutor," she said, suddenly. Three pair of confused gazes rested on her. "I went to school in London, I had teachers… I'm not a princess or anything like that; I simply appeared here, and as far as I can tell, this is a different world from the one I am from."
"What a strange joke," Phobos said dryly, "is there a punchline?"
"There's none," Ophelia raised her eyes, somehow sick of her lack of answers. "I don't know how I ended up here, or how is it that I can speak your languages. I certainly couldn't understand you when you picked me up."
"So you're saying you're… from another world?" Felicia repeated slowly.
"I think so, yes. At first I thought I might have gone back in time, but this is too different from the history I know."
Aristides and Phobos remained sceptical, but it was clear that they weren't going to pursue the matter. Perhaps the princess was an eccentric and liked to invent stories; perhaps it was a ploy to claim innocence of some perceived charge in the future. Her endgame was unclear to them, not that it mattered: their paths would soon diverge.
"Well, if anything, you do look the part at least!" Felicia commented, and answering Ophelia's confused look, she said, "your hair and your eyes are not quite the right shade, you know? It's like they're lacking some vibrancy to them. And that clothing you're wearing… it's all strangely adorned, and the material is unlike any linen or wool… or cotton I've seen."
The matter died after that, and the conversation soon followed. By ten, they had all retreated to their quarters. Felicia's words, however, were fresh on her mind as she laid down. Closing her eyes, she recalled her companions, and her boss herself. She had noticed it, of course, but wasn't yet ready to surface it as a thought in her head: their appearance, while not terribly foreign to a Londoner like her, still had some uncanny differences to what she would perceive as normal. The chief ones were the vibrancy of their colours: their eyes were all rich hues, almost on the edge of looking synthetic to her. Their hair, similarly, might look normal under moon or candle light, but once the sun had come out it appeared equally out of place, with a sheen and an undertone that seemed more like an artifice than a natural gift.
It was why she had been forced to speak out loud what she hadn't yet quite admitted to herself: that she wasn't in a dream, but had somehow landed in another world. But now that it had been said, she felt strangely at peace. It was good, after all, to know she wouldn't wake up again in the discomfort of her life in London.
-
"Ophelia, come here," Felicia said the next morning as her new assistant churned the butter for breakfast. It would be another half an hour until the sun rose, but she had been feeling strangely energised since she had woken up.
Ophelia cleaned her hands with her apron, and followed her boss to the backyard. "I thought it'd be better to let you know now," she said gravely. Outside, the few chickens and the lone pig they kept for the winter butchering were walking around, looking for food. "Something terrible happened last night with the Phrygians. A scuffle happened, and Phenos was stabbed to death in a fight. Ajax disappeared, and has yet to return. Ilmarinen was the only one that came back."
It took a moment for Ophelia to register who she was talking about. It was almost ironic that things had transpired that way, and only because of his death she'd finally learnt the last Phrygian warrior's name. She felt strange: they were not quite comrades, as they'd known each other for just one day, and they'd met in such circumstances that it wasn't inconceivable to her that she'd soon learn of tragic news from them. Still, she felt oddly shaken, as if certain pre-conceived notions she'd nursed had been pummelled down into dust inside her chest. Perhaps, used as she was to her modern life, she had actually thought that none of them could truly die… so soon.
She'd learnt before, when her dad had died, that it was a very human thing to think of one's life as a script for a movie, or a treatment for a novel. Things happened as a set up for the next thing, or to serve as a way for a character to learn something. It was easier for someone like her to divest everyone else of their agency and think of them as nothing but cannon fodder, secondary leads whose actions intertwined with hers to move the plot forward. It gave one the illusion of control, that if one were to follow fiction-logic, things would turn out okay.
There was no such thing. There was no reason behind it all; things just happened. Her father's misdiagnosis and the slow year and a half of cancer treatment that went nowhere, and a sudden collapse the day before he was due to be interned; there was no rhyme or reason at all, no closure. No one could explain why the man that had sacrificed so much to raise his only daughter alone, the loveliest father, had been consumed by the agony of a body that slowly ate itself to the point his mind had almost surrendered to it. She had been left with nothing but silence; she hadn't been able to tell him she loved him, or that she would miss him.
It had taken her two years to come to terms with her father's death. Underneath it all, she had learnt in the end, was her absolute refusal to acknowledge that there was no price she'd earn for her suffering. The universe would not trade her dad's death with something that would take her mind off it: she was now by herself, and that was it. She had a handful of pictures, a dead facebook account and endless memories of the time they'd spent together.
Ophelia's first question was going to be if everyone else was okay, but she stopped when she realised how stupid it was for her to ask that. They'd already lost one member in the party, and although her appearance was enough of a novelty to distract them, it certainly still remained in the back of their minds. Perhaps they had talked about it as they laid down in the morning, perhaps it was a warrior's code not to dwell too much on what would be their ultimate fate. They were all playing a dangerous game, after all, and it was only expected that they'd be risking their lives in it.
"What are the rest doing?" she finally asked.
"Aristides is taking Phenos' body to the sea. Phobos has gone with Remulus and Ilmarinen to the place where the fight happened to try to find the culprits."
"Do they not hold funerals for their dead?"
Felicia shook her head. "Phrygians believe that the body should be returned to nature after death. They normally transport their dead outside of towns or cities, and let them rot in the wild, or throw them into a body of water. There's not much ceremony; they have this strange conviction that once the body is consumed by the earth, the person becomes one with the land."
"How comforting," Ophelia's eyebrows rose in admiration. "I guess that explains why they were so blasé about their mate dying yesterday… is there anything we are meant to do?"
"No… I just wanted to let you know, since you've been travelling with them."
After the initial breakfast tasks Felicia showed her how to wash the bedding, which gave her a newfound appreciation for washing machines. It was time consuming and required its fair share of strength, but she found it strangely peaceful. Around mid morning, she had only had a quarter of it left, and after emptying the buckets with dirty water, she walked to the small stream that ran next to the tavern to collect some more. She caught sight of Aristides and Phobos going in for a drink, followed by the two surviving members of the party. She wondered if it was all right for her to go in and give her condolences, but after some minutes of hesitation and false starts she put it off for later, as their paths would inevitably cross.
It was around lunch time when she finally had some time to rest. She grabbed some bread and jerky from the kitchen and went up the stairs to find some quiet. Her leather sandals had been soaked after the activities of the morning, so she left them drying in the sun before getting inside: she moved like a mouse, barely making a sound on the normally creaky wooden floors. As she passed by the guest rooms, she heard Ilmarinen's voice, speaking in a hushed whisper.
"Ajax should've given them the signal by now," he said. "Go to the temple, you'll find one of their men. Bring him back to Lord Phobos, say that you've found a witness."
"And then?" Remulus whispered back.
"The witness will claim he knows where the murderers are and where Ajax is being held. He'll take us all to where the rest will be waiting."
There was a minute of silence. Ophelia felt like something had dropped in her stomach. "Don't worry, brother, there's too many of us and it's just the two of them."
"Are you sure? He always has allies in strange places… And you know him; even if we outnumber him, he's still the greatest warrior in Phrygia. He has killed three Knights of the Black Sun by himself."
"What is this, Remulus? I thought it was you who said that those three kills had been pure luck. Are you going to change your mind now, when you're so close to finally going back home?"
Ophelia decided to make her exit then, thinking that there was no telling when they would leave the room. Unfortunately, it is when someone purposely doesn't want to make noise that life decides to sabotage them, and she was no exception: she turned around, walked a few steps, and clumsily knocked over a broom she had left a few hours earlier.
"Who's there?!" Remulus' voice came from within the room. Ophelia, of course, didn't bother replying; she simply dashed downstairs. "It's the hibernian!" she heard him shout behind her.
She'd thought to hide in the relative safety of the hall downstairs, but Ilmarinen had started shouting "thief! Thief! Get her!", so she snuck towards the backyard, away from people. It was instinct, an irrational impulse; later she'd wonder if it wouldn't have been easier to simply confront them in front of everyone.
There was a problem with her plan, however, and it was that her two pursuers were fit warriors and she was someone who hadn't run since finishing high school. She took a wrong turn with them almost grabbing her by the arm, and ended up in a dead end two buildings away from the tavern. Ilmarinen and Remulus both closed in on her, grave expressions in their faces.
"How much did you hear?" asked the latter.
"Not much."
"But enough that you had to run away, princess" Ilmarinen smiled nastily. "It would've been easier if you hadn't tried to make a scene out of it, we could've snuck you away for a while. But there are going to be too many questions now…"
"You can keep your mouth shut and we won't do anything," Remulus proposed. Ilmarinen snapped at him, "Stop talking nonsense. We can't risk it."
He had been carrying a long knife in one of his hands, and as he refuted his co-conspirator he started to draw it from its sheath. "Nothing personal, princess," he said, drawing closer. "We just need to make sure all loose ends are tied."
Ophelia tried to make for a run aiming towards Remulus, who was unarmed. She thought about slamming into him and then getting away, but he was close enough that he could clearly see it coming. He caught her by the arms the moment she tried to make contact. Ilmarinen shouted triumphantly "hold her!" as she struggled violently against the strong grip that trapped her. The menacing man came closer with his knife raised towards her. She closed her eyes. She could've screamed had her voice not abandoned her. For an instant that lasted an eternity, she only heard the sound of footsteps and thought only one desperate plea: let me go.
And then, she was free. The arms around her disappeared and the footsteps faded into silence. She opened her eyes to see the two men mid-flight towards the nearest wall, hitting it with such violence that a grunt barely managed to escape their lips.
She turned around, almost like a reflex, trying to understand what had happened. The three of them were alone in the small space, and no one could've come in to interrupt without being noticed. She looked around, but whatever had come to free her had left without a trace: behind, only two bruised men and a confused woman remained.
"W-what was that…?" Remulus gasped, trying slowly to get up. He was holding his head, eyes half-shut to try to battle the pain away. Ilmarinen was groaning next to him, having rolled over on his stomach.
Ophelia could've run away at that point, but she was suddenly struck with the weirdest thought. She looked at her hands and the men before her. Her eyes, rebels that they were, were more partial to the long knife that had been dropped moments before, and she pointed at it. "Why am I so sure this is going to work…?" she wondered out loud, and almost as if it had been in her hand, almost like it was an extension of her, she willed the knife to move. And it moved.
It shook strangely, timidly at first. It stood up next, and then jumped into the air.
"Shit…! Shit, shit!" Ilmarinen had dropped all intentions of trying to stand, and in absolute shock had dropped back to the ground, bracing himself against the wall. Remulus, on the other hand, was frozen still. They both shared the same terrified expression, as if Ophelia had turned into death itself; and unlike what the woman would've expected of such a situation, they weren't fixated on the sharp thing that could end their life. They were looking straight at her. Forget the knife and the blood that had stained it so far; that invisible hand that she had suddenly discovered she could use to wield it, the same one that had batted the two warriors away like flies, that's what they were so afraid of.
She could do… magic?
Like many a fantasy story she'd read, it was easy, it was free, it was strangely liberating. She had no idea if it was just the telekinesis bit she was suddenly a master of; perhaps, her way with languages came from the same place. If circumstances would've been different, she would've dissected the whys and the hows in the way that someone who had been raised in the twenty-first century was used to do. But she was in front of two conspirators, and she was the one threat to their conspiracy. Her first thought then was, of course, to run.
"Ophelia!" Felicia's shout stopped her dead in her tracks. The woman was standing outside a humble wooden door on what was some sort of half-demolished wall, half-wooden fence. Beside her stood Phobos with a haunted, manic look in his eyes.
"They know who killed Phenos! They're working with them!" Ophelia shouted, pointing at the two traitors, who flinched at her gesture. "They were planning to ambush Phobos!"
That seemed to hurt the prince more than his earlier shock. His eyes snapped to his men and he transformed; it was quick and intense, erasing violently any trace of his previous vulnerability. A dark look overcame his face and his jaw tensed; he squared his shoulders, hand automatically reaching for the sword that hung at his side. Ophelia swallowed nervously as the man turned into a beast and strode forward, past her, to face the two other warriors.
His back seemed to be enormous, his muscles bulging. It was clear he was holding himself back. "Spit it out," he said.
"S-she's l-lying," Remulus trembled as he answered in a small voice. "S-she's an Elysian… she's t-tying t-to p-p-pit us against you…" Nobody believed him; it was a farce of an attempt, more out of duty to the situation than anything else. His voice petered out, unconvinced that it would go anywhere.
"Is Ajax on it as well?" Phobos barely moved the sword, and Remulus flinched. He went to open his mouth, when Ilmarinen suddenly fell on top of him, going for the sword on his side. It was barely an inch or two out of its scabbard when Phobos' own blade came down to strike the would-be offender down.
It was so quick no one, not even Remulus, had the time to react. It sliced cleanly through Ilmarinen's neck, making it seem like bone was cardboard and tendons were feeble strings. Ophelia's own awakened abnormality made her all the more aware that something was different in this reality, and took her several steps away from her previous theory of time-travel. As much as she wasn't an expert in such things, she'd watched enough crime shows and other macabre edutainment formats to understand that such things were not normal, at least back where she had been born in. Phobos could be a strong man but his sword was light, one-handed; executioners always used heavy blades, unwieldy and two-handed, coming down with the weight of a guillotine.
Who were they, really? And… who was she, in this world?
"Where are they hiding?" Phobos continued the interrogation, having kicked Ilmarinen's head away.
"I d-don't k-know…" the sword was brought up to his face, and he broke, "p-please, Lord Phobos! I only did it because I missed my family, I j-just wanted to go back!"
"We all have our sob stories," the sword's point left a cut down his cheek.
"T-the t-temple! Ilma said we'd meet someone at the temple, he didn't say where they were hiding!"
"When are they expecting you?"
"This afternoon! I was supposed to bring back that person as a witness, and let them lead you into the ambush… I swear I don't know any more than that, Ilma was always tight-lipped and I didn't want to anger him…!"
"Remulus," Phobos said coldly, and decapitated the man in the same manner as he'd done his ally minutes earlier, "may your body end as litter in a pigsty."
A breeze rolled into the small allotment, impregnating itself with the tangy aroma of human blood. The beast deflated, having achieved its goal; the shoulders went down, still tense, breath coming in sharper, louder. Drop after drop slid down his sword's edge, staining his leather shoes. Ophelia stood transfixed, her mind trying desperately to move her eyes away from the two heads in front of her. Yet her body betrayed her, caught as it was in the morbidity of it all.
It was curious; it wasn't the first death was witness to after arriving in that world, but it certainly weighted differently in her mind. This one felt personal; she knew Ilmarinen and Remulus as anyone could know someone in a day, she was but a feet away as they were slain. Perhaps it was that in the night everything was covered under a blanket of unreality; in the broad daylight it all felt naked, exposed.
She felt Phobos move, and a shaky breath escaped her throat. Suddenly, the reality of it all overwhelmed her: like a sudden summer storm, heavy water drops punched through the dark clouds to fall like rocks against the ground, against her. The deaths, her journey there, the discovery of how unreal it all was. Would she better off believing she was in a dream she could not escape from? Should she rather ponder on how she had gotten there? Why had she come to that place in the first place? Should she cry for Ilmarinen, for Remulus? Or should she feel betrayed in account of Phobos? What about Phenos, his untimely death? Who were they to her, if not newly discovered acquaintances, in the midst of a drama she had nothing to do with? How was she supposed to feel, or act, in this new place where nothing made sense except as a script for a bad movie…?
She couldn't breathe. Her chest contracted, mouth opened and trying its hardest to get air into her. She felt hands on her, a homely scent and thin bright hair tickling her cheek. "Ophelia!" Again, Felicia's voice shouted her name. "Calm down, slow, slow…!"
A hand caressed the back of her head; once… twice… she slowed down, breathing as the hand went down and up, down and up, down and up. "Good, keep it going… slow…"
A scene from a movie that had brought up memories of her dad had seen her shed her only tears in the last few years. It was not something she was used to, anymore. The wetness in her cheeks was a foreign feeling, and the novelty of that feeling of relief made her almost light-headed, deflating into Felicia's arms. It wasn't sadness or fear or distress; she simply was overwhelmed by it all.
"Thank you," she said in a small voice, hiding her face into the woman's shoulder. "I… it was too much for me, all of this."
The sound of Phobos' blade hitting the metal fittings in the scabbard jolted her, and she stood up straight, almost in a panic. "Phobos…" Felicia's voice had a hint of warning that was not enough to cover her anxiety.
"She's an Elysian," was his only explanation.
"What do you think you're doing?" Felicia pulled Ophelia back into her arms, turning away from the warrior who had not yet sheathed his sword. "You can't do this!"
"Stand aside, woman," the beast had reappeared, his voice low and full of deadly menace. "I've sworn an oath. An Elysian I see is an Elysian I kill or die at the hands of."
"She's not an Elysian! What Elysian would speak Phrygian or cow-herder backwater iberian like a native?!"
"You've seen her use that witchcraft of theirs, what else could she be?"
"Byzantium!" Felicia cried out, and it felt like the world had stopped. "It all fits the stories, don't you remember? The strange visitors with the dull hair, the weak bodies, the strange powers…?"
"Byzantium…?" Ophelia murmured, trying to bring her head up to look at her protector.
"It's the other world," the woman answered almost frantically. "The one where he comes from. The Elysian emperor."
Ophelia found it strange that the name was familiar; although not an expert in European history, she knew at least about the Byzantine empire: that it had been a thing that happened, mostly. She thought that maybe that tenuous connection was enough to assume they were talking about her world for whatever reason. She didn't really want to push the matter; there was little need to when there was a sharp sword nearby.
"Byzantium…" Phobos repeated to himself, and then clicked his tongue. The sound of a scabbard embracing its sword cut through the silence, as if to accentuate Phobos' resolve. "We can talk about this later. I need to follow the trail of these rats."
Ophelia let out a shaky breath as the man's steps went past them. Felicia didn't let her go until Phobos was out of sight.
"Let's go back to the tavern," the woman said. Ophelia stared into her eyes for a moment; her mind wasn't quite able to process what was happening then. Like a broken record, her thoughts were stuck on that one word…
"You think I'm from… Byzantium?"
Felicia sighed. "I thought you were a rather odd one, speaking the way you do, dressing the way you do… it still seems a bit unreal to me, but I've heard the stories so many times from the sailors that come from the Elysian empire that I'd be a fool not to name a tiger when I see its stripes."
"What do the stories say?"
"That the emperor of Elysium came from another world, and that world people called Byzantium. That he had a strange appearance, like you, and that he wielded incredible powers."
Ophelia felt a strange sense of calm then; something had been laid to rest. "I suppose he never went back."
"Oh no! He built the empire, of course, and fathered many children who became the aristocracy of the Elysian empire. Those are the ones Phobos hates so much, who the Phrygians called Elysians. And they inherited some of his powers, of course."
"Does… Phobos really hate Elysians that much?"
Felicia smiled sadly. "They are nothing but invaders and usurpers to him. It's a warrior's pride, after all. Don't take it personally, sweetheart."
Ophelia wanted to correct her, but nothing could really hide the disappointment she felt at Phobos' crude anger at her shared likeness with his enemies. She hoped, at least, that he was able to confront the conspirators that were after him. "Do you think he'll be okay?"
"He knows that loyalty is a precious commodity for a crown prince; at this point, I think he's tired of the repetition of it all. But there's nothing anyone can do, is there? He simply has to deal with it. He'll be fine."