The Book of V.: A Novel(31)
SUSA
ESTHER
Of Course She Will Not Return
She looks again in the mirror. The taloned toes are still there, the kumquat breasts, the misaligned face. The only thing that appears unchanged is her hair, which looks out of place now, its black lushness like a plant springing from stone. She can’t find the strip of leather she tied it back with before the pageant. Before the pageant is another life—her fingers tying the simple knot.
“What have you done?”
The king peers at her from behind his fingers, clearly terrified, and Esther shrugs in his direction, as if to say, You can see what I’ve done. It’s not only her body that’s been transformed, she realizes. A strength has oozed into her, like the tar that bubbles up sometimes into the sands near the river. A slick of dominance. She thinks of her uncle. He wasn’t smarter than her aunt. He was just in charge. Esther picks up the wine bottle, still lying at her remarkable feet. It feels small in her enlarged hands—small and light, as if she could throw it a great distance. A thrill washes over her, awe and shock at what she’s done, and is still doing.
“Please.” The king begins to whimper. “What do you want?”
Esther sets her paddle hands on her wide hips. “To be let go.”
If a hero in this moment would add, And my people—I want them protected. Stop the cleanse, then our Esther does not behave heroically. She is too intent on freeing herself for selflessness, too desperate to dare ask for more. To the extent that she thinks of her “people,” she thinks of Itz and Nadav and her aunt, the ones she most wants to see when she is returned. Mostly she worries about the trick of turning back into herself. She decides she will have to visit the Gadol tent first, for help. But before that can happen, she must be released, and before that happens the door the king is pressed against is shoved open, sliding the king forward and revealing a man carrying a tray.
Here is the bottle of wine the king called for. But the man is no eunuch. On his substantial frame he wears a high man’s robes, on his face the particular blankness of a man unwilling to appear shocked. He was on the stage, Esther remembers, a member of one wall. He sets the tray down now with an elegant swish, then faces her, his chest no more than an arm’s distance from hers, his gaze piercing. For a moment, she is daunted. The king himself seems to be afraid of this man—he has already leaped up from the floor, wiped his face, straightened his robe. Esther squeezes the wine bottle, draws the beast’s strength into her throat, and says, “Let me go.”
The man narrows his eyes. He is taller than she is, even in her current form. His mouth curls into a smile that can only—and will only—be described as evil. In a calm voice, he says, “The king chose a beautiful virgin.”
“She isn’t here anymore.”
His entire face slides upward, a sleeve of composure tighten ing over his rage. He goes to the king and begins whispering in his ear, his mouth twitching like a rodent’s, his words inaudible but audibly venomous. The king takes a breath so deep Esther can see his robe strain. Esther can imagine what the man is saying. Some part of her thinks: I am standing too close. But another part is determined to show no fear, and this part is more persuasive. The king’s nature is gentle, she thinks—she is almost sure of it. He isn’t capable of attacking her. And she turns out to be right, because in the next moment it’s the tall man who is pouncing, who pushes her to the floor and presses a knee between her legs, hard enough she feels her flesh open. She hears herself shriek as he pins her hands; the wine bottle slips from her grasp. He is stronger than she thought possible; even in her augmented form, she has to use all her might to flip him onto his back, and once she has him there, he pushes her off, flips her, and pins her again. She has never fought anyone, she realizes, and a bolt of fear gets in, slicing through her skin. Above her, his eyes are full of hatred. He yanks her hands, positioning her arms above her head and jamming both her wrists beneath his forearm. This, she thinks, is where he grabs the bottle and rapes her with it. He will cut her throat and burn her body; he will find a way to hide her. Her mother’s voice comes to her, a thing she used to tell Esther to do if she ever met a boar in the hills: Play dead or run. Trapped under the man, Esther sees no way to do either. Mother! But the man doesn’t go for the bottle. Instead, with his free hand he begins to scratch at her face. No matter how fast she tosses her head, his nails find her. He moves to her chest, clawing. She smells blood.
“It doesn’t scratch off!” she cries.
The man snarls. “But of course it does,” he says, and his sneering reinvigorates her—she kicks him away and rises to her knees. He will give up, she thinks. I am terrifying and repulsive. But as she pushes herself up to stand, she sees that her hands are getting smaller. This is what he meant. “It’s working,” he says to the king, and before she can breathe again he’s pushed her back onto the floor. Esther tries to fend him off with her elbows but she is distracted by what’s happening in her body—it’s not the scratching causing it, she knows, but her fear. But this thought delivers more fear, and now she can feel the reversal happening, she feels herself sinking again into the vortex but there is no violence now, only a peaceful cycling, neither hot nor cold, a terrain so familiar she starts to weep, for she is turning into a girl as they watch. The king looks as shocked as he did when she became the beast. But the man—he is the king’s highest minister, Esther will soon learn—lowers himself to straddle her and clamps her head between his forearms. “You will not mock the king,” he says, raining spittle across her face. Esther closes her eyes and he uses his thumbs to pry them open. “Do you understand?”