A mother that Orestes doesn’t remember, one he never had a chance to know, because of what she did. I’m back there, imprisoned behind a locked door, and my father is marching home, but I’ll never see him, never feel his arms around me again. He won’t know what kind of woman I’ve grown into; that I’m not the woman I should have been. She stole it from us all. I remember the elation I felt when I thought he was returning, and then the shock of her guards’ hands on my body, dragging me away at her command.
‘Orestes,’ I say. I don’t need to say any more. He can hear everything we’ve already rehearsed, everything I’ve told him. He stiffens, stands taller, ready.
I don’t look away, not once. I scrape my fist against the stone wall beside me so the blood trickles through my fingers, but I don’t take my eyes from my brother. I thought he would crumple; that he didn’t have it in him. But then I think perhaps he hears it too – the unfurling of leathery wings, the malevolent hiss of the serpents seeping down from the palace roof. My pulse beats deafeningly in my skull, a relentless drumbeat. He cannot fail me, I want to scream at him that he mustn’t, but I don’t have to say anything else at all.
I watch her fall. I hear the clatter of Orestes’ sword as he drops it to the floor beside her body.
I hear them take flight. Their heavy, ungainly bodies swooping from on high. The shrill bark as they circle overhead, their furious gaze centred on the killer in the courtyard. I hear my brother cry out to Apollo as they dive, and I flinch away as they sweep so close to me that my hair flies back in their wake and my ears ring with their howls. I duck down, but they pass me by, intent upon Orestes alone.
My eyes are screwed tightly shut, but I know it’s Pylades who’s standing at my side. The warmth of his hand on my shoulder brings me back, steadies my racing heart and heaving breath. ‘It’s done, Elektra,’ he is saying, and I’m crying. It’s over, at last, it is over.
I straighten myself up and Pylades’ hand clasps mine. The scene in the courtyard shudders and then resolves itself. The bodies, there in the centre. Orestes, kneeling, his hands clamped to his head, his eyes desperate, his mouth stretched into a grimace as though he endures the most unthinkable torment. The creatures are gone to our eyes, they are beyond what Pylades and I can see. It’s Orestes’ burden to bear, but we will be with him. Together, we draw him to his feet and although he whimpers, he acquiesces.
Pylades makes as if to lead us out, but I hesitate and shake him off. Orestes is hunched, his shoulders shaking, his face buried in his cloak, but I can’t look away. Her cloak, only loosely held around her shoulders before, lies on the ground where it fell beside her, a bright pool of fine cloth. I’m hypnotised by it: the intricate stitching, the rich purple hues of its folds. Orestes is muttering, a low, intense stream of indecipherable words that rises to panic as I take a step, and then another, towards her.
Everything around me is so vivid and clear, the earth so steady beneath my feet as I move closer. I pick up the cloak and the scent of her perfume drifts out on the warm air. I close my eyes and breathe it in. Then I lay the cloak over her body, smoothing it out so that it lies straight, and I stand back.
After a few moments, I feel the gentle touch of Pylades’ hand on my back and I turn away. I don’t need to look any longer. The sun is a bright gold disc, climbing in the blue sky. Our arms around my brother, we walk away together, into its light.
Epilogue
There’s a chill in the air today, a bitter edge to the wind that whips up froth on the tips of the waves. The water surges around my ankles and retreats, leaving the sand slick and dark gold beneath my feet. Out on the horizon, clouds and sea merge into one another in a grey haze.
These are the easiest days. In the silent, barren months when the earth yields nothing, when Demeter wanders in grief for her daughter, this is when I feel a communion with the world. I spent so much of my life in a dreary vigil; the stillness and the sorrow still feel comfortingly familiar.
But as Georgios told me once, it doesn’t last forever. I thought it would, when we were driven from Mycenae, helpless against the wrathful Erinyes. Pylades and I could do nothing but wipe the spittle and foam from Orestes’ chin, bathe his fevered brow and murmur soothing words as he writhed and screamed, his terrified eyes fixed on a vision we could never see. He couldn’t take the throne in his madness. The kingdom was in disarray, and when we fled to Phocis to ask for help from Pylades’ father, he cast us out, horrified by our crime.