Knowing
There was blood that day, and the next day, and the next. I could not escape it for all the wealth in my father's storehouses. The bricks themselves, baked hard by the Dardanian sun and porous as a sponge, oozed blood.
Apollo was taunting me.
Even in the cool quiet of the temple, where I had gone in hope of respite, I could smell blood—it almost turned my stomach. In the god's sanctuary, behind his statue, I tried not to retch. When I looked up, I saw the dark, viscous drops falling slowly from the trophies, and I thought I would choke from holding back my vomit.
I seldom went to my mother's quarters now—I am not like the other women. The god stands between us. Besides, she was there, and I could not bear to look at her. Where others saw beauty, I saw only a grinning death's-head, or a ghastly, rotting face, crowned with fire. When she spoke, I heard the cries of buzzards and the keening of captive women. And always she reeked of blood and carrion. The worst of it was that she found me intriguing—perhaps Paris spoke of me as of a freak, or perhaps she did not understand that I wanted no part of her—and would go out of her way to talk to me. I would lace my fingers in front of my eyes, afraid to look at her, and kept my answers short.
No one could see what was plain as day to me, and this made me impatient. My father was first sympathetic, then embarrassed, and finally furious: he ordered me put away. What could I tell him but the truth: that I saw tiny, brittle chains of human bone binding her to all of us? I could not help the things that I saw.
The first clue I had was at the homecoming banquet for my brother and his new bride. I had known, of course, that it would be war—it could hardly mean anything else—but I had not expected to jump and flinch when Helen unveiled her face. Everyone gasped, of course, but we did not see with the same eyes.
No one, not even the god, had told me that I would see lacerated flesh, black with clotted blood and not quite dead.
I knew when Laodice knocked over her cup at dinner: the wine dripped onto my lap, becoming thicker and darker and taking on a horrible odor. I screamed, and Hector, who only ever wanted to help, made up a story that I had seen a mouse. For the rest of the evening, I could not bear to look at him: he had become hollow-eyed as a corpse, covered with dust and blood, and so pale and cold that I knew he was dead already.
Though no sacrifice could help our need, we continued to burn hecatombs. Helenus pinched my arm. "Just read the omens, Cass, and for the love of Zeus and Poseidon, don't say anything about corpses!" I know that Helenus is alive and well, for his form did not change, but when I looked at the assembly, I saw widow's weeds, and bodies emaciated with hunger, living skeletons.
I did not need to stand at the walls to watch the battle; it followed me waking and sleeping, and it never let me alone. Daily, though no answer came, I prayed that Apollo would kill me, or blind me, or free me—though I had little hope that the last would come to be. Instead, one morning, I went down to the river and saw my reflection in the water: I was covered in blood, and a great wound seemed to cleave me in half. The war would not end for another two or three years, but I knew then. Will it seem strange if I say that it was a relief?
After that, I could be calm. Andromache asked me once how I did it; I told her that I had foreknowledge of my own death, and she winced and jumped back, as if this made me unlucky. People would rather not hear the truth.
Oh, Cassandra, must you be so morbid?
That is ENOUGH, Cassandra. I don't want to hear any more, and I'm sure these gentlemen don't either.
And I don't want to know what horrible thing you saw your breakfast turn into this morning, Cass, because I'm trying to enjoy my lunch in peace.
We may have quarreled, but I am a servant of the god, and I owe it to him to speak the truth.