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The wolf lies labored on her extravagant velvet pillows. Across her, the barest rays of sun slip from their bounds to light her eyes. “Sister,” she calls. Her hands claw at her belly, her throat, her chest. “Sister, I am not well.”
The other leans over her, hair cascading in a neat curtain. “Not well is well still to speak, evidently,” she says. Her face is drawn in concern for the potency of her medicine. “Well to speak, well to think, well to war. Sometimes I suspect no-one is well to war but us, Regan.”
Regan coughs, then pulls the corners of her mouth into a grimace. “Pretend no further here,” she croaks. Her chest shudders with its wild, thrashing motions. “We are war-like by your own admission, sister. You disturb in softness, parody in simpering—you mock in adoration. Goneril, cast yourself from affections of these nursing sort.”
Goneril puts a hand on hers, which is usually so unsuitable; now, something thoughtful forces itself known through it. Her sister’s hand on hers. Soon to still, soon to tear itself from the bright violence of life. She says, “I am war-like as the shrike pierces its prey. But does not the little bird fly home to its nest? May I not hold some shred of nourishing love?”
In a quick, forceful motion, Regan severs their touch. “Little bird!” She chuckles until her breath leaves as a wet cough. “She is a little bird flying to that hideous wooden bosom of a crown. Surely sorry for it, too.” And with this she looks up to the ceiling passively. “I feel weak. May I tell you that now? I am feeling weak.”
Goneril smiles serenely. “The babbles of the sick hardly bother me, for as they are uttered they fade as ghosts,” she says. “One, none, there, away! Only to my memory are you bound.”
Regan closes her eyes. “Then perhaps I shall confess: I am glad to have you beside me.” With a bony wrist, she rubs her throat. “In these times it comes to me that I have one sister, one brother. And as family—”
Goneril spits with aroused passion, “As family, we should hate each other.”
Inhibition falls from Regan like a veil. Suddenly from her eyes, tears well as blood. “I do hate you,” she shrieks, “as family.” Her sister holds her face steady while it twitches with emotion. “I hate you and hate and I cannot say the hating cause but for that animal kind of bondship. And in turn I think—I think of when you’d bring me rats from the road to play-pretend at being beasts. Do you remember?”
Goneril’s nails are sharp against the other’s jaw. “I remember,” she confirms. “She used to flee and hide from us in fear.”
“I thought, sister, she were a fool. Fool to be human!” Regan strikes her own hip to exert emphasis.
“Is this a matter of Edmund?” Goneril says. Between them creeps the tension of pack-mates turning on each other, in that great ouroboros of alliance and opportunity. “Has the matter of his loyalty driven you to impulse? You are being quite the fool yourself, now.”
“Not Edmund. Merely someone to love that I can,” Regan tells her. “I am quite dizzy now. Bother me no further.” She waves a hand in the air dismissively, as if she can’t tell the importance of it all.
Goneril grabs hold of her shoulders and shakes them. Her hair slips from behind her ears and falls completely, hiding her face in deep shadows. She commands, “Keep yourself from sleep! Tell me, what of Edmund?”
“I know him as a widow,” Regan says. She closes her eyes again. “No more, no less, save however we choose to chew the net of fate upon our shoulders.”
“A widow? Idiot, fool in passion—I am his wife! Wife! You think he loves you? More than service, more than—I best you! I best you in claim! Hear that?” As Goneril goes to jerk the other’s limp body again, she feels the coolness of her skin. She senses a stillness that reaches beyond slumber.
“The king is dead,” Goneril whispers. “Long live the king.”