Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom Read online

  “Why no,” Mary said slowly, looking around. “Why no,” she repeated, puzzled. “They look all right to me.”

  The woman sighed. “I guess I’m just overly sensitive,” she said.

  Red neon blinked outside the window, and the train slowed, shuddering into the station of the sixth kingdom. The car door swung open, and the tread of the conductor came down the aisle to the blond woman up ahead with the red painted mouth, who paled, drew her furs about her and shrank back.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Please, not yet. This is not my stop. Give me a little longer.”

  “Let me see your ticket,” the conductor said, and the woman wet her lips, the color of blood.

  “I mislaid it. I can’t find it,” she said.

  “It is in the second finger of your right glove,” the conductor said tonelessly, “where you hid it as I came in.”

  Angrily the woman jerked the glove off her right hand, scooped out the stub of red cardboard and thrust it at the conductor. With his punch he clipped the ticket, tore it across and handed her the smaller part.

  “Your transfer for the river crossing,” he said. “I think you had better leave now.”

  The woman did not move to go. The conductor put out his hand and gripped her arm. “I am sorry,” he said, “but you must go now. We can’t have any dallying around on this train. We have a schedule to keep. We have a quota of passengers.”

  “I’m coming,” the woman pouted sullenly. “But let go my arm. It hurts. It burns.”

  “She got up and walked down the aisle, her crimson wool skirt balancing and swaying about her legs, her head held proud and defiant. Outside the door of the car, on the platform, there were two station guards waiting for her. In the red glare of neon light that fell full upon them, they took the woman away, one on either side of her, through the barred exit gate.

  The conductor came back down the car, wiping his forehead with a large red silk handkerchief. He paused at Mary’s seat and grinned at the woman. His eyes were black, bottomless, but flecked now with cold spots of laughter.

  “We don’t usually have that much trouble with the passengers when their stop comes,” he said to the woman.

  She smiled back at him, but her voice was tender, regretful. “No, they generally don’t protest at all. They just accept it when the times comes.”

  “Accept what?” Mary stared curiously at the two of them, remembering the frightened face of the blond woman, her mouth wet, the bright color of blood.

  The conductor winked at the woman and walked away down the aisle, with the lights burning in the sockets of the walls like candles and the metal vault of the car arching overhead. The red light of the station slanted through the car windows and briefly stained the faces of the passengers scarlet. Then the train started up again.

  “Accept what?” Mary pursued. She gave an involuntary shiver as if struck by a sudden chill draft of air.

  “Are you cold, dear?”

  “No,” said Mary. “Accept what?”

  “The destination,” the woman replied, picking up the knitting from her lap and beginning again to add to the mesh of leaf-green wool. Expertly she jabbed the needle into the growing fabric, caught a loop of thread, and slipped it off on the needle. Mary stared at the competent, deft-moving hands. “The passengers buy their tickets,” the woman went on, counting silently the stitches on the needle. “They buy their tickets, and they are responsible for getting off at the proper station. . . They choose the train, and the track, and travel to their destination.”

  “I know. But that woman. She looked so frightened.”

  “Yes, sometimes the passengers are like that. Last minute jitters, you know. The awareness strikes them too late, and they regret buying the ticket. Regret doesn’t help, though. They should have thought about taking the trip beforehand.”

  “I still don’t see why she couldn’t have changed her mind and not gotten off. She could have paid more at the end of the ride.”

  “The railroad company doesn’t allow that on this trip,” the woman said. “It would create confusion.”

  Mary sighed, “Well, at least the rest of the passengers seem content enough.”

  “Yes, don’t they. That is the horror of it.”

  “Horror?” Mary’s voice rose. “What do you mean, horror? You make everything sound so mysterious.”

  “It’s really quite simple. The passengers are so blasé, so apathetic that they don’t even care about where they are going. They won’t care until the time comes, in the ninth kingdom.”

  “But what is the ninth kingdom?” Mary cried petulantly, her face anguished, as if she were about to burst into tears. “What is so awful about the ninth kingdom?”

  “There, there,” the woman comforted, “have some more of my chocolate bar. I can’t finish it all myself.” Mary took a piece and put it in her mouth, but the taste was bitter on her tongue.

  “You will be happier if you do not know,” the woman said gently. “It is really not too bad, once you get there. The trip is long down the tunnel, and the climate changes gradually. The hurt is not intense when one is hardened to the cold. Look out the window. Ice has begun to form on the subway walls, and no one has even noticed or complained.”

  Mary stared out of the window at the black walls hurtling past. There were gray streams of ice between the cracks in the stones. The frozen surface caught the light from the car and glittered as if full of cold silver needles.

  Mary shuddered. “I would never have come if I had known. I won’t stay. I won’t,” she exclaimed. “I will get the next train back home.”

  “There are no return trips on this line,” the woman said softly. “Once you get to the ninth kingdom, there is no going back. It is the kingdom of negation, of the frozen will. It has many names.”

  “I don’t care. I will get off at the next stop. I won’t stay on the train with these horrid people. Don’t they know, don’t they care where they are going?”

  “They are blind,” the woman said, looking steadily at Mary. “They are all quite blind.”

  “And you,” Mary cried, turning on the woman angrily, “I suppose you are blind, too!” Her voice spiralled high and shrill, but no one paid any attention. No one turned to look at her.

  “No,” the woman said, suddenly tender, “not blind. Nor deaf. But I do happen to know that the train will make no more stops. No more stops are scheduled until we arrive at the ninth kingdom.”

  “But you don’t understand.” Mary’s face crumpled and she began to cry. Tears dropped wet and scalding through her fingers. “You don’t understand. It’s not my fault I took this train. It was my parents. They wanted me to go.”

  “You let them buy the ticket for you, though,” the woman persisted. “You let them put you on the train, didn’t you? You accepted and did not rebel.”

  “It’s still not my fault,” Mary exclaimed vehemently, but the woman’s eyes were upon her, level after blue level of reproach, and Mary felt herself sinking, drowned in shame. The shuttle of the train wheels struck doom into her brain. Guilt, the train wheels clucked like round black birds, and guilt, and guilt, and guilt.

  Guilt, said the click of the knitting needles. “You don’t understand,” Mary began again. “Please, let me explain. I tried to stay at home. I didn’t want to come really at all. Even in the station I wanted to go back.”

  “But you didn’t go back,” the woman said, and as she caught and looped the green wool, her eyes were sad. “You chose not to go back, and now there is nothing you can do about it.”

  Mary sat suddenly upright, glaring through her tears. “Oh, yes there is!” she said defiantly. “There is still something I can do. I am going to get off anyway, while there is still time. I am going to pull the emergency cord.”

  The woman flashed Mary a sudden radiant smile, and her eyes lit with admiration. “Ah,” she whispered, “good. You are a spunky one. You have hit upon it. That is the one trick left. The one assertion of the will
remaining. I thought that, too, was frozen. There is a chance now.”

  “What do you mean?” Mary drew back suspiciously. “What do you mean, a chance?”

  “A chance to escape. Listen, we are nearing the seventh station. I know this trip well. There is time yet. I will tell you the best moment to pull the cord, and then you must run. The platform of the station will be deserted. They were expecting no incoming or outgoing passengers this trip.”

  “How do you know? How can I believe you?”

  “Ah, faithless child,” the woman’s voice was rich with tenderness. “I have been on your side all along. But I could not tell you. I could not help you until you had made the first positive decision. That is one of the rules.”

  “Rules, what rules?”

  “The rules in the book of the train company. Every organization has to have bylaws, yon know. Certain commandments to make things run smoothly.”

  The woman continued. “We are approaching the station of the seventh kingdom. You must walk down the aisle to the back of the car. No one will be watching. Pull the cord from there, and don’t hesitate, no matter what. Just run.”

  “But you,” Mary said. “Aren’t you coming, too?”

  “I? I cannot come with you. You must make the break yourself, but be certain, I will see you soon.”

  “But how? I don’t see how. You said there is no return trip. You said no one ever leaves the ninth kingdom.”

  “There are exceptions,” the woman said smiling. “I do not need to obey all the laws. Only the natural ones. But you must hurry. The station approaches, and it is time.”

  “Wait, just a minute. I must get my suitcase. I have all my things in it.”

  “Leave your suitcase,” the woman instructed. “You will not need it. It would only hinder you. But remember, run, run like the wind.” Her voice dropped. “There will be a brightly lighted gateway. Do not take that. Go up the stairs, even if they look black, even if there are lizards. Trust me, and take the stairway?”

  “Yes,” said Mary, standing up, sliding across in front of the woman and out into the aisle. “Yes.”

  She began to walk slowly, casually to the back of the car. There was no one watching her. At the end of the aisle, she reached over and pulled the cord labelled “Emergency” that was nailed along the length of the wall.

  At once the terrible siren began to shriek through the train, splitting the silence apart. Mary flung the door open and slipped out on to the swaying platform between the two cars. There was a grinding of gears, a screech of metal careening upon metal, and the train lurched to a stop.

  It was the platform of the seventh kingdom, and it was deserted. Mary cleared the three steps of the train in one leap, and the cement floor struck up with a shot of pain under the soles of her feet. There were shouts, now, of the conductors on the train.

  “Hey, Ron, what’s the matter?” The voice was hoarse. Red lanterns flared through the cars.

  “Matter, Al? I thought it was you.”

  Ahead was a gateway, studded with brilliant red neon lights, and there was jazz coming syncopated from the distance, beckoning. No, not the gate. To the right an unlighted stairway rose, menacing and narrow. Mary turned and ran toward it, the echo ricocheting back from the stone walls. Under her ribs the breath was caught, tight and hurting. The shouts were louder now.

  “Look! It’s a girl. She’s getting away!”

  “Catch her, quick!” Red light spilled after her, flooding closer.

  “The boss’ll fire us if we lose a soul this trip!”

  Mary paused a second at the bottom of the flight of stairs and glanced back. The windows of the train were gilt squares, and the faces staring out were bored, cadaverous, impersonal. Only the conductors were running down the steps of the train after her, their faces red in the glare of neon from the gateway, their fiery lanterns swinging, smoking.

  A scream caught at her throat. She turned to run up the stairs, dark, steep stairs that twisted upward. A cobweb stung her cheek, but she ran on, stumbling, scratching her fingers against the rough stone walls. Small and swift, a snake darted from a chink in one of the steps. She felt it coil icily about her ankle, but she kept on running.

  The cries of the conductors stopped at last, growing weak in the distance, and then she heard the train start up once more, rumbling away into the frozen core of the earth with a sound like sunken thunder. Only then did she stop running.

  Leaning aslant the soot-stained wall for a moment, panting like a hunted animal, she tried to swallow the slick taste of brass in her mouth. She was free.

  She began again to trudge up the dark stairs, and as she climbed, the steps became broader, smoother, and the air thinned, growing lighter. Gradually the passage widened, and there came the sound, from somewhere beyond, of bells chiming in a clock tower, clear and musical. Like a link of metal, the small snake fell from her ankle and glided away into the wall.

  As she rounded the next bend of the stair, the natural sunlight broke upon her in full brilliance, and she smelled the forgotten fragrance of sweet air, earth, and fresh-cut grass. Ahead was a vaulted doorway, opening out into a city park.

  Mary emerged at the top of the stairs, blinking at the fertile gold webs of sunlight. White and blue pigeons rose from the pavement and circled about her head, and she heard the laughter of children playing among the leaves of the bushes. Everywhere about the park the pinnacles of the city rose in tall white granite spires, their glass windows flashing in the sun.

  Like one awakening from a sleep of death, she walked along the gravel path that twinkled with the mica of the little pebbles. It was the spring of the year, and there was a woman selling flowers on the street corner, singing to herself. Mary could see the full boxes of white roses and daffodils, looped with green leaves, and the woman in a brown coat bending maternally over the display.

  As Mary approached, the woman lifted her head and met Mary’s eyes with a blue gaze of triumphant love. “I have been waiting for you, dear,” she said.

  About the Author

  SYLVIA PLATH (1932–63) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and studied at Smith College. In 1955 she went to Cambridge University on a Fulbright scholarship, where she met and later married Ted Hughes. She published one collection of poems in her lifetime, The Colossus (1960), and a novel, The Bell Jar (1963). Her Collected Poems, which contains her poetry written from 1956 until her death, was published in 1981 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

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  Also by Sylvia Plath

  POETRY

  Ariel

  The Colossus

  Crossing the Water

  Winter Trees

  The Collected Poems (edited by Tim Hughes)

  Selected Poems (edited by Tim Hughes)

  Ariel: The Restored Edition (Foreword by Frieda Hughes)

  Poems (chosen by Carol Ann Duffy)

  FICTION

  The Bell Jar

  Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams

  NONFICTION

  The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 1: 1940–1956 (edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen Kukil)

  The Letters of Sylvia Plath Volume 2: 1956–1963 (edited by Peter K. Steinberg and Karen Kukil

  Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–1963 (edited by Aurelia Schober Plath)

  The Journals of Sylvia Plath (edited by Karen V. Kukil)

  Sylvia Plath: Drawings (edited by Frieda Hughes)

  FOR CHILDREN

  The Bed Book (illustrated by Quentin Blake)

  The It Doesn’t Matter Suit (illustrated by Rotraut Susanne Berner)

  Collected Children’s Stories (illustrated by David Roberts)

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is e
ntirely coincidental.

  MARY VENTURA AND THE NINTH KINGDOM. Copyright © 2019 by The Estate of Sylvia Plath. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Cover design by Milan Bozic

  Cover photograph © CSA Images/iStock/Getty Images

  Originally published as Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom in the United Kingdom in 2019 by Faber and Faber Ltd.

  FIRST EDITION

  Digital Edition JANUARY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-294084-1

  Version 12192018

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-294083-4

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