VERY MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR A FOX OF STORMS AND STARLIGHT. It’s a minor explanatory thing that comes out in chapter 9 of Fox Book, which provides motivation for a major plot point that happens in chapter 12 (there are 49 chapters).
CONTENT NOTIFICATION: Kevin’s point-of-view scenes have a lot of swearing. Sorry-not-sorry. But maybe don’t read if the f-word offends you.
Also, this is an unedited draft. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you spot typos etc, but yo: unedited draft, so read accordingly.
Catch up on Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8, chapter 9, chapter 10, chapter 11.
12: Sunny
Life’s really complicated… And life’s really easy, because there’s what you want, and there’s what you need, and there’s what you neither want nor need, and when it comes down to it literally everything fits into one of those categories.
And so long as you delineate between the wants that are productive in your life, and the wants that will damage you, you’re good. Right?
That probably doesn’t make much sense to people outside my own head, but it makes sense to me, and I realise all this as I’m sitting in English again, first period, the faint stench of mildewed carpet and sweat, the crows cawing outside, the taste of dust in my throat—ashen, like my thoughts—and bloody Jimmy’s at it again with the teacher, trying to argue that Lady Macbeth is the ultimate symbolic representation of all women, that we’re all string-pullers and puppet-masters, too ashamed and deceitful to take power legitimately on our own, so we resort to luring in men with our beauty and turning them into savages.
Never mind that throughout most of history, we’ve spend our lives with our voices stripped from us, our actions taken away from us and attributed to others, our achievements downplayed and limited by glass ceilings and long dresses and high heels.
Never mind that Lady Macbeth literally says she’d do the deed herself if only society would let her.
No. Macbeth would never have fallen, Jimmy says, were it not for Lady Macbeth.
Once again, it’s all the woman’s fault.
My stomach twists in knots.
But then…
Jimmy’s neither a thing I want, nor a thing I need.
And…
Something sparks inside my chest.
Like a marionette with someone else tugging the strings, I raise my hand.
Ellie’s pale eyebrows climb her forehead.
So do the teacher’s. She looks at me in shock for a moment, then nods at me, completely ignoring the fact that Jimmy’s still going on and on and on from the back of the classroom like a soundtrack someone forgot to switch off. “Sunny?”
Adrenalin hits me like a wave—not like a pleasant one, or a wave that sparkles through your body and is gone again, but like an actual wave, like a shock of ice-cold water you weren’t expecting that takes your breath away and leaves you gasping, frozen, tense while your body scrambles to process what the heck just happened and why you’re now cold and soaking, soaking wet—and while my body is adjusting to this new situation where I open my mouth in class, I take my body by surprise and stand, because if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it properly, because what’s the worst that anyone can to do me, right here, right now, right at this moment?
I inhale.
For a second, I freeze.
Then the words well up in my throat, a tangible pressure, the taste of acid, and they’re spitting and stringing and flying from my mouth before I can even chew them. “Lady Macbeth is clearly a product of her time and culture,” I say, scathing, all the frustration and longing and desire I’ve been bottling up for nearly sixteen years biting at my tongue, and it’s sweet, so, so sweet, and it’s glorious. “It’s not her fault that she can’t wield power. She even says it herself: Unsex me here. You think she’d have had to say that if she could have just done the deed herself? You think she wanted to use Macbeth as a puppet, to hide in the shadows and force others to act on her behalf through trickery, through subterfuge?”
I’m staring at the whiteboard so hard my eyes might drill holes in it—or else like I might start crying—please, God, anyone, please, do not let me start crying—but I’m talking to Jimmy. It’s him I’m responding to.
And then my voice softens. “It isn’t guilt that knots her up inside, that makes her start sleep walking and hallucinating. It’s frustration. She’s so frustrated that Macbeth won’t do what she says, but that’s because she’s already frustrated to begin with, because she has no agency, because she’s a girl. She’s ready to dash out the brains of her babies, not because she’s cruel, but because she’s enraged. She’s angry. She’s this emotionally intelligent, observant, ambitious woman and she’s voiceless. She can’t speak up, can’t act, can’t do anything herself… even if… she wanted to.”
I’m out of steam.
I sit down.
The whole class is staring at me, and I can feel the burn of a blush rising up my neck. I glance at the teacher, dry-mouthed, trembling, empty. “Can I get a drink?”
The teacher nods, wide-eyed, as though I’ve poured so many words into the classroom air that there’s no room for anyone else’s, and as I stride toward the white-painted door, my hand curl into fists and I lift my chin high.
I wasn’t talking to Jimmy.
Or, not only to Jimmy.
Lady Macbeth might be a villain—but she’s also a cautionary tale. A warning, about what happens when you suppress a woman for too long. When you strip her of her voice, don’t let her talk, don’t let her decide.
Turns out, the frustration’s just as real, even when you’re your own oppressor.
I reach for the silver door handle with sweaty hands that match my sweaty neck.
The door opens before I can touch it.
It swings open toward me; I dart back a step to avoid being clonked in the face.
It’s Kevin.
My world doesn’t even stop, not even for a second.
High on adrenalin, fuelled by the rage of Lady Macbeth and all my other foremothers, I meet his eye, level as you please. “I need to speak to you,” I say. “Now.”
Kevin glances over my shoulder at the teacher and I don’t know what he sees because I don’t turn and look, but his gaze quickly finds mine again and he nods, steps aside to let me pass, then follows as I stride away down the hall.
I’m either going to run out of words the second I stop walking, falter and curl and hide in a ball and never come out of my shell again…
Or else this is the beginning, and I’m only just beginning to know the power my words can have.
Keep reading: Chapter 13 (the final chapter!)