by Ian Grey (Vampire: The Dark Ages | Fiction)
My flesh burning, stumbling I ran through a haze of pain and new morning mist. Only the damp dew protects the grass from the heat. Oh god -- I begged -- why have you forsaken me, why do you flay my skin with your gaze and cook the meat on my bones?
Flying forward, my foot slipped into cool muck. Blindly I threw myself forward, propelling myself into the liquid earth. Another part of my mind realized I had reached the edge of the wood, come to the peat bog that lay between the wilderness and the farm I had once called home. That part however was fleeing, and in a frenzy I pulled myself deeper and deeper beneath the filmy surface. My screaming stopped with an influx of water. Gulping greedily, anything to quell the pain, I sank away from the hatful abuse of the sun and soon slept in a darkness free of dreams.
A blink, an echo, a wisp of clarity. I lay as a corpse beneath the still waters, suddenly awake and aware � and hungry.
Moving through the thick muddy waters I dragged myself upward, a filth encrusted beast. Hand over hand and foot by foot I climbed up through the mud and darkness, my waterlogged lungs now weighing me, no longer the asset they had been in my flight. Eventually a hand broke the surface and I dragged myself on to the moonlit shore.
After several minutes of expelling muck, water and the wiggling things that called such home from my assorted orifices, I rolled over and quietly crooned to the night air. Soon a shadow fell over me. The innocent but nervous eyes of a young doe looked down into mine, its questioning look turning to sharp panic as I lifted myself up and lay it gently down beside me. Sh� I whispered to it in that quiet song that only the beasts can understand, sh�
After I had fed I carried the carcass back into the body and hid it amongst the reeds. I moved off and searched until I found a small stream leading off and bathed. What is good for the body is good for the mind, and so I soon lay again and contemplated the moon, and reflected on the past - and the future.
How long had I been hiding in this forest, feeding from those animals that answered my calls and hunting those who would not? The moon grew, the moon shrank � time seemed meaningless now. I had been so happy at first to find freedom from Yusef, my sire and tormentor, that I had not cared where I was or how long I had been away. But now?
I missed my sisters, but they were dead to me, though what remained might still breath and weep and gibber. Their minds and shapes stripped from them, it was better to think of them as gone to heaven than to face the horror that was truth.
But I had found the bog, and beyond that was home, and mother.
Brief flashes. Dim memories of youth, mama happy, papa alive and robust with health. The smell of Chanina and happier times. Riding on his shoulders, seeing the fields and the sun glistening on the Heather.
I hurdled myself from the earth and ran, my cold heart tight with loneliness. Home, the very word summoned a different sort of hunger to me. With a modicum of care I followed old half-remembered trails through the bog an on towards the fields beyond.
Half the night I navigated across the wetlands in the dark. Eventually I came through to the other side, and found the remains of the flock I had tended since childhood. They wandered, here and there, grazing where they willed. They no longer knew me, and ran from me until I coaxed them to me in the language of beasts. I pushed passed them, wondering why mother had not returned them to the corral. I had expected her perhaps to sell them, or tend them at least � we were too poor a family to loose even one �
Cold fear gripped me then as I ran on towards the house.
The door, open, the house stinking of death only days old. I entered, feeling about in the darkness, hoping but knowing the futility of such a wish. �Mother�� I whispered.
Her body lay on the bed, cold and stiff, a cavity ripped just beneath the rib cage having kept her cadaver from bloating. The wound was ripe with maggots, but little blood stained the floor or bed. I held her to my chest and rocked her in my arms then, gently, like she was one of my own flock. I cried for a time, disturbed flies buzzing lazily about us in search of a place to sleep undisturbed.
It could only have been Yusef, of course. In his rage over my escape he had come here in search of me and found only a defenseless old woman who had birthed the three disappointing wives that had vexed him so. In a way I was thankful he had taken his revenge so simply, for my sisters had not been so fortunate. The Beast in my stomach lurched about, growling whispers of revenge.
Numbly, I pulled myself out of the well of self-pity that threatened to fog my mind. All too soon, dawn would come and with it the hell of light that had burned me so recently. I took her outside and buried her in a shallow grave, taking a brief but necessary steps of severing her head from her body and burying both face down. I knew only what Yusef had told me of the curse he had passed me from Caine, but half � remembered traditions haunted me as well, and I would not, could not risk my mother�s return as a revenant like myself (or worse).
Day was soon in coming, and so I returned soon to the house. Baba, my beloved chicken (whom I had raised from a hatchling) had found me returned and had been trailing me happily, begging for food as usual. She seemed quite surprised when I responded in a tongue she understood. I begged her to help me find safety and from somewhere inside that tiny head she answered and led me up into the rafters of the old hovel.
There, hidden amongst the other oddments used for insulation, she showed me what must have been Mama�s dowry-chest. Hidden all these years, it had been her last vanity, the contents long since sold or put to use to keep us fed and clothed after papa had passed away. Here, Baba clucked to me in the stern tone she used with her own chicks, is safety.
I dragged that sturdy old chest back down and found, though strong and well build, it was also locked. There was a nimbus in the sky and panic was beginning to nip at me, for the key was nowhere to be seen (in truth, mama had told of loosing it some years ago � why she had left it in the rafters rather than put it to more practical uses).
Then Yusef whispered to me, as a fragmented memory from our brief lessons between long nights of erotic torment. �The powers gifted us through Vicissitude,� he had said, �may be both gross and subtle" . I pondered on this a moment, then taking a few strands of my filthy straw-colored hair and began knotting and braiding it. Slowly I kneaded a visceral half-life back into it, enough to animate it and give it a fraction of strength. Then, kneeling before the chest I inserted the new-formed tendril and �felt� about, prodding and poking in that tiny space hidden from view. As sunlight encroached across the horizon and a dead weight threatened my limbs, the lock clicked open. Hurriedly, I yanked open the chest and stumbled inside. The lid fell as consciousness fled and the last thing I heard before sweet oblivion took me was an audible click.
Next Month: Adelaethe meets her Prince�
