I devoured the codices - of which there must have been over 2000 – and savored the incunabula they kept there, safe and preserved. Histories, plays, literature, I perused them all. I experienced the words - absorbing each syllable in my mind, holding them there as one holds their breath, until my head ached with abundance. My candles would burn out, forcing me to light another. Dawn would threaten to approach, forcing my retreat, only to return the next night and the night after, and the night after that. Those were the merriest times I spent in Hungary, there in that library, amongst ratty tomes of forgotten lore and newly, blocked volumes. The smell of the ink, the crispness of the paper, the smooth feel of the leather binding between my fingers… it was all very intoxicating. Change comes with all things in life, seasons, people… relationships. Eventually, it happened with Buda, once more spoiling the city.
My fondness for the city, and even the country of Hungary, had grown over time. I walked its streets during the age of early absolutism, as the Renaissance King, Mathias Corvinus, ruled. His reign experienced great expansion, both southward and northwesterly. King Corvinus was a ruler of the people, and the common folk adored him immensely.
His legacy, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was like none other. The Bibliotheca was an expansive collection of historical chronicles, scientific and philosophic works - Europe's premiere collection. The Vatican's own collection was the only one that could hold a candle to it, but those were mostly religious volumes.
By then, though, I had seen all the Royal Library had to show me – the Bibliotheca Corviniana included. I was ready to bid adieu to the paprika-laden peoples of Buda in order to create new beginnings – to reinvent myself, as my kind must always do. Always running, and never staying still for long.
Wanderlust had pierced my disinterested heart with its visions of splendid new places and exotic locales. So one night, after my belongings were packed and my preparations made, I once more ventured into the city, to the blind beggar, whom I had used as a host.
I slipped into his hand enough coin to buy clothing, an estate, land, and perchance a title, if the King willed it. My directions were clear. The names of my court contacts, the location of my residence and its deed – now left to him. He fell prostrate thanking me, but I had moved on.
I bid farewell to the crowd at Heedstead Tavern, and bought a round for the mass of patrons - most of whom I had fed from over the years. I slipped into the Royal Library and walked amongst the volumes in their primitive bindings. Dust collected on my fingertips, a grey veil that had a stagnantly clean odor – an essence of history - that I savored, before rubbing it away with my thumb.
A single candle glowed in the drawing room when I returned to my estate. A messenger waited for me on his steed near the door and, upon seeing me, quickly disembarked. The letter, which I read once inside, had Aksel's seal.
The fire licked to life as I entered the drawing room, boxes littering the corners, furniture already dressed for preservation. I tossed the letter on a writing desk, deciding not to open it. Then the envelope’s sleek crispness teased me, curiosity finally winning. Beyond the crimson seal, an aura of white with hastily scrawled writing unfolded before me. He was coming tonight, the third night of the New Year, with urgent news – dire, he claimed.
I searched a nearby box of dusty miscellaneous items: small trinkets from desk drawers, candlesticks and silver pieces tossed in to ruminate until they reached their new home. Just as I had selected a palm-sized stack of paper, sat down at the desk, quill in hand, I sensed a presence behind me. Then I felt his hand rest on my shoulder. He was standing there as I turned around: as a figure in a gray suit and dust colored coat. His ruggedness, the features that had once defined him, had strangely softened.
"Who do you have with you, Aksel?" I demanded.
I could sense her, a young one, lingering near the porch, just within earshot. Her feet gnashed the grass and clacked loudly as she stepped on the cobblestone walkway. Her mind was a cyclonic whirlwind of pointless images that she assaulted me with, thrusting them at me as I pushed them away. She willed those thoughts through the door, through the thick, burnt-sienna wall. The agony she felt was a cumulonimbus, but the pain was self-contained.
This young one had felt her heart bleed, break in two, and die, and all this before he had turned her. She had seen things, incomprehensible images of torture, of unspeakable horrors; harmed and scarred and now existing eternally to live the nightmare within her mind as if it were a constant record – stuck in a loop. Now it wept, yet her visage was serene.
"You act surprised," I said as I moved to a linen-covered chair, sitting down without removing the cover. "You must teach her to guard her thoughts; if you expect her to survive around others, that is."
He asked if she could come in. After I had given my permission, Aksel sat down on the chartreuse sofa, glanced toward the candelabra nearest to him – silver with gilded gold leafing and ornate twisted leaves aspersed on its arms, an item considered antique even then- and lit the candles in its cups. Twelve golden flames fluttered to life across the room as she entered.
Her face was simplistic, child-like in quality, but she was no child. Her round emerald eyes glimmered against the starkness of the rigid ebony bangs clinging to her forehead. She cowered near the door, afraid to enter further. She was nearly five feet in height and appeared waifish standing alone on the outskirt of the room, shrouded in darkness, buttoned to the neck in her floor length wool coat.
"Come and sit with us," I said, taking pity on the poor creature.
"Why have you come here, Aksel?" The female sat next to him, glancing at him coyly. He quickly jerked his head from her glance to meet mine. "What is so urgent?"
"I need your aide," he admitted nervously.
"Thirty years have passed," I said, glancing at the female. "And now you come to me under mysterious pretenses, under urgent conditions? You have sought help! Does this pertain to Evelyn?"
"She knows my name!" the female screeched. "Aksel, she knows my name! I have not even told her!"
"You need to teach her to guard her thoughts, Aksel," I said. "I heard you outside, walking up my front steps, munching your feet in the grass; your thoughts were a jumbled river and you need to learn to control them. Control them before someone controls you with them." "Can they do that, Aksel?" she gasped.
"Yes." He glared at me from his side of the couch as she drew her legs up and sat on her half.
"I need a favor from an old friend, Bree."
"I have not seen you in thirty years, and under the circumstances of our parting,” I glared, “do we honestly hold each other in friendship?”
“Bree, I have nowhere else to go,” he sighed as his fledgling threw up her arms.
"I told you this would not work!" she stammered. He glared at her. Evelyn’s lips twisted as she rose from the couch and left the house, slamming the door as she did.
"What would not work?" I asked him. "I want the truth. Now, before I remove you from this house." "The story is long," he began, "long and unforgivable."
"I am not your confessor, Aksel; I cannot absolve your sins. Explain yourself, please.”
He rose from the couch and walked to the window, pulling back the drapes. His fingernail scratched at a square of unwashed glass, the grime collecting at his cuticle. He struggled through the layers of filth to peer into the darkness. He scratched some more, ignoring me, until he managed to remove enough muck to let a few meager twinkles of twilight shine through.
"I am not seeking absolution," he stated, finally. "I just need pity, and assistance."
“You do not deserve either,” I snapped. "Get on with it, then. Dawn is soon upon us and my patience is teetering."
"You were once a woman of great patience, Bree," he said, turning toward me, his hand covered in the filth from the window. He brushed it against his pant leg, marring the elaborate gray fabric, as he once again sat upon the couch.
"I was once a woman of many things, but you will find me now muc
h changed. And I pray that you tell me what is going on before I hurl you from my premises," I demanded. "How old is she, Aksel?"
"Fifteen," he stated flatly, gingerly shifting to the left corner of the couch.
"Fifteen! Aksel, how could you make one so young?" I relaxed in the chair and listened for her footsteps on the cobblestone. "What insanity possessed you to do such a careless thing?"
"I had no choice," he began. "She was going to die if I did not intervene."
"Then you should have let her die... or assisted, killed her; given her a merciful end clouded in a painless fantasy. But, this life, it is no place for one so young!"
"It is complicated, Bree," he groaned. "I was walking along the road that leads into Oslo from the north. You must remember that road – we used to hunt there – it was there that I found her. She had been abandoned and was lying alongside the road, bleeding, curled up into a tight ball like a wounded kitten. Her pain was agonizing."
"You should have ended it for her, given her some peace. You are weak."
"Your words are monstrous,” he howled. “I tried to, Bree! I meant to! But, when I reached down and glanced into her face," his voice softened as he spoke, his eyes glistening with remembrance, "She resembled someone I once knew. When the light caught her face and she opened her eyes, I remembered those eyes. I could not place them, or her. I took pity on her and took her with me. I don’t know why, I just did. I know I shouldn’t have, but I could not leave her to die, nor could I kill her. I entrusted my housekeeper with her daily care and oversaw to her every need at night until she was nursed back to health."
He sighed heavily, continuing, "It took over a week, but eventually rosy life bled into her cheeks. Her eyes glistened. Then one evening she demanded to speak with me. She had been throwing things at the housekeeper and refusing to eat." His voice trailed off.
"Then what happened? What did the young Evelyn wish to know?" My question brought him back to the present, back from the dream world his mind wandered in; he rose, slowly pacing the room.
"My nightmares came true, that is what happened." Aksel stopped in front of the fireplace and leaned against the proud mantle, staring into the empty hearth as if a wild fire consumed the darkened space.
"She knew who I was – even what I was."
"How could she have known that?"
He moved to the window and resumed scratching at the grime, his fingernails screeching at the glass. I ignored the noise. The clear glass beneath glimmered as each spec of dirt trickled to the floor.
"I killed her mother," he finally answered.
"When was this exactly? You found the girl near the roadside, half-dead.”
"It was the night before," he said, looking directly into my eyes. "I was hunting... nowhere near the city. I was hunting on that road." His voice softened and he returned to the couch. The velvet crinkled as he sat, even beneath the cotton dust covering.
"I was walking through the woods, as I do on most nights, and in the distance I heard a carriage of drunken men singing on their way toward the city," he paused.
"It is my fashion to haunt this particular pathway. There is even a legend about me. On that night, I caught a scent lofting from this carriage. It was not the smell of rum or the atrocious odor of tobacco originating from the two putrid drivers. No. It was the smell of women’s perfume, the sweet aroma of sugarplums and crushed violets. The scent reminded me of you," he looked up, a smile gracing his worried face. When I did not respond to his flattery, he continued.
"I flew into a nearby tree, and within a matter of moments I was upon their group. The two men were effortless. But, as I was finishing with the second one, a gorgeous woman emerged from the carriage. She began cursing me, holding up a crucifix. I grabbed hold of her, as you had done to me, and I threw her. She slumped to the ground and died. I heard a large grouping coming up the path and I fled to my rest," he lowered his head and sighed. "When I returned the next evening I found Evelyn."
"Was there any sign of the carriage?" I asked. “Of the mother…”
"No," he replied. "They had taken it; taken it after finding Evelyn inside and raping her. Then they left her, concealed in some brush near the road for the vultures to feast on."
"Was there any sign of the other travelers?”
"No, her mother and the two drivers' bodies were nowhere to be found," he replied. "They just left Evelyn, a defenseless child, Bree, for dead."
"Humanity can be a cruel and destructive people, Aksel. They are often senseless and quick in their actions.”
"Then you no longer consider yourself human?" he asked as he moved back to the fireplace and blinked the dead embers to life. The hearth became a growing belly of orange heat with tongues of red, licking against the burn-stained brick hearth. A warming glow permeated the room, reached into every corner, enveloped every object, every air molecule, and suspended itself as if it were holding me in a loving embrace.
"No, I have not for centuries,” I replied, the syllables catching the crackling embers and fading as they fluttered into the air. “But, ask yourself, are you any less cruel or destructive, any less of a senseless monster?” Aksel remained at the mantel, his left arm perched on the polished wood, staring into the raging flames. “No, I am not. We are no longer the people we once were. We can be cruel, selfish beings; perhaps we have always been that way."
"No, it comes with the blood and with time – the passing of time, and experience. But, that is inevitable,” I replied.
“We don’t intend to be monsters, though. It’s in our nature to be heartless and solitary.”
“For some,” I noted.
“Will we ever mend the rift between us?” he asked. “Or, are we destined to,” the words trailed, his chin quivering.
“Aksel, why did you turn Evelyn?”
“She was frightened and fought me, but soon she softened and became like a daughter. Then sickness swelled in her belly, and she burned with an intense fever. She slept, would not take food, and the doctor said she hung precariously to life. Then one evening she howled in pain and bled, and clutched her belly.” Tears stung his eyes. “She was pregnant, Bree.”
"Where is the child now?"
“Dead,” he said, his eyes closed, tears at the creases. “Born still and malformed. The midwife removed the babe before Evelyn could look upon it.”
He continued, “The bleeding wouldn’t stop and she was dying. The life drained from her and I could not let her go, Bree." He sat down on the couch and leaned back, sinking into the weight of the heavy cushions. "It was her choice. She had begged me to save her, Bree. She begged me with her dying breath, and she knew the monster I was. She knew the monster she would become; she knew this curse, and she wanted it! Out of selfishness, because I was not strong enough to live knowing I had allowed her to die, I did this to her. I created another us.”
"We all have our demons, Aksel, and we must live with them. She is yours."
"I cannot live with her any longer, and she cannot care for herself," he said, his words rushed.
"You should have thought about that before you created her, Aksel. She is your fledgling and your responsibility."
"She is capable, but society only sees a fifteen year-old child, Bree. She has become too masculine, too influenced by me. She needs a feminine influence." He smiled shyly at me, reaching for my hand, but I refused the offer of companionship.
"I will not care for your offspring, Aksel."
"She needs a mother, Bree. She needs to learn womanly ways, to hunt as a woman hunts. Please, I beg of you, take her," he pled.
"Aksel, I am nobody’s mother and I do not wish to become one now," I answered firmly. "I could tell from her thoughts that she misses her mother; cries for the woman who smelled of sugarplums and crushed violet, but I cannot replace this person. No one ever will."
"Then what am I to do, Bree?" His hands fidgeted in his pockets, his voice cracking. "Of all the times I have needed you, this is the most grave of tim
es, and you deny me. Bury our past, please! This is not about us, but her. She is innocent, Bree. Innocent! Do not let her pay the price for our sins."
"What are you not telling me, Aksel?" I demanded.
"I can tell you what he will not," a voice whispered from behind the library door as it opened. Aksel stood, moving to the fireplace, warming his shaky hands over the orange aura.
"It was my idea to come here and to seek refuge with you. Let me apologize for this, and please, do not harbor any ill will toward Aksel. He is merely playing along with my farce."
"Why are you seeking refuge?" I asked, curious now.
“One night I was hunting when I came upon a small camp of miscreants. There were only three there and I thought I could take them alone. The first man was simple. He had been sitting near a fire and I had snuck up behind him. It was an effortless kill. Then I created a noise diversion to lure the others out of the tent.,” she said.
She continued, “When they emerged, we all recognized each other. In panicked and flew off. Eventually, we took care of them together, but they had reached Oslo and spread word first that I had slaughtered their companion. I was cursed as a demon in Oslo, and we realized the problem was unfixable."
"And so you have come here seeking asylum?"
"It is the only way," Aksel interjected. “I must keep her safe.”
"And what would you do if I granted Evelyn this; if I take her in and care for her?"
"I will return to Norway, of course," he replied. "They have renderings of Evelyn's face circulating around the country, but they do not suspect me. I can go to a different city and start over."
"That is what I was expecting you to say," I said as I walked over to the fireplace, facing him. "Aksel, I cannot do this for you. I will not take her with me, nor will I stay here with her."
"How can you refuse her?" he asked, his words still shook with fear. He collapsed onto the couch, a plume of dust escaping the fabric as his body met the cushion. "Can you seriously not grant me this one wish, Bree?"
"You are still blind, Aksel, blind and unwilling to see the truth. She is fleeing Norway for the same reasons I fled, and yet you do not flee with her. Why do you hang onto that place? It is just a place! Yet, you cling to it as if it were the only thing in this world providing sustenance! You forsake those who you love,” I glanced at Evelyn, “and loved you, for a people that would burn you without a second thought.”
Descent Into Madness Page 7
