An End in Ice

by Rachel Ford

  This was a poser, but if father Andrei was to see me, it seemed I must use my real name. So I gave it. Brother Gregorius nodded. If it was a name he had heard before, he made no sign of it.

  We had been passing through a very fine garden, and now we diverted into the building proper. My understanding of the world being what it was, it seemed to me the interior into which we now entered was truly palatial in both composition and size. There was a measure of finery that called to mind Bishop Luca and his opulent styles, his bejeweled fingers and gold-encrusted robes. The rugs underfoot were soft and supple, the niches carved into fine stone walls filled with rich statuary and iconography.

  We walked for a measure down more such passages, and I was as enamored with each successive pass as I was the first. At length, however, we reached a sort of grand waiting area, filled with comfortable chairs of a make I had never before seen. Brother Gregorius turned to me, saying, “Wait here. I will see if the abbot can receive you.”

  Waiting until the monk had disappeared, I turned my eyes to the furniture. As I say, I had not before beheld such things, and I studied with keen fascination the billowing cushions, as entranced by the fine embroidery as by the softness of the things. I dared not sit in one, but I did allow myself to try the cushions against my hands as I marveled at such comforts.

  Thus engaged, I was startled when the door reopened some minutes later. I heard the faintest hint of a high voice mixed with a man's tones, and the shuffle of feet. I glanced up. Brother Gregorius had returned. I stood, somewhat embarrassed to have been caught studying the furniture with such rapt interest.

  “I'm sorry,” the monk told me, “but Abbot Andrei cannot see you.”

  This was something I did not expect. “Cannot see me?” I repeated stupidly. “But...”

  “He is very busy,” the brother explained.

  “But...did you tell him my name?”

  “Yes, of course. But he did not have any recollection of you.”

  This surprised me; but the good father, I recalled, was likely very old now. I was probably a distant memory, if not less, to him. “Well,” I said aloud, “it was many years ago. I am not surprised that he has forgotten me.”

  Brother Gregorius nodded. “But come: there will yet be soup, if we hurry.”

  “I thank you, but might I retire instead? My journey has been long, and I am grown exceedingly weary.”

  “Of course.” And so it was settled. He led me to a room, comfortable and private, and I feigned sleep. It seemed an interminable time, listening impatiently to the quiet sounds of the monks turning in for the evening, until a sufficient level of stillness had been achieved. Then I moved, a thin sheen of mist covering the floor, creeping inward throughout the abbey.

  I followed by memory the path Gregorious had taken without incident. All was still, but for chanting or prayer from a cell here or there – the evidence that a handful of pious men yet lay awake, contemplating with reverence their maker. The sound was audible, echoing in quiet whispers down the long passageways. The halls themselves, which had seemed so opulent when bathed in shimmering light, lay still and shrouded. There was a glory, macabre though it was, to the abbey in stillness, in veritable death, that activity and life had denied it; and a richness missing now, that emptiness had stolen. A strange paradox that impressed itself mightily on my mind at the time.

  At length I found my way, and passing by the fine furniture that had so captured me earlier, I slipped beyond the door and between the door jam. It was a fine piece, of heavy, carved wood set in an equally fine frame, and it fit so snugly that there was scarce room through which to pass.

  But I have not before described what it is to take the form of fogs and mists, in part because I am at somewhat of a loss for how to do so with anything resembling accuracy. I suppose it is something like dreaming, as one of those nighttime phantasms where you move like a disembodied spirit upon the wind, your mind and senses present even though your body is beyond reach. As a boy I had such dreams in which I would be carried, full of fear and wonder, far above the earth on a breeze, as if I had no more weight than a particle of dust. As a man, I have felt such fantasies become real; and it was neither so wondrous nor so frightening. With all such transitions permitted my kind, it is done – if you will pardon the turn of phrase as applied to one so clearly outside of nature as myself – naturally, without deliberation. It is no more unusual for me than it would be for a man to walk. At any rate, I do not mean to belabor the point, but to give some indication of the sensation.

  So it was that, in such a state, a disembodied spirit utilizing as its means of conveyance a blanket of mist, I made my way into the inner chamber. This, I found in turn, was but a finer and more private sort of waiting area through which, on the far side, one gained admittance to the Abbot's bedchamber. There was here a great host of books and works of art, and a desk piled high in papers and more books. Everything was done in a style of extraordinary pomp and luxury. These grand tastes were ones that I had not before seen indulged by the good father, whose humble belongs and modest quarters, when I had been a member of the village, had not hinted at such ambitions. And yet, if a man alive was more worthy of such comforts, I had yet to meet him.

  I did not linger here, but headed for the bedchamber. My plan was simple: the abbot had not connected my name with me, and so I must go and speak with him. If, as I very much doubted, a second flight was necessary, now, in the middle of the night, was the right time for such a thing; and if, as I thought more likely, Abbot Andrei had no desire to betray my confidences, I should know what I had come to know.

  This in my mind, I drifted beneath the second door – which was as tight a squeeze as the first. I noticed at once, as I entered, a sound that I had not anticipated, a sound muffled, even to my senses, by the excellent workmanship. There were two people in the chamber, breathing shallowly in the thrall of deep sleep. There were no other noises to be heard, however, so I took my regular visage.

  Here was a sight I did not expect – although, in truth, I might have anticipated something along these lines had my childhood impressions been less firmly set in my mind. The abbot, his fleshy body covering an ample spread of his bed, lay beside a second figure. This second was a woman, only just I imagined, for, in the glimpse I had of her as she lay half covered beside this man of god, her form had barely finished its transition from child's to woman's. She lay on her stomach, long, loose hair covering her back where the blanket did not, with her head resting on her arms.

  I turned away in mortification. This lecherous side of Father Andrei had never heretofore been hinted at, much less guessed by me, and I wondered that the good father, the simple, self-denying man who had spoken with such quiet gravity about salvation even after he knew that I had become a monster, had morphed into this hedonist before me. There was another factor as well: embarrassment. I had died an eighteen year old boy, a man in years alone; I had never seen a woman in this state of undress, and only guessed as to the curves and lines partially unveiled there. Whatever curiosity I had was far overshadowed by the knowledge that I, even less than the abbot, had no business seeing this woman, whoever she was, in such a state.

  I understood, of course, now the nature of the business that kept the abbot from receiving me; I understood the strange expression Brother Gregorius had worn when I spoke of a man of holiness: he had thought I mocked, and when he saw that I did not, he was left puzzled. And with good reason.

  I wondered now at the wisdom of my scheme. Father Andrei had become – or perhaps always was, though I had not eyes to see it – a man that I did not know; what indication had I that he would do anything but betray me?

  And yet, where else would I go? To my father, who had betrayed me? So I turned back to the bed, averting my eyes from the girl. I took a section of the blanket, wrapped around the abbot's now ample proportions, and spread it across her. Then I turned to Abbot Andrei.

  “Andrei!” I whispered, shaking him a very little. I d
id not want to wake the sleeping woman, and already she stirred. “Father Andrei!” She tossed, shifting the blanket. It occurred to me that she might be too warm now, covered with a blanket and next to so great a source of heat as the abbot. I had better get this done sooner rather than later, I decided, lest she wake. “Abbot!”

  A quiet start and a few muttered syllables signaled that Abbot Andrei was awake. “Father,” I spoke, “it's me, Radu.”

  “Radu?” He was turning over, and his form, as unclothed as the woman beside him had been, became visible. While there were no mysteries to his anatomy, this was a sight I had no desire to see either.

  I froze halfway into a grimace. Age and weight could not disguise what should have been apparent to me all along: this, Abbot Andrei, was not Father Andrei. The good father, wherever he was, was not the lecher before me. My heart gave a sigh of thanks even as I wondered in alarm at my predicament.

  Father Andrei might have received me, and might have turned me away; but how would I explain entering the abbot's no doubt locked doors in such a way? Already alarm was mounting in his features. It seemed to mirror my own feelings.

  “Who are you?” he demanded, reaching for a sheet with which to cover himself. The girl stirred again as his tones rose. “How dare you enter my quarters-”

  “Quiet!” I ordered. It was a foolish command, of course, for I had no hold over him and no right to command his silence. He was a man of the church, and I was demon-born. But I was desperate, confused, and beginning to panic. To my astonishment, he did as I bade him; and this, then, is how I learned of another great power that my kind may wield: hypnotism. At least, it is a state very near hypnotism, a state where a vampire may command the mind of his prey. It is most easily and quickly achieved upon waking, when the mind is transitioning from sleep to wakefulness.

  “Quiet,” I repeated, now more quietly myself. I had not yet grasped what had just happened, though I had some faint inkling of it.

  “Of course,” he spoke, his tone almost a whisper, his movement arrested. He sat in a trance-like state. “How may I help you, my son?”

  “Son?” I was still adjusting to this sudden change in demeanor. “Oh, yes. Who are you?”

  “I am the abbot of this place, Andrei.”

  “But you are not Father Andrei, not the priest who used to live here.”

  He studied me expressionlessly, with eyes half glazed over. “Priest? There is no priest of that name here.”

  “But he did live here, he lived here when I was a boy.”

  He shrugged his flaccid shoulders, as if this was a moot point to him. I cringed, the oddness of the entire scene impressing itself again on my mind. Here was he, a celibate man of God, in bed with a woman young enough to have been his daughter or granddaughter. Here was I, a spawn of the devil, invading the privacy of both, conversing with a naked abbot while his paramour slept beside him. It was too unsettling to continue.

  “Cover up, please.” That, at least, would bring some semblance of normalcy to the entire mad business.

  His arm, frozen as it was in its movement, continued on its way toward the sheet, and then pulled it over his body. As unsettling as this ability to command the abbot was, that at least I felt a little less like a creep in the night spying sleepers. “Now, to the point: there was a priest, appointed by Bishop Luca, back before the abbey was built.”

  “Bishop Luca?” the abbot repeated.

  “Yes.”

  “I have not been acquainted with the bishop.” Then, something like understanding lit his dim eyes. “Ah. You must mean Bishop Luca, who ordered the monastery built.”

  I did not know that this was the case, but it seemed likely. “Yes.”

  “I see. But the good bishop has been dead these last hundred years together now, my son.”

  “Dead?” A feather, as the saying goes, might have knocked me over.

  “Yes. He is buried here, in the crypts below his abbey.”

  I shook my head, saying stupidly, “No, he can't be dead.”

  The abbot regarded me impersonally. “He cannot be anything but: he was a man fourscore and three years old when they laid him to rest, and that a century, give or take a few years, ago.”

  “But...” My mind was having difficulty with this. I knew I had been gone a long time, years, but I had no conception of how long. “But Father Andrei...”

  “Oh, I think I understand. You must mean the old priest who ran the little church on which the abbey is built.”

  “Yes.”

  “He is dead too. They buried him here as well, I think. But that would have been many years past now. Long before my time.”

  “Dead?” There was no reason to think that the good father possessed anything beyond the usual longevity afforded mankind, but I was only slowly grasping the implications of the immense expanse of time that had passed in my madness.

  “Dead,” he repeated. “Before Bishop Luca, if memory serves.” Something like a frown creased his fleshy brow. “I do not recall exactly; as I say, it happened long before I arrived. And it has been many years since I have toured the crypts.”

  “Then...what year is it?”

  “Year? Why, it is the year of our Lord, fifteen hundred and forty-three.”

  My memory is unreliable at this point. I know I left the abbot with instructions to return to sleep, which he followed. But any remaining conversation between us is lost to the haze of despair that ensued with that revelation. I do know that I wandered the abbey after that, and found, somehow, the church's records.

  My clearest memory comes sometime later, whether hours or minutes I cannot begin to guess. My estimation of time clearly leaves much to be desired, though whether that is attributable to the long years of my kind, or a token of my madness I cannot say.

  I had discovered the church's register of events, of births and deaths, of marriages and baptisms. There must, I can only conclude, have been some measure of deliberation to my decisions though I can recall none of it. Perhaps it had it been unconscious. At any rate, it provided the answers I needed, for through this register I was able to piece together some semblance of the life I had missed.

  I learned that three of my sisters had been married; Adriana, a few years my junior, had married the friend of my childhood, Vasile. Maria and Irina had each married boys of the village whom I knew but a little, for they were, like my sisters, several years younger than I. I saw, as but a scratch of ink on vellum, that Sophia, poor little Sophia, my youngest sister, had died the winter I disappeared, taken by consumption. An angel's life had been reduced to a line on a page. I wept bitter tears at that, remembering our short time together and all my fond memories of her. I thought of the life she had never had, like the life Pavel had never had, both snuffed out so soon and so cruelly. I’d missed her last days. And now she was nothing more than a line on that vellum.

  And so they all were, however long they'd lived. Maria and Adriana, with long lives lived and many children born; Irina, tiny, delicate Irina, who died giving birth to a stillborn son before she had even reached proper adulthood; my mother...

  And here I wept bitterly anew, for the page relayed what I did not want to believe: my mother, my quiet, sensible mother, had been dead and buried a hundred and twenty-two years.

  My father too, and a brother born after I left, died some seven years into my madness, drowned while fishing. There was an entry, too, for Pavel, eldest son of Petru and Iona; and Radu, younger son.

  My family, then, was dead, their lives having been lived out and ended while I was lost to the throes of madness. My sister's children, and most of their children; my sisters, my father and my mother: they were all dead. My family was dead.

  I was dead. I’d died that night, over a hundred years ago, in snow and ice on the forest floor. Radu was dead.

  And this new creature, this creature who inhabited his long dead body, whose mind thought with his long dead brain? I didn’t know who he was. For so long, he’d been only a madman, a
shadow on the mountain, a crazed spirit that slaughtered wild animals and hid from mankind. Who – what – was he? I didn’t know.

  I knew that there was much that he might become, for good or ill. I knew that there was much I might become. There were strengths and powers – powers I was only yet coming to understand – at my disposal. There was a world beyond my village, and beyond my mountain, and nothing now to tie me to either. I supposed I would find out soon enough now that I’d returned to the living who this being was – who I was – and where I fit in that world.

  It was time. I’d been born the night Radu died, born on that same miserable, snowy night that he had perished. It had been an end in ice for him, and a beginning in the same for me.

  And now? I’d died already. Now I must learn how to live again.

  Thank you for reading!

  Thank you for reading An End in Ice.

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  About the Author

  Rachel Ford is a software engineer by day, and a writer most of the rest of the time. She is a Trekkie, a video-gamer, and a dog parent, owned by a Great Pyrenees named Elim Garak and a mutt of many kinds named Fox (for the inspired reason that he looks like a fox).

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