Forever

by Natalie J. Case

  Adan and I were caught up in ourselves, in our union and the pleasure of being children free to roam the night. He was the companion that filled an ache inside me that Crenoral never could. It took some time, but eventually Crenoral became bored with our increasingly private world and left us to ourselves. Mother or one of the others was given the task to watch us while we fed, though we often slipped away unnoticed. I suppose it was inevitable that Crenoral should feel shut out of our lives, as we became increasingly more dependent upon one another than on him.

  It was also inevitable that I would grow beyond my pet, bored with his limitations. He was, after all was said and done, a child, his mind and body stuck in the moment Crenoral stole him from the daylight. In truth, I had never thought about it before, that while I aged slowly, I did age, and none of the others did. I was constantly maturing. I noticed it as the dawn pulled him to sleep, while I, still excited from whatever fun we'd found in the night, lay awake beside him. I saw it as my head inched slowly passed his shoulder. I could see it in minute ways if I looked, my fingers lengthened, my hair grew longer, my appetite lessened … and Adan remained the same. Our interests began to change as well.

  Our play became increasingly violent and Adan's desire for blood intensified. I was generally sated easily, and sharing a meal with him was sufficient most nights for me. Many nights I had no need to feed, or chose not to as I saw nothing that interested me. As time passed, Adan desired more. His needs carried us miles from home, down the mountains to the shores of the Black Sea in search of towns and villages that had never heard of our kind, or felt the sting of our bite. On those nights we were forced into the mountain caves for shelter. As he fell into the deep sleep of the Family, I lay awake, listening to the strange sounds and smelling the odd odors and wondering what made me different.

  It was becoming obvious that I was different, and my interest in our violent death games was waning. We fought over little things, and it would hurt me every time he would storm away in anger. I wanted him to stay with me, so I would give in and do as he desired, but my heart wasn't in it. We began hunting separately from time to time, and I would find him returning with Arda and Vahe. I suppose it matters little which one of us stopped looking for the other first, but eventually I was alone again, and Adan was just another member of the Clan.

  Occasionally after that I would hunt with Crenoral, but it never felt the same again. I was changing, realizing I was not like the others. I was not human either, and that left me to wonder where I fit in. Crenoral began to seem to me as the others did … cold, distant, so unlike the father I had once adored. The night eventually arrived when I, in all my child-like wonder, truly saw him for the first time.

  We were hunting together, alone in the quiet of the early night. Not far from the mountainside where we dwelled, we came upon a family of three, settling in to sleep beside their wagon. They were young, the mother could have been no more than seventeen or eighteen, the child barely three. Crenoral played with the man when he roused at our approach. Crenoral taunted them, the Change plain upon his face. Their fear only encouraged him. The child cried, perhaps sensing the coming death, and I found myself holding her, trying to quiet her. The hunger burned hot inside me as Crenoral joked with the man, earning uneasy laughter, then embarrassment and finally the man's anger. He lunged at Crenoral who only caught him and bent him to his pleasure.

  Then, he tormented the woman, her dead husband's blood staining his face as he touched her breasts and kissed her. He flirted with the idea of bringing her into the Family, having grown bored with his latest fling, and not yet ready to go back to my mother, as he always did eventually, but in the end he killed her. I was still holding the child. He was sated, happy with himself … a monster. He laughed at my revulsion of him and mocked the protective way I was holding the child.

  I felt the hunger inside of me and clung to it, utterly revolted by what I had just witnessed. The child began to cry again as Crenoral grew angry with me. “What will you do, Amara? Leave it here to die slowly?” he asked, circling us. I felt hot tears sting my own skin as the Change transformed my face and the need to kill filled me.

  “I will not kill it,” I said, clutching the child tightly to me. “I will not.”

  “It is not a choice … look at you.” His voice was low, menacing. “I can feel how much you want her.”

  Small blond curls tumbled out from under her bonnet and big blue eyes opened to stare at the mask of evil on my face. I felt as if she was looking through me, touching some part of me that had never lived until that very moment. Yes, I wanted her. My heart pounded with it, wrapping around her own as if to squeeze it from her breast. “No, Father. I will not. She is–”

  “What, Amara? What is she? What is she if not food to sustain you?” He crowded over me, his eyes dark. The pressure of him nearly broke me.

  “A child. Innocent. I will not kill her.” I repeated it like a mantra as I released her and set her in the grass beside the dead body of her mother.

  Crenoral stared at me in disbelief, then looked to the child. She had ceased her crying, and only looked upon us, as if memorizing our faces. “Innocence is no protection,” he said. “Innocence is only the absence of knowledge. Think how sweet she will taste, how hot her blood must be now.”

  “No.” I turned my back and took the first steps away. He followed.

  “Kill her now, or be punished.”

  I stopped and looked up at him. The Change had left his face, but in the dark his scowl was dangerous and his eyes glittered with anger. It frightened me, but I did not respond, only stepped away. He continued to follow, his fury almost palpable on the night air. I hoped he would continue following me, and forget the small child alone on the side of the road. I hurt inside with the unanswered hunger, I hadn't fed in several nights, and his displeasure with me cut deeply.

  I kept moving until I was behind the closed door of my room, and even then I could feel him, hovering outside the door. I didn't sleep, and was up and out into the night almost as the sun went down. I had never before ventured out without at least Adan for company, but I could not bring myself to face him right then. I remember little of that night, but I hated myself. I hated what I was, where I came from. I fed to appease the hunger, but it left me morose and disgusted.

  When I returned, he was waiting for me on the ground floor, just inside the door. His hard hand came down across my face with a force that knocked me over. I lay still for a moment, then felt his hand in my hair. He pulled me to my feet and dragged me to the place that would come to be known as the punishment closet. It was a storage hole, barely big enough to stand in, and I still wore the body of a child. The door shut and was barred behind him.

  Time passed, I couldn't tell how much. My young body was unaccustomed to the starvation. It became harder and harder not to throw myself at the door, and to hold off the Change. Before Crenoral returned for me, I had spent more than twenty-four hours in the hold of the Change. I shook from head to toe, desperate to feed.

  He brought to me a child then, when he knew I could not resist. Thankfully, it was not she whom I had already spared, but a boy about the same age, his eyes wide and red as though he had been crying. His tiny heart raced, his blood called me. I tore his neck open and swallowed his life, nearly ripping his head from his small body. Crenoral laughed. “That is more like it, Little One. Do not disobey me again.”

  I did not feed again until the hunger became unbearable, until it tore me from my sleep and dragged me into the night. Then, I did it quickly, leaving little sign of my deed. I would leave early in the night with the young ones, brought to the clan by the impatient Vahe and Arda. Their hunger drove them all night long and they were easily distracted, allowing me to slip away and wander alone. I avoided Mother and Crenoral, certain that they would sense that something was wrong with me and punish me again. Crenoral's attentions however had returned to his first bride, and they were rather absorbed in themselves, so it made little di
fference to them if I chose company other than theirs. Indeed, it seemed as if Crenoral were as disgusted with my actions as I was with his.

  It appeared to all as if I fed as I had in the past, leaving early with the small group and returning several hours before dawn, but I fed little, hiding my starvation as best I could. I hovered near humanity, listening in on conversations of the world, of farming, hunting and children, love and desperation … things I knew little of. The lure of them was strong, I wanted them desperately, craved the warm rush they alone could provide, the heated passion of approaching death.

  More than that, I longed to be a part of their lives, their loves … their light. I wanted to stand in daylight and feel the heat of it kiss my closed eyelids and work its way into my soul. I was utterly smitten with the mortals who had been my playthings and suppers for as long as I could recall.

  Chapter 2

  I found that I loved to hear a voice sing, or watch children at play in the warm glow of a fire after supper. It brought a smile to my face, and made my heart shudder. The hunger filled me and I felt some great pleasure that rivaled the killing itself in the strain of holding myself still and silent and unchanged. I also found that I aged more rapidly when I went without feeding. In my infancy, my mother had counted decades as mortals do months, and the decades since Crenoral had brought Adan had seemed as years. I could, at long last, pass myself off among humanity as a young woman of fourteen or so.

  It was then that my heart governed me most. Long nights I would walk alone, unwilling to take human life. I would feed every few nights on wildlife, sparingly. Once or twice fate conspired to leave in my path a wounded or sickly soul, who would not live whether I fed or not. Soon, even that left a bitter taste on my tongue. I would hold them and whisper things they could never understand. I tried to be gentle and take what I needed to survive. When I'd finish, laying them softly back as I had found them, I would cry, sometimes violently, sobbing in an anguish I was unable to put into words. Once or twice, I became overwrought by it and would vomit back what I had taken, leaving them in a puddle of their own blood.

  I would hunt animals when the need grew to deafening volumes, falling upon deer, moose, whatever I could to feed the fire. Sometimes I would spot one of the others, watching me. In my most rational moments I knew the time had come to leave the Family all together, but I had yet to do more than think about it. Even then, I knew what my future life would be. Mathis, the old hermit who fancied himself a mystic saw it in me. He would whisper to all who would listen that I was the harbinger of their doom. He said the portents told that my unnatural creation was the omen of the end. Mother and the others had come from superstitious human stock, and easily believed him.

  Crenoral, of course, would not listen. I was still, on some level, his beloved daughter, and in his eyes they were merely jealous of his obvious affection. I may have angered and disgusted him, but I was his child, and he would not show me anything but affection in front of them, lest they think him weak and easily influenced. He showed no signs of recognizing that I no longer returned the affection, or of the changes within me.

  They knew. They watched me wander aimlessly all night and return no more sated than when I left. They could smell the bloodlust, the hunger I refused to feed. They taunted me; harassed me … tormented me until I wanted to turn all of my needing upon them and feast better than I had in months, even years. Mother knew as well, I think, as mothers sometimes will, but she said nothing. I wanted to be free from them all. How they sickened me … my stomach churning as they talked so trivially of death, to see blood dripping from open mouths as they fed. I hated them, despised them for what they were, what I was because of them … for the ease with which they killed, with no remorse, no regret.

  Time passed slowly, and I tried to make some sense of it, of my life. Mankind was growing and began to spread across the open spaces, building towns and villages where once wilderness reigned. I was still so young, so naïve, though my body had matured a great deal. I discovered that I could travel down the dark side of the mountain before the sun had completely set, covered in a heavy cloak and keeping to the shadows, allowing me to travel further away than I ever had before. I found a small village that I had never seen before, grown up several hours from my mountain home. Little stone and mud brick homes with closed roofs, wooden doors and windows clustered around a central gathering space with a fire pit and benches, all nestled in the shadow of the mountain.

  There was something familiar in the patterns of their lives, comforting to me in some way. I watched from the shadowed trees as the men returned from hunting and from tending the grain fields and the women scurried children indoors or served dinners. I listened to their language, and learned the words hovering outside their windows. Their women were strong and led the family in their daily chores, while the men saw to the building and filling the needs of their village.

  I learned that they had named the mountain on which I had lived my entire life. They called it Arakatz, and on certain nights they celebrated in ceremonies I could not comprehend. They had painted skin and chanted around a fire while one of their number performed some rite that invoked the great strength of the peak that overshadowed them and the grace of their god, Ar. Their lives were simple and I wanted, more than anything, to feel what they felt.

  In all I spent a year or more watching them, learning to braid my hair in a style which emulated the women, and styling my clothing after theirs. Garments of wool, dyed brown with pigments found in the earth, the women wore long skirts that protected their legs from the cold, often in layers so that they could carry things and dry their hands on the outermost layer, while still keeping warm.

  It was on a celebration night, early in the spring, when the irises and gladioli had not yet put out their first blooms, I stepped out of the shadows and followed the rumbling voices as the chant rose, into the village center where the holy man poured out an offering into a wooden bowl on the shrine. The smells of the wood fire, the sweaty bodies that danced in disarray near the fire, all swirled around me, intoxicatingly. There was expectancy on the air, as they made their pleas to Ar for their coming planting, and the hunt that would follow to supplement the remaining of their winter stores. The emotion was thrilling, and I let it sweep over me, wanting their happiness to be my own.

  As the celebration came to an end, I was reluctant to leave. I knelt alone, warming my hands over the remains of a once roaring fire. There I felt calm, the glow of the hot coals bathing my hands in a ruddy color that made them look nearly human. The air around me grew quiet as I knelt there and the villagers scattered to their homes. The pounding of my heart quieted and I breathed deeply of the life that infused that place.

  “You are not of our village,” a voice said near me.

  I jumped upwards, pulling my hands back away from the fire as if they might somehow give me away. “No. I am … not,” I said haltingly. I was frozen to my place, caught in uncertainty. Some part of me wanted to run, far and fast, and never return. The part of me that was drawn to them, bade me to stay and talk. I did not know what to say, and my grasp of their language was entirely theoretical. “I live … with my family … not far from here.” I was too nervous to consider lying, but neither dare I tell the truth.

  He nodded and poked a long stick into the fire. I recognized him as the holy man who spoke at these celebrations and prayed for the people. Up close he seemed much younger than I had anticipated. He had removed his ceremonial headdress and I could see he had short, curly hair that was lighter than most of those in the village, a soft blond-brown that was echoed in his beard.

  “What brings you to us?” he asked, his voice clear and pleasant.

  I was sure I could never articulate what had brought me to enter that village that night. “We, my family, have no village.” I stopped, struggling for words. “We live alone, up on the mountain. I wanted to see.”

  His eyes were dark, but glittered in the dying light of the fire. “What di
d you see?” he asked.

  “My people have no … ceremonies, like yours. It was beautiful.”

  “Do you not have gods?” he asked, stirring the coals of the fire.

  I shook my head. “No, not as such. My father would not approve.” I tried to imagine Crenoral giving an offering to some faceless god, but could not.

  “Where is your father?”

  I looked up from the coals, slightly startled. “You are a young woman, and it is well past supper. Won't he worry for your safety?”

  I knew I should leave, but couldn't bring my feet to move. I found myself speaking again. “My brothers and sisters are not far away, looking for one of our animals that broke loose. I came with them.”

  I was completely enamored of him in those few minutes, his voice, the gentle nature, the concern for my safety. “I am Amara.” I said, almost breathlessly. I had never given my name to a mortal before.

  “And I am Adroushan, priest of Ar for the people of this village.”

  Nearby I could sense one of the others, probably Arda. “I should go now.” I said, moving away. I paused and turned back. “Could I … come back, another time?” I held my breath.

  He smiled and nodded and I exhaled in relief. That began my first friendship among mankind. Once every ten days or so I would appear in the little village in the shadow of Arakatz and seek him out. At first I asked questions, curious about his god, and the people. We would spend the early dark sitting outside his hut while he told me the stories of his people and of the great city more than a week's journey north. He showed me clay tablets with curious symbols on them that he said recorded the stories he taught me. As spring gave way to summer, I brought gifts of wild flowers and shiny stones I sometimes found in the caves. As summer gave way to autumn, I came with shells and smooth stones from the sea. When winter blanketed the valley in white and hunting was scarce, I brought rabbits and deer from parts of the mountain they would never reach in the snow.