The Story of the Vampire, L (Completed | Featured )

Part 5 - The Faun

 After I came out of the water, I slept for several days. Sleeping, I dreamed of Egypt.

I was born in what became Assyria, in the shadow of Aleppo, to a tribe of hill people who had more or less settled outside its walls. In those days, we believed in spirits, and sang songs to each other at night, because it wasn't only us who were alive, but everything, and there is magic in that. This, I still believe. But it is not Aleppo I dream of, though I lived a life there, and though its songs still creep in me, and my hurts still bleed.

When I dream it is of Egypt. I think that someone killed my family, and that I knew who it was, and that I chased them through the burning country. I think that I was rich enough to have horses, or that I got them somewhere, and that I had been willing to risk their lives and mine for revenge.

But I don't remember. I know that my white Arabian reared and threw me, that she ran off in the night with everything I had left, and that when I looked around for what had spooked her, I found it.

For that time, my life had been very long, and I know that the prospect of my death did not frighten me, and that all thought of vengence left my body with my life, and that I'm dead now, but that's alright. With that death, who I had been passed away, and I spent many days in the water on my own, floating on the surface by light of the moon, and underneath it by light of day. I think that it is impossible for the children to do this now. The blood has been so diluted. I think I never thrashed and struggled as they do, but my memory fails me often.

My maker never spoke to me. What reason he made me, I don't know. This does not bother me. Lives are so little, shadows so easily broken up, what does it matter what the reason was? I spent some time in the water, looking at my reflection, curious and disturbed by how the years had been erased, as if my life and what I had lost had never been. What did I look like when I was living? I don't know, but it wasn't like this.

My people covered their bodies to keep the sun away, to keep stinging sand off of our skin. We often huddled together as if we were all of us one person, telling our stories, and I would lead a quiet prayer to protect us, and sift the coals, and these memories are strong in me. In Egypt, they wore thin linen around their waists and black kohl around their eyes, as did I. I would lie in the sun, imagining myself a river lotus, opening, young wet petals unfolding, drying, touching sunlight for the first time, which is also the feeling that I feel when I drink of blood, a bloom in the body which I was made for. After I went home from the water, in Herculaneum, I dreamed myself the openness of a river lotus, over and over again, my body calling for the blood, lying on my back in my cubiculum, so emptied. A bud tightly closed and flower hidden.

Escha sat with my body, wetting my face and collarbones with damp cloths and playing at sentry. I admit I grabbed him more than once, by the upper arms. I admit that when I woke, I tried to drown him once, because my body cried and cried for him, and I convinced myself that if he were dead it would be quiet in me again, but sense returned at his thrashing in the water, and we never spoke of it, but I know that for all of his life he feared the water. 

I wandered mad for a brief time. Sometimes, Yaksha was there, of India, and of Egypt. He still darkened his eyes with kohl, lines drawn from the corner of his each eye nearly to the ear, skin darkened and robust-seeming. He never said much to me in Herculaneum, but I knew that he wanted me to go away from there. He would stand at a distance, as if waiting. When he wasn't near me, it was as if he didn't exist.

Ariel had gone, into the earth or to another place. I have never known.

***

I found myself wandering in Herculaneum by night, as if I were looking for something hidden by its roads, not knowing where I really was. In the deepness of the very early morning, when it seems the people will never wake, I would look for the voice I had heard, the clear one. And then I stumbled upon it, while sitting against a stone wall, dreaming. It came from the window above me, accompanied by a lyre, as if a lamp had suddenly lit. My insides lit white with it for a bare moment, sending a warm cascade from the top of my head to my feet, traveling slowly. I suppose that feeling is relief. Perhaps it is joy.