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

Part 10 - Silver Mirror

I return to the subject of the mirror that Nonus found, the day that Escha arrived. He found it while digging in the dirt beneath the giant fig tree to the front of the villa. He had been doing as children do, digging with a stick in the freshly dried mud. It had stormed the night before, which is the most delicious time to cuddle each other, but after all of that smothering by us, Nonus nearly always went wild in the morning, scuttling about. Dig, dig. It would soon occur to me, years later, that it was the largest piece of polished silver I had ever seen. A boy does not think about such things, does he? When he cannot dream of possessing such things for his own. We looked at the mirror often in the first month, and then put it away among the linens. I did not forget it was there. 

On this day, two days since the episode beneath the stars, Nataniellus came into the kitchen and pinched the meat of my hip. "Funny boy, let's go to market," he said.

I was patting a bread loaf in the sunlight, about to slice it up for lunch, about to sneak a piece for my wine. Bread dipped in wine, lovely. There were nuts and some boiled eggs as well. Escha had been enjoying eating edible flowers, and so there were some, with white petals. A little boy with a flower on his tongue, a silly image. 

"I'm busy just now. You're free to go on your own," I said.

He took my hand, silent except for the sound of his breath, and pressed it against his cheek. The air in the mornings had taken on the character of a chill, and his flesh was soft and cool beneath my palm, the hard ridge of his cheekbone. The curve of my palm rested against his thin nose. 

"The children are talking about rain this evening. We're doing hair-dressing this afternoon. Does your hair curl in the wet?" I asked him. "If it does, that will be good practice for them." While I stroked his face, he closed his heavy-lidded eyes. I stroked the curve of his brow with my thumb. When he had come in, he'd had very clean brows, plucked and shaped. He, like I did, kept himself shaved, nose to toe, but the brows had begun to grow in. They were a burnt orange color, too. This shaving was not a luxury, but a cultivated habit.

"You're so good-looking," he said.

"I don't like that. Don't fawn over me. What do you want in town?"

"Yes, my hair curls in the wet."

I traced the head of coiled serpent ring around his left upper arm. Its eyes were black onix, its scales finely tooled in gold. Its tight coils indented his pale flesh slightly, causing the skin to blush. When I looked up he caught my eyes, gazing through his eyelashes. "Stop trying to be cute," I said. "You're old."

He licked his upper lip with the pink tip of his tongue and looked away. 

"If we go quickly into town, I can go, but we can't linger." We had never been to market together before. He had been there with the children a time or two, but it made little sense for two adults to go when the house needed looking after.

"Why should I linger?" he asked. "Is there something for me there? Do not the children need to eat? What will you feed them if you do not go to market?"

"We are provisioned. Are you wearing that?" I asked, mock-disdainfully, referring to the fine white linen tunic he wore. It was far finer than anything I owned, even better than what I had ever worn to entertain dinner guests. "Rags," I said, irritable in the humidity.

Just like now, he briefly pressed his cheek against my bare upper arm instead of answering me, and then took my elbow.  

We walked. As we walked together down the road, arm-in-arm, he told me that in his former life, not so long past, he always wore a hood to market, his hair covered and face shadowed like a woman. He was telling me about how the prostitutes painted their faces, and I was telling him how we painted ours, when I heard little sandals slapping the stony dirt behind us. I turned and Escha was running, closing the half mile from the house, his arms pumping away. In the two years since he had come to us, he had never forgotten his affection for me for a moment, so when I knelt to let him get onto my back he said, "Leave me, no. No," jabbing his sharp little chin into the curve of my neck. It hurt but I didn't shout, because my head was already clouded with the pain of a coming headache.