Chapter Six: Humanity
I'm alive! You wouldn't think it, given how long it's been. Life has been very... life... this 2021, and I really wanted to give this part of the story time. For all of you still here, my undying appreciation, it honestly means so much! A belated special thank you to Victor, who so kindly put together a wonderful wealth of information for me on Romanian culture and history to inform this work. It is still underused in the current posts, (and I'm sure I'm making some mistakes!), but as I develop and expand this world, his help was invaluable. I wish you all Yuletide blessings and hope this double update does something to help you enjoy the darkness. See you in the new year!
For my cub.
Full work summary: Cast out of his village and freezing to death in the snow, Sparrow finds himself rescued by a mysterious and beautiful woman, living in a grand house in the mountains. As he falls under the spell of his strange host, he finds himself brought into a dark world that presents a destiny he never could have imagined. Submission to a vampire is only the beginning.
Previously: Sparrow stumbled across Vestalia, his rescuer and lover, in bed with two chained prisoners, one of whom she then drained of blood and left dead on the floor. Terrified, he fled her manor. But Vestalia pursued him on wings, flew him to the rooftop, and reclaimed his body, drinking from his throat.
Chapter summary: Sparrow contemplates what has happened, under the care of Cyrus, Vestalia's groundskeeper. He visits the surviving prisoner and finds himself strangely drawn. Vestalia and Cyrus undergo an old practice and we learn more of their dynamic.
The quotations from Japanese poetry at the end are from One Hundred poets, One Poem Each, (Penguin Classics, 2018, tr. Peter MacMillan), no. 25 Fujiwara no Sadakata, no. 44 Fujiwara no Asatada, no. 50 Fujiwara no Yoshitaka. N.B. for art reasons, this story refers to flame lilies as being safe to touch, but they can cause skin irritation, so if you come across them, use gloves!
"Ah, at last, there you are, Little Bird."
"No, go away."
"I've been looking for you everywhere, we must go to the church."
"I don't want to."
"Why not?"
"Because if I go, then..."
"Ah, then you will have to accept that Marius is dead. You will have to say goodbye."
"I don't want to."
"I know, Little Bird, none of us do. But Marius has left us, the mountain has taken him. We cannot have him back, so we must say goodbye."
"I don't want to say goodbye. It feels so heartless. He didn't want to die, so it feels heartless to say goodbye as if he was a leaving guest."
"Perhaps. But funerals are not for the dead, you know."
"Then who are they for?"
"For us. If we don't bid Marius farewell, then he will not rest and the mountain will be haunted for us. We will lose our home to ghosts and we will never smile again. But if we take the time with him to say goodbye, if we part well, he will be able to leave us for his new existence and the mountain will be for the living once more. All our lives we will feel loss - loss of people, loss of hope, loss of strength, loss of faith. We need our mourning rites, they clean our souls out, let us face a new day. Without rites, we'd be trapped in purgatory even before our own deaths. We'd become ghosts, barely even human anymore, adrift in the spaces between lives."
"But if we make ourselves feel better, isn't that like saying he wasn't important?"
"Oh, Little Bird, not at all, not at all. Mourning rites are how we show how important we are to each other. Humans mourn because we love. We can't help but love each other. And you are very good at love."
"I am?"
"You are. Now, come perform the rites and stay human with the rest of us."
*
Rain drummed idle fingers on the towering window, silver and shadow braiding on the glass and wandering slowly down the pane, drooping and drifting like willow branches. The sound of thudding water rumbled in the dense, stone walls and the deep earth below. It played the gutters like a glockenspiel. It tapped on the teeth of gargoyles and pattered on the broad leaves of ivy clinging to the mortar. Mist veiled the drop down the mountain and caught like cobwebs on the knotwork hedges. The grass flushed emerald. Everything else fell into muted grey.
Sparrow curled in the window seat of his bedroom, hugging his knees, his head rested lightly on the cool glass. He gazed unseeing out into the landscape. It all seemed so small. The stewing, drab cloud obscured the soaring vastness of the sky and hazed the foaming mountain tops. The world was fading from him.
He wrapped the fine blanket closer about him, the slippery softness draping over his arms and legs and hanging loose over his narrow torso. He'd woken past noon to find a new set of neatly folded garments and a locked door. He'd eyed both with an uncomfortable surge of resentment, wrapped his sore, naked body in the blanket and nestled as close to a way out as he could get. But there was no real way out. He knew it in what was left of his blood. He could go and it wouldn't be over. He would always be here inside himself. He'd come alive here.
He'd died here.
Died so beautifully.
Death wasn't supposed to be beautiful.
He combed his fingers into his tangled hair and massaged his scalp. His brain felt like a lump of wet moss. He dropped his head forward and his neck smarted. He hadn't been able to bring himself to look in the mirror, but he could feel the wound she'd left on his throat like two pins were holding his tendons together. It ached to his spine. The ache was sweet. He hated that it was sweet. His whole body was tender, muscles strained from that nightmarish hurtle through the night, bruises on his back from the hard, slate tiles of the roof. His chest kept squeezing and his eyes were hot underneath. He felt skinned, even the lap of the blanket like a cat's tongue. He took a deep, slow breath. He filled with the smell of wood smoke and the herbal tea left with his clothes.
He closed his eyes and listened to the rain. It deadened his thoughts.
Drum. Drum. Drum.
Then another drum, out of time.
The door.
Sparrow's heart pounded, the apathy shooting from him in a spike of panic. He sat up straight, fists clutching the blanket, and stared like a rabbit across the room.
The knock came again. His pulse tripped over it.
A gruff voice came muffled through the oak. "Sparrow? It's Cyrus."
Sparrow's throat closed, his wound twinging. The memory of the burly man hauling bloody bodies washed his vision.
Cyrus murmured dully through the door. "I'm here to tend your wound, may I come in?"
Sparrow couldn't speak. He glanced about for a hiding spot, but everywhere just put his back against a different wall. He grit his teeth and curled his toes to spring.
The scraping of a key. A harsh click. A whisper of wood. The creak of a heavy boot. Cyrus stepped weightily into the room, carrying a wooden box and a bland, unreadable expression. He closed and relocked the door behind him. Sparrow watched the little, silver key vanish into the cavernous pocket of his coat. Cyrus turned to face him, staying at the opposite side of the room, a bear crossing the path of a fox. His thick eyebrows lowered a fraction. "You're not dressed, are you sick?"
Sparrow's pulse thumped weakly in his veins. The feel of his blood moving spiralled last night's events through his mind and made his stomach lurch, then flutter in excitement. He swallowed the unpleasantly pleasing sensation down and kept his gaze warily on Cyrus, the fox watching the bear for danger.
Cyrus didn't move. His stance was easy, his broad shoulders low.
Sparrow rolled his jaw and spoke hoarsely through his tender throat. "You said the clothes she gave me were from visitors."
Cyrus nodded.
"Visitors or victims?"
Cyrus' face tightened infinitesimally.
Sparrow jerked his head at the folded pile of clothes on the bed. "Whose shirt was that?"
Cyrus' peat eyes darkened another shade. "I don't remember."
"Is he dead?"
Cyrus' chest rose and fell in the odd mimicry of taking a breath that did nothing to enliven his eyes or speech. "He died happy."
Sparrow looked sullen back to the rain. "That's worse."
Cyrus said nothing. The clouds loomed low and more mercury shadows streaked down the glass and painted Sparrow's bare, warm-toned skin in the colours of grim winter. He regarded the boy calmly, cataloguing the creases in his brow and at the corners of his mouth, the new well-depth to his brown eyes, the pink smudging over his fine neck. He let out something like a sigh. He walked softly to the window seat, picking up a chair on route. He dropped the chair beside Sparrow and lowered himself into it. He shrugged off his coat and let it fall with a thud to the floor out of Sparrow's reach, so he couldn't pickpocket the key. But the idea didn't seem to have occurred to the lad. He kept gazing dimly out of the window, his body folding tighter and crumpling away from Cyrus. Cyrus rolled up his grey sleeves and unlatched the box. "Show me your neck."
Sparrow could smell turned, musty earth and something sticky under it, like rotting vegetables. His pulse had slowed again, but he could still feel it too harshly under his skin. He thought vaguely about being afraid of what was in the box and what Cyrus would do to him and how he might escape. He listlessly drew his hair over his shoulder and exposed his wound, letting the blanket wilt down his upper arm. He blurred his eyes in the interlace of raindrops. He felt Cyrus lean closer; no breath fell on him, but the scent darkened.
