Somewhere,
to all of us, there is a place of ultimate safety. We go there when the world
is too much for us to take and we need comfort and reassurance that, despite
all the raging evidence to the contrary, it won’t always be like this. For most
of us, it’s somewhere from our childhood, or a place that contains our parents
or friends. Or lovers, of course. The memory of the love of one so beautiful,
so compelling, so utterly spellbinding that we cannot help but find within
ourselves that echo of peace and turn it into a roar.
You turned
my echo into silence.
Loving you
was my greatest achievement and my most crushing defeat. I loved a monster, and
instead of my love moving you to become something better, I let your love turn
me into a creature of unspeakable horror. There is blood caked into the skin of
my delicate hands, and I can never find in me the safe place I might go to
promise myself that I will never again travel this dark and poisonous path.
There was a time when I was life, and when the thought of you brought me into
the light. Time and endless, endless suffering have made me nothing but death,
and nothing but yours. In the two thousand years since my own death, this has
never ceased to be true.
In the
months before it began, I can’t say I wish for more than the life I had carved
out for myself. I was, at that time, eighteen years old, safely cocooned in my
little home with my father, one of the town’s preachers. My people were
worshippers of the sun, and as it beat down on our earth and darkened their
skin, they would raise their faces to the light and give thanks. When my father
was young, he would lie in the sun, letting the light pour into his skin and
colour his mood. He met my mother by one of the cool water pools. He was twenty
six, and she twenty nine, old for marriage and parenthood. Many lived only to
early to mid-twenties, but he, filled with the divinity of his faith, was
healthy for his age and my mother, my mother was something altogether
different. She was nearing thirty, but her soft olive skin and wide set,
chocolate brown eyes made her look half her age. My father would often tell me
that he saw the light of immortality glittering behind her eyes, that the gods
had sent her to earth as a great gift, and it was a greater gift still that she
had chosen him to love. When I think now of his sweet words, it fills me with
sadness. The gods may have sent her, but they gave up on her the moment I began
to sleep in her belly.
When they
realised she was pregnant, no one expected her to give birth to a healthy baby.
Despite her apparent youth, there was no denying that she was too old to carry
a child and for both of us to make it through to the other side.
But my
parents, numbed to reality by their love and certain that they would be
protected by the gods, were optimistic. They ignored the words of the medical
men and soothsayers, and spent their days in the sun, making love, and
preparing for my birth. I used to ask my father if they were afraid that it was
all too much for my mother, if she showed any signs of faltering in those
months her belly grew heavy and her body grew tired. He would look at me,
sadness filling his face, and he would smile.
“She knew
what had to be done,” he would say, “She knew that you were coming because of
our love, and if losing herself meant that you would make it here, then she
knew-we both knew-that it was the only thing we could possibly do.”
When she
awoke in the darkest moment of night eight months into her pregnancy, her body
shuddering with pain as it knifed through her, I find it hard to believe she
did not regret her decisions. She must have sensed this pain was wrong, that it
was too soon, that neither she nor I were ready yet. By the time my father had
returned with help, it was already looking dire. Her blood, the first of so
much for me, filled the room, and me, half-born and already staring death in
the face, I was the choice to be made. She could be saved, or I could. Or maybe
neither one of us would see the morning. My father, on the rare occasion he
would talk about that night, says the choice was not his to make. My mother
knew even then so he said, that I was destined for otherworldly things. She
wrapped her fingers around my father’s hand and whispered in his ear that they
should let her go. She had come to life to love him, and to produce the child
she was about to bear. She was already halfway to the light, and this was the
only road she could travel now.
So I was
born, and as they lay my crying body on my mother’s silent chest, they prayed
for my soul and my protection. They should have prayed louder. No one spoke to
my father about my milky white skin or blond hair. They eyed each other
nervously as they looked into my bright, clear, blue eyes. I was like nothing
they had ever seen before, nothing they could comprehend. Already I was an
outcast. I should have stayed that way, kept to the shadows, never allowed to
speak to anyone blessed by the sun. But my father was a holy man, trusted and
respected, and perhaps more importantly, my fragile mother’s death had almost
destroyed him. His people, friends of them both, welcomed him back into their
lives and with him, his strange white-skinned baby. My father, overwhelmed at
what he now had to face, a world where he had to raise his daughter and adjust
to losing the only thing that could have given him the strength to do it, never
saw the uneasiness that I caused, the prayer from those who did not understand
how I had come to be, with my sapphire blue eyes staring into their brown ones.
I too did not understand. I was just born, and the echo of my mother’s death
still clouding me, her ghost clinging to my soft infantile skin. The first of
so many ghosts, of course.
So we lived
together in our little home, and as the years passed, the rawness of my
mother’s death was soothed for both of us, and the general suspicion with which
I was often treated also began to ease. I was as beautiful as my mother had
been, with a strange ethereal grace and lithe and slender limbs. I was clever
too, and my father would often take me out preaching with him, and I would
learn about nature, and I developed my vocabulary past that of many of the
older and wiser who lived amongst our people. I kept much of this knowledge
secret, as I knew that the slightest hint of my true intelligence would have me
branded our equivalent of a witch.
It was when
I was ten years old that I first noticed my father starting to wilt. At thirty
six, he was an old, old man, and his strong body had, over recent years, begun
to bend as his spine weakened and he struggled to face his beloved sun. His
eyes still sparkled but undoubtedly he was struggling. The seemingly endless
travel to heal and speak to those who needed to be healed wore him down, and
although he never spoke a word of complaint, his face would betray the effort
it took him to handle such things. Very often, I would stand beside him,
allegedly to act as a second speaker but in truth, he was braced against me as
he could not stand for any great length of time. His age brought him wisdom and
infinite respect, but his body grew weaker with every passing day.
My father
was giving a speech in our village on the eve of the summer solstice. There was
a feast prepared, and the air seemed pregnant with the endless promise of
summer. In my many summers since, I have never once failed to notice this
sensation as it returns and fills the world with anticipation. We all feel it
fill our bodies with excitement and then allow it to rise within us, this
feeling that we can do or believe anything. The magic of the summertime and so
many of us revel in that feeling. Not me, though. It feels me only with the
memory of that first summer. The summer that I gave my life to the darkness,
and made a promise to a monster that cost so many lives.
My father
was extremely ill. In truth, I wondered whether he would make it to see the
solstice morning. He was completely bent double, and coughed incessantly, his
thin hair hanging down over his shoulders, where the bones protruded painfully.
The stick that he used to walk was doing a pitifully insufficient job, and he
could take no more than a few steps without having to rest. I washed him with
cool water as I noticed that his skin, although as thin as a leaf, was hot to
the touch. As I ran my cold hands over his face, he caught my eye.
“It will
not be long now, my beautiful daughter. My body aches, and my soul is ready to
fly. Soon you will be facing this without me, although you will not be alone.”
His face
was peaceful, his fate accepted. My wide blue eyes welled with tears. I could
not lose my father. My life had no meaning were it not for him. I gripped his
hands as though I were trying to pull him back from the light he was sauntering
so casually towards.
“You are
strong, stronger than this. You will make it through, father. You and I, we
will make it through.”
He shook
his head then, and it was probably the only time he knew more about death than
I. So I helped him up and shuffled his tired body out of our home, where the
people waited for him to teach them absolution. I stood close by, watching his
face, checking to see if he needed support or rest as he spoke. But he needed
no help that night. He was filled with vigour, as though accepting his imminent
death had given him a renewed jolt of life. And I, at only ten years old, felt
as though it were my heart that was slowing its beat. A life without him, I
thought, is no life at all.
And then I
saw him.
In the
crowd of people, faces I knew well and had grown up with, there was a man I had
never before seen. He was like me. His skin was a soft, milky white and his
hair, although dark, was long and silky smooth, not coarse and heavy like
everyone else’s. And he seemed…sinister, I suppose. There was an empty circle
around him, as though those nearby did not dare get too close, and he carried
the air of a predator. Even to my ten year old eyes, there was something
alluring and passionate about him. I had never before had a sexual thought
about a man, but even from twenty feet away, I felt heat rising within me and
my heart find its beat. When he looked at me, it very nearly stopped again. His
eyes were not brown, like every pair of eyes I had ever found myself looking
into. His eyes were, once again, like mine. But where mine were a dark blue,
the colour of the deepest ocean, his were light, the colour of the sky on a
clear day. And when he stared at me, he was not just looking at me. He looked
into me, and his eyes might have been bright, but there was something dead
inside them. His eyes felt like an invasive touch, perverse and assuming. I did
not want to hold his eye, but I could not pull myself away. Fear and desire
rose inside me, and I did not know what to do. He looked to be about fifteen
years my senior and he should not have been looking at me that way.
When that
thought passed through my mind, a smile crossed his lips and all I could think
was that I wanted to have those lips upon my skin.
My father
chose that moment to collapse. There was a cry of surprise from the crowd, and
I was shaken from my reverie. I darted forwards and rushed to pick him up. He
was heaped on the floor, his body trembling as it fought for air. I rolled him
over, willing him to fight and knowing he couldn’t. But I wouldn’t have him die
to an audience. I bundled up his tiny body and an ache broke inside me as I
realised how little he weighed. The sea of people parted to let us through as I
carried him back to our home.
The
thoughts of the stranger had flown from my mind the moment my father had fallen
to the ground. As I carried him I could no longer feel him fighting for breath,
his racked body clutching on for life. I had kidded myself into thinking he
would fight long enough for us to have a proper goodbye, but as I lay him upon
his bed, I expected him to have already flown. But he had not. His greyed skin
was sunken and his eyes closed, but there was still the quietest of heartbeats
keeping him on this earth. I leaned over and kissed his cheek, giving a silent
prayer that I would at least be able to say goodbye. I hadn’t realised I was
crying until I lifted my head and saw his skin was wet from my tears.
I was ten
years old. No matter how old he was, this shouldn’t be happening.
The grief
tore into me like a knife ripping through silk. I could not bear the thought
that tomorrow when I woke, my father would not be here with me. Without him, I
had nothing but his memory to keep me safe and happy, and it would not be
enough. I was not yet ready to be alone. Tears fell upon tears as I tried to
accept what was happening before my eyes. I wailed incoherently as the sadness
bled into me. I was not aware of even my father now as I struggled to face his
death. I certainly was not aware that he and I were not the only people in the
room. This is why I cried out in fear when my tears were interrupted.
“I can help
him.”
The words
were spoken calmly, and not loudly, yet I heard them even over my own noise. I
swirled round, and even before our eyes met, I knew it was going to be the
stranger from outside. He was even more compelling up close. His perfectly chiseled face was hypnotic, and his blue eyes were frighteningly entrancing.
He took a step towards me, and his body moved quickly, fluidly, in a motion I
have not only come to relive, but have experienced many times over the course
of my cursed life. Probably too many times.
He crouched
down beside me, and for an instant, my brain forget my grief and my body
reacted to him being so close to me. Then he reached forward and touched my
dying father’s skin, and my father shuddered as though electricity ran through
his veins. The stranger turned to me.
“I can let
him go, or I can bring him back to you. It’s your choice whether he lives or
dies.”
I stared at
him, not knowing what to say. My father was old, for our people, and had been
dying for some time. Bringing him back was probably the most selfish thing I
could do. But I couldn’t contemplate a world without him, and this man in front
of me vibrated with a darkness and light that my ten year old mind could not
begin to grasp, even if I sense it. His blue eyes bore into me. My voice trembled
as I spoke.
“Save him.”
The
stranger smiled. Obviously, I had passed an important test. He once again put
his hand on my father’s skin, although this time, his reacted was far more
muted. He was turned away from me as he gave me his last instruction of the
night.
“Leave us.
Do not return until morning, and he will be well. And expect to see me once
again. We are destined for more than this, you and I.”
He turned
to face me then, and we shared a moment. His eyes poured into mine for just a
second too long, and I found myself leaning in to kiss him. But he moved his
face away, and I stood to leave.
©Nicola Pearce
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