Chapter 45 #3
When I am strong enough to stand, I try to run away. I try to run into the sun, to let it burn me through. You’re too smart for me, you’ve barred the doors somehow. I am too weak to break them down. I crumple against them, raging.
“I will let you go once I know you will not try to kill yourself again,” you say. “I spent too long searching for you to watch you die.”
You bring me humans and I drain them against my will because I am so hungry. Now that I am revived, I am consumed by the need to feed, to replenish my dead body. I am feral with my need for blood, cracking the marrow of the bones to suck what I can get from it.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“Who?”
“The woman in the sitting room,” I hiss. “The one you called your heart.”
“Ah.” You tap your fingers on the ground. “I made a mistake.”
I scoff and look away. It wasn’t just you that drove me underground though. That would give you too much credit, admit how weak I truly was. It was the loss of Zora, the realization that I could never have a friend.
You were not enough, and it burned me worse than the sun.
“I thought I could fix your problem. You were miserable, so I thought I could create another to satisfy you. It was a rash decision,” you admit.
“Satisfy me? Fix my problem?” I hate these words and I bare my teeth at you.
“You wanted a friend. I tried to find you one.”
“You think I am stupid.”
“I do not.”
“You must, to think I would fall for this. That I would believe that the woman you called your heart in our sitting room was there to be my friend.”
“I made a mistake,” you say again. It is the second time I’ve ever heard you say it, and it is in the same night. I should revel in it, instead I feel nothing.
When I am strong enough, we leave. You’ve washed and dressed me while I sleep. I don’t recognize the clothing, the material strange on my skin.
The new world is foreign and loud. Cars, trains, television, telephones. It barrels past me while you explain. “You can go anywhere now. Anywhere you desire, all you need to do is get on an aeroplane or ride a train. There are still wars to worry after, but we are creatures capable of much.”
“I want to go back,” I say.
“There are many marvels built, new world powers. You’ve been gone through several wars, it is for the best. Humans are cruel.”
“Take me back.”
“You can hate me all you want,” you say as we are on a train heading east. “But you must live.”
“I’ve seen enough of the world. It is the same thing, over and over again. I grow tired of it.”
“You have seen nothing,” you say. We get off the train and take another and another and another. We journey past fields of grain, past cities. You show me television, you show me the telephone.
“You can pick this up and speak to anyone, anywhere in the world,” you tell me.
“Who do I have to speak to but you?”
“This box will show you anything and everything from all over the world. They make movies and TV shows, you can see the news. Think if you could watch your favorite play whenever you liked, even if it were a country or five away.”
“Where is the charm in something everyone else can see? What is the use?”
I do not think you sleep, because I sleep and wake with you watching over me. You bring me humans when I refuse to hunt. You usher me onto another train.
At last, we leave a train station and take the stairs above ground.
Before us towers a building so unlike anything I’d seen before. Grander than the pyramids, than the Colosseum, than the ships the Vikings sailed on.
“The world has changed so much,” you say as I stare up at its greatness. It etches at my numbness, cracking it.
“What is it?” I ask.
“They call it The Dom. It is my favorite. It was destroyed in the last world war. They repaired it, and I rather like how it looks now.”
“World war?” I ask.
“Humans are cruel,” you say. “But the world is not the same one you left. There is so much beauty in it still.” You turn me to look at you, your hands framing my face.
“Melinoe, I will do whatever it is you ask of me.
If you tell me to leave now and never find you again, I shall.
If you say you want to rejoin me, be at my side while we explore this new world together, I will.
“Just know that I’ve searched for you every day since you left.” You pull my necklace from behind your shirt, where it’s rested against your chest. I’d caught glimpses of it but refused to look. Now I have no choice.
“I’ve scoured the world. I compelled every one of our kind I could find to make them tell me if they’d seen you. I hunted your scent and when the trail ended, I did not realize you’d…” You trail off, your hand pressed to your lips. “You’d been there this whole time.”
I have no words, so I stare up at the cathedral instead of at you.
“Promise me you will not bury yourself again and I will do whatever it is you wish.”
I step away from you and toward the cathedral. You trail behind me as I push open the door and wander through the antechamber. The lights from the street filter through the stained glass, painting the floor in brilliant shades of red and green and blue.
“You’re not allowed—”
“Leave us,” you command the human that tries to stop us.
I trace my fingers over the pews, I walk across the altar, I sit beneath the effigy of this god and stare up at him. He stares down at me in silence.
At last, I turn to you.
“You were my whole world,” I say. “I do not know who I am without you.”
“Is that what you want?” you ask.
“Yes,” I say, my voice so quiet I don’t think you hear it. “I want to know who I am.”
“You are beautiful and smart and strong. You have an endless zest for life, and a restless spirit that demands more. When you sing, it is like the gods of the forest and sky are with me. You are my everything,” you say, desperate. I’ve never seen you so undone before, so raw.
It makes it harder to say my next words.
“I do not know this about myself. I do not know if that’s what you’ve made me, or what I am without you.”
We stare at each other for a long time, then you nod and step back. “You cannot know I dug you up, then.”
“I suppose not,” I agree.
We get back on the trains, stopping when we must, until we are back in France.
We stand over the earth where you dug me up, the grave still open to the world. You lead me to the house near the field. We put back on my tattered clothes, we cover me with dirt.
“Is this what you want?” you ask me.
“Yes,” I say.
“Forget I dug you up.”
“If you are going to kill me, you must know the truth of it,” you say, your voice wavering. “If you still believe this is the only way to know who you are, if this is the only way to be free, then do it.” Your hands clasp mine harder, the tip of the stake now denting into the flesh of your chest.
“I am yours, Melinoe, even if you are no longer mine. You are what I think of when I wake and when I sleep. But I erred greatly because I am selfish, and in my selfishness, I hurt you. No words will ever make up for what I’ve done.
The punishment is yours to decide, because you are the one I so grievously injured. ”
“Aletheia,” I sob.
I drop the stake.