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

Part 14 - Pale Lotus

Escha is not impulsive. That I know. Since he was a child, he has been a boy of long plans. For Escha, all things must be beautiful, and beauty comes from a deep sense of meaning. For Escha, innocence is beautiful, and suffering is the price of nobility. He had cut himself down the long old slashes on his arms, where he had been bled for Nataniellus, but too shallowly to bleed to death. I lifted his body and laid him on the wooden table under the window. I went out, and brought a large basin from the Egyptian women on the first floor, and made many trips for water, filling it. 

And then slowly, methodically, I washed him, from toes to fingertips to collarbones and earlobes. I massaged his scalp with fine salt and ran my fingers through his hair. I massaged oil into his skin and wiped it away with the back of the knife he had cut himself with. I clucked over his wounds and wrapped them tightly with fine linen from fabric he must have brought me when I had been insensible to him. And when I had put him to bed, I scrubbed the floor on my knees to wash the smell of his blood away. 

When he woke, he began to scream. I sat up so that he could see me, to the elbows blooded from scrubbing the floor, and he turned his head away, and I almost laughed, because I saw him as my little one, having a tantrum because he was overtired, and because I was relieved to be with him again. I cooed over him, and hummed, and sat beside him so that he could hold onto me. And then he was kissing my neck with parted lips, and digging his fingers into the tender place behind the collarbone, which made me shout, and push him away. 

The look in his eyes was dark, much like he would look later in life, predatory and angry. He didn't speak. He tried to take my arm, to move me, but I do not move at anyone's will but my own. He tried to kiss me again. He was trying to make me as angry as he was. I sat very still, back straight against the low headboard. The white cloth I had wrapped his hair in was wet against my shoulder and he tried with his body to push me away.

"Don't block me out," he snapped, furious, voice rising. "I will not be blocked out. I am your own. You said to me that I am as your own. I would be given access. I will have what I would of you." 

"Who is this child who says 'I' to me," I said, softly.

"You are laughing at me. You are laughing. I can hear it in your tone," beginning to cry.

"Once, when you were small, your elder brother, your Iovita, took a stick from your hand and you came to me, screaming and screaming. You clutched at my linen robe and cried. I had never seen you so angry in all your life," I took him by the shoulders and inclined my forehead against his. "You said, 'Get him, get him, make him give me my stick', and would not be consoled until I promised to take you into town to get some nice cool plums to eat for your dessert that evening. And you liked those plums so well you forgot all about it. It still makes me laugh and laugh. It was only a stick but it made you crazy that he snatched it out of your hand. I thought, this child is like me."

He listened to this story with a crazy scowl on his pretty face. He was looking so nice, clean, and hair perked up and shining from the salt scrub, coming loose under the cotton. 

I pushed his hair back from his forehead, in an attempt to sooth.

"Does it please you, mocking me?" he demanded, but the breath was gone from his anger, and what was left was his sincerity, and his real issue. "It's easy for you. You are not afraid."

"Afraid?" I said, receiving him, stroking the linen wrapped around his arms. I kissed his temple. I asked him to tell me what was on his mind, and he sighed. 

"Did you wash me?" he asked suddenly, startled.

"Your nurse, my Nataniellus, spoke similarly as you do, sometimes. It does not seem so long ago to me, but I don't wonder that you can't remember his face at all. He used to shout at me that I should not speak harshly to him, because he had suffered, and I thought, does one not laugh at those who are sweet to us? You make me feel very happy, little one. I am sorry for hurting you. I am so relieved that you have lived, and it makes me smile that you are sulking."