Book 1: Going-Through
Prologue
"Quiet, my dear, just keep quiet, just do not cry! He will kill you if he hears you! Hold on to me, go on quietly, you only need to make it to the door. Then I will carry you in my mouth. Sweetie, do not turn around, just walk faster. Yes, I know Daddy is there, but he will not follow us. He wants us to leave without him."
"Ahan!
"For what I have done, I cannot be forgiven.
"For what I have done, your death will be my punishment.
"But you will die in my arms for I am death."
"Neeye? Where have you gone, you whining mongrel? Come here and whine even more pitifully, so that I could think better of doing anything else to you. Go and take a look at your male dog, you seemed to be wanting that badly. Well! Are you not going?
"After all, you loved him, where are you now, by thunder? Are you not ashamed of your cowardice? Are you afraid of pain, are you still afraid of anything after you lost everything? Will keep fearing for your worthless life? Will hide in the forest without ever trying to come at me?'
"So I was absolutely right to have turned you into a mindless beast. You have neither a reason nor a will of your own, you are only governed by most primitive emotions. I recall I was so amazed when I thought you were capable of love. And I almost believed that I did not know your true self, that you had hated us and never showed us your other feelings. But ought you not to have been here if it were love that had made you howl like that? My heart did rejoice at the sound! Why are you silent now?
"Or were you just being childishly hysterical? Did I disturb your peaceful night and really upset you by that?
"Could you have lost your mind and be unable to realize what is happening at all? Otherwise, I don't understand why hide in the thicket when I can find you and make a fluffy rug out of you in no time. Have you forgotten who I am? Can you still not recall after all this?
"You could not have forgotten, of course. But your idiotic train of thought has never been easy to guess at once. l will try again: you decided six years ago that you had managed to flee from me, so you will flee today like before. Right? Did it never occur to you that it was me who decided to let you go wherever you wanted?
"No surprise, though. You have never been modest and capable of seeing your own faults. Even your enormous mansion shows it. Gramia and I would never live in such a place. There had been two of us, there were two of you, but just look at the difference! You needed more space than we had needed? What for? And how did you persuade your male mongrel to buy this awful house? He did have some brains, unlike you, he must have been wondering. Did you promise him that you would have a bunch of children? Ridiculous. You are like a bottomless pit: no matter how much one pours in, everything disappears into the void. I must admit I feel sorry for him a little, even though he belongs to your soulless people too. I think he realizes now what sort of a life I saved him from. There was nothing more I could do for the one who had been meant for me before you replaced him. You are the only one to blame for everything that has happened, dear Neyee. You know, you have stolen everything that could have ever been dear to me, so I will always call you dear. Please, remind me of this if I forget, for I am not that young anymore...
"So, I felt sorry for your dog, but I wonder – did you feel the same about Gramiya when you escaped our place? I highly doubt it. You knew that your leaving would kill her, but you hated her, you mean, ungrateful girl, and I am sure you never looked back when you sneaked out. She died a day later. You have been killing her for a long time – ever since you took the life of our true daughter. And you have reached your goal finally! If only I had known!
"I could easily track you down then, but could not bring myself to it. Gramia would not come to life whatever I chose to do. And you were already too far away when I thought I would like to teach you a lesson, so I stopped thinking of revenge and went on with rebuilding my own life.
"But then I saw you this morning. You did not notice me, did not feel anything despite the training you got for free in my house. I could never imagine such an utter disgrace, such a terrible pettiness. You only thought of yourself and your wishes. I stood right around the corner and barely restrained myself from strangling you at that very moment. Only bewilderment stopped me: I could not figure out how on earth you had ended up here. How could someone clueless like you have gotten so far? You should have lived in a gutter, you know. It must have been pure luck or improbable conspiracy that you have met your dog. Without him you are nothing but a nuisance and have always been one.
"Apart from that, your curious neighbors were within earshot, and I was not ready to deal with them either. You can thank them for the last day of your human life. What am I saying though? You have never become a human being and never learned to be grateful. Are creatures like you capable of that at all? I wonder now – could it be that I was deceived by your appearance and expected things you just cannot do?
"But I can be grateful. And I would like to thank you for my realizing that I am not solely to blame for Gramia's death. I did think so before. How could I be such a fool when I had known you all along! Now I see everything as clearly as I should always have seen. It is fate, plain and simple. I would have never found you here myself, but even fate can no longer tolerate all the injustices you do to the people you meet. Fate brought me here so effortlessly that I did not suspect anything until I saw you. But then I instantly realized what I had to do. It was not easy, but I never shirk my duties, unlike you.
"However, you can get nothing out of this. I swear you think I turned on you just out of revenge. Well, a complete fool cannot be expected to see that my revenge would be something much more impressive than this. But I have not come here to just let off steam, no matter how much I wish for it. My fate brought me to you to restore justice – nothing more, at least not yet.
"I have been rewarded enough anyway. Part of my old dream has come true, even though I cursed all my aspirations years ago. You, Neeye, were born to help me to turn them into reality; instead, you have ruined my life. However, fate is neither blind nor deaf, and it knows how things were intended to be.
"And I am not blind to its hints either if I stop being hard on myself. I thought it was my momentary whim – to turn you into a beast to humiliate you. Now I see that I was prompted by fate again. It wants me to be avenged as well. Apparently, I was unfair to myself, imagining that you only wronged Gramia and I was hurt just because I loved her. You wronged me directly too, so I must return your evil to you – and you almost deprived me of my natural human form. You, who were given a human life nearly for the sake of it!
"I could not live like a human being when Gramia died and was almost willing to lose myself in my animal form. But I still managed to break away, and you will not. You are inept at our art and generally unintelligent and weak. You will definitely lose yourself, or rather, your petty mind that tries to imitate the human reason so poorly. It is with its help that you sneak here and there and lie to others and yourself. Without it, you will become a simple animal, not the best one either for it will inherit your character. You will forget who you were and will become a cowardly, silly and impulsive dog, and real animals will not like you.
"You will be alone, and the strongest thing left in you will be your emotions. They are funny to me, but I know they are cut out for you and will make you suffer in a way I cannot make you myself. I can torture your body to death, but I will not get to your soul. And your emotions will. Indeed, there is no better punishment. Your emotions are like mad dogs themselves, and they will reach you anywhere; you will not be able to hide within yourself, and I will see that nothing from outside distracts you too much.
"Oh yes, I do not care a straw about torturing your body. No physical pain is like the pain of loss and guilt, and you will feel it fully. How I will be enjoying that! But just think of it: at first I foolishly thought of locking you together with your mongrel's corpse in the basement and setting the house on fire. I buried Gramia like that, but I was not able to burn myself with her. It is not going to work for you either. Why, it is obvious: what you deserve is not a quick death but everything I felt after you killed my sister! How could I not understand it right away?! Fortunately, fate is much wiser than I am.
"I could tell in detail what awaits you, Neeye, but you do not seem to listen. I am sure you believe that animalistic thoughtlessness only makes life easier. I am not ashamed to admit to thinking so myself. Well, you will almost stop thinking, that is right. And nothing will stand between you and your nightmarish emotions which will not weaken any bit when you forget the reason for them. Your new body will only help. Animal sense of smell is stronger than memory, and it will make you frantically run about the house hunting your favorite scent; but it will be mercilessly fading away into windows and doors. I will lock the basement as tight as I can, but animal hearing is brighter than imagination, and you will hear the movement of worms from below and smash your head against the cover of the manhole until you bleed. You will forget that all of it happened because of you, but the guilt will burn like fire, and you will try to gnaw it out of your body and you will not succeed. No matter what you do, it will not alleviate your pain. Your torment and anguish will make you howl day and night, but no one will come to shoot a damn noisy dog. I will take care of that.
"If you try to seek your death yourself, you should know that your animal body will betray you just like you betrayed everyone you met. You will want to die more than anything else, but you will not be able to overpower your skin's primeval desire to live. And it has many years ahead, because you are a young and healthy animal. A restless and useless one, but these traits usually do not shorten life. I would even say they may help to live longer, ha ha!
"As you see, it is going to turn out pretty well, my lovely Neeye. Hope you were somewhere near pretending you did not care what I said. You seem to be not too polite a hostess... but I should admit I am not perfect either. Came empty–handed, a fine guest I am! All right, I can leave you a belated gift – still better than nothing. You know, I did not expect to meet you, so I just did not prepare well.
"The picture is a little worn, but I do not have another one with me, sorry. Let it be like this for now. Talking to the worms will bore you to death very soon – as if I do not know! They are nothing compared to your foster mommy, of course. I am sure you will be happy to talk to her once in a while. She is very young in the picture yet, so hopeful, energetic, and unbroken. Oh, my beloved sister...
"Next time I will bring more pictures. I really do not mind sharing them with you, dear Neyee, for you were part of our family after all. Even though the worst part imaginable. But we have already discussed it. As for the pictures, I will make them a monument to my dear Gramia here – and let them witness to the fact that I have avenged her."