She collapsed into the snow and wept.
Grief poured out of her. For Lusa, who had left an imprint on her mind of hard-won wisdom and iron strength. For her father and his men and what she’d done to them. Most of all, she wept for herself and what she had become. She had thought she could go back to the convent, that she could be safe there. But if she went back, she would endanger them all. She would not be able to resist the hunger, and when it came, what would she do?
A vision leapt into her mind: Valeria and Adela, their naked bodies entwined with hers, their eyes wide and staring, their faces twisted with horror as Ruxandra drained the blood from them.
“No!” Her voice rang through the forest, sending the night birds flying and causing rustles as the winter foxes dashed away into the darkness. She put her hands over her mouth. I can’t let them find me. They’ll kill me. Or I’ll have to kill them.
The sky above started to lighten.
I’ll have to kill myself first.
Suicide was against God’s law. To kill oneself was to throw away God’s gift of life, and that was the ultimate sin. But I am not one of God’s creatures anymore. I’m Lucifer’s, made by one of his angels, for the purpose of destroying life. Surely, God will grant me mercy for stopping myself from killing again.
Surely.
There was no question she was a monster. No question she should not be allowed to walk on God’s Earth. She had hoped that what the fallen angel had done to her in the cave had been temporary, but it was clear she had been turned into something so wicked that she should not—could not—be allowed to live.
For a moment she saw her mother’s hands, held out as the tiny child took her first wobbling step. Saw her mother’s smile when Ruxandra cried, “Mama.” Heard the words of a lullaby, felt the cool breast against her cheek then the warm rush of milk.
I’ve never remembered that before. I couldn’t have been two years old.
It doesn’t matter. I am not that girl.
Ruxandra straightened. She wasn’t cold, despite being barefoot and in a torn dress. A strong wind blew, and it whipped the dress around her, swirling up her bare legs. She watched the horizon grow brighter. It was almost dawn.
She started walking.
The sun was almost at the horizon.
She hoped to find a clearing where she could be hit by as much of the sun as possible. Instead, the best she could do was a small gap between the trees. She looked around, spotted a large tree; its lower trunk was bare of branches. It would do fine. She took off her dress and hung it on another tree beside her. Even naked, she had no discomfort.
I won’t be able to hide from the sun now. It will be faster this way. Ruxandra wrapped her hands around the trunk of the tree, squeezing as hard as she could. Fresh tears sprang to her eyes. It’s going to hurt so much.
Pretend you’re back at the convent. Pretend you’re doing penance for your sins. Pretend it’s merely a beating from Sister Sofia.
All I must do is endure.
The air grew warmer, and the sky glowed bright enough that it made her squint. She closed her eyes tight.
I will pray for Christ’s love first. Then I will pray for repentance and hope he is waiting for me.
She hoped he could forgive her. She didn’t want to go to hell. Would the demon—the fallen angel—be there? Ruxandra became embarrassed at the thought, as if the creature would think her ungrateful.
She asked, “Do you want to live?” And I said, “Yes.”
The warmth grew uncomfortable. She gripped the tree trunk tighter and prayed, “Christ, my God, set my heart on fire with love of you. That in its flame, I may love you with all my heart, all my mind, all my soul, and all my strength, and my neighbor as myself. So that by keeping your commandments, I may glorify you, the giver of every good and perfect gift. Amen.”
Set my heart on fire. It was almost funny, given what was about to happen.
Ruxandra remembered the agony from the last time. She swallowed hard and began the Prayer of Repentance, like the old soldier in the cave. She hoped she could face her death as well as he had.
“God, my good and loving Lord, I acknowledge all the sins which I have committed every day in my life, whether in thought, word, or deed. I ask for forgiveness from the depths of my heart for offending you and others and repent of my old ways. Help me by your grace to change, to sin no more, and to walk in the way of righteousness and to praise and glorify your name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.”
The sun broke the horizon, and her body was engulfed with pain.
She twisted and contorted as her flesh burned. Her teeth and talons came out as if she would fight the sun. Ruxandra drove her talons into the tree, refusing to let go. She would die and be done with it. She opened her mouth to pray, but the pain was so awful it took her breath away. She forced more air into her lungs and screamed, “O Lord, my God, I confess that I have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed! I have also omitted to do what your holy law requires of me! But now, with repentance and contrition, I turn again to your love and mercy! I entreat you to forgive me all my transgressions—”
Darkness.
She was surrounded by darkness, cocooned in it.
Is this limbo?
She could hear nothing, see nothing. She had expected to open her eyes to see the fires of hell or the gates of heaven or even the gray plains of Limbo where the dead wandered, forever denied the presence of God. But there was only darkness.
She sighed and turned her head. It moved only an inch before coming up against hard earth.
What?
She dug with one hand, found cold dirt beneath her fingers.
I’m buried alive?
Panic, raw and wild, tore through her body, driving her into frantic motion. She began scrabbling with her hands, talons ripping through the earth. She screamed and thrashed. Dirt filled her mouth. She spat it out and screamed again. Her clawed hands ripped and tore at the earth around her until one broke through into open air. She pushed hard, shoveled hard, trying to clear her body from its tomb of earth.
Then her head was free, and she sucked in cold winter air.
Above her, the moon shone down with a cold, unforgiving light. Her dress still hung on the branch where she had left it. In front of her was the tree she had gripped. Its bark was shredded where she had ripped her talons free. There was a patch of snow, pressed down where she had knelt, and dirt flung in all directions around her grave.
I buried myself?
I thought I had died.
I wanted to die.
HOW COULD I HAVE buried myself?
Ruxandra pulled and crawled her way out of the hole. The movement ignited a dozen fires in her back and legs where the sun had scorched her. Behind her, the earth fell in clumps into the empty grave that should have been hers.
I must have dug the hole while I was burning. I must have pulled the earth over me and hid in the ground until the sun was gone.
The idea that her body could act on its own, even after she had fallen unconscious, was terrifying.
She limped away, brushing the dirt from her flesh. It hurt to touch her legs. She twisted to look; burned, blistered skin ran from her calves as far up her legs as she could see. She continued brushing at the dirt, despite how much it hurt. The pain was her penance and no less than she deserved for what she had done—what she had become.
The torn dress was still hanging from the branch. She glared at it. It was a human thing, and she wasn’t human anymore. She was a thing. And things didn’t wear clothes. She should just leave it and walk away.
Except she didn’t want to be a thing.
She didn’t want to lose her humanity even if she was some sort of demon. She took the dress and pulled it over her head. She tried to pull the cloth over her exposed breast but had nothing to secure it with. If she had a needle, she could have sewn it. It wouldn’t have been pretty because she was not the best at sewing, but it would be serviceable.
&nbs
p; Valeria had always teased her for that. The tall, thin girl would look over her shoulder and point at the stitches until Ruxandra would tickle her to make her go away.
I wonder what she would say now.
if I hadn’t been made into a monster, I wouldn’t need to sew it in the first place.
Ruxandra shook her head. Self-pity would not help. The main thing was to get as far away from people as she could manage. She glanced at the ground, finding her footprints and the broken branches and torn underbrush that marked the way she had come. She turned her back on them and began walking in the other direction.
The bare branches of the trees and the frozen grass peeking up from the snow stood out stark and hard in the icy winter night. The nipple on her almost bare breast grew hard, but the skin did not burn, nor did she begin to feel numb. Having become a demon, she could no longer be hurt by the cold.
Which is strange, because demons come from the fires of hell. You would think they’d be more used to that than the cold.
Unless that’s part of their torment.
Part of my torment.
Unable to stand the sun—a creature of the cold and the dark—she would live in the night, while other people slept. It was an effective way of isolating someone from the world.
How we loved to stay up late whispering when we were eight and nine! Adela, Valeria, and I—back when all the little girls slept together—crowded by the window to see the full moon. Thinking we were so very, very bad.
What are they doing now, my friends?
She had never felt so alone. She had never known one could feel so alone.
And this is my forever, night upon night upon night . . .
I cannot bear it . . .
But I can’t be near people, not anymore. So accept it and pray, and maybe God will help me escape this miserable existence.
She said the Prayer of Repentance again, repeating it as she walked. The cadence of it became the cadence of her steps. The rise and fall of it became the rhythm of her breath. And with each repetition, she walked farther into the forest until she had no idea where she was.She wasn’t even sure if she was still Wallachia.
She was away from other people, and that was all that mattered.
When the sky turned from black to dark blue, Ruxandra looked for shelter. She stepped into gullies and searched around the bottom of trees, hoping to find another overhang or a space in the roots of the tree or a hollowed-out bit of earth where she could hide. She had no doubt she could dig another hole if her body willed it, but she desperately did not want to do that.
Finally she found a spot, a hollowed-out bit of earth beneath the roots of an old oak tree. The space wasn’t deep enough to hide her entire body, but time was running out.
She dug at the frozen earth but couldn’t gain purchase on the hardened soil. She glanced at the lightening sky, wishing for a shovel, or a knife, or even a sharp stick to make the earth crumble enough to move it.
I had talons in the cave. Why don’t I have them now?
With that thought, her fingernails shifted and grew and changed color to long, silver talons that glinted in the pale light of the moon. They didn’t look like flesh or fingernails. More like steel daggers, piercing from her skin.
Ruxandra screamed.
In her mind she saw her talons digging into her father’s neck. She saw his face contorting, heard his scream before his head tore from his shoulders.
No!
Ruxandra slammed her talons into the frozen earth. They went through as if the dirt were warm lard, digging in with no effort at all. She tore at it, scattering it away from her. Again and again she attacked the ground, putting all her anger and self-hatred into the motions until she had dug a deep, hollow space to hide from the sun. When it was done, and she no longer had need of them, her talons blurred and shrank and became simple fingernails again. She ran the digits one over the other, looking for some hint of the blades beneath but found nothing. It was as if she were an ordinary girl.
Only I’ll never be ordinary again.
Ruxandra curled into a ball in the deepest part of her little hollow and stayed there until sleep took her.
She awoke before full dark. The sun was gone from the sky, but there was still light. The red and gold was almost too bright for her to look at, streaming through the few clouds above the trees. On the other side, the sky turned deep blue, then black. Ruxandra stood at the base of her tree, watching. The night was still bright to her eyes, and the stars seemed to shine much brighter than they had before. Even with the moon shining its light upon the earth, she made out the deep blues and grays and dark greens that were the true colors of the night sky.
Beautiful.
I wish . . .
She left the thought unfinished. Instead, she watched the trees as the moon’s silver reflection bounced off the snow and glinted along the sleeves of ice encasing their bark. The trees shimmered with their own light, she realized. A deep, drowsy light, as if they waited until spring to wake and shine. She turned in a slow circle, taking in the glow. On one branch, something glowed brighter—a white owl, watching her with wide eyes. Something else slipped across the forest floor—a squirrel, dashing from one tree to the next. Ruxandra knelt beneath her tree, wide-eyed.
She could hear a squirrel—silent to any normal person—skittering up a tree trunk. The owl huffed in a breath, its heart beating faster than a human’s. Ruxandra closed her eyes and listened. There were a dozen other small hearts beating nearby, other wings, floating and flapping through the forest, and little feet skittering nearby. Farther off, the hooves of deer tapped against hard earth and the near-silent paws of wolves, padded after them in the dusk.
Ruxandra opened her eyes, then shifted them to the sky again.
It is all so beautiful; so divine.
Why did I have to become a monster to see all this?
She had no answer, so she clasped her hands in front of her and prayed for forgiveness. She prayed for guidance and understanding of what she had become. She prayed to not hurt anyone else, ever again.
She was still praying when the sky lightened, and she was driven once more into the earth to sleep and hide until darkness came again.
When she came out the next night, she was hungry.
It was only the stirring of hunger. The first, lightest pang. And with it came absolute terror.
I will not.
Please, God, do not let me kill again.
Her prayers became frantic; desperate cries to God to give her the strength to resist the hunger until she withered away into nothingness. She forced herself to stay on her knees. She clenched her hands tight and prayed out loud, hoping the noise would drown out her hunger. She tried to focus only on God and his divine works so that she might not kill again and find redemption.
When the sun neared the horizon, she retreated once more into her cave. She wrapped both hands around her belly and curled into a ball. She let sleep take her and hoped it would be enough.
It wasn’t.
She awoke ravenous. Her body screamed its hunger at her, desperate for her to fill it. She closed her eyes and tried to pray, but every time she did, Lusa’s neck was ready and waiting for her. She could smell the sweat on the woman’s body, could feel the woman’s heart beating, and when she sank her teeth in, she could taste—
“No!” Ruxandra dropped to the earth, pushing her face hard against the dirt, rubbing it back and forth as if the pain and the cold might somehow drive the hunger away. Please, God, don’t let me do this. Please, God, don’t let me do this. Please, God, don’t let me do this.
She could trace her steps back to the village. She was sure of it. She could be there well before sunrise if she ran, and when she got there—
“No! I won’t! You hear me? I won’t do it! I will not kill another!”
The scream was so loud it startled the birds in the trees and sent a squirrel skittering out and leaping from one frozen branch to the next.
Squirrel. br />
Ruxandra pulled her face from the earth and listened. There was a squirrel in a tree, not twenty yards from her and still fat from its autumn gorge of nuts. It stared back at her with black, curious eyes. Its claws were dug into the tree, its entire body tense and ready to run away the moment Ruxandra moved.
God gave man dominion over every living thing that walks on the earth. She could hear the squirrel’s little heart racing. I can feed off the squirrel.
If I can catch it.
She straightened slowly. She wasn’t a hunter. She didn’t know how to hunt like the men who used to bring deer to her father’s court. She had no idea how to move so she wouldn’t startle the squirrel. So she ran.
As fast as her legs could take her she ran, racing to the tree and jumping for the branch where the squirrel sat. The squirrel saw her coming and was gone long before she reached the tree. It scrabbled higher up to sit among branches too thin to support the girl’s weight.
Ruxandra growled. She turned her back to the tree, then sat down hard. She had to eat, had to catch something before her body drove her back to the village. She glared at the squirrel a moment longer then closed her eyes and listened.
There was another fast and light heartbeat less than a dozen yards away. Ruxandra opened her eyes and stared until she spotted the rabbit under a patch of brambles. It watched her too. She climbed to her feet again. Instead of going toward the rabbit, she angled sideways. The rabbit stayed in its hiding spot. Ruxandra drew closer until she was no more than five yards away.
She turned and sprang, overshooting the rabbit by thirty feet.
Ruxandra was so surprised by how far she’d jumped that she lost her balance and fell, face-first, onto the ground.
The rabbit sprinted away, heading for the woods.
Ruxandra scrambled to her feet and chased after the rabbit, a flash of brown fur and long ears amid the white of the ground. Its feet kicked up little puffs of snow as it dashed away from her. Ruxandra sped up, crashing into trees and jumping over underbrush. She lost her balance twice more and jumped past the rabbit several times.