The Ballad of Aramei

  “You didn’t answer my question,” Isaac says in my mind, slowly moving his fingers closer. “Are you sure you’ll hold out on me for an entire week?” I want to kiss that confident grin off his lips, but I can’t move any part of my body now but my eyes.

  Finally, Isaac moves his hand away, pulls me around in front of him, my legs still straddling his waist, and crushes his mouth against mine.

  “Ahhh!” Zia yells out. “Come on! I’m not into porn!”

  Isaac breaks the kiss and says without taking his eyes off mine, “I guess I’ll just have to wait a week.”

  He won this battle a long time ago and knows it.

  I lean in and gently tug on his bottom lip with my teeth and then kiss it softly.

  I don’t have to say a word.

  We leave Zia, Camilla and Cecilia in the pond and can’t seem to get to his room fast enough.

  Chapter 13

  ISAAC HAS ME AT Aramei’s cabin before the sun comes up the next morning. On this day, there are fewer guards outside; at least those in plain sight anyway. Raul is one of them, standing outside at the front of the cabin with a sword sheathed at his hip. I think he’s Trajan’s number one guard because he’s the only one I’ve seen consistently since the first time I laid eyes on Aramei months ago.

  “Another day of volunteer work,” Raul says as we approach the front porch.

  The early morning sky is borderline dark. A faint blue hue bathes the forest in just enough soft light that I can see everything clearly but it makes me feel like I should still be in bed.

  “Unfortunately,” Isaac answers in a sullen tone. He pats Raul’s shoulder with one hand.

  I leave them to their usual conversations, kissing Isaac once on the lips and slipping inside the cabin. It looks exactly the same as it does every day except that just like the guards, there are fewer servants working on the bottom floor than normal. Eva, Aramei’s chief caregiver, stands on the top floor overlooking the bottom and she smiles down at me.

  As I make my way up the stairs, I realize how relieved I am to be with Aramei again. The more that I see her, the more I sometimes feel like I never want to leave and although I find that strange and maybe even unhealthy, I don’t care to seek the answers why. Aramei is special to me. I think maybe she always has been since the moment I met her. Being connected to her like this has only enhanced my feelings for her and every day it drives this insatiable need to help her and maybe to protect her.

  I don’t know, but I truly feel like our connection means more than helping Trajan to know what’s going on inside her mind. I feel like I’m here for Aramei and not Trajan and that he really has nothing to do with it. And the more I think about this the more I feel like I want to lie to him, keep him out of my time with her entirely. Because after all, I think if Aramei were trying to communicate with him, it would be him she has called out to. She would have said his name and not mine.

  “Good to see you, Milady.” Eva bows and I put up my hand and shake my head.

  “You’re really gonna have to stop doing that,” I say. It seems I have to remind her of this every time I come here, but she is a slave to habit.

  She nods her apology, her soft hands folded together in front of her laying against the black sheer fabric of her gown.

  “She’s awake,” I say walking over to Aramei sitting on the edge of her immaculate bed. I lean over her and comb my fingers through her light-colored hair, brushing it back behind her ears and I look across at Eva. “Has she seemed any different since yesterday?”

  “Yes,” Eva says walking up to join us, “she has appeared more anxious than usual. Just an hour ago she could only stare off at the window overlooking the driveway. I could be wrong, but it seems as though she could sense that you were on your way.”

  I smile at Eva, glad to hear this news and then I kneel in front of Aramei so that I can be more at level with her eyes. The lantern on the bedside table casts a soft orange-yellow glow on one side of her face, accentuating her long, thick eyelashes and her angelic, unblemished white skin. Her legs are bare and I reach up and gently pull the ends of her sheer white gown down from being pushed near her thighs, and smooth the fabric over her knees. Her restful hands lay in her lap, sinking slowly in-between her legs in the slope of the thin material. As always, she smells wonderful, like vanilla and jasmine oils that have been rubbed into her skin.

  I peer deeply into Aramei’s placid green eyes, searching for some sign of conscious life.

  “How does she eat?” I say to Eva, but not looking away from Aramei. I don’t want to miss anything, having learned that she comes and goes so sporadically that the blink-of-an-eye saying fully applies to her.

  “She doesn’t.”

  I do look over this time. “Never?” I say, unable to grasp the absurdity of it. “I know she’s immortal, but I guess…,” I look back at Aramei and rise to my feet, “…I don’t know, I guess I just assumed that she at least ate, even if you had to feed her.”

  I cross my arms and turn to face Eva fully. “Then again, it makes perfect sense, too.”

  Eva nods. “She will not die of starvation,” she says. “Trajan’s blood provides her body with all of the nutrients that it needs. She hasn’t eaten in over one hundred fifty years.”

  Astounded, I can’t do anything but shake my head over and over, staring downward toward the floor.

  I lift my eyes to Eva and say, “Would you mind bringing me some fruit?”

  Eva looks at me curiously. “Of course,” she says and heads for the stairs.

  “Thanks.”

  Eva disappears from the top floor and I turn back to Aramei who still has yet to move. It always makes me anxious to see her sitting like this for long periods of time seemingly without twitching a muscle. It’s like my own body starts to feel stiff and unhealthy just looking at her. I think about blood clots and poor circulation and all kinds of conditions caused by an inactive body. I know Aramei will never die or even be affected by any of those things, but it doesn’t keep me from feeling uncomfortable by it just the same.

  I stand beside her, brushing the silkiness of her hair between my fingers and then I take a chance and position one hand underneath her arm, trying to coax her statuesque body into a stand. But she doesn’t move, so I move around and in front of her again and bend over, taking one of her legs into the cradle of my hands. Back and forth I move her leg, bending it at the knee as if I’m performing her physical therapy. But she still doesn’t budge, or show any signs of comprehension.

  Eva comes back upstairs with a small glass bowl of strawberries. She walks over to me and holds the bowl out to me. I take one strawberry off the top and carefully dig my fingernails into the juicy top to pinch away the leafy green stem.

  “You mean to try feeding her?” Eva says curiously.

  “I’m going to try,” I say, though I don’t feel any confidence that it’ll produce any results. I kneel in front of Aramei once more and squeeze the fruit so that a little of its juice comes to the surface. I place it to her lips and move it across her bottom lip slowly, wetting the sensitive skin there with the sweet juice.

  After a few more times of doing this, and I admit, taking a tiny bite for myself, Aramei’s pale green eyes shift so subtly that for a moment I do think I was only seeing things. I try with the strawberry again, but Aramei never changes, so I pop it in my mouth and sigh as I swallow it down.

  “Kind of dumb,” I say looking over at Eva standing at the foot of the bed. “I thought maybe something her body used to be accustomed to before she lost her mind, might help her to wake up a little.”

  “That is not at all dumb,” Eva says with a smile in her voice.

  I go to my feet, already feeling defeated and thinking this day is going to turn out like yesterday, but then I sense movement behind me. Before I turn around I check Eva’s face and sure enough she’s staring behind me at Aramei as though my luck has finally changed. I turn around to see Aramei looking up at me. Her almond-shaped ey
es blink twice and a shiver runs through my back. Without turning away from her, I reach around behind me for the bowl of strawberries in Eva’s hands and fumble another one into my fingers. I kneel in front of Aramei again, pinching the stem off at the same time. Her head and eyes actually follow me, but I feel like the strawberry has nothing to do with her attention. I want to turn and look at Eva so that she can see the shock and relief in my expression, but I’m afraid to take my eyes off Aramei for one second. I bring the strawberry up to her lips and just before it touches them, Aramei stuns me and Eva both, “Release me from his prison,” she says and I can’t breathe.

  And then the life in her face grows cold once more.

  When the stun of her bizarre words allows me to move my head, I turn brashly to look up at Eva, searching her face for answers, but I can see that she won’t have them.

  Back and forth I look at each of them, finally letting my desperate gaze fall upon Eva who is the only one of the two I can get anything at all from. My lips are slightly parted, eyes slanted and focused.

  “What was that?” I finally say. “His prison?” I don’t think I’ve ever been so perplexed.

  Eva’s face softens. “Delusions,” she says. “A Blood Bond, as you know causes the mind to experience things that are not real. Milady Aramei has been speaking these strange things for two hundred years.”

  Something Trajan said to me the day he came for me courses through my mind: “…trapped in a world of her own, some strange world inside her mind that I’ve never been able to comprehend…,” and I grow more perplexed than ever. But what Eva says about this makes perfect sense. And the only thing I’ve seen inside her head are the memories of her past and there is nothing strange about them.

  “Can you leave me alone with her?” I say gently.

  “Yes,” Eva says and bows. She places the bowl of strawberries on the table next to the balcony and leaves us without another word.

  I crawl into the bed and nuzzle next to Aramei facing her and I brush the softness of her cheek with the backs of my fingers. Her eyes are open and before long I realize that she’s staring at me. She knows that I’m here. And I know now that the key to opening her mind is that we have to be alone together. But why? Is what she has to tell me a secret? Is she afraid even of Eva who has watched over her for so long? It could be anything, but no matter what it is I’m determined to unravel it.

  “I’m here,” I whisper to her, our faces mere inches from one another. “I need to see what you see…please let in.”

  Aramei’s hand comes up and slowly her fingers rest on my lips. I don’t freeze up this time, but I do remain quiet and still.

  “Close your eyes,” she says so softly that it could lull me to sleep if I let it.

  I close my eyes, feeling the smoothness of her fingertips on the edges of my lips.

  And then the whirlwind of Time and Space takes me up again, hurling me through the ages and into the life of a young woman in Serbia.

  Balkan Mountains – Eastern Serbia – Winter 1761

  The wolves are bolder in the winter. They patrol the thickly snow-covered mountains like kings, scavenging the brave wildlife that dares to tread out in the open hunting for a scarce meal. But the wolves have also been hunted by humans for generations for fear they are the beasts eating their cattle. In some cases, this is true, but the real truth is that the locals fear that believing in the Black Beasts will make them real, so they blame it on a creature less frightening as if this will satisfy their hearts. The people of this small village and all of the villages that scatter the mountains go out early in the morning, trudge through the heavy snow wearing the furs of the wolves they killed the winter before and they hunt them down, year after year. But the cattle are never spared, no matter how many gray wolves are eradicated. And the horses and the sheep; they are being killed, too. Savagely. Sometimes there is nothing left, not even the bones, but most of the locals refuse to bring back the Old Myths, the stories their ancestors told of the Black Beasts that stand on two legs and are taller than any man.

  Secretly, each of them believes the Old Myths. All of them grow up from children knowing that there are things in the vast Balkan Mountains far worse than anything man has ever known. They have feared the beasts for a thousand years, but superstition keeps them from admitting it openly.

  On this frigid winter day, Aramei wakes to the sound of her sister’s scream piercing the outside air. Aramei jerks up and shakes the stun from her mind, rushing out of her tiny makeshift bedroom and out the front door of her cottage. Still in her nightgown and with bare feet, she stands in front of the rickety wooden door with the snow up to her ankles. In seconds, her feet are stinging from the cold. She rushes back inside and thrusts her feet down into her father’s boots and then yanks her father’s thick coat from the back of his chair, letting it swallow her small form.

  Filipa screams out again and Aramei bursts back through the doorway and runs out into the snow, the oversized boots loose on her tiny feet.

  “Father!” Filipa shrieks from somewhere behind the house. “Father! It’s Vela! The wolves got Vela!”

  As Aramei comes around the corner of the house she spots a trail of dark red staining the bright white snow and coming from the stables. Her steps pick up, as much as the big boots and the weight of the snow swallowing her feet inside of them will allow.

  “Where’s Vela?” Aramei shouts as she enters the barn.

  Filipa sits crouched over the dead horse, a pool of thick warm blood pools on the ground where the horse’s lower half used to be. Steam rises from the blood and entrails in the bitter cold, making the sight that much more haunting.

  “Oh, no, Vela…,” Aramei runs over, nearly tripping in the boots and she falls to her knees beside Filipa and the horse’s corpse. “Oh, girl,” she says, stroking the horse’s stiff snout; its eyes are glazed over, the tongue lolled out of its mouth. But Aramei can only be saddened by the sight and never sickened or afraid. She doesn’t even notice that her father’s coat is covered in the horse’s blood.

  “Look at her!” Filipa rips out the words angrily, pointing to the back end of the horse. “There’s nothing left! What kind of wolf could do that?” Tears are streaming from Filipa’s eyes, but they are tears of anger.

  Aramei, still gazing down into the horse’s black, lifeless eyes says, “Viktor told me about the black wolves deeper in the mountains. They are bigger than the gray wolves that father hunts every winter. I think only they could have done this.”

  “Black wolves?” Filipa says, rising to her feet and gazing down at her sister. “Don’t you dare mention this to Father. You mean the Black Beasts! Who is this Viktor? Why have you been sneaking off with him this many months?” Filipa is growing angry, but more-so worried for Aramei. She crosses her arms over her chest and glares down at her disapprovingly.

  Aramei stands and faces Filipa, her bloody hands resting helplessly at her sides. She had told Filipa that Viktor went back to his homeland last fall and this was true as far as she knew, but it didn’t stop Viktor from visiting Aramei at least once a month.

  The last time he had come to her village was just days ago. He came to warn her about the ‘black wolves’.

  “Please don’t tell Father,” Aramei says in a soft, pleading voice. “I will tell you everything if you give me your word you will keep it to yourself.”

  Filipa’s green eyes widen with disbelief. Aramei has never kept secrets from her sister until this stranger, Viktor, came along and Aramei knows that it will be hard to finally tell Filipa the truth.

  Just then, their father comes stumbling into the barn, still dressed in his long-pants and thick socks that he always sleeps in to keep warm. Aramei and Filipa move away from the corpse and stand side by side, huddled together to share their body heat. Their father looks at the horse first and then makes note of his coat and boots which Aramei is wearing. He shakes his heavily-bearded head at her, but doesn’t say anything about it.

  He mov
es toward the horse, examining the amount of blood and damage.

  “Must’ve been an entire pack,” he says and then his dark eyes wander around the rest of the barn to see that their cow and three goats have been left untouched. “Did you see it?”

  “No, Father,” Filipa says.

  He looks to Aramei and she shakes her head.

  “Get inside,” he demands, pointing towards the cottage, “And Aramei, please make use of your own clothing.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  The sisters scurry out of the barn and back inside their warm cottage where a fireplace burns heavily in the front room. After putting her father’s coat and boots back where she took them, he comes in after her, dresses for the weather and heads out with six other men from the village, equipped with rifles and axes, to hunt the wolves.

  Filipa watches her father from the window until his dark form contrasted against the snow disappears over the top of the hill leading deeper into the valley. She wastes no time and storms over to Aramei, grabbing her vigorously by the elbow.

  “Who is Viktor to you?” she lashes out. “Have you given yourself to him?”

  “No!” Aramei says, offended by her sister’s accusations. But then her face softens as she can’t hold an angry emotion for more than a few seconds at most. She reaches out takes Filipa’s hands. “He is just a man,” she says. “He has been wonderful company and has taught me things that I would never have learned here.”

  Filipa moves back slowly so that Aramei’s hands fall away and she looks upon her warily. “Men do not befriend young women just to teach them things unless it is how to properly lie on your back when he needs to pleasure himself.” She sneers and then says, “What kind of things did he teach you?”

  Aramei ignores Filipa’s cruel ridicule altogether. “I know how to live in the wild if I ever need to,” she says. “He taught me to trap small game and to hunt with a bow. What woman in this village do you know who has ever held a bow, much less become good at using one?” She points toward the wall to indicate the village women as a whole and adds, “Sweet bread. And laundry. And planting. And of course, child-bearing—as you so eloquently described it. That’s the most any woman from here will ever know, Filipa.”