Born of fire. It will kill him, and I will be glad, I thought. He blazed before me and it seemed to me as if dark, smoky wisps fled away from his body. Djinn! I must have made an astonished noise, for he frowned at me.
‘Well, will you drink or not? I was brave enough to.’
I squatted beside him. ‘You are not sad at all, are you?’
He was very still. ‘A little,’ he admitted, ‘but what is a sanctuary to some is a prison to others.’
‘Not that much of a prison,’ I reminded him scathingly.
‘Some people were trapped inside with me. Now I am free.’
He held the bottle out to me, and I drank.
I tipped back my head and swallowed a taste of chalk and velvet in a sauce of flame. I opened my eyes wide and the universe spun before me. Born of fire. We are. Desert creatures; kin to the djinn, to the deva.
I laughed at the spiralling sky.
When I had calmed down, he reached for my hand. I did not look at him, but we both stared out upon the night, thinking of our days to come.
Heir to a Tendency
It was the pressure of our fingers more than the application of the make-up itself that caused our cousin Lathorne’s nose to go back into its proper shape. The indiscretion had first been perceived at breakfast by our matriarch, Letitia, when Lathorne’s nose had seemed to stretch forth from her face to examine the steaming contents of the cup before her. Letitia had directed a significant glance at my older sister, Clarine, who quickly whisked Lathorne away from sight, before any of our menfolk noticed her aberration. Lathorne was a weak creature. She was elderly, true, but this did not excuse her tendency for spontaneous change.
Clarine had elected myself, along with two other female relatives, to assist her with Lathorne’s cosmetics. The application of make-up to her seasoned features seemed to soothe their waywardness; we used it often. Now, long past the hour for lunch, we were still in Lathorne’s chamber, shaping tranquillity within her as much as taming her capricious nose. This was a special day for us, a day to dress in our finest gowns. Lathorne had wanted to wear yellow. A good choice I suppose; it went well with her skin, which she took few pains to keep neat.
‘I want to wear my favourite dress,’ she’d said, trying to pull out of our arms and stagger across her bedroom towards the wardrobe. ‘Like in the old days. The yellow one. I wore it with gold you know, gold at the throat and wrist. One poor boy wasted quite away with love for me when I wore that gown.’
It was hard to imagine this now, seeing her so withered and neglected, scrawny as a plucked hen in her underwear.
‘But it is such a very old dress, dearest,’ said Abisarah, another cousin, who was almost as old as Lathorne, though not nearly so peculiar. ‘Quite out of fashion, and I dare say the animals have nibbled right through it. I shouldn’t wear that one, my dear.’ She laid a tough, uncompromising grip upon Lathorne’s right arm.
‘Nibbled through my yellow?’ Lathorne’s lips began to tremble as she struggled fruitlessly against Abisarah’s hold. She spoke in a querulous voice. ‘But what can I wear then for the Homecoming? What?’
I was finding the whole procedure quite oppressive and went to the windows to fight with the nets and seek some air. The atmosphere in Lathorne’s boudoir was hot and dry, spiced with a reptilian musk. She kept a long, thick snake in a glass tank by the door, which we’d all realised was a strategic placement to cover a certain aged, snaky odour emanating from Lathorne’s own flesh. Naturally, because my people are forced to share this world with the little people, whose shapes are miserably unmalleable, and who age at an alarming rate, we have to adapt our appearances to mimic their life-spans to some degree. However, this does not mean we cannot appear to grow old gracefully. Lathorne, because of madness, stupidity or sloth, had simply allowed her shape to sag around her. It repulsed me having to pander to her defect, but I was aware that it must be kept secret. Letitia did not want the males to know about it. She did not want them thinking the females were somehow more insipid than themselves. The fact an aberration had occurred on this, our special family day, was just an added trial - though perhaps invoked by the stress of the situation. For today, Great Uncle Gerhard was returning to the family stronghold. Long absent from the bosom of his throng, long having wandered the world beyond our gates, he had sent word that his travels were over. For him, it was time to seek once more the protection and succour of his relatives - at least for a while.
Whether Gerhard actually was my great uncle is open to conjecture, if not lengthy scrutiny of the family archives. From what I could gather - and I must confess I had faint interest in the subject at the time - Gerhard and his immediate kin were somewhat apart from the main family; related in blood, but distantly. They were a wandering kind, producing no children in living record, and prone to fleeing the family demesne whenever possible. Indeed, none of Gerhard’s consorts remained in the house, and sad to tell, there was cheerless news to divulge to him. Seven years previously, a fatal accident had abruptly stripped my Great Uncle of all his male lovers who had still been in residence at Gravewell Park. I hoped these tidings would not cause too much of an upset. Hopefully, Gerhard would have forgotten most of his consorts. After all, he was a very ancient individual; I had never met him.
Eventually, I was able to retire from Lathorne’s room, leaving Abisarah alone to cope with any remaining afflictions. Bored, annoyed and a little sickened, I felt in no mood to celebrate. The afternoon was coming down towards evening, and shadows were lengthening over the lawns in front of the house. Lamps were being lit and soon the curtains would be drawn against the rustling darkness that braided the long driveway down to the gates. Soon, great uncle Gerhard would venture upon that rough stone. He would come by horse or carriage to the steps of the house. We would all see him.
Downstairs, in the shadowy hallway, I came upon my brothers, Valentine and Wylie, adjusting each other’s neckties before joining the rest of the family in the drawing room. We are very much alike, my brothers and I, in temperament as well as appearance. Consequently, we don’t always get along well together, especially at those times when a mirror is the last thing you want to face. This evening, however, we were in accord. I acknowledged their russet-haired, fine-boned beauty as I silently approached them. Great Uncle Gerhard would surely be proud of us.
‘Celestine,’ Valentine said, when he finally noticed me on the stairs. ‘You look enchanting tonight.’
‘I haven’t even begun preparing myself yet,’ I replied. ‘Why should I bother at this early hour? Our relative will not arrive until after midnight. Our mother said so.’
‘And is Lathorne prepared?’ Wylie asked.
I ignored the implication in his words. The males might suspect Lathorne’s unhappy nasal tendency, but they would never find tangible evidence.
‘Indeed, she is ready and quite aglow with the prospect of a family celebration.’ I glided past the pair of them, chin high.
Nearly all the family, my parents and their consorts among them, had already gathered in the drawing room, which was lit solely by dozens of tall candles. All the best jewels were out, winking wetly in the candle-light, and also the best perfumes. The atmosphere was quite intoxicating. Lesser kindred, who were not so well placed upon the family tree, were handing out aperitifs. Conversation was low, but an air of excitement filled the room. My mother, Delilah, looked radiant, her amber silk gown complementing the autumn bronze of her coiled hair.
‘Homecomings!’ she said, opening out her arms to me. ‘Oh Celestine, how poignant this must seem to you, close as you are to your first leavetaking. Ah, the travelling times are the most enthralling for a young girl!’
She was a well-meaning creature, but it always irked me that she felt compelled to emphasise my youth whenever possible. After all, I was nearly forty-two, which might be infantile in Grigori terms, but fairly advanced by human standards.
‘Travel?’ I withdrew from her embrace. ‘Mother, I hardly think a leng
thy incarceration in the stronghold of throng Yaling, counts as travel!’
‘Nonsense, my dear,’ my mother said brusquely, casting quick glances at those who overheard our conversation. ‘You’ll have to travel to get there. It’s quite a distance.’
Valentine and Wylie had followed me into the room and were smirking at this exchange. For them, the threshold of our home opened up into a wide world of possibilities. Their travels would be far more interesting than mine, I felt. I cursed the fact that the Yalings had put in an offer for me, which would probably be the precursor to another offer - that of a strategic mating to enhance the bloodlines of the Gravewell and Yaling throngs. I hoped to escape Yaling hospitality as soon as possible in order to explore the world. Human women were so restricted by their culture, and to hide among them, we are obliged to mimic their behaviour. However, relative youth or not, it was not beyond my shaping skills to wear a form that superficially resembled a man. Then I could walk the countries of the world without fear.
‘My darling, I thought you would be wearing the dove-grey gown I had made for you,’ my mother said, perceiving a shortening of my temper. ‘You’ll look so lovely in it. Gerhard will be astonished to see what treasures have been born into the throng in his absence.’
‘I will take a small aperitif before I begin my toilette,’ I said. A certain measure of good humour was restored.
My nephew and confidant, Bayard, accompanied me to my boudoir, in order to assist me with the fastening of corsets. I suppose he is my closest friend, although sometimes he annoys me so much I could kill him. Pretty thing, Bayard, as deceitful as he is attractive, although I believed he feared me too much ever to betray me. We were the same age, and he too would soon be leaving Gravewell Park, unprotected by Grigori of experience, in order to sniff the wild lands beyond our gates. Apart from our dependent servants, humans were mostly an unknown quantity to us. Our elders had encouraged a reclusive reputation for the family. Only older, more trusted members of the throng interacted with the outside world, and no human in the county was aware of exactly how many Grigori huddled within the walls of Gravewell Park. Bayard looked forward to breaking human hearts out there in the world, whereas I was more intent upon examining their depths. Perhaps we would work well as a team.
At half past ten, Bayard escorted me back to the drawing room. ‘Not long now,’ he said.
‘No. I wonder what he will be like, this antique great uncle of ours. Somewhat hideous, do you think?’ I had never seen anyone thousands of years old, but there were rumours such creatures found it difficult to retain a corporeal shape of any great beauty.
Bayard pulled a sour face. ‘If he is as old as people say, I wouldn’t be surprised. It is a shame. Personally, I would prefer something appealing to land on our doorstep this evening.’
I squeezed his arm. ‘Bayard, you are perverse.’
He grinned. ‘No, I itch for freedom, for sensation. Is that so bad? Nothing - nobody - here excites me. It is like being hungry, yearning for the most exquisite and forbidden ichors, yet being offered only the juice of a dog as sustenance.’
‘Perhaps you scratch your itches and sate your hunger too often to take pleasure in it anymore,’ I observed.
He smiled ruefully, pushing his dark hair from his eyes. ‘I want to be scarred by life,’ he said.
Sometimes I worry about him.
As the clocks in the house were all preparing to strike eleven, we were disturbed from our polite revels by the sound of urgent knocking at the front door. The echo of it reverberated throughout the hallway like the booming of a monstrous drum; some pagan drum, summoning terrors. It brought quite a chill to my blood. Several of my relatives, whom I suspect had been harbouring desires to repair to their bedrooms for some time, perked up considerably. Did the knocking herald the arrival of Great Uncle Gerhard, earlier than expected?
All eyes turned towards our matriarch, Letitia, who rose up from her couch like a splendid queen of some ancient, forgotten city. She was dressed in a gown of eastern design, its hem decorated with embroidered eyes. Without a word or a glance to anyone, she cleared a path through the relatives by will-power alone, threw open the drawing-room doors, and advanced with stately tread into the hall. Here, without looking round, she raised a hand to stem the flow of relatives streaming behind her. Before she had finished unbolting the front door, the knocking came again; this time even more sonorously and impatiently.
‘Gravewells,’ Letitia said, addressing her family. ‘I fear we have a man in need here!’
We all laughed a little, and the front door was opened.
‘Oh,’ said Letitia.
We all proceeded cautiously into the hall. There was a dreadful draught blowing through the doorway. What had been a clement day had rustled up a stiff wind in its passing into night, and a great deal of that wind was now coming into the house. It curled around the gaunt form of a tall man on its way inside; it blew his cloak out in front of him. His face was shadowed by his hat, but even at first glance, there was no indication that this was an aged individual. Indeed, my first impression was of a person young, vital and powerful. I had expected something - someone - quite different. This was a sentiment which I believe Letitia shared. I could tell her first instinct had been to embrace the traveller, but instead she stepped backwards, as if confused. The man on the doorstep bowed.
‘Madam Gravewell?’ he said.
‘Come in,’ said Letitia.
Letitia led the new arrival into the drawing room, leaving his single battered luggage bag in the hall. It was not raining outside, but his thick black cloak was damp with sparkling droplets. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, beneath which he concealed a grin and a clean-shaven chin that looked somehow raw. Not that the chin was without pleasing shape, or indeed the mouth above it. I chided myself for believing Great Uncle Gerhard would favour an ancient form. He looked young, but then, why not? Because of his long absence, he was a stranger in these parts. He could wear whatever shape he liked, supposing he still had a deft capability for it. Poor Lathorne, with her forgetfulness and her dreadful dim brain, did not possess the concentration or energy required to maintain a comely shape, but hers was an unusual condition. Perhaps I had come to judge all ancients like her, even though Letitia and Abisarah were very nearly her equal in years, and they were both glamorous creatures in their maturity.
Our visitor did not speak but, at Letitia’s request, sat obediently upon a sofa. She summoned a relative to pour him brandy, which he sipped from with obvious pleasure. In the middle of a throng of family members, Bayard slipped his arm through mine and whispered, ‘Well, well!’
‘He does not seem overcome with emotion to be home,’ I hissed back.
‘I don’t blame him!’ was Bayard’s last hushed retort.
‘The wind is terrible outside,’ Letitia said into the silence of the room.
‘Indeed terrible!’ added my uncle Everill.
‘The like not seen this season,’ trilled my mother.
The traveller shrugged. ‘I have seen worse,’ he said.
Surely the Homecoming should have been a joyous event with embraces, kisses and exclamations of delight all round? I could not understand this dour silence and awkwardness, where the loudest sound was the crackling of the fire. I wanted to leave the room with Bayard in order to discuss the situation. In that silence, I was reluctant to speak aloud. What a strange person Great Uncle Gerhard was.
‘It seems,’ he said, putting down the empty brandy glass upon the carpet, ‘that I have intruded upon a family party.’
Everybody looked at one another. The man took off his hat, and a wealth of white-gold hair tumbled around his shoulders. His face was handsomely hewn, though raw-boned. I saw he wore an earring in the shape of silver sphinx in one ear. He smiled at Letitia, who was standing in front of him, the fingers of one hand pressed against her throat. Her mouth was open in astonishment; an expression I had never seen upon her face before. Her thin nostrils were pinched and wh
ite. I think it was at that point that I - and probably everybody else present - realised the man we had let into our house was not Great Uncle Gerhard at all.
The porters had let this stranger in at the gates. They had let him in! This meant he must be Grigori from some other family, because no-one human would ever cross the shadow of the gates, at least not without due preparation. Unless... unless he had entered our estate by clandestine means and scaled the walls! Was that possible?
‘Who are you?’ Letitia demanded. She looked very frightening and tall, but this did not appear to bother our visitor very much.
‘Who were you expecting?’ he rejoined, putting his hat upon his knees.
Letitia had folded her arms; always a fearsome sign. Her fingers tapped an anthem upon her sleeves. ‘I entreat you, for the sake of politeness, to answer my question. I have offered you hospitality, after all.’
He shrugged. ‘Forgive me, my lady.’ He burrowed beneath his cloak and retrieved an envelope, quite battered and stained. ‘If you will indulge me by examining these documents, you will see I am here in good faith. These are my credentials.’
Letitia snatched the envelope from him, and scanned the contents with raised brows. ‘Peverel Othman,’ she said, and stuffed the papers back into their envelope. ‘Your family are a throng with whom I am unfamiliar.’
The man inclined his head. ‘We are a small, yet distinguished line,’ he said. ‘As such, we are private people, and do not engage in social activities. I am not surprised you have not heard of us.’
‘Yet the family Boonspill deems fit to grant your their endorsement,’ Letitia said, with suspicion in her voice.
‘Are the documents genuine?’ queried one of her male consorts.
She shrugged. ‘I find little to suggest otherwise. However, I admit to a certain discomfiture concerning your advent, Peverel Othman. Perhaps it is just the shock of your unannounced arrival.’