Anamnesis by Zorina Alliata (red queen free ebook TXT) 📖

for stopping by. Say, do I owe you anything for stopping by?”

“No need for pay, sir,” the lawyer smiled. “Your daddy was a personal friend and I owe him many things. You have a good night now.”

Closing the door, Dante took a deep breath. An uneasy feeling had clung to his stomach. For a brief moment, he has had a daddy. His daddy thought about him, gave him Company stock when he was an infant, and left clear instructions about him to his lawyers. As early as three years ago, his dad talked about him with this Chris Henderson guy. His dad pronounced his name – Dante – when discussing his business with the Company.

Dante held to the thought longer, sweet lingering sensation under his tongue. He had a daddy.

*-*-*

My uncle Costin lived in the Enchanted Willow forest. Once renowned for its fairies and gentle wolves, the forest had become home to a small farmers village and the villagers' domestic horses and sheep. There was one fairy left, and my uncle had spent years trying until he finally managed to sleep with her. He had no control over himself when it came to women; aggressive, silent, he’d prey on them the same way he went hunting for deer. His lust did not wear off easily; he had complicated, long relationships with women of all ages and standings; he did not want to give them up, not one of them; he managed his love life like a business: cold-blooded, precise, effective.

I despised him as a child; his numbers were cumbersome and shadowy, curled around his legs and thighs like a vine. I could not see them well enough. One day, in the dark pantry at my grandmother’s house, he slipped his hand down my back slowly, like he was measuring and weighting me. I turned to him and his eyes were blinded with desire. I was 8 years old.

In time, I came to accept him – or rather learned to ignore him. He had nothing to teach me except the dark side of lovemaking, and I had no use for those lessons. His spells were always the same, half light and half shadow, peeking from behind him like hounds waiting to be released.

My uncle had managed to single-handedly destroy the last swirl of enchantment in the willow. The fairy, now old and weak, used to be a beautiful young girl with gracious spells in her hair just a few years before, before my uncle tricked her into loving him. Her name was Eliza. I had met her once, when I was visiting my uncle; I wandered into the forest, just because it seemed so utterly void of feeling. I saw a few crows and a few rats; distorted numbers here and there, marking the path of each dying fairy.

Eliza stood by the small lake. She had long, white silver hair and a deep-green dress. She sat with her feet in the water, her head bent. Her face was shining with a happy melancholy, her piercing black eyes lost in memories. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen in my life. Her numbers aligned perfectly – her inner beauty must have matched her exterior one.

“Hi, Eliza”, I said. My uncle Costin had mentioned her name, bragging about his new affair.

“You must be Anna”, she smiled. “Costin said you’ll be visiting.”

“What happened to the Enchanted Willow?” I asked. “I hardly saw any signs of life on my way here.”

“Death,” she answered, sadly. “Death came. We couldn’t stop it. We made a mistake, we danced too late.”

The fairies appeared to mortals and danced during the Rusalii night – a religious holiday celebrating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles. Sometimes, they’d be good and show people tricks, like the face of a loved one reflected in the lake; more often, they’d be bad, and they’d steal somebody’s food or baby girl; you never knew.

She got up with grace, her dress flowing in the gentle breeze. And then I saw Costin’s spells, black cuffs around her ankles; swirling up her pale feet with the cleverness and patience of a wild tiger in waiting.

“You’re glowing… You’re in love?” I asked her.

She laughed. “Of course not”, she said. “I have no heart.”

But she was lying – a purple, narrow line coming out of her mouth.

I closed the memory back, softly. That night, in Gaithersburg, MD, all was well. Once more I had witnessed something I chose not to do anything about. To preserve my being; to survive, in good condition; to not disclose the full awe of my powers, for fear I might be spotted and killed instantly.

It was 4:00 AM in Romania, the time when my uncle Costin usually came back from the Enchanted Willow and his fairy lover; he had to – his spells expired at the first light of dawn, and he needed to reinforce them around his house. I’ve seen him in my Aunt Virginia’s memory of an autumn morning. Costin stepped through the dark like a cat, on carefully learned paths. Behind him, Eliza’s flower bed trembled in the dim light; Eliza herself struggled to get up, only to be overpowered by the black spells around her neck. She fell back, confused, lost.

“What are you doing here?” he had asked my aunt, with the same harsh tone he had used when they revived me.

“Why didn’t you come last night?” she cried. “You said you’ll come. I waited for you! Were you screwing the damn fairy again? Don’t you see she’s an old hack now?”

“I hate you so much”, my uncle hissed. “You are the worst thing that ever happened to me.”

“Why do you say that?” she whined. “What did I ever do to you? I always give you everything you ask for. I gave you my potions, my plants, my power. I gave you my body and my soul. Why don’t you want me anymore?”

He pushed her aside in disgust and continued to walk. Virginia sat down on the wet grass, tears flowing down her aging cheeks. He can make you love him, but he can’t undo it, she thought. You’re his forever. I’m his forever. She looked back at Eliza’s silhouette amidst the dead flowers and felt sorry for the poor creature. At least she, Virginia, still had a family to protect her, but Eliza had no one. Virginia was never innocent, while Eliza was a pure being when my uncle seduced her.

My aunt gathered a few stones from the ground and looked around for wood for a small fire. In silence, she cast her spells in the morning fog. The willow accepted and approved with a cold breeze; when the time will come, when my aunt’s love will end, she will let the forest kill him.

Her love ended that night, as Lou and I were watching Friends, cuddled on the couch. The death of my grandfathers changed her and made her face her mistakes; the numbers in the forest needed a slight adjustment to make the fatal spark. A strong, vengeful wind surrounded my uncle as he was hurrying home. He tried to hold on, but the willow had gathered too much hatred. Eliza’s voice rose in a horrible scream. My uncle Costin was thrown against several trees before the fatal hit to his head.

By the time Friends ended, his memories came to me in a rush - clear, powerful, magical, cunning.


CANTO V


In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning it was the sun in the deep forest, warm rain washing the stones, millions of bright stars in the dark beauty of the night. Nature was a merciful master holding the world in loving hands. It was balance and, at an arm’s length, the Universe slowly rocked the Earth in its cradle.

My aunt Virginia had green eyes and warm blonde hair; she was 16 and in love. She would run out at midnight to meet her lover in the alley behind the high fence; her white teeth shining through the darkness, her nightgown like a wild bird. She’d run into his arms, breathless, beautiful, seeing herself through his love-struck eyes. Love was a mirror to her. She needed adorers, flowers, passions and fury; she’d devour and consume love like a vampire drinking blood, a painful ache that had to be healed. She fell in love every day, every night; she saw herself in their eyes and she was irresistible to herself.

Nature accepted her from the start; she was fertile and healthy, liked to walk bare-foot in the grass, and liked all animals. She was much more a part of Nature than she was a part of our family. In the night, Nature would put soft flowers underneath her body and gently support it when it came down in the swirl of passion. Small, yellow blossoms were crawling up her spine, following her lover’s hands. Fireflies reflected on her skin as it turned pale and red, dancing to the spectacular rhythm of life itself.

25 years later - lovers reduced to a few, blonde hair getting thinner, skin sagging - my aunt Virginia realized she was more than a body with desires. She sold her 2-floor condo in the midst of elegant Bucharest – place of renowned orgies and parties - and returned home, weary, doubtful, lost. She needed someone to blame, and my grandparents gladly offered her a cause. She became aware of her heritage and her enemy – and hated Nature for not keeping her young and beautiful.

There I was, a card shuffled amongst her memories; my aunt Virginia came running into the house to see me cold and breathless, my grandfather screaming for help. She whisked me into her room; she had potions there. She sat me on the bed while prying open her dresser. She stopped to look at me and the three of us – me as a child, her, me looking through her eyes now – suddenly knew, with a cold chill in our bodies, that I was dead and that it was too late.

Virginia stepped back from the bed and sat on a chair; she was not sad. She felt relief and slight amusement; she hated me, we all discovered. I was the child she never had, the child of her boring sister whom she did not understand. Her sister, sick since childhood, fragile and thin, was able to bear a child; while she, Virginia, wasted her youth and body away.

She did not move for minutes. As we contemplated life, death and suffering, the lateral door opened and my uncle Costin entered the room. A fast, tall, athletic man, he was my father’s brother and also his complete opposite. He assessed the situation in a second.

“What are you doing?” he yelled at my aunt. “Save her,” he said.

“It’s too late,” Virginia answered, shrugging. Her voice filled with unexpected emotion, we noticed.

“You can bring her back,” he ordered. “I know about your potions, Ginny. You found the hidden Corner Flowers up on Empress’ Rock. I know you have them, how else could you have done what you did that night?”

Her heart raced, but she blocked the memory and refused to indulge.

“I have only one left”, she said. “And I was keeping it for...”

“Didn’t you learn anything in over 50 years of living?” he asked. “You can’t abuse it every time you need a boost of confidence, for God’s sake. You are old. She is young.