by T. F. Walsh
She had been about to work her song again, thinking she had until night before Caleb arrived, and then he appeared before her.
“I have come,” he said, calling to her from outside her cell.
“Yes, I see that.”
“Are you ready to talk now?”
“I am as ever your humble servant,” she answered, unsure herself whether she was being ironic or not.
“Libby, don’t — ”
Whatever he was going to say was interrupted by Se’, who was finally rattled out of rest. Recognizing the reason for Caleb’s visit, Se’s opened the cell door, which took an inordinate amount of time because he would not cease bowing while he did so.
“Leave us, Se’. You do not need to close the door.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
As Se’ walked nervously away, bowing again, Caleb continued, “Both of us, I think, would prefer to forget, at least for a moment, that this is a cage.” He nodded his head in the direction of the open door.
“I thank you for sentiment, but I’m afraid it will take a great deal more than that.”
“Yes, it will,” he said darkly. “Would it help you to know that your interrogators will not visit you again?”
“What do you mean?”
Ignoring her question, Caleb continued, “I cannot offer you your freedom, at least not yet, but I can give you a reprieve, if you wish it.”
“What do you — you offer me a reprieve.”
“While you aid me, you will not be held here.”
“I will be in the palace.”
“Yes, when we are finished with … ” He stumbled, gesturing vaguely. “With what you do, you will return here.”
“From one cage to another then. I see.”
“If that is how you see it, then yes, two cages. One better than the other though.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Libby, don’t thank me. I — ” He paused, glancing nervously down.
“You need my help,” she prompted, hoping to avoid what she knew would be another apology.
He looked up at her then, his face a mix of emotion, but he continued talking in a clinical way, seeming to have decided, as Libby had, that coldness would serve them both now. “As a — I am — as the prince, compared to other vampires, I am different.”
“You are different.”
“Indeed, compared to other vampires, compared to humans, compared even to your kind … I am … different.” He said this severely, unflinchingly, almost daring her judgment.
“You are different,” she repeated, hoping he would trust her with more information.
“I don’t feel emotions, not as you do. Other sensations, too, are limited.”
“I am sorry. I do not understand. You said you don’t feel emotions.”
He looked lost, unable to explain, agitated. Rubbing his forehead, running his hands through his hair, quickly, over and over again. He seemed torn. She could feel that he didn’t want her to know about his shifts, but what did that have to do with his inability to feel?
Caleb sighed loudly, coming to a decision. “You know the shift in your males — you know it limits their cognitive skills. In the form of the wolf, your males are instinctual, feeling little the emotions that make them men. They do not remember their homes, their wives, themselves. They do not love. They do not know fear. You understand this, do you not?” He did not wait for her answer. “With the — with me, there are similar problems. I don’t know why. No one knows why. I have been like this — I have been like this since I was young. No one knows why.”
“There is no reason for your difference.”
“No one knows of one, no.”
“Tell me more, please.”
Though he was clearly nervous, he continued, “I don’t think I have ever felt what you call happiness or sadness. I emote. Right now, perhaps to you, I seem angry, but it’s really just confusion. I may feel something akin to those emotions, but even were I to feel them as you do, I don’t know them. I don’t recognize them. Something as simple, as elemental, as pain baffles me.”
“You don’t feel pain.”
“To be honest, I never have been injured in battle, but I have, well, experimented with pain.” He seemed to blush, a normal enough response at such a statement, but was he merely confused, unable to explain what he felt. He didn’t seem embarrassed. What did he mean? He added, “If I have ever felt pain, I did not recognize it as such. I don’t have much to go on.”
“You say you don’t feel pain, but isn’t that, you know, normal?”
His mouth gaped. “How could that possibly be normal?”
At his surprise, she stuttered, “But … but I thought. In our pack, we are told … well, you’re shocked, so I take it that isn’t the case.”
“What isn’t the case?” he asked, confused.
“That vampires don’t feel anything.”
“No. Most certainly it isn’t the case. I assure you. I am rather … unique,” he said slowly, as though choosing the appropriate word to describe himself.
He was making fine distinctions for her, but she didn’t understand. Did Caleb’s connection to a wolf affect his ability to feel? Did it really make him that different from other vampires and even other wolves. How could she convince him to tell her more?
“I guess that it … it almost seems like some story that is told to scare children now … but … I have heard tales like that my entire life, so there has to be some truth there. Don’t all vampires have issues with normal feelings? Doesn’t being dead affect your ability to feel the sensations of living?”
“We’re not dead. Of course we’re not dead. The stories you creatures come up with. How could we bear children if we were dead?”
“I don’t know, but … why are you so cold? If you’re alive, why don’t you have a normal temperature?”
“It is normal, more or less, but we don’t regulate it the way you do or even the way normal humans do. In a way, our heat is entirely inside. That doesn’t really explain it, but it’s close enough for what you want to know. Our skin doesn’t release heat or energy the same way you do. We don’t perspire. Our skin doesn’t heat or cool. It doesn’t need to. We regulate temperature on the inside. If you were to test our internal temperature, it would only be a little cooler than yours. Does that satisfy you?”
“Not really,” she said, but she was smiling.
“What? Why are you smiling?”
“Well, ok. So you’re not dead, but if you’re not dead, why does your face always look like that?”
• • •
He tried to laugh with her, eager, hoping that their former camaraderie was returning. Well, maybe laugh wasn’t the right word. It was more a huff of hair, his own special kind of laugh, like something trapped inside, burbling out. Her laughter seemed miraculous to him now. He wanted to share it with her.
He had also learned something about her. Talking of emotions — her area of expertise — drew her out, brought her back from wherever else she had been. He was surprised by her question, pleased by her flippancy. Somehow they had magically returned to who they had both been before.
He crossed his arms and lifted his brow in the way that Libby often mimicked. “That is a question, perhaps, for another day. My concern isn’t my face — it’s feelings, sensations.”
“You just told me that vampires feel them normally,” she said, crossing her arms, too.
“Most of them do. More or less, vampires feel emotions in the normal way. Of course, they feel them, though, at a slight distance, like an observer.”
“Like an observer? That’s not really experiencing them, is it?”
“You’re contentious about this, aren’t you? I suppose emotions are your particular prevue. Perhaps I spoke too soon. I
n any case, to say that vampires’ emotions are similar to those of an observer is not quite right. It might be said, more accurately, that they experience feelings as parents do, seeing and sympathizing with what happens to their children.”
“Isn’t a parent like an observer? I don’t understand the distinction you’re trying to make.”
“In many ways the parents have a more complex and deeper experience than the child-participant, not less of one. Yes, they are observers, but they do not simply see and watch in a clinical way. They are connected, deeply connected to their emotions, but … how can I explain it? If a small child falls and cries, the parents feel that pain, not directly, but their power of empathy allows them to feel something close to it. But the parent also feels the relevance of that pain. She knows this hurt is of little importance: small, temporary, insignificant, and, then, gone.”
“That must be why my emotions are so effective against vampires. You never experience them directly. It would be quite a shock to experience actual pain, true fear.”
“You use words like actual and true to describe what you feel. Vampires would say that our feelings are truer and less clouded than your own. After all, the child’s fear, her crying over a slight scrape, isn’t, in a sense, accurate, is it? When an adult falls and undergoes the same injury, he would not behave so. The child’s shock and fear are distortions, lies that are not reality. With experience, with knowledge, she would not cry. She would perceive accurately the truth of the insignificance of such an injury.”
“I’ll accept what you’re saying for now, but I think you’re wrong. Still, that doesn’t sound any different from what you are saying you feel — or, don’t feel.”
“Yes, I understand, but it’s complicated. There are things about me that I do not want you to know, that aren’t mine to tell you, secrets of my people. The way we experience emotions is connected to our longevity.”
“Yet you say you are different from other vampires?”
“Vampires, wolves, they have all died before me, many of them by my hand, and I have not felt sadness or regret. I have not wept. My own father’s passing meant almost nothing to me. Upon your arrival, his death disappeared from my thoughts entirely. I know what is happening to me, but I cannot tell you. To be honest, I would not tell you had I the choice. Still, I want your help.”
“Then you shall have it. Cage or no. At least for now,” she said seriously.
Embarrassed to have said so much, he looked away from her, until she held out her hand, like a man in a human film.
Titling her head to the right, smiling, she wiggled her hand at him. “Deal?”
Taking her warm hand in his, he felt lighter, somehow, than he had in months. “Deal.”
Chapter 16: GROWING PAINS
Only a day had passed since she last saw Caleb. A few hours after he left the prison, she was collected by armed guards and told to travel with them to the palace. One of them had stepped forward and explained to her what was happening.
“My name is Nevan,” he had said. “The prince has placed you under my care. No harm will come to you, but I must blindfold you, and you must be bound.” Without waiting for her approval, he had started to prepare her for the journey through the city.
She had been escorted through gate after gate after gate, and was finally brought inside a monstrously large building. She could not see it, but as she trundled upstairs, she could feel how big the place was, and she knew it was the Capitol Palace. She was taken to a room and placed in a chair. Finally, her restraints and blindfold were removed.
They told her hot water awaited her in the connected room and that the prince would come when he was available. Nevan specifically informed her that, in the meantime, after her ablutions — he had actually said ablutions — she should rest. In fact, Nevan told her that she was ordered to bathe, to dress in the clothes given to her, and then rest.
Although she knew guards were positioned all around her — some she saw even on the balcony outside — she admitted that she had been wrong. This did not feel like a cage. After the cold cell of the prison, this most definitely was no cage. She decided to thank Caleb later. She bathed, absolving herself, she thought wryly, and then she slept, more deeply than she could at the prison. Yet just before dawn, she sprang up, hearing someone enter. It was Nevan. He apologized for intruding, but he needed to inform her before he slept that the prince was too busy to see her this evening. He would see her tomorrow morning or, at the absolute latest, tomorrow afternoon.
At first, she had been slightly annoyed, being told that the prince would visit her whenever he deigned to honor her with his presence, but then it occurred to her that Caleb might be offering a kindness, pretending to be occupied to give her more time to rest, more time away from prison.
She slept and was not awoken until late in the morning. She was given food. She was allowed to bathe again. Then she waited, until day settled into night, until Nevan had come to collect her.
• • •
After walking, again blindfolded, through the palace, she was brought to a stop, and Nevan peeled off the linen around her eyes. As her eyes adjusted to the room, she realized she recognized it. It was the room in Caleb’s memories. There was the window. There was the prison outside. Moving her eyes from the view beyond the glass, Libby noticed a dark green mat placed against the wall, near the back corner of the room. She might need to change that for future sessions, but today any place would do. She remembered Caleb’s insistence that he’d never felt pain, so her goal today was simple. Thankfully, its simplicity meant that she might manage it, as nervous as she was.
After a moment, Caleb entered. He did not look at her. Instead, he saw only Nevan. Libby bowed, lowering her head. She peeked up, glancing at Caleb and her guard. She wasn’t sure she could do any of this well, but she was pretty sure she couldn’t manage it with an audience.
“You may leave,” Caleb said to suddenly to Nevan.
“Yes, my Lord,” Nevan answered, but finally Caleb looked only at her, not sparing a glance toward his soldier.
As the door closed after the guard, he clipped, “What do you need me to do?”
Jarred by his abrupt questioning, she asked in return, “Caleb, I’ve been here since last night, and now I am finally seeing you. Is everything ok?”
When he said nothing, she prompted again, “Caleb?”
“I have no idea what’s going to happen here for either of us, so I thought it best to wait for the gaurds.”
“Are you worried I would try to hurt you?”
“No, no. It’s — I want to be near the guards. For you.” He stammered, confusing her. “What do you need me to do? Where should I go?”
“The magic works best with immediate contact. So,” she stopped to clear her throat, “I’ll need to touch you. The closer we are, the more contact we have, the clearer the transference.”
“Are you saying that, if we touch, I will feel more precisely what you feel?”
“Yes, the feeling will be clearer for you, but the contact will also make it easier for me. The spell requires energy and stamina to share, but distance between us would require exponentially more.”
“When you speak of contact, do you mean proximity, or do you mean physically touching?”
She swallowed before answering, “Both. It’s about creating a bridge. I can create a bridge over great distance and with no contact, it’s possible, but it’s also very limited. What I can feel and share is limited. Today, though, what I will show you is simple. So … I … I don’t need to touch you, but … ”
He spared her, concluding on his own, “Touching will make this better.”
“Yes, that is close enough to what I mean.”
“Fine. Then how shall we begin?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Now that she was so close to him, all though
ts had fled. She couldn’t concentrate on making sentences. Instead, she went to the wall and sat against it, stretching out her legs, making a space for Caleb. Then she glanced up and waved him toward her. “You will sit here,” she said, gesturing to the space in front of her.
“You want me to sit — you want me to sit in your lap?” His voice lifted in a way she had never heard before, his low and confident growl raising almost an octave in surprise.
“Not in my lap. In front of me.”
“Semantics,” he hissed. “I’ll be sitting in the middle of your legs.”
“This is how we practice when we are children. I was taught this way by my mother and then by the women of my pack.”
That information seemed to calm him a little, but then his forehead wrinkled in thought. “You say you sat thusly with your mother. But surely you can see that this is a position that requires great trust. Surely you see that?” His voice raised again, but only a little this time.
She merely raised an eyebrow at him, giving him the same treatment he always gave her. But her stare was clearly less powerful than his because he just continued with his complaints.
“It was no challenge for you, a small child, to sit wrapped in the embrace of you mother, but do you really expect that I will willingly and readily turn my back to you?”
“I would not harm you.”
“Is this a promise you’re making to me?” He crossed his arms as if were considering her words, but his face remained clear of expression, so she could not tell if he thought her promise was of any worth.
Finally, he answered for her, again coming to what he saw was the only logical conclusion: “Of course you would harm me. I am your captor. My people are the sworn enemy of your pack. Our kinds have always battled each other. Yet you insist so simply that you would not harm me? Do you take me for a fool?”
“Caleb, don’t be ridiculous. You know I am not going to hurt you. You told me that not five minutes ago. What’s wrong with you?”