by Paul Park
Miranda struggled for a moment more. Then she relaxed her body and lay still.
“Good. That’s better. Now. I want you to—say it. Say what you must say.”
As soon as she stopped struggling, the ghost relaxed its grip. But there it was if she tried to move.
“Say it! Beg for it! When the first white tyger—begged for help in this same room…”
Miranda set her lips together. Cramped and aching, she lay still for several moments. Then she relented. “What I need…”
Again there came a soft flutter of laughter in her ear. “Is that the best—you can do? I remember when the farmer—brought you white asparagus in Mamaia. Such rudeness! You refused to eat it. You sat until midnight with your plate—in front of you. Until Juliana…”
“Help,” Miranda whispered, and the world shuddered to life.
The darkness fled. The Gypsy girl was gone. Miranda was alone in the salt cave. Light came from a new source, a clay lamp in the center of the floor.
From where she lay, her cheek against the floor, Miranda had a good view of it. Once when her adoptive parents had taken her to New York, she had seen a lamp just like it in an exhibition of artifacts from Pompeii. A flame protruded from the spout, and it shone on a chamber that was like an ideal version of the old one, a perfect cube cut out of the white rock. The salt throne had disappeared. Air came from the black entrance where the candles had stood.
Miranda saw these things as she raised her head. Now the relief she felt at the ghost’s departure was troubled by a new thought: Where was she now? The walls and floor were smooth. The stone was not pure white but a dull, mixed, dusty color like the sand on a beach. Here and there the surface glinted with darker flecks and veins. Miranda stumbled to her feet.
She was in a new version of the cave. And if she stumbled out the entrance into the dark night, what would she find? Would she have changed again? Would everything have changed again?
She sat down on the floor next to the lamp. She sat cross-legged and put her face into her hands. In her ears there was a roaring sound and something else. A little bird was caught above her in the vault, and she listened to the beating of its wings.
This was not tara mortilor, she knew. She had no sense of moving through a dream. Nor was it the world of her childhood in Massachusetts. One more time would she have to start from nothing? She absolutely couldn’t bear it.
Still, first things first. There was an object on the floor next to the lamp. It was a disk of some yellowish metal, gold or brass or bronze, or else a mixture. The rim was carved in a pattern of roses that surrounded a flat, smooth, polished, unfigured circle. It had a handle of carved briars. Picking it up, Miranda knew she was holding a mirror, an ancient mirror from the days before silvered or mercury-coated glass. The metal was stained and tarnished so she could not see more than a shadow of her face.
The back of the mirror was also carved, incised with a scene Miranda remembered from Greek myth. Circe the magician, sitting in a low chair. She stretched out her arm, and with a long reed she was tickling the heads of Odysseus’s men. Some had already turned to pigs.
There were letters carved in a circle around this scene, and Miranda could just make them out. GNOSESAUTON. This meant nothing to her. But she glanced at the clasp of her gold bracelet with its own circle of minute, indecipherable words. Then with her cuff she tried to rub some of the tarnish from the mirror’s face. But the metal wouldn’t come clean.
She heard a fluttering in the corner and the bird was there, beating its iridescent wings against the surface of the wall until it found the dark hole to the outside air. It was a brandywine bird. Then it was gone, and Miranda heard another noise. A little, brown-furred mouse was trapped along the base of the far wall, squeaking with terror. It was caught in a kind of snare. And when Miranda put the mirror down and came toward it, she thought it might expire from fright. Shivering and trembling, it turned to face her. It was a dear little thing, though when it pulled its lips back, Miranda could see the sharp rat’s teeth.
* * *
AFTER LUNCHEON THE Baroness Ceausescu started back toward Bucharest. She rode in a closed carriage with eight horses and four postillions. But in the evening she had not gone farther than Brasov, where she’d arranged to spend the night. Soldiers had ridden ahead.
She came into the walled city by the Trumpeter’s Door. At the state accommodations in the Piata Sfatului, she was met by representatives of the jeweler’s guild who had prepared a public dinner. There was music and a reception in the town hall. It was not until almost midnight that she made her excuses and returned to her room to change her clothes. Her train to the capital left at dawn.
She disliked women and had no women in her household. Using a charm of misdirection, she managed to give Jean-Baptiste the slip when he was turning down the bed. She found the servant’s stairs, the servant’s door, and she was in the street, walking under the gaslights of the central town. The moon was almost full, which helped her after she’d left the circle of lit streets. She was looking for a house that had been famous once. Now it was abandoned—the residence of Lucas Hirscher the silversmith, who had been the vampire’s previous incarnation.
She found it in the Strada Eroilor, a cul-de-sac off the boulevard. A tall mansion in the style of the previous century, now its windows and doors were boarded up and covered with graffiti. A sheet of pressed tin had been pulled back to reveal an entrance used by criminals, lovers, and thrill-seekers, though on that night the house was empty. The baroness uncovered her lantern in the great hall.
Lucas Hirscher had been notorious in Transylvania. From his youth he’d cultivated vice with the sensitivity of an artist, and it was only his proximity to wealth that had kept him out of prison or away from the gallows tree. Finally his own wife and daughter had forced him to justice and murdered him in his own bed. Later the girl had drowned herself.
There was a scurrying in the wall. The house was overrun with vermin and stray cats. In the dining room the baroness discovered what she was looking for, a painted portrait of the vampire mounted on a wall above a rubble of broken plaster. She lit the face within the circle of the lantern’s eye. There he was. He had the same face as Zelea Codreanu, the same lustrous eyes and fat red lips.
The house was now a shrine for the worship of Hecate, banned by the order of the German government. The baroness herself had signed the order, forwarded from the Committee for Roumanian Affairs. The locations of the cult had now withdrawn from public view. There was a witch’s circle drawn in chalk on the bare floorboards underneath the painting. There were stubs of candles and the stiff body of a rat, hung from a piece of lath thrust through the wall. Its desiccated belly was full of coins and nails.
The baroness had brought some of her own paraphernalia, including the tourmaline, which she gripped against her chest. “Gnose sauton,” she began, and then continued for a long time in the Greek language. The air was dense and thick. No draft or current threatened the lantern or disturbed the flames from the candle stubs that she now stooped to light.
Always the waiting was tedious as she murmured her charms and listened to the scratching in the walls. Not having eaten much at dinner, she was hungry and her throat was dry. It was long past midnight when she heard a creak outside the door and caught a glimpse of a girlish shadow. She addressed her in the language of the dead. “Oh, my dear—please come. Livia—is that your name? Your father has told me how beautiful you are. Please let me see. I’ve brought a gift for you.”
In the center of the witch’s circle, surrounded by candlelight, she had laid the presentation necklace of the jeweler’s guild, given to her that evening after a series of brief speeches. It was made of feldspar and yellow diamonds, woven together on a platinum chain.
* * *
ALSO PAST MIDNIGHT, while the baroness enticed Livia Hirscher under the light, the vampire came to Insula Calia with his men. With muffled oarlocks they had rowed upstream from the village of Chiscani o
n the western bank. When he’d felt the presence of the ghost in the salt chamber, then he’d guessed what he would find.
Under the fat yellow moon the four boats pulled out of the main current and around to the stone landing on the east side of the island. They came ashore at the stone dock where they tied the boats up to the iron rings. Zelea Codreanu was the first ashore.
Above him rose the crest of the small hill. All was in darkness. While the men waited for his signal, he raised his delicate nose into the night air. That night they were hunting the white tyger. They had brought nets and spears because they wanted to capture her alive.
The vampire never slept. By day he pored and fussed over dry papers, wearing his gray civil-service uniform. But at night he allowed himself more elegant fabrics. He wore a black silk shirt and leather pants. A strip of cloth was knotted around his upper arm, bearing the insignium of his political party, the Legion of Aphrodite: a phoenix rising from the ashes of its nest.
And he had brought his legionaries, the usual mix of unemployed stevedores and fishermen from the port of Galati. They had accompanied him before on various raids. Now they climbed ashore, nineteen ragged barefoot men and boys. Some carried torches, bundles of kerosene-saturated burlap on the tops of poles, which he now lit with his cigarette lighter as they clustered around, despite the risk of fire in the dry reeds. “Men,” he whispered, “I know you would not hesitate to shed your blood for Great Roumania and what is right. We’re here to apprehend a criminal. Have a care, but she is only a girl, doubtless asleep, one of a parasitic race of so-called aristocrats who have sucked the life of our dear country, kept us all in poverty and shame.…”
* * *
BUT MIRANDA WAS not asleep. She was in the white salt chamber with the seven-metal mirror in her hands.
Then she let it drop. In a moment she felt too confined in that small space. And the lamp burned too bright for her new eyes. She’d lost sight of the rat and couldn’t hear its squeaking. Had it escaped as well?
Miranda ducked her head into the low tunnel and scrambled out into the night. Above her was the golden moon. She climbed out of the dell onto the ridge and looked down to see the torchlight gathered at the dock. She was no longer afraid. Now I have lost everything, she thought. And so she came walking down the forest path, alive to every birdsong and whisper until she stood on the dry slope above the legionaries as they came ashore. Her eyes had settled into a different kind of vision. She saw clearly in the dark, a low palette of blacks and brights and grays, and she was aware of tiny movements.
The men, by contrast, saw her indistinctly, and to some of them she seemed to hang above them like a brooding and expectant beast, poised to jump. They had guns but did not use them. When she came down the slope they pulled away, trapping her in a circle of light. None would approach her. And to her it seemed as if they were the beasts, not she, and they were cringing in silence when she moved, as if afraid she might notice them. Though some of them were shouting, and Zelea Codreanu was telling them what to do, Miranda heard nothing of all that. But she was surrounded by a ring of tiny squeaks and groans she heard over the roaring in her ears, the pumping of her heart. Their faces were inhuman, distorted not just by thuggishness and fear, but by a new kind of nature. In each of them she could see a spirit animal scratching and struggling to get out, as if caught in a transparent human bag. In some cases the membrane had already peeled away, revealing the stalklike eyes and active mandibles of insects and shellfish or the unformed faces of baby animals, as if seen through a splitting caul.
Only Codreanu had kept his human shape. Or it was as if the caul had ripped to show the same face underneath, made shiny and new and even more beautiful. Pale skin tinged golden in the torchlight, soft, long-lashed eyes, red lips that were open now to cry out exhortations and political rants. But it was as if the shell that had surrounded these words had also cracked apart, revealing something soft and quiet. The Roumanian words had cracked apart to reveal a core of French: “Longtemps j’attendais—now I have you.”
Roumanian was the language of Zelea Codreanu. But the vampire spoke in French. Miranda looked up at the moon. With her new, quick eyes she saw a bird fluttering overhead, and with her new ears she heard a voice that might have been inside herself. “Don’t be afraid.” But she was not afraid.
She reached out her hand, which was indistinct to her. But she could see the claws. She could feel the movement of her joints and muscles. She could hear the pounding of her heart. She stepped into the grip of a young man and with a sweep of her hand she slit the membrane that covered him from top to bottom. The bag deflated and collapsed around an animal that was neither large nor fierce, a little dog that yipped and complained when she reached down to grab him underneath the belly and flip him into the air, into the water. A long pole with a sharpened end clattered to the stones.
All of them—bugs, beasts, and scuttling crabs—now spread away from her into the dark. They were the frightened ones, and it was right they should be frightened. She leaped after them, grabbing them and throwing them aside. Flung down, one of the torches made a fire in the small dry grass. Through its light she saw the vampire start away, running down the flat spine of the island toward its low south end. But in a bramble patch he tripped and fell, and she was on him.
She turned him over. He was weak under her hands. He also was afraid and she could feel it. The moon shone in his face. His fear was like a tremor in his flesh. It thrilled under her fingers while she waited to do—what? Her hands were stiff with power while she waited to do—what?
Zelea Codreanu lay on his back. He was a man in his early thirties with pale skin under which she now saw a blush of color. His blood was rising to the surface. He opened his lips and she could see his teeth, smell his breath. In an instant she remembered all the small things she had heard about him during the previous days, how he’d been born into a peasant family in Galati. How he’d been taken in by the Sisters of Diana and sent to the temple school where he’d excelled.
Not another one, Miranda thought. Not after the policeman in the garden of the Russian consulate—as she looked down she could see her hands again. There was a change, and the vampire understood it. His eyes opened, and with a surge of strength he turned her over and put his hands around her throat. “Ça-y-est maintenant,” he whispered. “Let me.”
She had hesitated too long. Now his red lips were near her own. One hand was on her throat, while with the other he was touching her on the neck and shoulders. But she was not frightened, though the vampire’s thumb had pressed into her windpipe. She had resources, wells of power and disgust. But she couldn’t breathe. Her hands pulled uselessly at the vampire’s hands; his mouth was near her own. “Is this what you like?” he murmured, before he bit her on the lips, drawing blood.
They lay in the short grass above the beach. Miranda could hear the susurration of the river. And then something else. “Papa! Papa! Est-ce que c’est vraiment vous? Ah, comme je vous cherchais—how I was looking for you!”
A girl stood on the riverbank below where they lay in the dry grass. “Papa, what are you doing—do you want to make me jealous? Who is she, please?”
Miranda felt the vampire’s grip loosen on her neck, slippery now with sweat. She saw him raise his head, and so she twisted underneath him, batted at his hands. At first she didn’t think he recognized the girl. But then a flicker of something passed across his face. “Livia,” he murmured.
“Papa, is this how you repay me? After I have given you so much?” The girl had climbed up the slope and stood above them now. Her saturated dress trailed behind her. Weeds hung from her wet hair. She carried a knife with a serrated blade. Around her throat shone a gaudy necklace, alternating yellow and gray stones.
Down by the dock the torch had lit a fire. Miranda saw the girl by the light of a smoky fire, which was spreading through the drought-starved reeds. Miranda had turned her head so that her cheek was against the stones and she could breathe. She stu
died the girl’s old-fashioned hook-and-eye-laced boots.
Miranda pushed up and pushed away with all her strength, and she was free. She saw the gleam of the blade as the girl raised it up. The vampire also raised his hands to protect himself. The girl had grabbed him by his long hair. Then she was hacking at his face with her knife; Miranda rolled away over the stones and staggered up. Beyond the struggling figures, the fire had begun to spread up the east slope of the hill toward the dell and the salt cave. Ludu Rat-tooth was chained there on the salt throne.
It was Miranda’s instinct to escape, to run away. Whoever she was, wherever she had come from, the girl in the high boots didn’t need her help. The vampire was on his knees now as the girl cut him with the knife. Miranda backed away from them. And then she turned and staggered up the hill. But she stopped when she heard the voice, whether the brandywine bird or else something internal—“You must fetch him.”
In her mind she caught a glimpse of Ludu Rat-tooth, locked and chained. The fire was burning in the dry underbrush. The Gypsy girl was her first duty and Miranda continued up, climbing where the grass was green. Then she stopped again. “Go back,” said the voice. “Fetch him. This is your chance.”
Twenty feet above the riverbank she turned around. Below her she could see the vampire’s body sprawled out on the pebbles. Beyond it the girl had waded out into the water. She stood with the water around her thighs. She had her back to Miranda and was staring out over the calm dark river, lit now with reflections from the fire.
“Don’t worry about her,” said the voice.
That was bad advice. As Miranda stumbled down again, Livia Hirscher turned in the water and came to shore. The fire burned in patches over the low end of the island. The air was full of smoke. In her big wet dress she flounced ashore and met Miranda at her father’s body. Jealous, she was snarling more like a wild beast than a human being. But then the brandywine bird flew around her head, pecking at her eyes. And she was flailing at it with the knife until her slashing strokes unbalanced her—her wet leather boots, the yards of wet cloth around her legs. She fell to her hands and knees with the bird still in her hair, while Miranda dragged the vampire by its wrist. She pulled it through the high grass. Now she knew what she was doing. Mary Magdalene had locked this creature in a prison for a thousand years.