Blood Sisters

by Paula Guran

  Ariel drifted through the weeping days, while Maeve and Zenna comforted each other. They drew closer in a way they never had before. They were changed too. But the spell over Ariel eventually began to melt away. She could feel the real world coming back. She could not turn into a beast and walk the wind. She could not drink blood and become “other.” That was the tragedy of it. She would never be the same again because she couldn’t be like them. Zenna had been right about that. But at the same time she was not how she’d used to be. She was marked, lines down her torso the color of mulberries.

  On the night of the next full moon, Ariel climbed onto the roof of the house. Summer was ending, already the air smelled of decaying fruit and smoke. Autumn air would always smell that way, even if there were no fires, no fruit trees. There were no vampires on the roof, or down in the garden. How cruel they were. And how stupid was she to have believed that once would be enough. Of course it wouldn’t, but even so she had consented.

  It was no surprise to her that Zenna wriggled out of her window and used the limbs of the ironwood tree to reach the roof. She did not speak to Ariel at first, but just stood beside her, hands on hips, gazing at the forest behind the house. Eventually she said, “Are you going to tell me or not?”

  There seemed no point in being arch and saying, “What do you mean?” Ariel sighed. “I will show you,” she said.

  Zenna turned round. Ariel could see she was full of pain and jealousy. She had guessed, no doubt, because Ariel’s secrets were written all over her; she smelled of them. Ariel took off her shirt. In the moonlight her skin was parchment and the claw marks looked like burns.

  “Claws, not teeth,” Zenna said.

  Ariel nodded. “When they take your blood, perhaps it is something in their saliva that makes things happen. But it doesn’t last. You were right about that. It does change you, though; enough to feel a stranger in this world, but not enough to belong in theirs.”

  “Tell me what happened,” Zenna said. “Please.”

  Ariel did so. She spoke the words of a story so unlikely, she could hardly believe it herself, yet it had happened.

  “I should hate you,” Zenna said, “because it feels like you took something that was mine. But I’m glad it changed you. We are similar now.”

  Ariel tried to smile. “We can outrun time.”

  “For now.” Zenna held out her hand. “Come on. Maybe we are not as stupid as they think.”

  Hand in hand, two girls run through the moonlit forest. They run so fast they are merely blurs of light. They run so fast they cause cracks in the bark of trees that leak a green-yellow radiance. It is the were-light of seeing.

  LA DAME

  Tanith Lee

  Tanith Lee was born in the UK in 1947. After school she worked at a number of jobs, and at age twenty-five had one year at art college. Then DAW Books published her novel The Birthgrave. Since then she has been a professional full-time writer. Publications so far total approximately ninety novels and collections and well over three hundred short stories. She has also written for television and radio. Lee has been honored with several awards: in 2009 she was made a Grand Master of Horror and honored with the World Fantasy Convention Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. She is married to the writer/artist John Kaiine.

  Lee’s fictional vampires are truly too numerous—and too diverse—to cover here. They range from the fairly conventional ancient female vampire of “Nunc Dimittis” (1983) to the “alien vampire” Sabella (mentioned in the introduction) to the surreal story-within-a-story “The Isle is Full of Noises” (2000). While “La Dame” is one of Lee’s most original vampire variants, it also harkens back to some of our most primal beliefs about the sea and ships…

  “The game is done! I’ve won! I’ve won!”

  Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Of the land, and what the land gave you—war, pestilence, hunger, pain—he had had enough. It was the sea he wanted. The sea he went looking for. His grandfather had been a fisherman, and he had been taken on the ships in his boyhood. He remembered enough. He had never been afraid. Not of water, still or stormy. It was the ground he had done with, full of graves and mud.

  His name was Jeluc, and he had been a soldier fourteen of his twenty-eight years. He looked a soldier as he walked into the village above the sea.

  Some ragged children playing with sticks called out foul names after him. And one ran up and said, “Give us a coin.”

  “Go to hell,” he answered, and the child let him alone. It was not a rich village.

  The houses huddled one against another. But at the end of the struggling, straggling street, a long stone pier went out and over the beach, out into the water. On the beach there were boats lying in the slick sand, but at the end of the pier was a ship, tied fast, dipping slightly, like a swan.

  She was pale as ashes, and graceful, pointed and slender, with a single mast, the yard across it with a sail the color of turned milk bound up. She would take a crew of three, but one man could handle her. She had a little cabin with a hollow window and door.

  Birds flew scavenging round and round the beach; they sat on the house roofs between, or on the boats. But none alighted on the ship.

  Jeluc knocked on the first door. No one came. He tried the second and third doors, and at the fourth a woman appeared, sour and scrawny.

  “What is it?” She eyed him like the Devil. He was a stranger.

  “Who owns the pale ship?”

  “The ship? Is Fatty’s ship.”

  “And where would I find Fatty?”

  “From the wars, are you?” she asked. He said nothing. “I have a boy to the wars. He never came back.”

  Jeluc thought, Poor bitch. Your son’s making flowers in the muck. But then, the thought, What would he have done here?

  He said again, “Where will I find Fatty?”

  “Up at the drinking-house,” she said, and pointed.

  He thanked her and she stared. Probably she was not often thanked.

  The drinking-house was out of the village and up the hill, where sometimes you found the church. There seemed to be no church here.

  It was a building of wood and bits of stone, with a sloping roof, and inside there was the smell of staleness and ale.

  They all looked up, the ten or so fellows in the house, from their benches.

  He stood just inside the door and said, “Who owns the pale ship?”

  “I do,” said the one the woman had called Fatty. He was gaunt as a rope. He said, “What’s it to you?”

  “You don’t use her much.”

  “Nor I do. How do you know?”

  “She has no proper smell of fish, or the birds would be at her.”

  “There you’re wrong,” said Fatty. He slurped some ale. He did have a fat mouth, perhaps that was the reason for his name. “She’s respected, my lady. Even the birds respect her.”

  “I’ll buy your ship,” said Jeluc. “How much?”

  All the men murmured.

  Fatty said, “Not for sale.”

  Jeluc had expected that. He said, “I’ve been paid off from my regiment. I’ve got money here, look.” And he took out some pieces of silver.

  The men came round like beasts to be fed, and Jeluc wondered if they would set on him, and got ready to knock them down. But they knew him for a soldier. He was dangerous beside them, poor drunken sods.

  “I’ll give you this,” said Jeluc to Fatty.

  Fatty pulled at his big lips.

  “She’s worth more, my lady.”

  “Is that her name?” said Jeluc. “That’s what men call the sea. La Dame. She’s not worth so much, but I won’t worry about that.”

  Fatty was sullen. He did not know what to do.

  Then one of the other men said to him. “You could take that to the town. You could spend two whole nights with a whore, and drink the place dry.”

  “Or,” said an
other, “you could buy the makings to mend your old house.”

  Fatty said, “I don’t know. Is my ship. Was my dad’s.”

  “Let her go,” said another man. “She’s not lucky for you. Nor for him.”

  Jeluc said, “Not lucky, eh? Shall I lower my price?”

  “Some daft tale,” said Fatty. “She’s all right. I’ve kept her trim.”

  “He has,” the others agreed.

  “I could see,” said Jeluc. He put the money on a table. “There it is.”

  Fatty gave him a long, bended look. “Take her, then. She’s the lady.”

  “I’ll want provisions,” he said. “I mean to sail over to the islands.”

  A gray little man bobbed forward. “You got more silver? My wife’ll see to you. Come with me.”

  The gray man’s wife left the sack of meal, and the dried pork and apples, and the cask of water, at the village end of the pier, and Jeluc carried them out to the ship.

  Her beauty impressed him as he walked towards her. To another maybe she would only have been a vessel. But he saw her lines. She was shapely. And the mast was slender and strong.

  He stored the food and water, and the extra things, the ale and rope and blankets, the pan for hot coals, in the cabin. It was bare, but for its cupboard and the wooden bunk. He lay here a moment, trying it. It felt familiar as his own skin.

  The deck was clean and scrubbed, and above the tied sail was bundled on the creaking yard, whiter than the sky. He checked her over. Nothing amiss.

  The feel of her, dipping and bobbing as the tide turned, gave him a wonderful sensation of escape.

  He would cast off before sunset, get out on to the sea, in case the oafs of the village had any amusing plans. They were superstitious of the ship, would not use her but possibly did not like to see her go. She was their one elegant thing, like a Madonna in the church, if they had had one.

  Her name was on her side, written dark.

  The wind rose as the leaden sun began to sink.

  He let down her sail, and it spread like a swan’s wing. It was after all discolored, of course, yet from a distance it would look very white. Like a woman’s arm that had freckles when you saw it close.

  The darkness came, and by then the land was out of sight. All the stars swarmed up, brilliant, as the clouds melted away. A glow was on the tips of the waves, such as he remembered. Tomorrow he would set lines for fish, baiting them with scraps of pork.

  He cooked his supper of meal cakes on the coals, then lit a pipe of tobacco. He watched the smoke go up against the stars, and listened to the sail, turning a little to the wind.

  The sea made noises, rushes and stirrings, and sometimes far away would come some sound, a soft booming or a slender cry, such as were never heard on land. He did not know what made these voices, if it were wind or water, or some creature. Perhaps he had known in his boyhood, for it seemed he recalled them.

  When he went to the cabin, leaving the ship on her course, with the rope from the tiller tied to his waist, he knew that he would sleep as he had not slept on the beds of the earth.

  The sea too was full of the dead, but they were a long way down. Theirs was a clean finish among the mouths of fishes.

  He thought of mermaids swimming alongside, revealing their breasts, and laughing at him that he did not get up and look at them.

  He slept.

  Jeluc dreamed he was walking down the stone pier out of the village. It was starlight, night, and the pale ship was tied there at the pier’s end as she had been. But between him and the ship stood a tall gaunt figure. It was not Fatty or the gray man, for as Jeluc came near, he saw it wore a black robe, like a priest’s, and a hood concealed all its skull face but for a broad white forehead.

  As he got closer, Jeluc tried to see the being’s face, but could not. Instead a white thin hand came up and plucked from him a silver coin.

  It was Charon, the Ferryman of the Dead, taking his fee.

  Jeluc opened his eyes.

  He was in the cabin of the ship called La Dame, and all was still, only the music of the water and the wind, and through the window he saw the stars sprinkle by.

  The rope at his waist gave its little tug, now this way, now that, as it should. All was well.

  Jeluc shut his eyes.

  He imagined his lids weighted by silver coins. He heard a soft voice singing, a woman’s voice. It was very high and sweet, not kind, no lullaby.

  In the morning he was tired, although his sleep had gone very deep. But it had been a long walk he had had to the village.

  He saw to the lines, baiting them carefully, and went over the ship, but she was as she should be. He cooked some more cakes, and ate a little of the greasy pork. The ale was flat and bitter, but he had tasted far worse.

  He stood all morning by the tiller.

  The weather was brisk but calm enough, and at this rate he would sight the first of the islands by the day after tomorrow. He might be sorry at that, but then he need not linger longer. He could be off again.

  In the afternoon he drowsed. And when he woke, the sun was over to the west like a bullet in a dull dark rent in the sky.

  Jeluc glimpsed something. He turned, and saw three thin men with ragged dripping hair, who stood on the far side of the cabin on the after-deck. They were quite still, colourless and dumb. Then they were gone.

  Perhaps it had been some formation of the clouds, some shadow cast for a moment by the sail. Or his eyes, playing tricks.

  But he said aloud to the ship, “Are you haunted, my dear? Is that your secret?”

  When he checked his lines, he had caught nothing, but there was no law that said he must.

  The wind dropped low and, as yesterday, the clouds dissolved when the darkness fell, and he saw the stars blaze out like diamonds, but no moon.

  It seemed to him he should have seen her, the moon, but maybe some little overcast had remained, or he had made a mistake.

  He concocted a stew with the pork and some garlic and apple, ate, smoked his pipe, listened to the noises of the sea.

  He might be anywhere. A hundred miles from any land. He had seen no birds all day.

  Jeluc went to the cabin, tied the rope, and lay down. He slept at once. He was on the ship, and at his side sat one of his old comrades, a man who had died from a cannon shot two years before. He kept his hat over the wound shyly, and said to Jeluc, “Where are you bound? The islands? Do you think you’ll get there?”

  “This lady’ll take me there,” said Jeluc.

  “Oh, she’ll take you somewhere.”

  Then the old soldier showed him the compass, and the needle had gone mad, reared up and poked down, right down, as if indicating hell. Jeluc opened his eyes and the rope twitched at his waist, this way, that. He got up, and walked out on to the deck.

  The stars were bright as white flames, and the shadow of the mast fell hard as iron on the deck. But it was all wrong.

  Jeluc looked up, and on the mast of the ship hung a wiry man, with his long gray hair all tangled round the yard and trailing down the sail, crawling on it, like the limbs of a spider.

  This man Jeluc did not know, but the man grinned, and he began to pull off silver rings from his fingers and cast them at Jeluc. They fell with loud cold notes. A huge round moon, white as snow, rose behind the apparition. Its hand tugged and tugged, and Jeluc heard it curse. The finger had come off with the ring, and fell on his boot.

  “What do you want with me?” said Jeluc, but the man on the mast faded, and the severed finger was only a drop of spray.

  Opening his eyes again, Jeluc lay on the bunk, and he smelled a soft warm perfume. It was like flowers on a summer day. It was the aroma of a woman.

  “Am I awake now?”

  Jeluc got up, and stood on the bobbing floor, then he went outside. There was no moon, and only the sail moved on the yard.

  One of the lines was jerking, and he went to it slowly. But when he tested it, nothing was there.

  The smell
of heat and plants was still faintly about him, and now he took it for the foretaste of the islands, blown out to him.

  He returned to the cabin and lay wakeful, until near dawn he slept and dreamed a mermaid had come over the ship’s rail. She was pale as pale, with ash blond hair, and he wondered if it would be feasible to make love to her, for she had a fish’s tail, and no woman’s parts at all that he could see.

  Dawn was so pale it seemed the ship had grown darker. She had a sort of flush, her sides and deck, her smooth mast, her outspread sail.

  He could not scent the islands anymore.

  Rain fell, and he went into the cabin, and there examined his possessions, as once or twice he had done before a battle. His knife, his neckscarf of silk, which a girl had given him years beore, a lucky coin he had kept without believing in it, a bullet that had missed him and gone into a tree. His money, his boots, his pipe. Not much.

  Then he thought that the ship was now his possession, too, his lady.

  He went and stood in the rain and looked at her.

  There was nothing on the lines.

  He ate pork for supper.

  The rain eased, and in the cabin, he slept.

  The woman stood at the tiller.

  She rested her hand on it, quietly.

  She was very pale, her hair long and blond, and her old-fashioned dress the shade of good paper.

  He stood and watched her for some time, but she did not respond, although he knew she was aware of him, and that he watched. Finally he walked up to her, and she turned her head.

  She was very thin, her face all bones, and she had great glowing pale gleaming eyes, and these stared now right through him.

  She took her hand off the tiller and put it on his shoulder, and he felt her touch go through him like her look, straight down his body, through his heart, belly and loins, and out at his feet.

  He thought, She’ll want to go into the cabin with me.