by Tanith Lee
REMEMBER ME
From an explanation of origin by John Kaiine.
I
His first memory: darkness, fear, and the smell of water – then two dots of flame, a shape – something that snaked toward him – and ordinary fear changing to whitest terror.
He was three years old, maybe just four. He would never be sure of that. Before the first memory was a nothingness, like death, except he had obviously been alive. And anyway, beyond true death lay another life. He would come to know that, quite soon.
Years after, he realised he must that evening have been stealing from the market stalls, mostly things dropped on the ground. He was hungry, and he had lived like that, stealing, or begging. But there were other thieves and beggars in the grey little town below the mountains, and they had no compassion for any small weak dwarf-thing called a child. So they set on him, and then, getting the taste for it, chased him. He would have run down past the squat cathedral, along roughly cobbled alleys, toward the river, and there crawled in at one of the flood drains that ran away under the town. His adult pursuers were too big to get in, or else he had already lost them and only been too afraid to know he had. Certainly they never followed.
In the flood drain he lay until dusk closed the shutters of the sky against the world. Perhaps he slept, exhausted, there on the shelf just above the water. Rats sometimes swam by below, but none of them troubled him. Later, too, he would think he could just recall the rats. Did he believe the red-eyed thing that was suddenly sliding toward him was itself a rat – a great rat, a king of their kind, come after all to tear him into pieces?
He had no name, and nameless and alone, he waited, the child, whimpering, for the last cruelty and the final blows.
‘Whaar tiss thiss?’
So it sounded to him – language he knew, but sibilant and also guttural – an accent. Till then, he had heard only one accent, that of the townspeople.
The voice spoke again. The same words. Now the child knew what they meant.
‘What is this?’
He found he had shut his eyes. He opened them, and looked, because surely even a rat king could not speak any human tongue.
A man’s face, close to his, very pale, the skin extraordinarily clear and fine, so pure. It might have been carved from whitest ivory, and was hard like that, too, with strong narrow bones. It reminded him of the face of one of the saints, probably seen, though not properly remembered, in some religious procession. The eyes were dark. And the voice … that was dark, too.
‘You are a child,’ said the voice, deciding.
He could say nothing. He stared. In his brief life, everything had been anyway quite strange, and often senseless. Unkind also. And so when the man stroked back his hair, with a hand that was the perfect companion to the pale, carved, saintly face, the child did not struggle or try to run away.
‘What are you doing here, child? You crawled in and lost your bearings, did you? You’re too young. Unripe fruit. Only scavengers and weaklings, or those themselves childlike, take your kind before they are grown. Come, I’ll lead you up out of this place.’
The saint who had entered the flood drain like a serpent, and whose eyes of shining scarlet were now black as ink, swept the child into his arms. The saint had a curious, not unpleasant smell, like a plant recently pulled from soil, the moist earth still scattered on its leaves. His breath had been wholesome when he spoke, for, as the child would come to learn, he had flawless teeth and lived on a flawless nourishment. Any corruption eventually smelled on such breath had more to do with the rot of the soul.
But what happened next was bizarre enough. At the time the child could not grasp it, it was like those events that happen in dreams. Afterwards, he would be used to it, and to many similar actions. He would think them all usual, indeed, enviable.
There was a kind of rush – a sort of flight, inside the drain. Either the stones gushed back, or the man arrowed forward, the child borne with him. Then wet and darkness opened in an O of brilliant lesser dark. The sky was there, streamered with windblown stars. There was a scent of coming storm. Underfoot, the muddy bank of the river, and close by, one of the ugly little humped bridges, and not so far away, the few leering narrow lamps of humankind.
‘There then. Here you are. Go back to your kin, little child. Go back and grow up. Twelve or so years, that will do. Then maybe we shall meet again.’
Turning, the man, in a swagger of black garments, left the child, there on the ground.
The child stood rooted to the mud.
He saw above him the sky, and nearer the miserly lamp-stars on the banks of the river; he smelled the stink of people, and heard the murmur of their heartless minds. From the cathedral, midnight struck.
Then a shadow flicked somewhere under the bridge. Probably it was nothing, only a stray dog perhaps, as desolate and desperate as he, but it woke up again the child’s terror.
And with a noiseless cry, he came unrooted from the mud and ran after the tall figure that walked so incredibly swiftly away from him.
‘Papa!’ cried the child, aloud then. ‘Papa! Don’t leave me –’ Where in God’s name – yes, God’s – had he learned that name papa? He never knew. It simply rose in his mouth as the tears rose in his eyes.
But the stranger paused, a hundred yards away along the bank. Then, turning, he came back – and was there beside the child, impossibly, at once. Down from the tower of more than a man’s height, he gazed at the boy stood crying before him. Perhaps the man was bemused – or amused. It could not have happened often, this.
‘Why call me back? What do you want?’
‘Papa,’ said the child.
‘I’m not your papa. I doubt you have one. What is the matter with you? Go away.’
But neither of them moved. And presently the man leaned down and picked up the child again, raised him high up in arms like steel, looked at him with eyes like ink.
‘What shall I do with you?’
The child flung his own arms round the neck of this saint. He seemed to have been born, the child, in those moments. New-born, of course his first cry had been Father! Father!
The saint laughed. Amused, then.
‘I am named Schesparn. Don’t call me papa. Say my name.’
The child said the name.
‘Come then. You shall go with me.’
That night-morning, they went east of the town. The mountains, which then encircled and shut the boy’s universe, were as ever immense and craggy, and now blue-veined with starlight. At first he thought they would fly right over them – for of course, they travelled in the air. But Schesparn only went a little way, some twenty miles, maybe. They moved by a form of levitation, or merely juxtaposition, one place to another. There was no changing of shape, not then, for Schesparn carried the child in his arm, and needed an arm, to do so.
The estate lay along a lizard-tail coil of the river, deep among pines and then the lighter woods of birch and ash. The house was a mansion of ornamented, decaying stonework. Vast windows glared like beautiful outraged eyes, all glass gone, only the iron lattices or webs of leading still in them. Not a single light showed.
The storm came in those minutes, catching them up, and the old house too. Clouds like huge masonry figures lurched low overhead, cracked with lightnings. Then the storm had passed. Only a white fluttering was left behind in the sky.
Although they had travelled quickly, summer dawn was not so distant. In at one of the wide casements Schesparn bore his charge, and dropped him gently on a floor like watery agate.
Rather than disturb, the lack of lighting encouraged the child. He had only ever been taken into the lighted areas of mankind for some type of punishment. Although he did not remember in after years, the moment of the eyes in the drain being his first adhesive memory, at three or four, no doubt he did recall that lit rooms meant nothing good for him. He liked this domestic darkness therefore, instinctively. He liked the darkness and pallor of Schesparn, the only person who
had ever shown him care or any interest.
Then some of the others came.
First was a woman. Her name was Stina, he would learn shortly. She glided forward over the dry watery floor, and she was pale as Schesparn, dark of eye as he was – and, like him, for a second her eyes flashed red. Her mouth was red, too. By the lightning flicker, with innocent acuity, the child saw both the real colour and what it must be, for it ran down her white chin, over the pearly column of her neck, in at the bodice of her gown. But out of her mouth slipped a long tongue, and took the colour away from her face, yes, even off her chin. A white hand attended to the rest, and then she licked the hand, with eager grace.
After Stina, three others entered. They were all men. Every one of them had a likeness to the others, despite some differences of build, hair colour or eyes. The woman too was like this. They might all have been of one family. They were.
‘Is that for us?’ one of the men asked Schesparn.
‘No. Unripe.’
‘True. But perhaps, sweet – I’ve never tried lamb or veal.’
They laughed.
Fearless now, the child also liked their laughter. He laughed too.
And then Stina said, ‘How brave he is! Look, how trusting. Come here, little boy, come to Stina. Let her see you close.’
‘Go then,’ said Schesparn. ‘She won’t harm you. Not yet.’
But the child had been peeled of fear, at long last. So he went directly to Stina, who crouched down, and looked deep into his eyes. And when she smiled, her teeth were clean and her breath had only a warmth on it, as if she had just eaten a little roast beef and drunk a little wine.
‘You are a nice child, I think. Not pretty. But look at your forehead and your skull. A head for intelligence. Oh I had to leave a boy like you, he was my darling – so long ago …’
She took his hand. He gave it.
The man who had asked if the child was ‘for’ them also walked over. He had dark red hair. He said, ‘What’s his name?’
Schesparn said, ‘I think he has none.’
‘I will christen you then,’ said the other man, whose own name, the child would learn, was Mihaly. ‘I will call you Dracul – Dragon.’
Pleased, the child looked at him. Never ever had there been such benign interest, such involvement, from others.
These others sighed and whispered. Some more had come in. They were like ghosts made flesh – never, never the other way about. And then, their leader entered.
His name was Tadeusz, for so they addressed him, respectfully and at once. He was older in his looks, his hair grey streaked thickly with white. Yet his physique was like that of a robust man of 25. They all, male and female, older or younger, had firm and perfect faces and bodies, which the child – ‘Dracul’ – would come to see through the years, both costumed and bare.
Tadeusz looked in turn down at the child. After an age, he spoke. ‘You do not know where you are, where you have come. But one day you will be one of us. I choose you, for Schesparn has chosen you. Those we love and keep we never choose lightly. Be aware, we are not kind, as you think us, little boy, little Dragon. We are so different from anything you know, so changed from what we ourselves once were, that we can hardly be expected to abide by the codes of men. But you shall be safe among us.’ He raised his head. He was like a great wolf, striped with ice, yellow-eyed.
The others nodded. All of them were there by then, all the family that lived in that house. ‘Now I will give you your first lesson. You must learn, my dear,’ said Tadeusz quietly to the child now called Dracul, ‘to sleep by day. Soon the sun will rise. Though some of us may bear it, it is never easy, and some of us it would sear away. Therefore, by day, we slumber. Learn to love instead the night, little child. Night is day to us. And now to you, also.’
The child minded none of that. His life had had no patterns. Now it did. He looked adoringly up at Tadeusz. Father first, then mother. Now grandfather, the patriarch and ruler of the house. How the boy had come by such instant physical categorisation, he could not ever know, as even then he had no memory left of a beginning. But certainly Dracul knew, at last he had come home.
He was used only to sleeping without comfort, and on hard surfaces. So to find somewhere to curl up in the carved, pillared and otherwise generally empty mansion, was simple. Besides, he knew that here, no-one would hurt him. That was a luxury.
Why had he been at once so sure? They had mesmerised with their hypnotic eyes and touches. They had, their kind, great power over his. Just as they could control wild beasts, they could, largely, control savage humanity.
But also – he believed them. Especially Tadeusz, the Old Wolf.
Probably, as he was to think, the child, two decades after that night, had actual wolves adopted him and shown him some kindness, he would, like other feral children of whom he later heard, have trusted them, become one of their own.
Sunlight streamed in across the floors, cut little shafts between the columns behind whose bases he had elected to place himself. He woke now and then. But he had slept through days before, having nothing else to do.
As for his name, he prized it, turning it over and over in his mind, even asleep, like a precious jewel. He did not yet, although they had, apply the name to himself. He merely considered it his possession. It was the first.
When the sun set, he woke and was thirsty. But he had already found a large room, a hall or court, where a fountain played into a basin. He went and drank the water, which tasted dusty. Leaves had blown in at windows and the open roof, perhaps only last autumn. Some lay in the basin. Frugal with always starving, and having eaten, the day before, a piece of cheese rind and a rotted plum, he did not think of seeking food.
The crimson sky darkened. He knew they would soon arrive, come back from wherever it was they had gone to. He knew infallibly, and maybe they had told him, sunset was dawn to them.
Schesparn and Stina came first. They brought another woman, young, with ash-blonde hair, who was called Medestha. Stina said to Medestha, as they were coming in, ‘You understand, this one is not for the usual purpose?’ And the blonde head nodded. The two women washed the child’s face at the basin, and combed his hair. Then they played games with him, having brought a hoop, a ball, and three little bats. Soon the red-haired Mihaly came in, and he had a dead rabbit, which he skinned, then handed to the child a small portion, raw and dripping. ‘We do not cook our food, Dracul. Be like us. It’s much healthier for you.’
The child – Dracul – took the meat. It was like nothing he had ever known – rich and succulent, savoury and sweet together. He sank in his teeth, and they watched him, the blood running down his chin. It did him, the raw fresh flesh, the blood, great good.
II
Dracul learned them, his companions, like a book. First their faces and names, next their ways, swiftly their magician-like talents and abilities.
He knew, having been instructed by them inside that second day-night, what they were – Streghoi – Nosferatu – Oupyrae – Varcolaci – Vampires. The Undead.
Did that mean anything at all? Had he ever heard them spoken of among the haunts of men? Not knowingly, ever. And why was that? Because no men, nor women either, had ever spent any time with this boy, save to ill-treat and chase him with stones. He was as alien to his own race as were his hosts at the mansion – though, like them, he too had been human once.
Now, naturally he altered. Loving them, enthralled, petted, protectively taken on ‘excursions,’ he aped their manners, longed to be as they were. All that, even despite seeing, after the shortest while, examples of their more terrible – and grosser – acts. But how could it not be so with him? What had humans, also terrible and gross, shown him, or offered? This demonic wolf pack was his family now. And they had promised, from the first, one day he should be one of them. Just as initiation, the rite of passage, was held out before all valued and aspiring males. As was quite normal, he feared it, did not properly grasp what must occur, yet
longed to be ready and to be made like the rest of his new tribe.
After the first, Dracul seldom went out diurnally. He was trained inside a week to sleep day long and wake at sun fall. His skin paled and grew clear almost as theirs, from the ‘healthy’ diet of bloody raw meat and juicy fruits – for orchards raved about the upper edges of the forest, pomegranates and peach trees, and higher up the stony sides of the land, orange trees lit bright with moon-washed globes. His night vision strengthened. He saw as he had never done – a snake like black silver in the silvered black of grass – a tiny flaw inside an emerald ring, shaped like a milky hand.
He saw too, shown without reservation, their acts of miracle and magic. How they might disintegrate to pass through some obstacle, like snow or mist, how they might raise themselves into the air, or drift across a sky in human, or in other, form. He saw them change shape, to bats – wolves – and puzzled as to how it occurred, as if their bodies parted like curtains to let the other creature out. He asked Sraga tenderly if it hurt her to change herself in this way. And Sraga laughed. ‘It itches,’ she whispered in his ear. ‘Then one scratches.’
‘How can she explain?’ said Faliborv. ‘You will come to know.’
‘Will I do it right, when my time comes?’ worried the anxious child. ‘How will I know how?’
‘Your body will be refined and wonderful by then, like ours. Your body will know how, by itself. It’s simple to us to do these things, simple as breathing. We are immortal. We are gods, Dracul.’
They were gods. For sure, they were the gods of Dracul. And cruel as gods, uncompassionate, avidly noncompunctious and amoral.