Her Loving Husband's Curse (26 page)

“I slumped under the weight of her words, and her voice softened. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘As I said, you’re to stay with me.’

I didn’t have the will to argue or flee, and it was going to be dawn soon, so I followed her into her hut. It was a tiny one-room structure, and I had to bend over to walk inside. There was a small cauldron hanging over a lit fire in the hearth, pots of herbs and liquids on a roughly chopped wooden table with three stumps for chairs and two beds of rags on the floor. She gestured to one of the beds. ‘There,’ she said. ‘You see I’ve been expecting you.’

“‘Are you certain no one lives here but you?’ I asked.

“‘No one.’

“‘There are three chairs,’ I said.

“‘I am expecting another. Soon.’

“The windows were already covered with quilts, in preparation for my presence there during the day, I presumed. Along the back wall, hidden in the shadows, so much so I didn’t notice them until I was standing there, was a short, wide shelf stacked with books.”

James brushed a stray curl from Sarah’s cheek. She looked at Grace, who had pulled herself upright in her crib, standing silently, as enthralled in her father’s story as her mother. She wouldn’t be going to sleep again any time soon. James took the baby from her crib, her tiny hands clutching his t-shirt in her fists. Grace didn’t take her eyes from her father’s face, and Sarah thought Grace must understand every word he was saying. Grace tugged again on James’s t-shirt and murmured.

“I think she wants you to go on with your story,” Sarah said.

“I think you’re right.” James sat on the bed near Sarah, propping Grace in a sitting position between them. “The witch gestured at the shelf. ‘You’re a reader,’ she said. ‘You will stay as long as it takes to read these books. Not a moment longer.’

“I relented and nodded. Besides, I had nowhere else to go and I thought reading might help to ease the pain of being away from my father, and from you, so I stayed.

“The woman and I hardly talked during the nights. She talked to the stray squirrels who came to eat the nuts and berries she left for them, she scribbled strange drawings and words in a language I didn’t recognize with her colored inks on paper, she chanted late into the night and bubbled concoctions in her cauldron.

“‘How did you get so many books?’ I asked her once. ‘I don’t see many bookbinders in the forest.’ She swatted my words away since she always found my questions annoying.

“‘I haven’t always lived here,’ she said.

“‘Then why did you come?’ I asked.

“‘Because I wanted to live as I wanted to live. I cannot conform to foolish ways. My father tried to marry me off too many times, finally to an elderly widower who stank of spoiled fish and lived in room no bigger than a boot. I wouldn’t hear of it, and my father despised my stubbornness. But I wouldn’t obey. I knew of my abilities from the earliest age. My mother had them. She taught me all she knew before she died.’

“‘How did she die?’ I asked.

“‘My father turned her in for witchery while we lived in England yet. They burned her at the stake.’

“Burning convicted witches? I wanted to vomit at the thought. The hangings were horrible enough, the dungeon where you died too dreadful. But to burn them alive? The witch shook her head. ‘I know you’re suffering from the hunts,’ she said. ‘I have no right to speak such ways.’

“She sat on the dirt floor in front of the fire. I didn’t know how that meager hut stayed upright, it looked so haphazard, like sticks in a mud pie, and I wondered how it didn’t burn down whenever the fire was lit. I half-expected the cinders to catch the walls and burn the place down the way the fiery sparks caught the wood when they burned the living people alive.

“She watched me a long time, saying nothing, pulling her knees to her chin as she sat cross-legged on the ground. ‘You do not like what you are,’ she said finally. ‘You will need to make peace with it. You’re going to be this way a while.’

“‘Make peace with it?’ I said. ‘I would gladly make peace with it except I know not what I am.’

“‘You truly do not know?’

“‘I know I am unhuman. Horrid. Despicable.”

“‘You are those things only if you choose to be. Otherwise, you are vampyre.’

“‘Vampyre?’ I wasn’t even sure I knew the word. ‘What on earth are you saying, woman?’

“‘I’m saying you’re magic, vampyre. You will never age beyond what you are now. You will never grow infirm or sickly or weaken. You will always have the strength of one hundred mortal men and the speed, sight, hearing, and reflexes of the most refined hunters in the wild. Your living body is dead and yet you still walk and drink. Blood. The living force in blood is what moves you. You will live forever.’

“‘Surely you jest since you cannot mean forever,’ I said. ‘Tell me truly—when will this be over? When will I be able to sleep in peace?’

“‘I jest you not. Once you are infected with the magic, you cannot escape it, that is, unless you find magic more powerful than the one that turned you in the first place.’

“I jumped over to her, knelt by her side, shaking her shoulders. ‘Where?’ I begged. ‘Where is this magic more powerful than the one that turned me into this accursed thing?’

“‘I cannot say. It is too rare and to my knowledge it has never been done. But you never know what you will find once you begin looking.’

“‘So I am trapped like this? Dead and alive? Without my Lizzie? Forever?’ I slumped over as I realized there was nothing I could do to release myself from this curse and I would wander the nights missing you, hiding from the daylight, searching for blood to drink for the rest of time. I closed my eyes, wishing there were some way I could end myself because the thought of existing that way for eternity was too dreary.

“‘Be not mournful, vampyre,’ she said. ‘There will be better nights ahead for you.’

“‘My name is James,’ I said.

“‘Very well, James. ‘Tis about time you introduced yourself properly. I was beginning to wonder where your manners were. I am Miriam.’ She grasped my hands and didn’t flinch from my dead-cold skin. ‘Hear me, James. There will be a night when you’ll be glad you are what you are. You must believe me, or else every night from now ‘til then will be a lonely, useless burden.’

“‘When will that be?’ I asked bitterly. ‘When will I be glad for the blessings of this curse?’

“Miriam shrugged. ‘‘Tis not as if I know the date of every event ever to happen in the history of the world. Things happen in their own time. You’ll find what you’re looking for when it needs to be found. That is all.’

“That sounds like something Olivia would say,” Sarah said.

“Yes.”

“Was she more pleasant to be around after that?”

“Miriam became an invaluable friend to me. She showed me how to live more comfortably this way. She taught me how to use my instincts to their best advantage. She showed me where I might find willing donors if that was how I wanted to live—without killing. She taught me how I needed to make peace with myself because I wouldn’t get any farther along until I did.

“‘There’s nothing you can do to change what you are,’ she told me. ‘You can’t go back and change that night. You can’t tell the bad vampyre man to leave your human neck alone. You can’t bring your wife back to life. You are what you are. Vampyre. Since there’s nothing you can do to change it, you might as well accept it and learn to live with it for as long as it lasts.’”

“Theresa said you saved Miriam from people who wanted to harm her,” Sarah said. “What happened?”

“About a month after I arrived I was woken up by voices. I pulled the quilts back from the window and saw five men surrounding Miriam, grabbing for her, pulling her arms, tugging at her skirts, taunting her, making rude gestures at her. They were very drunk, I could smell the liquor on them, and they were very dirty and ragged, as though they had been traveling for some time. Miriam held herself with dignity, and she didn’t seem afraid, though she looked toward the house to make sure I was there.

“‘There he is,’ she said, ‘the one who will save my life and take yours.’

“The oldest of the men laughed the loudest. ‘Him?’ the man said. ‘He can’t take one of us, let alone all. We shall take you as we want you…’

“‘And do we want you…’ said a leering black-bearded man, who licked his lips to emphasize his point.

“‘…and then we’ll knock your friend’s brains out because we can.’ The face of the oldest man was well lined, like a map of the underworld where every evil intention was marked. He grabbed Miriam’s wrist, dragged her to the ground, and kicked her in the back before I pounced on him. The others charged toward me but I flipped them off as easily as if I were flicking flies away. I made a show of the older man, snapping his back and biting his neck and feeding until the others disappeared into the maze of the trees…”

James stopped to watch Sarah’s expression. “It’s all right, James,” she said. “Keep talking.”

“Miriam was all right, just some scrapes and bruises. She wasn’t all that concerned. ‘You see,’ she said. ‘‘Tis the prophecy. You were here to save me from those wretches. You are serving your purpose well, James.’ Then, just two weeks later, the moment I read the last word of the last book there was a knock on the slab of wood she used as a door.

“‘At last,’ she said, ‘he is here.’ She opened the door and there was a red-haired, dark-eyed young man who smiled when he saw her.

“‘James,’ Miriam said, ‘I’d like you to meet my husband. What is your name, husband?’

“‘Matthew,’ he said. Matthew stepped into the hut and looked at her like he had known her all his life. He hardly acknowledged me, he was so consumed by staring at Miriam. She opened the door wider for me to pass.

“‘Good-bye, vampyre. You will know my children, and their children, down the generations. They will help you find your way.”

“‘Thank you,’ I said.

“‘You needn’t thank me,’ she said. ‘I was merely fulfilling the prophecy, as you will fulfill your end as well.’ Miriam took my hand. ‘We are intertwined, you and I. We will always be connected, even when I am gone and you are still here.’ She stepped aside so I could pass. ‘Blessings on you, James John Wentworth. Peace be with you. And always remember…you will return, James. You will.’

“I stepped outside and she closed the door behind me. Even as I flashed away I heard her kissing the man who had appeared out of nowhere. He must have been the third chair, I thought, though we weren’t in the house together long enough to use them. There were years when I struggled to make sense of her words. They were hard to accept at times.”

James smiled. There was such joy in his eyes, such love, that Sarah’s heart swelled at the sight of him. “And now here you are,” he said. “Both of you. Miriam was right—I have returned.”

“Now I understand why you and Olivia and Jennifer are so close. Miriam helped you find your way then, as they help you now. As they’ve helped me. And now Theresa and Francine are helping us.”

“We’re fortunate to have such friends.”

“It’s in the prophecy,” Sarah said, “and I’ve learned not to second guess prophecies. They usually come true.”

“And what is your prophecy for us?”

“That we’ll live happily ever after. Whether it’s here, in Salem, or Sydney, Australia, it doesn’t matter. Whether people like vampires, don’t like vampires, think you’re a vampire, think you’re not a vampire, it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re together, everything will be fine.”

“I think that’s the best prophecy I’ve ever heard,” James said. “Let’s make it come true.”

* * * * *

The lines of weary, broken-hearted people stretch down all the miles of the road as far as I can see, and I can see far now, Lizzie, I can. They are everyone. They are the elders, the wisest and the most respected, with gray in their hair and bends in their frames. They are the youngest, from newborns clutching their mother’s chests to toddlers who can barely walk on their own, to smaller children who are wailing, echoing the fear they see in their parents’ eyes. The young men ride their ponies until the ponies are confiscated and they are forced to walk alongside the rest. The young women catch the lewd glances of the blue-suited soldiers who do not hide their delight at the sight of the pretty raven-haired girls. The walkers are husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, cousins, friends, neighbors, and anyone else you ever knew from the day you were born. They walk across the rough terrain of the heavy forest, wagons passing at a slow pace on either side. Some call for family members they cannot find. Most say nothing, staring at the back of the head of the person in front of them, stumbling over a rock here or a dip in the dirt there. Some watch their feet as though their numb legs have become detached from their torsos and they wonder how they move forward. Those too weak to walk are hauled in the wagons transporting food and blankets. Though it is a summer night and the sky is shimmers and the stars wink, there is a storm-like gloominess in everyone. They look on in bewilderment as though they hardly know how they got here.

Those at the front have stopped to put up their camps for the night. Fires crackle and burn in the open air. People call for their family members again, hoping to find them now that the walking has stopped. There is a surprising stillness in the camp for the number of people here, the soldiers’s horses, the livestock. As families settle together, they whisper if they need to talk, hunching away from the soldiers who aren’t shy about butting someone in the head with a musket because they can. The blue-suited soldiers patroling the camps notice me, I am obvious with my blond hair and dead-pale skin, but I am not the only white man here who is not a soldier. There are others here too—some of whom are walking as a show of support, but there are also teachers for the children, doctors to care for the ailing, preachers to preach the Good Word, and missionaries thinking now is as fine a time as any to convert the heathens. Many of them will live with the native people in their new home.