Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (16 page)

             
The silence was beaming with noiseless contentment, so tranquil it was lulling me unnoticeably, but still, I was somehow managing to withstand it, not to surrender, to stay awake...

             
As soon as I found myself in the blurry misty graveyard I had dreamed of the night before, I realized that I had in fact imperceptibly fallen asleep, and energetically tried to chase the nightmare away so as to wake up for a while and move to my bed, but that was not such an easy matter. The dream was already ruling my consciousness, and quickly erased the difference between itself and reality from my mind, sinking me into an already familiar, yet disturbing realm.

             
This time I had materialized just in front of Odda’s shabby tilted gravestone, the chilly wind gently raising my hair falling down the back, and the frosted coldness haunting the dead atmosphere around was seriously menacing the fading spark of life glittering inside my terrified heart.

             
The unpleasant pulsation of horror under my skin was quickening with the rise of the ominous premonition obsessing my soul, and, in an attempt to escape my thoughts as well as the ill-boding surroundings, I took a fast step aside, careful not to step on Odda’s grave.

             
The sudden echoing sound of silently purring threat as a storm was coming to life somewhere near the horizon line startled me and, having sensed that something crucial would follow, I sharply faced the mime tomb.

             
And it really did happen then – in a single fraction of the second.

             
Even though I had been prepared for a strike, the sight which opened up in front of me astonished me so much it drove me too close to fainting, and I really would have collapsed on the empty grave in my feet if the dread hadn’t knocked me petrified.

             
Yes, the grave just had to be empty – because, although I had never seen the girl named Odda while she had been alive, I was completely sure that the half-transparent silhouette woven from the finest rays of lucent light, which had appeared sitting gracefully on the edge of the fallen tomb, belonged to her.

             
Oh dear, she was a ghost!...

             
Breathless and cold as a corpse, I was blankly staring at her in utter stupefaction, unable to prevent my hands from shaking or to urge my heart to beat rhythmically again; my soul itself had frozen into strange bewildering numbness, and all thoughts were irrationally flying around inside my head, only confusing me more.

             
But Odda didn’t even seem to notice me – radiating her own pale halo of light, she was resting sorrowfully on the granite stone bearing her name, her stare filled with daunting heavy grief roaming somewhere towards the graphite-intense clouds piling up in the distant heavens.

             
A mighty thunder violently shook its maddeningly restrictive manacles as though it wished to suddenly break free from its celestial prison, and the armies of air roared with loud aggressive disapproval, and threateningly whipped their deadly flashes of lightning around the overcast vault above us, aiming them at the caught rebel.

             
The ghost raised her head with a slow refined movement, and fixed her eyes right onto mine in a voiceless plea...

             
Her eyes...

             
Her familiar eyes...

             
My own scream of horror startled me and I – already awake – raised my head from the textbook where my forehead had involuntarily leant.

             
Oh heavens!...

             
My heart was racing in freezing fright, and it took me several seconds to come round and realize what my nightmare had shown me.

             
Odda – the girl whose tomb I had tripped against in my dream the night before – was the victim in the innocently white gown from the sacrificial ritual which had been chasing me in all the nightmares I had had several days ago.

             
Did this mean that such a medieval-looking sacrifice had been executed just three years ago – in the very same world I belonged in!?!...

             
Impossible!...

             
Or maybe...

             
Exhausted, I crawled to my bed and relaxed in it, the fresh coolness of my pillow calming me down like Cardew’s presence would have...

             
And outside, the torrential rain that had just started was insistently knocking on the windows, as if to force me into inviting my new nightmare in...

             
                            “Oh –” my tone sounded so naturally surprised that Cardew gave me a secret smile. “I was missing you, my love –”

             
With an adoring smile, he rushed towards me at once and grabbed me in his strong fitting embrace, lifting me off the ground and twirling me around himself up in the air, spilling my hair in fantastic shapes around both of us.

             
“My day just became so lovely –” Cardew whispered when he left me on the ground again, and I giggled quietly before turning to finally kiss him.

             
Thirstily ardent, the boy clasped me tightly to his chest, and I cast him a playful glance so as to provoke him; a smile of content trembled under his skin, and he rose to my challenge as he bent down towards my face. The kiss he inflamed my lips with was so ferocious despite its softness that I completely forgot where we were, and started answering to him in the same aggressive and lively way that probably looked rather violent from aside, but was so sweet...

             
So frenzying...

             
“Stop!” Mr Shelton’s amused voice reminded us that we were on stage – on a rehearsal all the other people from the cast were watching from the first row. “What do you think you are doing?”

             
Cardew’s eager lips tore away from mine with difficulty, and he shifted his head towards the producer without letting go of me.

             
“Kissing her?” he supposed innocently and someone in the hall chuckled.

             
“It looked like some new kind of torture, a punishment with suffocation or similar,” Mr Shelton informed us with a joking tone, then turned towards me and played concerned, “Are you alright, Freya?”

             
“Perfectly alright,” I confirmed in giggle, and most of the girls of the crew seemed to believe me. “Why, wasn’t it realistic enough?”

             
“Too realistic, I’d say,” he shook his head not to burst into laughter. “If I may present it more mildly, you look like duellers, not lovers –”

             
Cardew and I both suppressed an outburst of loud laughter and exchanged almost-angelic glances which made everyone chuckle.

             
“Again, please,” the producer clapped his hands and my partner had to let go of me to return to his previous position. “Ready? Come on –”

             
I took some steps forward and cast a negligent look aside, then played surprised when Cardew came in sight, “Oh! I was missing you, my love –”

             
“Wait, wait, wait!” Mr Shelton stopped us before we had got to the kissing part at all. “Freya, dear, this form of address sounds a bit strange the way you say it –”

             
“My love –” I repeated, underlining the second word, and quickly perceived how I was ready to blush as Cardew was watching me in his attractive intense way. “What’s so wrong about it?”

             
The producer suppressed a smile not to offend me, and gave us a sign to start from the previous scene; several more people came on stage to represent the other deities in the mythology, Cardew and I hid backstage, and the show began.

             
“Anything to complain about, lovely?” Cardew bowed above my shoulder to whisper in my ear while we were waiting for the moment in which we had to appear in front of the empty hall.

             
I grinned a bit evilly, and glimpsed at him from below. “You still dare ask after this kiss –”

             
“Cardew, your turn!” one of the boys patted his shoulder, but the main deity had frozen at once at my words, his stare suddenly tightened onto mine with astonishment.

             
“What about it?” he asked with sincere alarm and I bit my lips not to giggle mischievously.

             
“And our supreme god!” echoed the words that were to call him on stage, but he ignored them as though they didn’t exist at all, his eyes fixed onto mine with an insistent expectation, “WHAT ABOUT IT?!”

             
“Cardew!” another voice repeated his name, this time with worry, and one more hand pinned its nails in his shoulder as well. “Come on, boy, we’re late –”

             
“Well –” I drawled just to check what Cardew’s reaction would be and when exactly he would lose his patience, but he was absolutely and imperturbably deaf to all the calling of the others and was staring at me with his fiery and delusively clear gray eyes. “If I have to be honest –”

             
“And our supreme god!” having seen no signs that the supreme god was about to show up at all, the one who was to call him from stage repeated the words once more, with rising embarrassment mixed with alarm in his trembling voice.

             
“Cardew! Cardew!” several people were insistently trying to pull him away, to break the tense suspense haunting the air, but he was standing in front of me as though his feet were glued to the floor and nothing but me had ever existed for him.

             
Yes, I absolutely loved his ways to flatter me…

             
“Tell me!” his intonation was so demanding and unyielding that I almost burst into giggling.

             
“I didn’t like it –” I made a deliberate pause and a bit cruelly observed the shades of unpleasant surprise dance on his face before I finished the sentence, “... That we were interrupted –”

             
Suddenly calm at once, Cardew burst into joyful light-hearted laughter and, despite the fact that his name was being almost shouted with obvious annoyance from all directions, he did leave a fast kiss on my lips before running to the stage when the same words were being screamed for the third time, “AND OUR SUPREME GOD!”

             
If there had been audience in the hall, they would have started cheering so loudly that their applause would have resounded to the ceiling itself: not only had Cardew appeared when he had been announced with impressive yelling, but also he did it with such energy and vigour that it felt as though a whole army he was in lead of stepped on the stage at the same time.

             
“You couldn’t fail him!” someone hissed behind my back, and I turned with an amused smile to face the fair-haired and so envious Claire. “He did perfectly.”

             
“I didn’t want to fail him,” I grinned happily at her annoyed expression. “And – however hard to understand that is to your small pretty head – I don’t even want to fail you.”

             
“Who is she? Who is she?” the loud whisper raised from the stage to summon me, so I smiled at Claire once again – not without a tint of superiority – and raised my head proudly to walk from behind the long curtains.

             
Exactly like the script was suggesting, I walked right past all the other deities, and raised my eyes only once – to fix them straight into the absorbing graphite depths of Cardew’s. I stopped for a moment to stare at him – thankfully that was a part of the play, too, as I would have done it anyway, so intensely magnetic he was – then I narrowed my eyes a bit provocatively for a second as I raised my chin, and hurried to walk away faster than I had come in, stopping close to the edge of the stage and glancing back towards him with almost shy curiosity.