The encounter with the Icemen had set something going inside of me, a gravity relentless in its forward momentum. For days, I could think of nothing but Aki and Jabi standing in the shadows of the evergreens, their pale white skin, their enormous height, their large rough hands. I felt the strange sensation of Aki’s hand in mine. I had never experienced such intensely opposite emotions, curiosity and terror all mixed up together.
I was so turned around by the experience, so unsure of just what it all meant, that the only reaction I could manage was to stay in my rooms and think. I spent the entire week after the encounter sitting by the fire, struggling to make sense of it all. These days of paralysis gave me time to sort out what was happening to me and formulate my response. There was no point in looking to the sky for a helicopter to appear, or to imagine that I would be rescued or that I could run away from the truth. A transformation was taking place inside of me, I knew; I could feel it on a cellular level. I was becoming a new person, one who would have the strength to face my inheritance.
It took some weeks before I gathered the courage to go to the northeast tower again. I stood outside Vita’s door, expecting to hear her shuffling around her room, but there was nothing but silence. When I knocked, she did not answer. Finally, I pushed back the door to find the room as dark and stifling as the mausoleum. The air was unusually muggy, the window shut and a fire burning in the fireplace. Greta sat by Vita’s bedside, wiping her forehead with a wet cloth.
“What happened?” I asked, startled by the sight of Vita. An extraordinary change had come over her. She was very thin, her skin pink with fever.
“Come in, madame,” Greta whispered. “See for yourself.”
Greta stood, giving me the chair, and left the room. I sat down at Vita’s bedside, near the table covered with perfume bottles. There were fifty, perhaps more, each crystal bottle filled with colored liquid. I picked up a square bottle tied with a silk braid, weighing it in the palm of my hand as I read the label—Mitsouko. I worked off the glass stopper, and a dark, oriental, musky smell filled the air.
When I looked back at Vita, her pale eyes were fixed upon me. “I hate that perfume,” she whispered, smiling slightly. “It was my mother’s favorite. I only keep the bottle to remember her. Let in some air. Greta is trying to suffocate me.”
I went to the window and opened it. I stood there, glancing at the mountain, its ridges and crevices capped with fog.
“Come,” Vita said, gesturing for me to return to the chair. “You came here to speak to me.”
I left the window open and sat at her side. I had been trying to work out how to speak about the creatures to Vita, but in the end, I simply blurted out the most pressing question. “What are they?”
“What are they?” Vita said slowly. “You might as well ask: What are we?”
“Don’t avoid my question,” I said.
“They are our legacy. They are your legacy. When you are ready, you will go to them and see for yourself how beautiful they are!” Vita’s eyes were sparkling, and for a moment, I believed the fever had made her mad. She leaned to me and took my hand. “They are rare and precious creatures,” she said, growing calm. “Somehow, through the millennia, they have survived. But the world is encroaching. This pocket of mountain has remained untouched, but for how long? Satellites, airplanes, helicopters—there is always danger for them. But now you are here. You are here, and you are strong enough to help them.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, and I saw that my hands trembled in hers. “Why has this fallen to me?”
“We don’t choose our birthright,” she said. “It comes to us whether we like it or not.”
The portrait of Eleanor on her horse looked down upon us. As I gazed up at her, the cadence of her voice came strong in my mind: I have protected Vita, and yet, in my weakest moments, I question the goodness of such protection.
Vita followed my gaze up to Eleanor’s portrait. “They terrified her. She wouldn’t even meet them. But she knew they existed. She understood the choice I made.”
“What choice was that?”
“To protect them,” Vita said, her voice weak. “I vowed to help our ancestors survive.”
With that, she reached over to the bedside table and pulled out a fat leather notebook from a drawer. Struggling, she handed it to me and gestured that I should take it. I opened the leather cover, and the binding cracked with age. Inside, I found a sheaf of papers that, when unfolded, revealed themselves to be pages ripped from Eleanor’s memoir.