My head felt heavy as the hand patting my back pulled me out of the deep sleep I was in. I struggled to open my eyes as I realized I was sitting up against something warm, something I’d drooled all over. Enock! “Sorry,” I said, perking up and wiping the saliva off of his coat.
“It didn’t bother me at all.” He put a hand on my chin and licked away what was dripping down over it, making it even wetter than before and causing me to shiver. Enock took me in his arms and stood, helping me to stand as well.
“It’s five past the hour when all Halvandors rest,” Enock said through a yawn. “If we go now, we should be safe.”
I remembered Enock showing me that Anvilayans had an internal clock that kept time for them as we climbed out of his window. Outside, I wrapped my arms around his neck as he held me against him with one arm and raced all the way around the manor, slowing to a stop at the top of the hill. Here, he sat me down and we walked to the door.
The chirping of insects and the gentle breeze felt good. The moon shone overhead in a much clearer sky than it had earlier that night. With the added aid of the light cast by Enock’s eyes, the door was easy to see.
“So, will your eyes always light up when you see me?” I asked, stopping at the edge of the door.
“Probably. As far as I know, only binding yourself to the one you choose can put it to rest. When someone becomes part of you like that, your eyes adjust with the rest of your body.”
“Oh.” I felt bad, because it just wasn’t fair. I wasn’t sorry for being a human, just that Enock was being robbed of so much because of it.
“I don’t mind.” He placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder and then knelt down to look at the door.
When his hand touched one of the stones, they all lit just as faintly as before. “Rocks from Cyron,” he said, stepping onto the door, still crouching and running his fingers over each one. “They’re guarding something…They will only open for a certain individual.” He looked up at me. “Did they respond to Helena?”
I had to think about it for a minute. “No, they only lit up when I touched them.”
Enock got off the door, keeping his hand on it, and looked at it for a moment. “Let me see your hand.”
I knelt beside him and held it out. He took it and laid it on the metal beside his hand. The stones became brighter, followed by a series of clicks. There was a loud banging sound at the top, making me jump back, and then more clicking, along with a final bang at the bottom. It became much too quiet right before the door opened a couple of inches.
“It’s a good thing Anvilayans sleep so deeply,” Enock said. I stayed where I was as he stood and pried open the door noisily.
A flicker of red ignited inside as I stood and looked down at a set of old blackened stairs that led underground. Enock held out a hand to me and we began our descent. The red light intensified and bled brightly all over the stairs when I took my first step. A white one came on with the second and a yellow with the third. Three fist-sized stones were suspended with heavy chains from the ceiling.
I stopped halfway down at the horrifying sight in the back of the medium-sized room. A birdcage sat on the floor with a small, slightly human-looking skeleton in it. Mouth hanging open and spine twisted, a baby’s arms and legs were lying on the floor, sticking out between the wires. But the hands and feet were much too long, and the jaw was twice as big as it should have been. It couldn’t be human.
“Is it Anvilayan?” I asked, taking another step.
“No. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
It was scary enough, I almost turned back. And if Enock hadn’t been there, I probably would have. But it also kind of drew me in, because I had to know what happened in that room.
Yellowed paper littered the floor and a small table against the right side of the wall. But there was nothing else there, only the caged skeleton and a worn black notebook lying crookedly in the center of the table. Enock let go of my hand at the bottom of the stairs and went to the table, just as I looked to my right at the corner of the room and let out a scream. I lurched back and fell against the stairs in fright.
“Sarafina, are you all right?” Enock was already by my side.
Placing a hand over my back where it had slammed into the point of a stair, I sat up painfully. “Yes.”
I looked back at the human skeleton, lying on the pieces of a broken chair, with its head leaning back and arms lying at its side. Bits of purple fabric clung to its neck. Its ribs and hip bone were badly broken, as if something had ripped its way out from inside. I looked back at the cage and wondered if it could have been the thing lying inside it, as Enock and I walked over to the table.
The papers had strange symbols written all over them in horizontal lines, with the exception of a few, which had detailed drawings of a young woman with dark curly hair and wide lips. In one, with four long gashes through the center of it, she was very pregnant. I felt afraid for the woman as I picked this picture up to stare at her face, so shadowy and hollow.
Beside me, Enock picked up the notebook and opened it to the first page. “Can you read that?” I asked him, looking at the strange symbols scrawled all over it.
“It’s Anvilayan.”
I laid the paper down. “What does it say?”
“It’s a journal about a woman named Camilla.” He began flipping through the book, scanning each page for a few seconds. “It was written by the son of a master of the house many generations ago. He fell in love with a human. His parents forbid him from having anything to do with her, but it doesn’t sound like she was interested in him, anyway.” His eyes crumpled in disapproval as he read. “It must have driven him insane when she agreed to marry one of the other servants, because he locked her up in here and forced her to act like she loved him. He took her free will away…”
Enock stopped to read some more, allowing me time to take a few cautious steps toward the little cage. The protruding forehead was huge and the way his jaw hung open made it look like the thing had died screaming.
“February first, seventeen o’ two, the darkest day of my life,” Enock began reading out loud. “Our child was born today. It was male, just as I had hoped. But beyond that, I can only describe it as an abomination. Born after six months of pregnancy, and bearing no resemblance to human nor Anvilayan, it is like a son of the devil himself, if such a being does exist. It cut itself from the womb with murder in its heart, killing my beloved Camilla. I wanted to save her, but it would have meant taking her mortal wounds upon myself and leaving her to raise this cursed being alone. While dying would have been far less painful than living without her, leaving her to raise this fiend by herself would have been cruel and unfair.
“Never again will I hold her in my arms. Never will I hear her utter sweet words of love or sing me softly to sleep. I cannot even offer her a proper burial. Her memory has been erased from any human who has ever known her. No Halvandor knows she is missing. I cannot risk taking her from this room and having my great offense exposed. Of course, it will hurt far too much to return and see her in the heart-wrenching state she lies now. So when I finish my record, I say my final farewell to the greatest and only true joy of my life. I will take all of her things to burn or to keep, and close this room that has served as a retreat for heads-of-house-to-be forever.
“As for the abomination, it will be left to die with the mother whom it killed. It has not ceased to cry and writhe in agony since the moment it entered this world. This should have been the greatest day of my life, becoming a father to a son I share with the woman I love. But instead, I now have nothing but loss and pain, which is exactly what the child will be left with. Let it rot. It is a far better death than it deserves.
“I will find a way to keep this from happening again. No one should ever know this pain. Human and Anvilayan must never mix in this way. When I leave this room, I will seal it so that it can only be opened by the hand of a human and Anvilayan who are truly in love. I would prefer my secret be kept forever, but this way if anyone is ever foolish enough to make my mistake, they may see the enormous cost it will have and end it. So if someone is reading this, I implore you to heed my warning. I know that love is a never-ending thing, but it is far better to suffer severance than to know you caused your beloved’s death. Trust me, and please, let each other go.”
Enock looked up at me. “That’s it.”
“I thought Anvilayans and humans couldn’t be together because of the killing at the old dance hall.”
“That’s just a tale the servants pass down to each other. The Halvandors created it a long time ago to scare them enough to prevent them from ever letting this sort of thing happen. Halvandors on earth are simply raised to know better. Perhaps in truth, it all started because of this.”
“But he said he would keep the secret forever, and this is ten times scarier than that story. Why would they bother to make up the other one?”
“I don’t know. Maybe that story changed over time. Maybe it actually happened and we’re the ones with incorrect information. It’s been centuries, so I really can’t say.”
“Well…regardless, this happened.” I looked around the gruesome room and then back to Enock. “What if it happens to us?”
“It won’t. We cannot bind ourselves to one another, so I don’t think we have to worry about children.”
No children. Ever. There was so much I hadn’t thought about. I wasn’t dying to have children or anything, but everything I’d just heard and seen scared me. I mean, it really scared me.
“Can we leave?” I asked, wishing I’d never come here.
“All right.”
Enock set the journal down and took my hand before leading me up the stairs. I shivered and looked back at the manor when we emerged. Enock shut the door, causing it to click and bang noisily again. Then he quickly spread dirt back over it.
“Would you like to go back to my room?” Enock asked me.
“No!” Standing there with Enock, exposed to the world, was already scaring me. The idea of going back to his room was terrifying. After seeing Camilla, all the danger we were risking suddenly felt much too real. “I’m tired, so I think I’d rather go to my room and lie down.”
Enock nodded with a look of uneasiness and wrapped his arms around me, lifting me before he leaned over and raced us both back to my room. Then he slid my window open so I could climb in.
Once he was inside, he shut the window and turned to me to say, “You should know, the child they had—the problems may not have only been caused by the fact that she was human and he was Anvilayan. It is almost unheard of for two Anvilayans to become intimate before being bound to one another. Without that connection, the desire for intimacy isn’t present, only an overwhelming love and desire to be bound together, to spend forever together. Usually, only madness would drive a man to force himself on a woman, and any child that is born will always arrive with extensive defects. Without that binding, something always goes wrong. The process isn’t complete. Everything in that cellar is madness, so please do not let it trouble your mind.”
It wasn’t that simple, though. What I saw terrified me. If the wrong person found out about Enock and me, something far worse could happen. So when Enock reached out to touch my face, I flinched, too afraid to take any chances at that moment.
“I’m sorry.” I went to sit on my bed. “I really am tired,” I lied, wanting nothing more than for him to leave.
“I could stay with you,” Enock said, “at least until you fall asleep.”
“I’ll be all right,” I lied again.
Enock gazed at my hands. “I’d give anything to know what you’re thinking.” He smiled weakly, but it disappeared as I climbed under my blanket and hid them.
“I’m only thinking of how tired I am.” I laid my head down and shut my eyes, fighting back tears.
I felt his breath just before his lips pressed against my forehead. “I love you, Sarafina,” he murmured, “with all my heart and with all that I am.” Then he crossed my room soundlessly and left through the window.
That night, I cried and suffered the greatest pain of my entire life.