Dangerous Ties

3

The next day, I awakened with a chill and the gloomy determination to see no one. It was Sunday, and throughout the village some festivity was being prepared. From my windows, I watched as women garlanded the doors, shutters, and lintels of the shops and other buildings with flowers. Young men carried in kindling from the woods and built a great cone for a bonfire in the village square. Elders and children were setting up tables and singing. The cheery lilt of their voices and the occasional whoops of the young men rankled me in an indeterminate way. On arriving with the morning meal, my servant brought two plates of smoked meat, a large wheel of cheese, and an entire loaf of bread. Weistreim explained he would not be back that day as he was attending the celebration planned for that evening.

“And what celebration would this be,” I asked politely, but I heard the sourness in my tone. Since awakening, my habited priorities had returned to haunt my demeanor. It reproached the memory of seeing myself through the crone’s eyes, arguing with erudite persuasiveness that the ordeal had been nothing more than having allowed my misplaced guilt to be swayed by the pagan funeral.

His answer was bright, but guarded, “In memoriam of certain ancestors. You would not be familiar with them, monsieur.”

At the moment, I was not interested to inquire either, and when he left, I pulled the shutters closed and laid the tray he had brought inside the pantry. Although the weather was temperate, I could not shake the feeling of being cold. I threw some kindling onto the low flame in the fireplace, and when there was a good, steady fire, I browsed through my collection of books and manuscripts. At length I found a treatise by Grigori Rastrelli, “The Mathematical Properties and Mystical Symmetry of Musical Notes.” I sat down in the overstuffed chair before the fireplace. My grasp of the Russian was sufficient and the text absorbing. Soon the sounds of growing merriment from outside were inaudible to me.

Most the day I sat reading, rising only when necessity called or I wanted to nibble on something from the pantry. The celebration outside was in high order by mid-afternoon; drums began to beat from the square, and their pagan toll grew steadily deeper and more fervent. Eventually, it became so loud I could no longer concentrate. I laid the book down and went over the assignments I had planned for the next day’s class. But as I pored over my notated journal, a chorus of shrill voices suddenly pierced the monotonous drumming. Laying the journal aside, I went to the window and peeked out again. The bonfire was burning high above the silhouettes dancing and sitting cross-legged around it, and the smoke that wafted from the flames lazily licked the orange threads of twilight on the horizon.

As I watched the arcane festivity, I saw women amongst the shifting throngs of dancers. They were naked, and the light of the bonfire made their bare flesh gleam like smooth cream. It seemed so indecent to me suddenly; and though propriety tried to convince me it was morality that was offended, my heart knew better.

Carina had been in the grave less than a day.

Later, as I cut some of the bread and cheese for dinner, I was startled by an abrupt silence. The drums had quieted, the voices of merriment hushed completely. I sat, embraced and expectant while I ate, but the festive sounds did not rise again. I returned to the treatise for some time, and when I was too tired to read anymore, I looked out the window one last time. The crowd had emptied from the square, and the bonfire remained burning. A single man paced back and forth before it. I squinted and made out the familiar features of Carina’s father. His arms were crossed, and his eyes were buried beneath an iron-hard furrow of brows. With a twinge of sympathy that softened my earlier judgmental indignity, I left him to his privacy and readied for bed.

I did not reach bed, however. The troubling image of Carina’s father pacing the ground stirred my remorse again. Before it could compel the illusions I’d surely suffered in the grove, I returned to the chair. Draping a quilt over my legs, I read long into the night until at last I fell asleep.

So deep was my slumber I cannot swear what next my conscious mind knew. Whether it was real or something from a dream, I was startled by a scratching sound, like sand rubbed against glass, somewhat away from my chair. I believe my eyes opened, long enough for me to see or imagine the text in my lap. The next moment, my mind lulled into black numbness.

I dreamed of a viper that slithered over the shingles of the house. It maneuvered over the underlaps of the shingles slowly, so that the splinters snagged its old skin and loosened it from the creature’s body. It was a slow process, but I heard the echo of each old scale as it peeled from the body. I flinched with every snap of parched skin, knowing that soon the viper would find its relief, and make its way down the boards and search for some tiny cranny or hidden hole. It would enter the house then and find me, asleep and vulnerable in the chair.

The image dimmed and I started to return to a deep sleep. Then, abruptly, I perceived a low grating sound like the tearing of tin. A distant image of opening fangs glinted at me in the beckoning blackness. My heart rate accelerated as I fought to open my eyes. Ice grazed my cheekbone. The minute hairs froze beneath the chilled touch, and the tissue and bone under my seared skin throbbed with intruding coldness. This coldness at once spread throughout my face, as intense as if I’d dived into artic waters, and my nostrils and throat felt frosted completely.

Rattled to full consciousness, I gasped for air. My eyelids opened and shattered the crystals that seemed to bind the lashes.