How remarkable I found it to be the colossal change in me. That without warning, the bleak and morose sense about myself felt gone away. For the first time since perhaps my girlhood, I did not feel so rotten, and I owed it completely and wholly to the golden faces at that time.

If you ask me which days were my least aching, when I felt least my brooding heart, these would be the ones.

—1818-1838–

    As you may have guessed, I was no longer bound by trivial human conventions. Whether a surface was to be soft or firm was no matter. If a room were to be bright or dim, warm or cold, it mattered so little. All that was needed was a room and a place to shut out the light.

Thus, within the walls of the coven, there was very little comfort to speak of, as Phedré was hent upon some century long journey in refusing anything of mortal parallel. Though, he had a taste for civilized luxuries, that was much true, for he had been so very dapper in his fashions on those nights he went to the Opera houses, his reflective orbs like violets as he followed the rich scent of Parisian blood.

    Until, quite curiously, there came to be this intolerance with him, some unknown agitation as he shouted to the others, "Bore me, how you all bore me upon true and cruel death!", so that at times he left and was gone for such a spell, I imagined he might never return.

    But revitalized and animated, he would breeze through the doors as though back from some mysterious fount that had restored his lively interests and made him well again.

And with this, soon there came to be from all parts of the known world, art and furniture and lamps, and with that, more light! This did bring me comfort, as these things helped me along in some simple fashion to believe the lie that I might somehow deny all that I had become.

I took kindly to the bed that now sat at the center of my chamber, draped in rich green velvet. I would spend my time there, finding sleep on those nights I denied my thirst altogether. There I felt unfettered, felt so nearly the girl again who knew nothing of vampires.

    But beyond it, beyond the heavy metal of a door, waiting in the shadows like some foreboding whisper—like all dreadful things dwelling in shadows—laid my miserable coffin.

But then I held little need for what extravagance Phedré would offer, the lavishness of tapestries and silken drapes and embroidered pillows. Nor the large, shining mirrors reflecting endlessly the decadence of wallpaper adorned with colorful bouquets and golden humming birds.

    The drawing room was suddenly cluttered with Chippendale furnishings and roses upon the marble mantle, the golden gas chandeliers dripping of fine crystals reflecting such light, so that not even upon the lofty ceilings was there ominous shadow.

Abundantly during the night came deliveries of roses for the vases, and men arriving from the Americas with the romanticism portraits of Charles Willson Peale.

Our home was kept very dark during this, lest we revealed our unsated flesh to them full in the eyes, our pale orbs that were so unclouded. But the men complained, "Monsieur, please! We shall fall down and die if we do not have more light! Why this one candle?"

And groaning impatiently, Phedré said, "You'll get paid whether you die or no," irritated completely, so that he stormed off.

From my balcony, I would watch them leave with a hunger and a mourning I cannot well explain. The warm spring breeze caused their distinct aroma to linger in such a way that I longed to swallow that pleasantness whole.

I never knew such terrible torment.

But then there were the children, these precious little starlings who were finally curious at me. Their small hands wound the frame as they blushed at my door that stood open, and I, sitting on my bed and sulking, pat beside me for them to come. And their small mouths smiled and they came and buried themselves beneath pillows and linen, and there I sat with them, tempered and moved.

    And I found that they were not those little devils I thought them to be, that in fact, although unnaturally intelligent, they looked unto the world through all but a child's eye, that they were yet so new.

Their little giggles quickened me and I savored the gentleness of that sweet laughter. Never before had I been so especially taken by this common noise that was now nothing but a round coil of silvery sounds streaming out to penetrate the very pulsing of my heart.

    They played with my hair with their tiny fingers, and nuzzled beneath my arms. And I hummed to them and caressed their golden curls, and I looked them in the face, luminous and bright, and kissed their rounded lids and their tiny petal buds, and I felt all of a tender spirit.

And then, suddenly, there was David. He stared at us from the doorway, his glittering, winking eyes holding their special little scorn.

Preciously, they called out for him to come and play. I could well see in his face, that beautiful pouty mouth, that he wanted to, that these children had meant something to him.

Caught in a tender moment, I reached for him, and then silently and with more repugnance to his look than I had ever seen, he stepped back and then was gone.

"He does not like you," one told me with a voice so slight. His round, plump face shown through a sea of fiery curls. And I realize he was the very one to light the candles of that wretched room. And his features, the haunted quality of them, seemed finally softened by the gas lanterns of my room.

"My name is Henry," he told me, and I loved him. I loved them all.

And, so, I thought, these children, who had finally been lulled down to where they slept, had given me purpose marvelous much that I should look after them, as I had loved them truly and honestly as a mother from the first.

Alas, they were a passion put to me upon this dull, simple earth. And it was my good sense that I could nurture them and tenderly sway them from what evils their instincts would have them do.

    And, so, although I avoided any passions of my own, I would read to them gladly and readily, as their minds were of the vastly blooming sort. And how bright did their small faces look at the tales of The History of Little Jack and Gulliver's Travels, and other such books. And finally, in time, the requests of The Monk and the volumes of Les Liaisons dangereuses, all of which I thoroughly detested, and scoffing, cast them promptly aside, shouting, "Mon Dieu!", and told them to go ahead and read that filth if they were so hent for the flames, to which they laughed themselves thoroughly to the ground.

And so it was when I had forgotten my quest for misery and my teeming thoughts, that I found grief with a new name entirely.

Undoubtedly, these children were children until after so many years had passed, when to my dismay, little by little, like tiny birds from their nests, they would leave, hent on their own discoveries, until their visits became fewer and fewer.

But Henry, like that one loyal child that could always be counted upon, found my rooms every evening just as he always had. I had a profound connection with Henry. Where I loved all my little starlings with such passion, there was something so akin to me within Henry.

It softened that dull ache in my heart, that soft swell in my throat as I sat at my parlor window, looking to the gas-lit boulevard, attuned to the distant crowd, the distant music, a woman that walked past our courtyard with a stream of diamonds around her neck so stunning, such that they shimmered beneath the yellow lights most fascinating. And the sweet aroma of the blooming garden below mingled with that of her perfume, along with that one other more essential one.

And Henry, he said to me as he drew upon parchment the most elaborate scenes, "Why do you watch out the window like that?", so that I was now looking at him. "And with that frown? Is there nothing else that compels you?"

"You compel me," I said to him gently.

He only watched me, studying some mystery upon my face, I don't know. And then he said, as if to abandon whatever endeavor, "Your walls are too empty, and your shelves. Why shouldn't you paint again and read?"

"Yes, yes," I said, I so a feather to his whim. "As you wish," so that finally I was painting the sky's at dawn and the fruitful meadows of tall grass and weeping willows, as I could only remember it, until finally he brought books by the dozens, collections of literature from the Americas and poetry that he would obtain. How, I wouldn't dare think on.

    He would ask so many questions about instruments and say that he wished to hear me play the piano, something I could never bring myself to do, but he would hold to me sheet music and ask, "What do these mean?", and I would tell him.

    And suddenly, it was he who was playing the most elaborate music with a master's passion, a master's precision, leaning in, pressing the ivories as if pressing my aching soul, so that I felt tenderly my breaking heart again.

But then as time went on, his features gained a detached coolness to them, so that his golden eyes grew focused and sharp. And, too, he had grown frightfully quiet, such that at times what he thought was unknowable to me.

    He would listen to me read poetry with a concentration that made him look ghostly, so that the sight of him startled me and I was looking back at him in awe. And like a porcelain doll brought impossibly to life, he would say to go on.

     At times I would find him quietly sitting in a chair, his booted feet dangling like a doll's booted feet might dangle, engulfed with such abandon with music or within a new book he discovered for hours. I would watch him there, his small, round fingers plump, though made hard by vampire nature, as they turned through the writings of Voltaire, and I attempted to measure the depths of his focused gaze that had been such a mystery to me.

Yes, he was of a child's body but now with a vampire's keen consciousness, and that coveted span of innocence had alas ended, and my reprieve had gone along with it. And I had mourned it. But, too, I had buried it with all the rest, lest I goad him to vex on how he would never gain stature and walk as men do, or how he would forever be bound by another for safety alone and for no better reason. And other things I couldn't ponder.

It must have been that I had known, but only I could not conceive the harrowing truth; that these children were never to grow. And what could only be inevitable, a wealth of knowledge to be forever hosted by the round expressions of a child.

I saw them as tiny birds behind the close-set bars of a cage with eyes that were curious, yearning of things they will never have, and how this vision burdened me.

And though he was a round-cheeked child still and his voice very small, in time his words formed from that tiny mouth and tiny tongue as though he had spoken them for centuries, void of those round, child-like vowels.

    There came to be this clear resonance to it, something liken to the perfect pitch of a violin chord. And then a sudden shrewdness when he would say with a sneer as I handed him a new collection of poetry, "I tire of these sonnets and literature! Each one mirrors the last! Where are the unconformed hearts, the philosophies that are untethered?", so that it stopped me.

I struggled to know the journey he took. I cannot pin down the exact time of it, if only to say that gradually he wanted ruffled shirts to wear and, too, fine black capes. And that it mattered to him his hair and his boots. Until, finally, we were discussing the wars of Napoleon, and what a prideful dolt he thought him to be, and we would laugh and laugh until the barest light of dawn hit our vampire eyes.

    Together we would sit like two clams in a shell, sharing secrets and pondering what is the afterlife and if we should ever reach there, even if it be Hell. Such conversations quickened me and terrorized me all at once, for what room in Hell would they have for one like myself, neither good nor bad but a hopeless blunder of both. And what was this suffering compared to the fires of damnation?

"You are not bad," he told me in his thin, silvery voice, his eyes on the flickering candle. His head rolled against the soft, velvet cushion of the chair and he looked at me thoughtfully, eyes smoldering portholes to his soul.

"You own your brooding heart steadfastly," he said to me. "But you suffer only because you feel you must. But why must you suffer to live and bear burden your breath if so uncertain you are of everything? The point is that you do not know," he said, leaning forward now. "You've questioned if you are damned, but then, too, with the same breath, you've condemned yourself all the same. And in this, you have hardened your heart against the world!"

"But in this primordial form?" I countered, tears so nearly standing in my eyes. "I am meant to take life, and I have the profound inability to do this, because they are all but innocent and know nothing, can know nothing of this existence!"

"Even still, what sin have you committed?" he said with that level tone, those tears now spilling from my eyes, so that he reached to gather them with a little, pale finger, and brought it to his mouth. To its foul bitterness, he grimaced, and I lowered my head.

"But, alas," he continued, "what if you did what is only in your nature to do? Why condemn this? The lioness, from those strange, faraway lands, when she overtakes her prey, that knows nothing other than to graze the earth. Would she then need to be damned? Should she then be called a devil when she does only what her instincts tell her to do, which is to do what she must to survive?"

I contemplated quietly. And once I could put aside that this profound wisdom had come seemingly from a feral child, I realized he was infinitely correct. My anger had been my silent battle all along, and it had worn me down into a sorry mental heap. But to the rest, well, its answers elude me even still.

I was thinking again of his tiny form. On how he could instinctively unravel such questions. And it burdened me quite completely to think on what he might have become, if only he were let alone to become it.

    And of all the discussions we had, all of the answers we were bent on defining in that room, sitting warmed by the fire, never had we spoken of our fair and eternal youth that seemed at once bleak and empty.

    I strained to know. I strained to know until the brink of mental exhaustion, to what point did he think on it? To what degree did it anger him? And if I weren't so lost within my own confusion, what might had I said to correct this, to comfort him?

    But, then, it had always been he to comfort me, he to say, when I was agonized by my turn, "Not by your hand. Not by your heart."

"It is time that you connected with this instinct," he told me now, coming down from the chair. "It is imperative for your wellbeing. I will help you through it and show you what to do. It isn't all gruesome like those pitiful lores printed."

...

Spring in France was a celebration. In the evening a gathering of festivities with merchants and dress makers, talented ladies weaving flower crowns with the most beautiful specimens of tulips and wild flowers of all kinds. Jugglers and magicians, the artists with their finely painted gardens, tempting you to reach and touch the petals that bloomed against delicate clouds up above. The bakers selling their sweet custards and cakes filled with jam, butchers with their boiled meats, all which thoroughly sickened me.

And in the courtyard were people playing music and dancing and laughing, twirling in pairs like swooning lovers, the women's skirts fanning out and coming down again with a subtle rustling of soft chiffon and silk.

All of them together no matter the status, the men with their brilliant capes and walking canes, mingling among those with pressed dirt upon their worn boots and hems, and all drinking themselves into a stupor until finally exhausted. Until finally, stuffed and lazy-eyed, treading upon masses of confetti and crushed flowers, they were stumbling aimlessly in the dark, until all had grown calm and quiet.

And then a woman fashioned all in white, with her wide brimmed hat and ruffled collar tightly buttoned, her newly purchased gown draped over her laced gloved hands, and then the glow of Henry's hungry eyes.

His method to me was terrifying. Although, it wasn't as savage as I had pictured it. Non, it was far worse. It was frightfully calculated.

He would wait, a child alone in the courtyard, feigning all but helpless and afraid, his parents having lost him in the crowed.

    So skillfully did he spell the gracious, gentle-eyed patron who only fell in love with his flushed, rounded cheeks, his tiny bud mouth, his perfectly soft skin, all of which I had feared in that unholy cathedral. That, I had gotten right.

    And as she carried him away, the dress left discarded upon the ground, with a dreamy look to his eyes, he nuzzled against her neck, the curve of a hand at the nape, the glint of little fangs showing through the moist, parted lips, the tongue pressing forward so that the tip of it gleamed.

♱