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Wouldn't it be nice if I owned these characters? Alas, I do not.
***
Over burning fields and bodies
I stay close to the ground
Slipping miles from the arches and arc-lights
Into the warm night.
- Shearwater, "Lost Boys"
Rose and I could do nothing. We could not get the boys to answer us when we asked where Alyse was, whether she had run away, whether they had done something to her. We screamed, we wept, we pleaded. Maddened by worry, I tried to run past them toward the daylight, and found myself caught, lifted as easily as a child, and deposited again at the back of the cave. Rose kicked over the jug of water and I narrowly prevented her from flinging it against a wall.
They would not speak to us; they would not acknowledge us.
Exhausted, hungry, regretting the loss of the water, Rose and I sat together with our heads bowed. The day passed in silence.
After long hours, I lifted my head to see that the light from the mouth of the cave had dimmed to blue dusk. Rose's head was down on her knees, but I saw the shine of her open eyes. The boys were finally stirring. I did not see him rise or hear him approach, but the leader was standing over us. He looked at us, at the empty jug and the dead fire, then he picked up the chipped crockery and disappeared out of the cave.
Rose and I waited. Time had already stopped, and it made no difference for us to wait another hour. The other boys seemed restless, moving and pacing in the half-light, but never talking.
It was nearly full dark when I heard him return. The jug was set down with a soft thunk beside my feet, and desperate with thirst I reached for it and drank deep before handing it to Rose. There was a soft patter of something hitting the ground near us, and I drew myself into a tighter ball. The hiss of a spark, struck I knew not how, and slowly the fire grew again.
Beside me, Rose gave a stifled cry, and I turned to see her snatch something off the ground. It seemed they had remembered that we must eat, for the things that had fallen to the ground were raw new potatoes. I seized one, heedless of dirt, not caring that it was raw, and bit greedily into it. Perhaps this is from our own fields. It was bitter and chalky, but it was food, and we were famished.
When I had bitten into my third potato, I looked up to see the leader squatting by the fire, watching me eat. I wiped my mouth, suddenly self-conscious of how dirty I must be, and his eyes followed the motions of my hands. Something about the searching in his eyes, the slight furrow of his brow, made him look like a child waking from deep sleep, trying to remember his surroundings, trying to reconcile his dreaming and waking worlds.
Despite their cruelty, despite their indifference and inhumanity, my heart was seized with something like pity, as it would have been for any creature caught and confused. I held out the potato toward him.
"We do not eat," he said, but his flat toneless inflection had changed – there was almost a question in his voice.
"Who are you?" I asked again, unable to stop myself. He merely looked away, staring into the fire. But his body was tense and listening, so I tried again.
"Where did you come from?"
The pause after my words was long, so long I thought he was not going to answer. But then he said softly, to the fire, "Very far away."
The silence was complete. Rose had gone utterly still beside me, listening, and the other boys were so frozen in the half-light that they might have been statues.
"Who brought you here? Why did you come here?"
He turned his head back to look into my eyes. "We came here alone." I thought he would say no more, but then he spoke again. "We are always alone now."
I had not seen them move, but the other boys were close behind him now, drawn toward the sound of speech as if huddling around a flame. The fair one's eyes were glassy and distant, but the dark one watched with a naked hunger in his face. Rose, despite herself, was drawn in.
"Do you not have parents, or families?" she asked.
"No family," growled the dark one. The fair one shook his head, back and forth, back and forth.
"Parents," said the leader, again with the shadow of a question in his voice.
"Yes, parents," said Rose, and tears were close to the surface of her voice. "We have a father. We had a mother who died."
There was another pause while Rose bit her lip and tried to master her tears. The dark one put his head back and groaned softly. I ached inside. Then, unexpected: "We had him," the leader said.
It was as if the air suddenly shifted. The fair one lifted his head as if scenting something. The dark one seemed to gather himself, like a thundercloud.
"Him," he rumbled.
"Carlisle," the fair one breathed, a name or an invocation.
The leader's face was twisted now, a smile full of pain. "We were with him. We were not alone."
"Who was he?" I asked. Rose thumped my leg with her closed fist, but I didn't care. They were finally speaking to us, and I dreaded the return of silence.
"Carlisle," said the leader. "We were his. He created us."
With a roar that made me startle like a rabbit, the dark one launched himself at the fair one. The fair one laughed, a high, mirthless bark, then they were a tangle of legs and arms, a vicious roiling knot. This was like the wrestling matches at the village fair, but rougher, wilder. Rose cried out when the fair one throttled the dark one, slamming his head against the stone wall, but the dark one seemed unhurt and soon regained the upper hand, wrenching the fair one's arm behind him and forcing him to the ground. With a twist that should have broken his shoulder, the fair one somehow slipped away, only to spring onto the dark one once more. On and on they raged.
"They will kill each other," Rose sobbed to the leader.
"No," said the leader simply.
As suddenly as it had started, it was over. The dark one fell back, snarling, grinning. The fair one threw his head back and laughed, high and cold. "Beautiful, my children, beautiful. You will be rewarded." There was a languid, aristocratic drawl to his voice, and I peered at him uncertainly, but he dropped back to his haunches, gibbering unintelligibly, shaking his head back and forth, back and forth. Rose gripped my arm and whispered in my ear, "I don't want to talk to them anymore."
"Sometimes he set us to fight each other so that he might watch," said the leader, watching us closely. With every passing moment, his voice was coming unstuck, as if he were remembering the pathways between one word and the next.
"Carlisle?" I asked. Rose's grip on my arm grew tighter.
"Sometimes he took us to his bed," said the leader, looking at me with his dusk-colored eyes.
Rose made a sound of disgust and turned away, but I nodded slowly. I thought I understood. I had seen how men in the village looked at Rose, how the butcher watched the swing of her hips and the swish of her skirt when she walked by. I had also seen the schoolmaster stare at Garritt the cobbler's boy with hooded eyes, seen a touch linger too long on shoulder or wrist. Two different hungers, but of the same kind.
"You didn't mind it?" I asked. His eyes glittered at me out of the icy beauty of his face.
"Did you love him?" I asked. Something like pain flashed through his eyes, and his lips parted.
"Did he love you?" I asked.
The dark one blazed into life. "He never loved us!" he roared, leaping up, and drove his clenched fist into the wall with enough force to break the bones of his arm. Rose jumped and clapped her hands over her ears. The fair one giggled. Rose was crying again, in frightened stifled gasps. The dark one peered at her through the firelight, then came crashing toward us with heavy steps. He crouched beside Rose and dragged her into his lap once more, pulling her hand from my arm as he trapped her effortlessly and wound his fingers into her hair. She pleaded with him to stop.
"He was golden like you," the dark one rumbled. "Sometimes he would touch us softly," he said, stroking her curls, "and sometimes..." His fingers curled in a fist, and he pulled, yanking her head to the side. Rose shrieked. The fair one watched with eager eyes.
"Stop him!" I cried to the leader, my own tears falling now. "He's frightening my sister. You're frightening us."
The leader merely looked at me, then at Rose, and there was no indication on his face that he recognized our fear, or cared. It was perfect, blank indifference – he neither pitied us, nor exulted in our terror. He's not human, I thought frantically, gulping my sobs. The dark one didn't pull Rose's hair again, but closed his eyes and buried his face in her curls.
"He was perfect," said the leader at last out of the stillness, his voice distant, and it took me a moment to realize that he was speaking of this Carlisle. "He was as a god, or an archangel. They came from far away to be near him, but he shone above them all." For the first time, there was life in his voice, and warmth. "There was always music, and feasting, and the light of a thousand candles, all at his command."
"Isobel," whispered Rose, so that only I might hear.
The leader continued. "He dressed us in silks and velvets," he said, and I could see the memories crowding in his eyes. "He sat me beside him and I drank from his goblet. He stood me up to sing for him, for everyone, but the songs were always for him. He petted me and caressed me. We were his favorites. We were his children."
"His children," whispered the fair one.
"I thought you said you didn't drink," I said.
"Isobel, stop," whispered Rose.
"It was not wine in the goblets," he said.
I swallowed hard.
"He called me by my name," said the leader, his eyes full of long-ago candlelight.
Somehow it had not occurred to me that he would have a name. If he did, perhaps something in him was human yet, and could feel and remember. "What was your name?" I asked him.
The candlelight in his eyes dimmed and drifted. I watched his face as the velvets and silks, the feasts and the music, slipped away, and he saw the walls of the cave. He looked lost, and then his eyes fixed on me. "My – my name?"
I nodded, and he unconsciously mimicked me, his chin rising and falling by the barest fraction. "My name," he said, his brow furrowing. I wanted to move toward him, to smooth my fingers over that wrinkle, so I wrapped my arms tighter around my knees and did nothing.
His eyes were searching, inward. "My name – my name was – was – Edward." It was only a breath. "He called me Edward."
I took a breath and held it, then let it out. "You are Edward," I said to him.
His eyes were full as he looked at me, of candlelight and firelight both.
"You have a name," he said in his questioning way.
"Yes," I said.
"Don't tell him," whispered Rose.
"My name is Isobel," I told him.
He leaned forward where he sat, as if to reach for me. "Isobel," he said slowly, as if the sounds were foreign to him, but I felt the gooseflesh rise on my arms at the sound of my name from his mouth. "Isobel, la bella, la bellissima."
I didn't understand his words, but they were like a spell, like the trailings of the fisherman's net.
The fire seemed to spill out of his eyes now, flooding me. "Isabella la più bella, they would call you. In India they would paint your hands and your feet with gold, and line your eyes with black, and drape you in chains of gold and rubies. They would wrap you in satin and set you on a cushion and worship at your feet."
My breathing had gone fast and shallow.
"In Persia they would rub your body with scented oil and dress you in gossamer hung with ropes of pearls," he said, "and they would hide you behind veils of silk, and men would tear themselves to pieces for want of a glimpse of you."
Somewhere Rose was saying, "Don't listen to him." I was trembling.
"But in Venice," he breathed. "Ah, in Venice. They would bind you in corsets of silk and lace and set diamonds to glimmer in your hair like stars in the dusk. They would strap high jeweled slippers on your feet and hang sapphires around your throat. And the wine would brighten your eyes until they shone, and the blood would rush under your skin, and they would call you bella, la più bella, la regina della notte."
And as he spoke I could see it coming to life, the torchlight and candlelight, the drapings of red velvet and black silk. The tables piled with exotic fruits, whole roast pigs, birds of paradise with their feathers quivering. Chairs and couches where women and men lounged, entwined, in their bright plumage of lace and damask and brocade. Somewhere below me, oiled bodies writhed against each other under the languid gaze of onlookers. The silver goblet in my hand was full of a crimson wine, thick and rich as heart's-blood. And this must be Carlisle beside me, a golden archangel, terrible and beautiful and cruel. He reached for me with a hand with vermillion nails like talons and thirst in his face.
Then my vision swam, and it was no longer Carlisle beside me, but Edward – not lost or broken but beautiful and whole, a smile on his lips, and untold promises in his eyes.
"Bella," he whispered. "Bellissima."
My skin was icy and white like his, and we ruled this place together, undying, forever young, forever beautiful.
"Isobel!" hissed Rosaleen.
My sight cleared, and I found myself on my knees, reaching toward him, yearning toward him. I snatched my hand back. He closed his eyes and the fire released me, and I was only Isobel, dressed in homespun wool, frightened, dirty, hungry.
I pushed myself clumsily back toward Rose, shaking. The dark one dragged her out of my reach with a snarl. The leader – Edward – turned away.
I curled into a knot of bones in the unbroken silence, then lay down alone. The boys neither spoke nor moved. I did not want to sleep, but I did, although my dreams were full of darkness and firelight, so I could hardly tell the difference between sleeping and waking.
When I awoke to daylight, I was alone. Rose was gone. I put my head down again and closed my eyes.
***
Translations from Italian: bella means beautiful, of course, and bellissima is very beautiful. La più bella, the most beautiful, and la regina della notte, the queen of the night.