Early update again! This time with a Nathan-centric chapter. Just some dabbling into his history—and his relationship with Saya and Diva's mother. Let me know how I do, because, to be honest, mythical/Beowulf-type writing has never been my particular forte! XP
Hope you enjoy! Review, pretty please! :)
Caesura III
Diva, asleep in bed, looks like a cherub. Wisps of hair falling across her face. Little fingers curled into the sheets. So innocent, you'd think she was poured out of Heaven's chalice.
Except for the blood dribbling down her chin.
A severed human foot—what? She likes to drink from that cushy space between the heel and toe—lies beside her like a teddybear.
Watching her sleep, Nathan can't help think—despite the painful impossibility—how much she resembles her mother.
Thoughts of said mother don't usually arise on a day-to-day basis. (Second-to-second is the better phrase to use.) Nathan doesn't need to be consciously thinking of his late Queen to miss her. He just isn't the same without her.
Never has been, or can be, despite the centuries that've passed.
And hopeless romantic that you are, you'd have it no other way, would you?
He's sure it says something negative about him, how he still wallows like a lovesick Romeo in memories he should've forgotten centuries ago.
But who cares? His memories. His Queen.
So: nyah.
Settling in the armchair, Nathan lets the storybook in his lap slip away. If he didn't know better, he'd say these fairy-stories Diva likes him to read to her—tales of morons who trade money for beans and necrophiliac princes who kiss the lips of corpses, for fuck's sake—act as a trigger for remembering his Queen.
Especially the Icelandic myths. Sagas of enchanted winters, supernatural tricksters, and warrior-princesses. Torcs, dirks and blood. They never fail to remind him of his birthplace, back in Iceland.
The original mummy of Saya hadn't been discovered there for the scenery, that's for very damn sure.
One particular story piques Nathan's fancy. The tale of an exiled princess, and a prince who abandoned everything to be with her. She: beautiful, defiant, iron-willed. He: clever, devoted, impetuous. Their travels to strange lands, meeting extraordinary people. Their all-consuming love, immortalized in verse. Their families who despised all they stood for, and stopped at nothing to destroy them.
Nathan isn't stupid. He knows there's truth behind every work of fiction. When the original Joel Goldschmidt had theorized that the mummy, Saya, might retrace the genesis of mankind, the old codger hadn't been too far off.
The existence of Chiropterans, their culture, stretched so far back that it was imprinted on the very essence of legend and myth.
On the very essence of human consciousness itself.
Nathan remembers ancient Norse tales of the Ragnarök—an epic battle that wiped out all the gods and goddesses amid cataclysmic natural disasters. And he is reminded, bittersweet, of the terrible feuds that were his Chiropteran kindred's downfall. He remembers ancient Norse beliefs that the origin of life was fire and ice. And he is reminded, chuckling, how each pair of Chiropteran Queens are born with one set of red eyes, one set of blue.
He remembers other things too. How a certain self-righteous Nordic god called Forseti represented justice. And he is reminded of a favorite cousin who grew up to preside over the clan's judicature. He remembers a Nordic goddess called Idun, who was associated with eternal life, her golden apples bearing rejuvenating qualities for the gods. And he is reminded of a Chiropteran noblewoman he'd played with as a child. How she grew up to inherit a sprawling orchard, whose golden apples were served in the clan's magnificent feasts every winter, dipped in bowls of blood.
He remembers all these wonderful, tragic, whimsical things.
And is also reminded, painfully, which two lovers his favorite fable is based upon.
He was alive when the first ballads were being sung.
One of them, his best-beloved, is mentioned in the book. It goes, always accompanied to a lute in his memory, something like this:
At the door of my soul she is standing,
So sweet in the gleam of her garment:
Her footfall awakens a fury,
A fierceness of love that I knew not…
Each time he hums the ballad, he's assaulted by a photo-album of mental snapshots. Bright red eyes. A blue rose twined through a black braid. He hears laughter as sweet as a chorale of bells; tastes kisses that feel like an entire glittering universe. And he relives darker memories too. Clashing swords and ravaged screams. Iron manacles and blood on perfect white thighs. He re-experiences journeys through wheat fields on a galloping horse; flights across the night sky on outspread wings.
With a familiar, radiant form held in his arms.
His Queen.
And each time he succumbs to the memories, he remembers...
Iceland…
They'd taken shelter in an inn far from the best, redolent of human sweat and brewed alcohol. But, for their situation, suitable. No one would dream—least of all their hunters—that such a low establishment was hideaway to a Chiropteran Queen.
Nathan—except he was not called Nathan then—his name was in a different language, and its utterance boasted a very different title.
The lowborn of their land would have associated it to great marble hallways, jewels and rich beds of fur. Or, in the more recent years, following the brutal family feud, to matricide, revolt, and bloodshed.
It was fitting.
He was a Chevalier; a knight. And more than the subject of love ballads, knights were weapons of war.
In the dim candlelight, Nathan guarded the door while his companion removed her traveling cloak, revealing a long blue gown and a diminutive figure.
"You're certain it is safe to stay here?" Her voice was a red silk ribbon, a goblet of blood. Sultry, sustaining. He let it twine around his senses, drinking it in.
"Your sister's Chevaliers will not think to look for you here. They hate mingling with humans. They'll assume it's the same for you."
"What if they don't?"
"There's no need to worry. If they arrive, I've bribed the innkeeper to give us a warning. We can slip out through the window, and to the stables directly below us. I've ordered a boy to keep our horses at the ready. By the time they've reached our room, we will be riding north."
"I see." Her red-toned eyes were ironical. "You always seem so certain."
Nathan held her gaze, injecting into it the force of his emotion. "I will not let any harm come to you. I may not be your Chevalier by blood, but I will be so of my own free will. I will protect you until you have fulfilled your mission."
She nodded. In the glow of candlelight, she looked lovely beyond bearing. The glossy black hair, thickly-braided like a thoroughbred's; the imperious sweep of eyebrows; the painfully red lips and gold skin; all resulted in an uncommon, exotic beauty.
But it wasn't her beauty Nathan loved. It was her spirit.
She had defied, single-handed, the traditions of her rigid aristocratic clan; befriending the humans they sought to destroy. She had endured the execution of all her Chevaliers, and braved abuse and assassination for advocating harmony between both races. Forsaken, in an eyeblink, a lifestyle of luxury and power for her political beliefs.
All to travel as little more than a vagabond. An outcast.
So many nights, Nathan had watched her spirit come close to shattering. Only to resurface, each time, stronger and brighter than ever. The polished sword she wore at her side was like a deadly embodiment of her will.
Queen and warrior. Mother and lover. She was all that for him, yet so much more.
"I'm sorry for everything I put you through," she murmured now. "You gave up everything for me, only to suffer constant disgrace and hiding."
He shook his head, adamant. This was not the first time they'd had this discussion. And each time, his answer was the same.
"My only wish is to be with you. I want to help you until you've forged peace between our people and the humans. Our kinsmen will gain nothing from enslaving the human race. We both know this, even if they do not."
She exhaled, bitterness creeping into her tone. "Our kinsmen aren't to blame. They only follow the laws decreed by the council. Except the council themselves are just a stage of puppets. My grandmother's Chevalier is the one who pulls the strings. In his lust for power, he's determined to tear our entire family apart. Turn mother against daughter. Sister against sister."
Nathan looked away, throat burning
He knew exactly which sister she was referring to. His blood-queen, whom he had abandoned to be with her. The same blood-queen who, a year ago, he'd sensed falling to her irreversible death, while he was on the other edge of the country.
The sensation still turned his skin to icewater to recall.
Made him all the more terrified to imagine what would happen, if he lost her sister too.
"It was your sister's Chevaliers who assassinated her," he said, barely above a whisper. "All her life, they used her as a figurehead to carry out atrocities against the humans. She was manipulated every step of the way. But after you were exiled, she began to question the council's ways. Her Chevaliers killed her because she had outlived her usefulness."
His companion sank into the narrow pallet, pressing a trembling hand to her face. "They told me she took her own life. Because of all the shame I brought our family."
"No. That isn't true." Crossing the room, he knelt before her, gently taking her hands. "Please listen to me. I have told you before. Your sister was impulsive, even impressionable. Like a little girl. But in her own way, she was as strong as you. She would never have done something so cowardly as taken her own life. Even after your exile, she spoke of you, wondered where you were. The other nobles were all hemmed in by tradition. But not her. She loved you far too much to forget you."
"Yet you still left her to come to me?" Her voice was choked.
Nathan pressed her hands gently. "I loved her. I will not deny it. But I couldn't love her the way I love you. I did from the first moment I met you. When we danced at your mother's banquet, do you remember?"
Her eyes were bright with tears. "How could I forget?"
He smiled, chest aching. Brought her hand to his lips, kissing the row of knuckles. "I can still see everything so clearly. You were standing alone by the long table. And there was a blue rose in your hair." He lifted a hand, letting his long fingers flutter across her temples, the pale shell of one ear. She leaned into his touch with a sad smile. "Even after our families arranged for me to become your sister's Chevalier, I never stopped loving you. I still like to imagine you felt the same."
"I did. You know that." Her small fingers, callused from scrollwork and swords, covered his. "I used to envy my sister for winning your hand. I'd watch from my window whenever she took you horesriding or strolling through the gardens with her. You were her favorite, do you know? But she had good reason to cherish you. You… were nothing like her other Chevaliers. Your brothers."
A hideous rift of memory settled between them. Nathan's eyes felt hot as embers. He knew she wasn't referring to how his brothers had manipulated and murdered her sister.
She was speaking of the Ugly Thing that had happened after her exile. When these men she shared her home with, that he shared his blood with, had dragged her down into the dungeon. And, one by one, done things to her that still curdled his blood to recall.
He had received word too late, and raced upon the scene unable to do her an ounce of good. But in the ensuing scuffle, he had killed his eldest brother. And managed to bundle her out of the territory before the guards could be alerted.
From that night to this, they had been running for their lives.
"Do you love me?" she whispered. "Even after everything that has happened? Even after all the trouble I've brought us both?"
"More with each passing day." His words were more vehement than tender. "You know I don't believe in dishonor. I never have. Our elders might say that our stars were unlucky. That these things were fated to happen. But I wouldn't blame fate so much as the will of corrupt men. None of this is your fault. You must believe that. I will keep telling you, over and over, until you do."
"Even if..." She swallowed. "Even if the children I carry aren't yours?"
Nathan followed her downswept gaze. Her belly, under the dark-blue gown, was growing with twins. They would arrive by the end of the year, or earlier. Unable to help himself, he spread his palm against the taut material. The warm flesh surged beneath, pulsing with life.
He still remembered their combined horror when she'd realized she was pregnant. Remembered how many nights they'd spent at inns not too different from this one, weeping and raging, trying to reach a solution. He'd as good as told her she must abandon the children after birth. This was no life for newborns.
It would only make her more vulnerable; only make their escapes more difficult.
But although she had agreed with him, she still refused to give them up.
"They are my flesh and blood," she'd screamed when he tried to dissuade her. "It doesn't matter how they were conceived. They are mine. I will not abandon them."
And Nathan, knowing from experience that nothing could sway her once she'd made her decision, had conceded.
He didn't care either, how these children were formed. Knew that if they were born, he'd love them as intensely as he loved the woman carrying them.
But that did not stop a chilling premonition from crawling down his spine.
A forewarning that, by letting these offspring of betrayal and rape survive, he was releasing the catalyst for a terrible unforeseen future.
Shaking it off, he lowered his head. Pressed his lips to the soft swell of her belly, the gown's fabric warmed by her skin. He felt the babies' pulse mingling with hers. His body pounded with tenderness for them.
"I will protect these children. Just as I protect you. You are all I have. I cannot bear to lose you."
She shut her eyes. "You were against my keeping them, at first."
"I'm against anything that endangers your life more than it already is. But if you've resolved to have these children, I have no right to argue with you. You are their mother. And because you are, I will love them." He quirked a brow, teasing. "Besides. You remember the prophecy made twenty years back? That any children you bear will be miracles? One a warrior, the other a songstress. The world will exist as a stage to showcase their beauty." He smirked. "I'm not one for respecting prophecies made by old men with hair growing out of their ears. But considering their mother's endless charms, it's not too far-fetched."
She laughed, and he delighted in the music it made. He had been hearing it so rarely as time went on. Her tiny fingers combed away the hair from his forehead. Candlight stuck two crescents in her wistful eyes.
"You've done so much for me already," she whispered. "Despite everything I've made you suffer. I'm sorry I have nothing to give you in return."
"You've given me all I'll ever need. You trust me to stay by your side. To serve you. That is more than enough."
"For now. But for how much longer?"
"For as long as you will have me." He saw the doubt wavering on her face. To allay it, he brought her hand to his lips, kissing the center of her palm. Her name slid like cinnamon off his lips. "You are my reason for being. I will do only what you wish."
"Then—" She swallowed forcibly. "Please promise me something?"
"What?"
He was startled by how clouded her face suddenly was. She held his gaze steadily, pensively, like a lost soul being ferried into the terrible underworld of Nilfheim.
Never to return.
"This time we have together is borrowed. Both of us know it, even if we never talk about it. Sooner or later, it will be over. We can only run so far before the other Chevaliers find us."
Nathan stiffened, chilled by her words. And chilled too, by the portent of what was to come.
"When that happens, please promise me something."
"Promise…?"
"Promise you will kill me with your own hands."
His fingers tightened on hers.
"Wh-what?"
Her stare was as unyielding as the chains his brothers had used to tie her up in their dungeon. "Promise you'll kill me. If we find ourselves cornered by our hunters. If there is no way out. Stab me through the chest. Pierce my heart. And as soon as my scent has faded from the body, crush the skull. That way, if my remains ever fall into enemy hands, they will not recognize me. They will keep hunting for me, thinking I am alive. It will waste manpower and time. Two resources they could be dedicating to creating armies and attacking humans instead. At least then, my death won't be in vain."
Nathan's pulse hammered sharply. The room seemed to spin round and round, only he perfectly still—an embodied caesura.
"How—can you ask me this?"
"Because you are the only one I can ask." Her hands had gone moist and cold in his. "Please. I'm begging you."
He was stunned by her ghastly proposition. Her eyes remained fixed on his face, filling with tears. He could not look at them without his own welling up. When the first sob escaped her, he immediately pulled her into his arms. Frantic to calm her down, because she had endured too much pain already, and he could not stand to give her more.
He pressed his face into her hair, eyes burning. "What about the babies?"
"Watch over them, if they survive. But if they do not—if I do not—"
His arms tightened around her. The savagery in his words frightened even him. "I will kill myself if you do not survive. You know I will."
She pressed her forehead to his. Her skin was smooth; feverish. "No. Please don't do that. I couldn't bear it if you threw your life away for me."
"I would have no life without you."
"Don't say that. Don't lose hope. If I do not survive, I want you to live on in my place. I'm not asking that you forget me. But I'm not asking that you hold yourself away from the world either. That would be as good as destroying you. And I love you too much to do that."
"But not enough to leave me?"
Her eyes squeezed shut. She swallowed a convulsive sob. "Please. It isn't a choice for me to make. I started this feud. I made the decision to live this way, to be hunted at every turn. But I cannot make the choice for you too. I've brought enough ruin to your life."
"I told you. That doesn't matter to me." He took her face in his hands, kissing her again and again, her salty tears mingling with his. "No. No. I'm begging you. Don't ask this of me."
"I have no one else to ask. Please. Just do this for me."
It was like being trapped in a nightmare. He wasn't even aware, until centuries later, how tightly he was holding her. As if they were bound together, fused in flesh and blood. And, between them, the ponderous weight of the babies. Filling him with fear, longing, with every breath.
The thought of giving them up, giving her up, was impossible.
"Please," she whispered, lips brushing his. "Please promise."
The tears fell wildly then, even as he pressed his face into her hair, her neck, kissing her wherever the salt hadn't touched, wherever the candlight couldn't reach. His answer seemed to come from some secret, savage recess in him, untouched by judgment.
A place that was equal parts love and duty.
"I promise," he sobbed, the words slicing like daggers across her skin. Tearing them both apart. "I promise."
Dull-eyed, Nathan tosses the storybook aside.
Even an idiot can guess how that tale ended. Ultimately, cornered by enemies on a mountain range, the Princess begged the Prince to keep his promise. And he, bound by honor for all his brouhaha to the contrary, was impelled to put word to deed.
She died bleeding in his arms, while he screamed and screamed until the sky tore open, a massive bolt of lightning zigzagging to split the mountain apart.
Killing their enemies in an avalanche, and burying the Prince and Princess forever.
Which, FYI, actually had happened. He could never explain what that was. Karmic benevolence? Freakish weather?
Considering the way his life rolled, maybe both.
But the story concludes that, post-avalanche, the Prince died in the Princess' arms. Of a broken heart, as if Death by Shitload of Rocks wasn't bad enough.
Which is pure nonsense.
Said Prince is very much alive. Said Prince is dwelling in a pricey Manhattan hotel, sitting upside-down on an armchair with his legs dangling over the headrest and his head where a sane person would put their ass.
And said Prince is, from that day to this, still loyal to the memory of his Princess. Still fulfilling her wish.
Watching over her children.
Ironic, how the prophecy came true after all. Saya is unquestionably the Warrior; Diva the Songstress. Both as lovely as their mother, in their own unique ways.
But the prophecy failed to mention that their lives would be as dreadful as their mother's too.
Nathan blames karma. Or irony. Or cosmic stupidity. Or something.
No one knows that, after the avalanche, he dug out his Queen's remains. No one knows that he hid them deep in the mouth of a cave, and visited them every ten years as if making pilgrimages to a sacred tomb. No one knows that, when humans discovered the remains, and they were shipped to Joel Goldschmidt's mansion, he was one step behind them.
Except he couldn't reach the Zoo fast enough. By the time he'd arrived, under the guise of a groundskeeper, he'd learnt, sick to his stomach, that Joel Goldschmidt had dissected his Queen's remains. That he and his assistant had removed the two cocoons from her belly, out of which, appallingly, two babies had hatched.
Enraged as this desecration made him, Nathan couldn't help but rejoice too.
He'd reached the point where he'd begun to think of himself as the only surviving Chiropteran. Feud and battle had taken all his kind, with a ferocity that was epidemical.
But now, knowing that two others shared his lineage—the daughters of his Queen—was enough to give him a new lease on life.
But his heart broke when he saw the injustice in both girls' lives. One was cordoned off like a precious ruby, brought up by a man who, though he loved her, saw her as more a prize than a person. The other was locked, by the same man, in a tower where she received as much love as a rabid dog.
Infuriated by the human's cruelty, Nathan resolved to whisk both Diva and Saya away. Keep them as his own, and explain the truth about their origins. But before the plan was put to action, Saya released Diva from her tower, on Joel's infamous birthday banquet.
The rest is commentary.
Nathan allowed himself to become Diva's 'Chevalier', when it was obvious watching from the sidelines wasn't enough. The spectator would have to play chessmaster, in order to give this tale some semblance of a happy ending. He chose Diva for obvious reasons. More damaged, more abused, more alone. Saya, however difficult her life is, at least has a loyal Chevalier—Haji—to support her.
Diva has nothing.
And Nathan is determined, by any means necessary, to remedy that.
All she wants is a family.
Solomon is too self-centered to see it. James is too blinded by his own fantasies of Diva. Karl is too busy wallowing in angst. And Amshel barely sees Diva as a person.
It's up to me to get the job done.
Too bad Saya's wish isn't as easy to grant. Well, how can it be? She wants to kill her own sister. Which, all right, fine, she has a good reason to want. Joel was her father, the Zoo was her home, Diva wrecked both, blah blah, boo hoo. He gets it.
But the girl could have so much more to live for, if she'd just open her eyes and see. That poor Haji's face practically reads Open 24-7, Use Me, and This End Up, for crying out loud!
Nathan suspects his plans for both girls may not go as expected. Very little in life does. But whatever the result, it's bound to start fireworks. And that's what he's looking forward to most.
After centuries of mind-numbing boredom, a man's got to get his jollies some way, right?
I promise, my Queen, that I will find some way to make your daughters happy. And I promise not to hold myself away from the world in the process.
I remain, even now, eternally yours.
There are some feelings, he knows, that will always transcend love and duty.
Hunger and stupidity are two of them.
No, wait. Hunger can be remedied. Stupid is forever. XP
At the door of my soul she is standing... Taken from the Icelandic tale of Kormac the Skald.
Anyway, hope you guys liked this brief 'experiment' into Nathan's past. Any comments/criticisms? Don't hesitate to share. Feedback is always welcome!