Chapter summary: I swear to God, the next fairy tale Rosalie tells me ...
"Rosalie ..." I said after a while.
"Shhhhh. Sh-sh-sh. Sleep now. Sleep." Rosalie crooned.
"I can't," I whined.
Rosalie sighed. "Once upon a time ..." she began.
"Rosalie!" I whispered fiercely, "this had better not be a story like last night's!"
"No," Rosalie answered, "this is a history."
"Well, okay," I acquiesced grudgingly.
I could see her talking about God's Name again putting me right to sleep. No harm in that, I guess.
"Once upon a time, there lived a noble woman in a far-away castle in the Little Carpathians with pure, snow white skin ..." Her voice took on the story-teller's lilt.
Oh, it was Snow White! The girl in the story was rescued by the handsome prince and the end, right? So I guess the story was okay, since it had a happy ending.
Wait a minute, was this our story? Did she see herself as the evil queen and me as the girl rescued by the prince? Who was the prince? Edward? Did she think Edward would find me and rescue me? Why?
And didn't she just say that the handsome prince sweeping you away was fiction, and she said it so angrily, as if she thought the whole idea was bad? Why would she be telling a story with the happily-ever-after ending if she hated it so much?
My thoughts were in turmoil, as I tried to concentrate on the relaxing and hypnotic sounds of her words telling the story instead of the conflict I felt in her telling it.
"... and every day ..." Rosalie continued "... she would look into her mirror, gazing at her perfection, and would ask herself: 'Who is the fairest in the land?' And she seemed to be regally pleased at the answer she received from her own reflexion. And she would hold court and listen, bored, to her peasants' requests, occasionally showing interest, not in their requests, but in something about them. This went on, day after day. Each morning she would gaze contentedly at herself, and each afternoon she would hold court. The peasants all feared her and told stories to scare each other, but they were a superstitious lot, so what could they know? Besides, the rule of the land was that each family would present themselves to her, Countess Báthory, and that she would give them an audience, so there was no avoiding her, despite their superstitious fears."
I could hear the contempt in Rosalie's voice for the stupid peasants. I wondered if they believed in the Doppelgänger like stupid me.
"Then one afternoon, one of her towns' mayors presented his family to her to pay their respects. The countess looked down at the family and something caught her eye. She dismissed them quickly, looking very displeased."
"The next morning she stood in front of her mirror and demanded: 'Who is the most beautiful in all the land?' She looked into her reflexion, but then stalked away and demanded her coach be prepared. Off she rode in her glass coach, and her guards on horseback were hard-pressed to keep up with her. Then after a unrelenting ride, she had her coach stopped in a field outside one of her towns, the town of Trenčín, the town, in fact, from which the mayor had visited just yesterday. There was a young maiden with long brown hair flowing around her heart-shaped face and beautiful, open, innocent brown eyes that stood in contrast to her creamy-white skin. She was gathering fruit from the apple orchard, and the countess summoned her."
"'Yes, your Grace?' the young girl asked, confused at seeing the Countess, beautiful and courtly beyond compare, or so the girl thought, come into her humble town after seeing the noble woman just yesterday."
"'You will come with me!' the Countess commanded, and there was no gainsaying her imperial decree. The girl couldn't even take the time to say goodbye to her father as the countess swept her away in her coach."
"Rosalie ..." I whispered.
Rosalie continued on, darkly and dispassionately, ignoring my pleading tone.
"The Countess would not see anybody that day as she had the girl in her private chambers. That night the guards came and collected a large sack that weighed nothing at all, as was the monthly custom. As they did so, their Countess hummed happily in her hot bath whose water no one was allowed to drain except the Countess herself. The guards threw the sack in the furnace, and the next day the ash was made into soap for the Countess' use. This soap, however, smelt like no other: it had a subtle lavender and freesia scent that made one dream of heaven and think of eternal bliss."
"Rosalie," I begged, whispering, "stop!"
"The next morning," Rosalie didn't stop, but continued relentlessly, "the Countess marched right up to her mirror, and exclaimed, 'Now I am the most beautiful in the land!' But then her look went from triumphant to sullen to spiteful to furious. She turned to her retainers and demanded, 'Am I not beautiful?' she screamed to them."
Just like Rosalie had screamed at me in the forest.
"Her grand vizier minced forward, bowing low, 'Your Grace,' he said obsequiously, 'you are the most beautiful of all the ...' He didn't get to finish his platitude, however, for the Countess grabbed a cudgel from one of her guards, and bashed that old man's head in with one blow, and then continued to rain blows on that now deformed body."
"'And that,' the Countess screamed, 'is the reward for lying to me!' But then her mind snapped, and her guards had to restrain her from doing herself and others harm, and she was carried, kicking and screaming, back to her private chambers, where they could hear the wails of a banshee haunted by madness issuing forth from the bed to which she was tied."
"The screaming didn't last long, for those superstitious peasants and those good townsfolk from Trenčín and Čachtice and other surrounding towns had formed an angry mob and stormed the castle, catching the guards unawares. The town mayor cried out for his daughter, calling 'la mia bella figlia!' or 'my beautiful daughter!' over and over again, and his cries turned to anguish when he was shown where she was ... that is, where the ashes of what was left of her was. He held those ashes, and he held that soap to his face, his tears mixing with the ash as the mob dragged the Countess from her chambers and burned her at the stake for the witch that she was."
"And that is how the girl got her name: Cinderella. And Countess Báthory? She is also known as the 'Blood Countess,' but she has another name for her inhumanly pale white skin: the 'Ice Queen.'"
Rosalie was quiet as my tears slid down my face.
"Oh," she said after a moment, "you wanted a different story than yesterday, yes? I suppose that means a happy ending. Well, then, here it is: the castle was soon abandoned and became a ruin, but in what is left of the quadrangle where the countess was burned, there now grows a plethora of honeysuckle and a single rose bush, and, strangely, the scent of lavender can be detected by some brave enough to risk a visit to the cursed ruin of that Ice Queen, the Blood Countess, but others say it's freesia. So hard to tell the subtle difference for humans and their weak senses. Well, there it is: your happy ending; flowers growing from the ash in the ruin. The end."
It wasn't Snow White; it wasn't Cinderella. It was another one of Rosalie's pointlessly heart-breaking stories. My tears made the pillow wet again.
"Was Countess Bathoby a vampire?" I whispered despondently.
"It was Countess Báthory," Rosalie corrected, "and, no, she wasn't a vampire; she couldn't have been. The Volturi would have gotten to her for being so brazen about things."
"Why, Rosalie? Why?" I asked.
"Because that's what they do, and they are very good and very quick about ..."
"No, Rosalie, I'm not asking that." I corrected her. "I'm asking why do you do this to yourself? Why do you keep telling these stories that only hurt you?"
"My dear, sweet child," she said in a compassionate tone, even though she was only one year older than me, "I am a vampire in Eternity. Nothing more can be done to me ... nothing more than what has already been done."
"Then why ... ?" I asked.
"I am doing this for you ..." she began.
"Don't!" I pleaded.
"I am doing this for you," she continued, softly, comfortingly, unabated, "so that you can see me as I am."
"I do! and it's not that, Rosalie, it's not!" I exclaimed. I felt her purring; but it was now working because I was tired from the lateness of the night and the hard thinking I did during the questions and answers from before. And from the emotional angst of the terrible 'happy ending' story Rosalie told. I felt myself slipping away, but I had to tell her this. I had to break through this 'Oh, I'm bad!' barrier she erected, even against herself.
"You do not," she purred. "You are caught in this whirlwind of events and circumstances, completely at the mercy of monsters your are powerless to fight, and you have the chance to make the right choices, but only if you see things clearly."
"I do, Rosalie, I do!" I fought back against my drooping eyelids. "It's you who ..."
"Just like the situation I was placed in." Rosalie's soft whisper was a sung lullaby. "I too felt rejected by my mother. I too was caught in events that I couldn't fight. I too was completely at the mercy of terrible, terrible monsters. Redeem yourself, as I cannot. Do not make my mistakes, for in this situation, you are me."
I gasped.
She rested a cold, smooth, calming hand on my head. "Now, sleep," she commanded.
As sleep overtook me, I now realized what "Li-..."-something stood for. For I realized what Rosalie was trying to be: she wasn't trying to be a mother to me, she wasn't trying to be a father to me. She wanted to be me. She wanted to be me, and she wanted me to be her. She didn't want me to be her daughter, as much as she wanted that. She wanted me to be her, so by saving myself I could save her from what she is now.
"Li-..."-something stood for Rosalie's name.
It stood for 'Lillian.'
She wanted me to be her, but only better. And how could I do that if I couldn't even be half, no, not even a millionth, of what she is?
I feared sleep as I fell into it helplessly. Being her, ... but better? I just knew I would hate my dreams tonight.
Chapter end notes:
Countess Báthory Erzsébet, August 7, 1560 – August 21, 1614, reigned in Transylvania. She has a rather ... interesting ... history.
