Chapter Seven

"You Sent for Me, Father?"

"You sent for me, Father?" Her voice was like an icy gust of wind: cold and hard as a frozen-over stone wall. However surprised she must have been, considering her environment, she hid it expertly. Her face was completely devoid of emotion: cold and steely: expressionless. It was astonishing just how cruel she could make herself appear when she wanted to, indeed, she looked rather like a very powerful, ravenous business tycoon at just another business meeting, cold, dark, and superiorly accurate, raising her eyebrows as though bored by something that was clearly a waste of her precious time.

This, however, was a lie if anything at all, for inwardly, she was trembling… Her father had almost never called on her before, and her last experience had not been a good one. Invisibly drawing in breath, she felt her heart jump in fright and realization as she felt the memory wash over her, and sweep all through her being, flooding her senses, so that in that instant she relived it all, it became real to her, tangible as the face of the man before her…

It was August 24, 1989, or, as she might have written formally, jeudi le 24 d'aôut, 1989. Evening, the late-winter sun stretched almost endlessly over the blood-red, quickly-darkening sky over the Petranni Manor on Homebush Bay, ushering in the night, foretelling of what was to come…

Nine year old Alina Petranni smoothed the skirt of her dress (a fashionable wizarding dress-robe version of the muggle evening wear) anxiously, and looked up into the mirror of her vanity, wide-eyed with innocence and anticipation. Gently running her hand over the hair one of her personal servants, Branwen, a muggle-born girl, of course, half-Irish, and half Maori (she had been bought in New Zealand) by descent, had spent the last two hours curling especially perfect for the occasion. Unsatisfied, she feared that hair so loose would be seen as disrespectful. Clapping her hands twice, high in the air, in front of her face, and far enough to the left so that the right edge of where her hands would have been, had they made contact with her visage, just barely met to brush the area of the leftmost edge of her left eye. As if she had been summoned by magic, which she had been, seven year old Branwen slipped through the door from the foyer of her mistress' quarters into Alina's dressing room, where her mistress sat, chin high in the air, expression calm and expectant, one that had been observed and practiced so much so that it was flawless. Curtsying, and keeping her head properly lowered, the girl spoke softly, in a submissive voice, thick with an accent that was strange with its mix of Irish, Maori, and New Zealand, "I am at your service, my mistress."

Alina snapped her fingers with the graceful flow of running waters that had taken many years to learn, and the girl jumped to her side almost as though someone invisible had shoved her forward. Curtsying this time so low that she had sunk to the floor, Branwen paused and listened for her cue once more, and, rising, as her mistress gave a small, gentle clap in her lap, she seemed to understand immediately what it was that she was expected to do. Sliding behind Alina, about to lay her hands on the dark russet-glow-red tendrils, she halted in slight horror (as Alina saw in her mirror) as her mistress swept out her left arm and threw out her hand, gesturing her to stop where she was, step forward, and face her. Stumbling slightly, Branwen started forward, so she stood at the pureblood's left side.

As though she refused to speak directly to her favorite "handmaiden" (in the sense of the term of the women attendants, a personal female servant), and look her in the face, she seemed to be talking straight into her mirror, slowly and condescending, as though Branwen were a small, retarded child. "Branwen, have you washed you hands? You know the rules, there will be no laying of touch upon your mistress until your skin has been washed of its natural contaminants." Giving her hand-maiden a small, weak, superior smile, she watched through the mirror as the girl slipped and stumbled apologetically off to the bathroom to "cleanse" her hands in the magical wash, and returned quickly, fingers sparkling, to tassel her mistress' hair. Sweeping up the locks over which she had labored for many hours to curl (a long process that severely tried the patience as Alina's very long, very thick hair fell naturally and stubbornly straight, requiring magical aide to remain in any other form), she drew them into an elegant bun near the crown of the head, one so that the curls spilled somewhat down and over the top to brush the shoulders. Her fingers working expertly, she completed the look to perfection, stood aside, and, when dismissed, gave a weak smile, and did not hurry to leave.

What a sight that must have been, to those of us so unaccustomed to such things, to see such a small, skinny, soft-and-round-faced child of nine, face wide with youthful innocence and wonder, sitting so stiffly and rigidly straight, done up as though to attend a wedding, with no smile upon the face, giving orders as though she were a queen. Rather disgusting I'd imagine, but those are just my thoughts, and I'm just the narrator, what would I know? For on the Petranni manor, which in its property holdings was large enough to constitute a small country, nonetheless all of magical Australia, this was commonplace, everyday life: nothing extraordinary, quite to the contrary, anything else would have been considered taboo.

It had been a particularly dark and cold winter, which was bizarrely unnatural in Australia, and so Alina's naturally tan skin was somewhat paled, and if one gazed upon her countenance from afar, one would note rather strangely, that her complexion seemed a pale white-golden olive, with tan going all around each of the outlines in her face. In the winter, Alina's dark red hair darkened somewhat to a bronzed, coppery auburn, and her yellow-green cat-colored eyes seemed to glow more brightly than ever, exuding an aura that was unearthly. Indeed, on that day, Alina did seem a little extra-terrestrial, a little angelic, a little ghostly… She was dressed in garments that any of us, raised in a setting that, if not middle-class (the self-proclaimed status of our humble narrator,) could not possibly have compared or matched, in the wildest dreams of any muggle human being ever in the history of man, with the sort of wealth the aristocratic class of the old wizarding familes possessed, would equate (purely in view of its everyday wardrobe) with aristocratic, Victorian Britain. Her later-angled face was then more rounded, with her high Slavic cheekbones softer, and seemingly lower and more reminiscent of Northern European phenotypes, lavender crescents sweeping beneath her lower lids, and tracing all along herself was her characteristic, haunted look, which told of one carrying a burden beyond her years. She was wearing a deep, vivid, richly colored, forest green designer (what else?) gown, unusual even for magical Australian wizarding society, but beautiful. The dress was long-sleeved, but off-the-shoulders (falling across one arm, across the chest, and across the other arm), tightly clinging to the waist, and falling, flowing out like the liquid fibers upon which dreams are weaved, from the hips (though, as can be expected Alina had virtually no waist and no hips at such an age) to the toes. The material, somehow magically enhanced, actually had an angelic glow in the aura surrounding it, and sparkled like diamonds. With real gold-spun thread was the dress trimmed, and the material was the same material as the invisibility cloak, and as the pensieve, like sunlight (dyed deep green) made liquid, spun into material attire that only the wealthiest might have ever laid eyes on. The pensieve fabric itself actually had the depth of the iris of the human eye, was further encrusted with crushed pearls, diamonds, and emeralds, and powder of roses and silver. Incidentally, the dress she was wearing that August 24, 1989 was a smaller, identical copy to the one she was wearing this morning. Coincidence? Maybe… But most likely, at least on some level, purely intentional. She draped her cape over her shoulders. It was the same length and color as the dress, but made out of a thick (appropriate as it was winter, and the pensieve-material did not provide much warmth) velvet, and trimmed with a rich brown fur, matching her Cinderella-slipper-shoes and silken green gloves. It gathered at the brooch at her shoulder, which carried the symbol, the crest of her mother's family, the Ambrose clan, which featured a medieval portrayal of a dragon, embossed in pure silver, the one maternal heirloom she carried. Allowing her fingers to run briefly and delicately (as though it might shatter at her touch) over the brooch, she felt a tear run down her cheek, because, most probably, the sensation of the silver against her flesh, the silver that had been embraced so many times by the mother she never knew (whose death had left her at the mercy of a detached, emotionless father) and all those who came before her, had triggered the release of the pure, raw emotion that had been building up inside of her ever since she had received the call. The brooch itself was sacred to her, and if she had been an idolator, it would have been her god: it was the one tangible object in her world that was as out of place in that house as she, and because it had been her mother's, who, to her, was as mysterious as moonlight. It offered to her an escape, a dream.

Letting the teardrop run all the way down her visage until, rolling off her chin and lingering only for a moment, it fell with a rather unremarkable splash to the marble floor, she hurried quietly away. Stepping out of the dressing room into the transport hall of her quarters, she clapped her hands four times, and her sixteen handmaidens appeared to accompany her. For Alina, in her mansion, the size and grandeur of which transcends both the words and imaginations of muggles and ordinary wizards, had her own personal living quarters complete with bed chamber, bath, dressing room, dinning room, library, office, parlor, foyer, transport hall, and servants' (handmaidens') quarters, which was convenient for a family that was family in name and title only. Her living quarters consisting of a size of over a quarter mile in both length and width (NOT collectively - which makes me, thinking it incredibly ridiculous, as more a statement of wealth, power, and prestige, and an excuse to isolate oneself from one's family, than anything else, wonder what anyone could possibly do with such space), did not even constitute one eighth of a wing (or one-one-thousandth of the entire property for that matter) in the Petranni mansion, but such is made a possibility when one has all the magical aids to transportation, and when one has a good sense of direction, so as not to lose one's way. Indeed, getting lost in the manor was a very real problem for the rich and famous of magical Australia, it was not uncommon for a guest to come to stay, lose his way, and not be found for many years hence. However, this had never occurred on the Petranni manor, and not just because although it was the largest and grandest of manors perhaps in the wizarding world, it had all the technological magical installments of the day and enough servants to patrol every inch of it, but because the Petranni family, although the most wealthy and powerful of all Australian wizarding society, were very unpopular, and rarely received any guests at all.

Accompanying their mistress to the transport hall, which brought them, on Alina's vocal command, instantly to the grand staircase before the grand parlor, near, of course, the grand entrance way to the Petranni mansion, her sixteen hand-maidens formed a protective envelope around her sides and a train behind her, Branwen at her right hand, and descended to the main floor. There, amidst the breathtaking beauty of the scene of sunset to which the grand parlor walls were set, they were met by a page, fifty-two year old Myrddin (pronounced "Murr-thin") who was bedecked in the finest satins that money could appropriately buy for a muggle born. His graying black hair, slightly crinkled olive skin, desolate honey colored eyes, and injured leg (which had been wounded in an anti-muggle-born raid thirty years earlier) spoke of a shattered soul and a spirit that had been crushed long before it was even brought into the world of living men. He limped ahead of them to announce the arrival of Mistress Alina to receive her father's call, and the irony of a limping page did not strike the young girl at all. If there was one thing she knew about her father, it was that he was very fond of his servants, 'more so fond of his muggle-borns than he is of his own daughter' she lamented inwardly, and he would never be so cruel as to sell one so physically useless as Myrddin. He was keeping the old, injured, sickly man as a pity-favor, and besides, the person who was most often come to receive a call, or to make one, was she, and why should Demetrius Petranni strive to do anything but hinder the little girl he hated?

When she finally met with her father, doing as he ordered, she dismissed her handmaidens to go about their daily duties in her quarters, and leave the masters of the house be. When the final sashaying skirt was at last out of earshot, words ricocheted their way out into the open, wary of hunters as deer come to graze in a clearing, "Bonsoir mon père, puis je vous aider?"(Good evening Father, how may I help you?") Alina spoke in French not because it was her native language, but because, much like it had been in the muggle world centuries earlier, it was the language of polite, reformed, aristocratic wizarding society.

Of course, 'twas perfectly acceptable for her father to speak to her in English, as he was, being her elder and her father, considered her superior, but it was a mark of his treatment of his daughter that he spoke to her as such. The native language was only spoken either between two intimate equals (such as family or lovers), or from superior to inferior (as from master to servant), it was a sign of his superiority over her that he could respectably speak to her in such a way, but it was also an insult to her intelligence, for it was assumed that if you speak in a non-intimate manner with someone in their native language, that the language of reformed society is not only too good for them to speak and hear, but beyond their intelligence, beyond their powers of mind and comprehension to grasp. You can be certain that Demetrius Petranni did not speak to his daughter in a warm or intimate manner… ever. "You have the speech of a servant," he sneered at her, raining down his disgust in his eyes, hatred thick in his sophisticated voice, so much so that it seemed to ooze out of his mouth.with the slither of a snake. "No doubt you possess the intelligence, the capability of such a level of existence, in fact I doubt you fully grasp what it is I am saying to you at this very moment."

Her countenance remained stiff in its expression, it had not changed, although her eyes called her bluff, she was not indifferent to this, for out of the window to her soul poured the look of one who had just been crushed, who had received a knife in the heart from someone from whom they longed to receive a loving embrace. "Je suis désolée mon père, j'essaye avec tous que j'ai, tout du temps, de vous plaire, mais je néglige d'accomplire cette tâche simple, parce que je suis indigne. Vous êtes miséricordieux immesurablement, et je suis reconnaissant immesurablement pour votre bienveillance." ("I am sorry Father, I try with all that I have, all the time, to please you, but I fail to accomplish this simple task, because I am unworthy. You are immeasurably merciful, and I am immeasurably grateful for your kindness.") Her voice trembled a bit in her apology, something that, combined with the hurt in her eyes, spoke volumes about how she truly felt. A little hurt. A little shocked. A little disappointed. And with every moment she was growing more cynical, with every moment she began to belittle herself, as though she were worth nothing, and with every moment she concluded more strongly… What more could she expect?

"Yes, but 'all that you have' is not satisfactory, and you display your condition of simplicity and inadequacy in every thing you do, in every gesture, in every move you make, in every word that slips from between your lips… You even have the appearance of a simple muggle-born. It surprises me immeasurably that you could be of my blood, of your mother's, that you could be of such pure and high lineage, and it eludes me as to how such a beast could be any daughter of mine. Why, had I not known that your mother was a faithful and respectable woman, true to her blood, her class, and her family, I'd have thought that you were the child of the lowest of all muggle-born vermin. You are my greatest shame, Alina, and I'd be a better, happier man if you had never been born." He spoke in such a calm, yet all the while menacing, voice that it was unnerving, and yet such a calm and even tone, however laced with venom that it was, made his commentary all the more damaging.

She struggled now. She fought with all she had… and she lost. A tear rolled down her cheek. It was a tear of sorrow, of betrayal, of depression, of rage, of rebellion, of anguish, of resentment, of bitterness; but most of all, of the deepest hurt imaginable in this world.

Demetrius had seen her tear, and with his lips he formed a twisted, maniacal smile, it was a condemnation, an omen of doom, and the ravenously evil aura exuded by his very eyes sealed it with the kiss of death. "Is that a tear I see? Oh yes, you're crying, how very sad indeed," he mocked. At this, Alina grew desperate, she struggled as does a dying soldier on the enemy battlefield to cling to life, just to hold herself back, to keep more tears from coming, and for all the strength that she put into this effort, she failed with as great strength as she had used to succeed, and the tears came pouring out ever that much stronger. She felt her control slipping slowly away, ever just an inch and a half out of her grasp, and the further she reached to recapture it, the faster and further away it slipped from her hand. Her father laughed mirthlessly, his deep reptilian sound filled with malice. "And yet again you have failed. My, I am so surprised… Why were you? What was it that you expected? Did you expect a loving embrace? Did you expect me to behave like a common muggle father? Had you expected me to hold you and hug you and kiss you and tell you that it would be alright, that I'd make everything better, that I'd protect you, that I'd 'always be there for you?' That I love you?" He sneered triumphantly, and anyone with an intelligence quotient above two would be able to see with a simple glance at Alina that Demetrius had "hit a nerve" as they say, that he had struck emotional gold, that in those final four words he had crippled her.

She appeared as though she might fall, and never get up again. She appeared as though someone had just stolen the legs right out from under her, as though everything she had had been cut away from her with a knife: severed, and with that same knife had her heart been cut out and been gored to a final, bloody death. She had lost control completely by this time, and as she wept violently, would she not have been so broken she would have been amazed at the savage, animalistic sounds escaping her vocal cords. Like a wounded bear she screamed in anguish, and a whimper escaped her mouth. Her breathing ragged and her voice strained, she stuttered on seemingly syllables, completely unaware of what it was she was saying. Shattered, she stumbled backwards, lost her balance, and fell crashing down in a very ungraceful manner to the hard, cold stone floor. The violence of the force alone allowed bruises to blossom like small flowers across her arms, legs, and back, and ripe red blood to flow from a gashing cut on her left cheek. Her vision blurred with a perpetual river of tears, she looked up helplessly to see her father rise from his seating place, and advance dangerously towards her.

"I can see that must be it," he said in a quiet, dangerous, slithering voice, laughing maliciously once more, "and I am so very sorry to disappoint you Alina, you simple, simple girl… I do not love you. I have never loved you. I never will love you. Why? Because you are vermin, the very pain of my existence… You are corroded, you are stupid, you are foolish, you are ugly, you are savage, you are my own worst nightmare… You haunt me, you worthless girl! You are a beast. You make my days miserable, my nights sleepless with disgust, my life unlivable. I am ashamed to call you my own! I pray each night to the almighty God that he will remove you from this plane of existence because every day you live does further the knife in me! I wish with all my heart that you had never been born, and if your mother was with us, so would she." Alina's face crumpled in a way that Demetrius Petranni would probably never again witness in his entire life, and he raised his left arm as a black-orange aura enveloped it, and a visible surge of power flared upward from the upturned palm of his hand as his clenched fingers extended fully. Alarmed for her safety and knowing by the pain in her leg that she would not be able to escape in time, she collapsed fully on the floor, raising her arms to shield her face from the products of her father's wrath. She had seen him summon power through his dominant hand (his left) and use it without a wand just as powerfully as though he had had one, and she had noticed how he would never use this ability in the presence of a guest, but she had never known that it was considered as one of the most deeply potent, dangerous, and illegal forms of the dark arts. Her small collapsed body forming a rigid cage around her face, a shield, she prepared herself for pain. Demetrius lowered his empowered arm before raising it again, and he exercised this power. The glass chandelier was brought down by the force which he commanded through his left hand, shattering on top of his child, and with this power allowed the glass to rise, skate across the stone, and make a few deep cuts through Alina's flesh. With every further sentence he spoke, another object came pelting at her, crashing nearby from all the way across the room. "What? You thought your mother loved you? You thought that if she'd lived she'd be showering you with affection, making your life better every day? That she would have loved you? Did you think she was watching, guiding, and protecting you from up in heaven?" Crying out with wild abandon, screaming and moaning and whimpering as though her very life depended on it, her pain was tangible, it was audible, it was visible, so intensely did it attack the senses that one could taste it, that with the inhalation of breath, the bitterness of it would infiltrate the entire blood stream, would sink into the pit of one's heart and never quite leave, scarring forever the organ in which it resided.

"Your mother never loved you. No one will ever love you."

With exhausting force he motioned his arm as though he'd punched her, however far away she was, and with that her body rose and started to float in his direction, it gathered speed, he allowed it to pass him by just a little bit, and with painful force did it slam into the wall just behind him. Her head snapping and following suit, the sickening whiplash motion of the neck drove the head to hit the wall with excruciating force. Pinned against the wall by a magical force, Alina looked into the face of her father, a demonic, inhuman glare pushing out of his eyes with such force that it alone could have held her there. The evil in his eyes subsided a bit, and for the first time emotion rose in his voice. "Have you ever wondered why your mother isn't here after all?… It's because of you. IT'S YOUR FAULT!!! YOU KILLED HER!!! YOU ARE THE REASON SHE IS DEAD AND NEVER COMING BACK!!! IT'S YOUR FAULT! It's your fault. You killed your own mother. If it weren't for you, she'd still be alive. It's your fault."

His eyes shining, humanity returning to them, he released his power, and so released his hold on her. She fell softly to the floor, and he swept out of the room, staggering and fighting to maintain the energy to simply walk, in an exhausted voice, he commanded a nameless servant to clean up the mess. After all, we wouldn't want Mistress Alina to hurt herself, would we? Gasping for breath and with rivers flowing from her eyes and nose, the bedraggled and beaten Mistress Alina crawled into the transport hall, somehow managing to remain silent. Brought to her quarters by the magical mechanism, she got up and, despite the shattering pain, ran raggedly to her bedchamber. Never before had she felt pain so acute. Never before had she known the world could be so cruel. It was as though she had made the final descent into hell. What had she done to deserve this? Why? For the first time in her very young life, an unlikely thought for a nine-year-old crept into her head… The thought of just how liberating would be the cut of a knife across her throat. The blood spilling out. The catharsis of pain. And finally…. An end to it all… A freedom, a place where nothing would hold her, a place to rest. World-weary and with a greater capacity to fee a pain beyond her years, the most depressing rage of pain yet in her young life, she collapsed on her four poster bed… And wept passionately, fiercely, violently: truly, madly, deeply.

Her eyes shining, gleaming with emotion, she was jerked violently and painfully from her reverie by the returned gaze of the man before her.

"Follow me," the words slipped softly out of his mouth, almost as though they were floating on a breeze. Pausing only for a moment as they held one another's gaze, both nervous, both sorrowful, both strong, he turned, and they set off deeper into the cave. Deep in the heart of the darkness, the light of the world was theirs.