She'd been born only 19 years ago in the large bedroom of the house where she'd lived her entire life. Always an only child, her parents had lavished all their attention on her and she'd had a childhood full of gifts and affection. She in turn adored her parents and although she'd been slightly spoiled and wilful, she was by no means obnoxious. Loneliness was the only blight on it; she'd been isolated by the remoteness of her mother's palatial house in the mountains and had never attended school. Her father taught her initially, he read to her from the great dusty books that crowded the shelves of the vast library.
The library was very old, like the rest of the house. She'd never known how old. Her mother told her that there had been a house there for many centuries longer than there had been houses in this country but Mary didn't believe her. Her mother's family was ancient as well, it came with the house. Her mother was the last in the family and as such had inherited the house and a small fortune. Her father was a mystery, he never spoke of his past but he had such a vast amount of learning that Mary was certain he'd been a scholar. He was considerably older than his pretty wife and although he never once mistreated her, it was clear he didn't really love her. He loved her library and was very fond of her the same way one can be fond of a particularly devoted pet. He certainly loved Mary and read to her nightly until she was able to read for herself.
For her entire childhood, her mornings were commonly spent with her father in the librarycomfortably surrounded bythe ancient dusty smell of books she came to associate exclusively with him and climbing up on the tall wooden ladders to read the spines of the oldest books on the top shelves. She learned a little of Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Egyptian picture writing and Chinese letters as well as some small part of the extinct dark language of the other world which her father seemed particularly fascinated with. He marvelled aloud at some of the texts in this vast collection and there were many he forbid her ever to read. Incredible stories about the demons and beasts who had allegedly ruled Earth before humans had control. She managed to read at least eight of them before he caught her and locked them back up in his room. She'd sulked then and refused to speak to him so to apologise, he'd lit candles on the roof that night and sat with her reading aloud from Faust. She'd never in her life forget the fitful flicker of the candles in the cool night time breeze, hugging her knees in the semi-dark listening in thrall to her father's powerful voice chanting the lines like an actor.
"Unlock'd the spirit-world doth lie,
Thy sense is shut, thy heart is dead!
Up scholar, lave, with courage high,
Thine earthly breast in the morning-red!"
He laid his hand on her shoulder and looked down at her with eyes as strange, bicoloured and oddly luminescent, as her own and said with sudden seriousness,
"Mary, my sweet child, you have nothing to fear in the world. Trust me and obey me, Mary, and I will make us happy and great."
She thought little of it at the time; her father often said strange things. He repeated the admonition "trust and obey" often though and Mary took it for granted that he was right in all things.
Her afternoons were her own and she spent them outside, walking in the old woods around her home, sometimes walking as far as the deep mountain lake and swimming a little. She never saw a single soul in those woods or by that lake. It was her own personal Eden. Before it got dark, she would come home and listen to her mother playing the grand piano in the parlour until dinner. She marvelled at her mother's skilled fingers flying across the keys, coaxing the music from them like magic. She said at the start of each piece simply what it was and who composed it so Mary came to know Mozart, Bach, Brahms and Beethoven as well as her mother's own compositions which were always lovely, often sad and never louder than she could avoid. She knew how her husband disliked her playing, he hated music and called it a waste of time and had never, since their wedding, danced with her although she loved it. She danced alone sometimes with Mary hiding watched her, twirling and gesturing to the air, vital and beaming in the easy grace of her movement.
Evenings were always the same, dinner together as a family followed by listening to her father read by the fire or playing chess with him, he instructed her at first then watched as she improved and improved, able to beat him by the age of eleven. They all sat around the fire, sometimes her mother would just talk for the sake of talking, other times there would be comfortable silence.
Night was the perfect time for Mary to sit in her very own tower at the East corner of the house and look out over the dark woods, perhaps watching the rain and listening to vinyl records of old rock bands. She would lie on her back staring out at the night and imagine exploring the places her father told her of. She imagined meeting King Arthur and his knights, sailing with Ishmael, prowling London with Dracula. She imagined slaying demons. It was her favourite fantasy; she saw the dreadful creatures in their armour and mail with immense swords or cruel spears crawling out of the shadows of her tower room. She saw the ancient evils that haunted the dark places of the world and, sword in hand, she slew them all. She laughed and tossed her head as her blade rent demon flesh and she gloried in their screams.
Then her father would tuck her into bed, her mother kiss her softly on the forehead and she would be left alone with just a couple of candles and her LP player in the velvet-draped cavern of her room and she would whisper to the ghosts of the house.
She was fearless then, what was there to fear? She talked to appease the ghosts, demons were all dead and gone and the big bad real world was miles and miles away from hers through forest and mountains.
Then one day when she was thirteen, the real world came to her. Her mother realised as Mary entered her teens that she would need a life of her own one day. School was unthinkable; Mary simply didn't possess the learning. So to prepare her for college one day, her mother begged her husband to send for a tutor. He was scornful at first, he considered his daughter highly intelligent with the greatest education a child could possess but when his wife reminded him of his ownformal education and all it had taught him, not just what he'd learned from books, he reluctantly began to be convinced. A tutor was sent for. Her mother knew 'just the man.' An old friend from where she didn't say named Gabriel Loggia.
He arrived within two weeks of their request and brought with him a great deal of books, scientific equipment and, to her father's surprise and alarm, firearms. He was a striking man, taller than average and powerful of build all in black with short black curling hair streaked with grey. His eyes were large and dark and his accent was thick with Italian. He was Mary's first real contact with a man other than her father and she was taken at once. She listened eagerly to him telling her all that he was going to teach her and show her. She didn't notice her father's eyes narrowing or her mother's dreamy smile.
Gabriel offered Mary his arm with a secret smile to her mother and led her into the parlour where he commenced telling her about her education then asked her many questions about herself and what she knew which she was delighted to answer showing off the full extent of her vocabulary and crediting her father with every piece of information she had. He taught her everything, she confessed. Except the music and composers, her mother played them to her. She played piano. Gabriellaughed and said he knew with another smile to her mother. Her father had glowered and stood directly behind Mary and demanded of Gabriel exactly what it was he did.
Gabriel had confessed that he had not always been a tutor, his original profession had been priest, and he showed them his old rosary. He'd experienced a rather unusual attack after that and had gone on to being a "paranormal mercenary" as he put it. At that stage in his life, he'd met Mary's mother at Cambridge University where she was studying the History of Old World Music and he'd been body-guarding the Curator of Artefacts at the University museum. Shortly afterwards, he'd been forced to go underground and continue his work there for several years due to "complications with national law enforcement." Mary was rapturous. She hung on his every word and her father grew increasingly more bitter. When Gabriel had finished describing his life, Mary's father asked to speak with her mother alone and she was left with Gabriel who smiled kindly at her and began to show her how to weave a band of threads that was ten times stronger than the threads themselves. Useful for all kinds of things, he'd said.
Her mother and father were a long time talking and, although she never once heard a raised voice, she knew they were fighting. She never particularly minded when they fought, it was part of life, and her father was simply right because she had never known him to be wrong. When they came back half an hour later, though, it was her mother who was triumphant and Gabriel was to stay. While Mary was confused and conflicted that her mother had won a fight against her father, she was glad Gabriel was to teach her.
Her education commenced the very next day, for the very first time in her life, she put some thought into what she should wear eventually settling for a white blouse and emerald knee-length skirt with dark green shoes and her long dark hair in a braid with green ribbon. Satisfied that she looked studious enough, she went down to meet Gabriel in the large study set aside exclusively for his lessons. The table was covered in neat heaps of books depending on subject and there was a red leather-bound blank book for each stack. On a rack against the wall were rows and rows of guns of all shapes and sizes along with boxes of clips, bullets and shells. Her attention was immediately drawn there then to Gabriel who stood by the window talking to her mother. They spoke in hushed voices and laughed softly and it made Mary's temper flare. She opened the door harder than was necessary and walked smartly to her desk where she sat down and whipped out a pen. She glared up at the pair of them, anger flashing in her odd eyes.
"I'm ready to begin now." she said imperiously.
Her mother smiled and kissed the top of her head on the way out which made Mary want to punch her. Gabriel walked easily over to the chair beside hers. Her anger drained away as he handed her the first of the red blank books and began his first lesson on Arithmetic. She sampled all the subjects he was to teach her in that morning and when they broke for lunch he told her off-hand that she should change into something more practical for the afternoon because she would have her first lesson in what he called "marksmanship." Which basically meant gun fighting. She was thrilled beyond words and bolted her lunch before racing upstairs to change barely even throwing a greeting to her father as she dashed past him. He scowled deeper and gripped the cover of the book he carried.
She met with Gabriel on a make-shift firing range on their main back lawn. He set up targets and began his first lesson, how to load a gun. Given the variety of guns he possessed this took all afternoon but he insisted she learn it properly. By the time it was approaching dinner time, she was almost bursting with impatience to fire one and just before they packed in for the evening, he grinning allowed her to take one shot at a target. Taking her arms, he lowered them to the correct height, showed her how to align her vision with the sight of the gun and explained to her to breathe slowly, fire each shot like it's your only one and aim always for the very heart of the target. She squeezed the trigger and let the bullet fly with a crack that was, to her inexperienced ears, like thunder. Smoke curled around the barrel of the little revolver and she exhaled deeply. She knew she'd found her passion in life and it felt great. She held the heavy gun flat in both hands and looked at it in awe like it was entirely new to her. Traced her fingers along its barrel, the handle, the little hammer and the still warm tip. She breathed deeply again and looked at last up at the target. The shot had hit a little left of the perfect centre...of the target to the right of the one she'd been aiming for. She bit back a sob but Gabriel laughing kindly gave her a sublime smile.
"Don't worry, piccolo donna," he'd said, "Everyone misses the first couple of times, even Billy the Kidd. You mustn't give up little cowgirl."
She laughed a little and smiled. He took the gun gently from her and began to remove the remaining bullets gesturing towards the house as he did so.
"Best go inside, chica; they've been calling us for almost five minutes."
Over dinner Mary couldn't stop talking about the lessons. She wasn't normally very talkative but this evening she found it hard to shut herself up. As usual, she and her father headed to sit by the fire after dinner but her mother declined and headed through to her piano room to practise. Gabriel also left. Once they were alone, Mary's father sat opposite her with the chessboard untouched between them and looked at her severely.
"Now Mary, my dear girl, you've grown up so much over the years and I am eternally proud of how mature and intelligent you are. However, you still have much to learn. And not just about Science or Arithmetic or whatever it is we are paying that...man to teach you. Mary, you must know about people. Your mother and her old college friends are fairly typical people. They go about their lives, they think, they feel, they do more or less what they like. You and I are of a different set, Mary. We are special, set apart from them, we are powerful. We have the knowledge and the natural ability to be truly great. People like your mother and Gabriel must never get in the way of what we are here to do."
Mary had been puzzled but never sceptical. She trusted her father's word.
"What are we here to do, father?" she asked quietly and respectfully. He smiled and reached out a hand to begin the game of chess.
"Trust me Mary. Trust me and obey me and you will find out."
They played several games of chess, most of which Mary won, and discussed all she'd learned that day, her father reacting with scorn and contempt to the teachings of Gabriel. They laughed quietly together at sly, unfair things, mocking his accent, his thick dark hair, his large eyes. Just before Mary went up to bed, her father took her by the arm and leaning in close, he said;
"Gabriel Loggia is a liar, Mary. Believe him about factual matters like Biology and Literature but don't listen to his opinions and don't ever trust him."
Mary nodded, kissed her father's cheek and went up to bed confused and unhappy. It was a comfort to her to think about that first shot fired from the little pistol and, listening over and over again to Happiness is a Warm Gun on her LP player in the dark, she fell asleep.
Authors notes at the end of a chapter? Never tried them before cos they're mostly ignored either to go on to the next chapter if the story is good or to high-tail it if the story really bites. I own no-one in this story (except Gabriel Loggia and I don't want him, any takers?) The quote midway through is from Faust by Goethe which is an excellent play I would recommend to anyone. That's all from me except to say, as always, reviews are greatly appreciated. Bye, Skaye.