Chapter 17
Fairyland
I can feel Jasper's magic starting to work on me, starting to pierce through the cloud of misery that has enveloped me since leaving Gregorio in Paris. Alice is kneeling on the floor in front of us.
"You and Gregorio are going to be together again," she says soothingly.
I lift my dull eyes to her and ask hopefully, "Do you see that?"
Her eyes fall to the floor. "No," she admits. "But that's only because so many things are undecided. I can't see exactly where or when you'll be together, but I just know that you will be."
I nod dejectedly and press my face into Jasper. Alice looks worriedly at him and squeezes his hand.
After about another hour, I am officially sick of myself. I sit up, push away from Jasper, and make an announcement. "Okay, I am through being pathetic. Thanks Jasp, or Jazz, or whatever it is they're calling you these days. Somebody tell me what's new around here in the land of mist and freakiness," I say.
I look around the room and for the first time notice that Esme and Rosalie are with us. They both look fairly distressed when they return my gaze. I must be an extremely sorry sight if those two are feeling bad for me. I soon find out that I'm not the one they're concerned about at all.
"I don't think our news is going to cheer you up," Alice tells me morosely. "At least I hope it doesn't," she adds in a warning tone.
I sit up straighter. "Alice, what is it?"
She starts to answer, but her face crumples. She clamps her hand over her mouth and quickly turns away.
I look anxiously at Jasper, who tells me in a low monotone, "It's Bella. She's slipping rapidly into the newborn phase. It started when you all met in Alaska. Something in her snapped, and I wasn't able to moderate the ravenous bloodlust that consumed her. She became crazed, nearly uncontrollable. It's just like you said – the phase hit her late for some reason."
Alice has turned around and is able to speak now. "It's like she needed to be able to take care of the baby when she first became a vampire, so she was fine. But the more independent Renesmee gets, the more Bella slips away - as if nature gave her the stability she needed when she needed it, but now it's time to pay up."
"The baby!" I gasp. It has human blood coursing through it. Even for me, the thought of a mother devouring her own child is too chilling to imagine.
"The baby's fine," Rosalie answers. "She's upstairs sleeping now. Bella is herself enough to know not to harm her, but we could see the physical pain it caused to be near her. And it didn't seem right to make Renesmee watch her mother go through it. This whole thing is upsetting enough for us adults. I'm watching over the baby until Bella's better."
"So, how bad is she?" I ask.
Jasper answers. "When it first started, it took Emmett, Rosalie and I to pin her down and even with all three of us, we eventually started losing ground. Edward got here just in time. With him around, she's more manageable; he's the only one she'll halfway listen to."
"Poor Edward," Esme laments from across the room.
"Yeah," Alice says. "He's not doing so great himself. He's totally beating himself up over this. Not just because he's the one who brought her into this whole life, but also because it started when he was gone. He thinks if he hadn't left, this wouldn't have happened."
"Foolishness," Jasper practically spits. "Nothing could've stopped this from happening. None of us have that kind of self control. I kept telling them. But they didn't listen. Thought she had some kind of special gift and that they could just skip under a rainbow into fairyland. Everyone acted like I was just paranoid, but it turns out that they were just naïve."
"You don't have to be so angry about it," Alice chides him. "We're all in this together, right?"
"Right," he huffs and then falls gloweringly silent.
"Anyhow," Alice says, "Edward's with her round the clock and the rest of us take shifts with him. Emmett and Carlisle are with them now. We're very careful where she hunts, and she's eating about four times as much as the rest of us. She's usually fairly stable right after feeding, so that's when we let her see Renesmee for a little while. But when we see the red start to burn in her eyes, we know she'll need to be restrained.
"We make Edward take a break from her for one hour a day, just for his own sanity, but I don't know what good it does him. Wait 'till you see him, Elie. He looks like shit."
"Alice," Esme says disapprovingly.
"Sorry," Alice mumbles. "He looks really, really bad."
"Any thoughts on how long this is going to last?" I ask.
"No," Alice answers. "Jasper and Emmett think that if we just let her eat a few humans, she'll come out of it faster. They've talked about breaking her into death row at a prison and letting her go nuts. I mean, I guess they're all going to die anyhow and maybe getting it all over with in a surprise attack like that is better than sitting around, waiting for it. I'm just not sure how Bella would feel about it later, you know? It doesn't really matter, though, because Edward forbids it. But I could see him changing his mind if this goes on too long or gets any worse."
My problems seem much smaller compared to all of this. So, in a way, their news does make me feel better. Don't tell Alice.
*****
The next day, I decide to be productive. I'm going to interview the werewolves. I get the idea when the nasty-smelling, dog boy from last time comes to pick up the baby in the afternoon. Apparently this is the routine – Bella hunts at night so she can see her daughter first thing in the morning, then Rosalie takes the baby for the rest of the morning, and after lunch, Jacob picks her up and entertains her for the afternoon.
I understand that this Jacob is good friends of the family and wants to help out, but I get the sense that something more is going on with him and the baby. Something strange. I ask more about Wolfy and find out that he's the leader of a pack comprising two other wolves, a brother/sister team. At least one of them patrols the Cullen property at all times. Jacob's pack is affiliated with a larger pack that protects the nearby La Push community. Protects it from vampires. They're only cool with the Cullens because they don't kill humans. Jacob's pack is helping to keep Bella in line so she doesn't blow the whole deal.
When I ask specifically about Jacob and Renesmee, the Cullens become suddenly interested in something else, like a tiny mote of dust floating through the air. Something weird is definitely going on. Looks like there's a lot for me to learn about these wolves. Learning makes me think of the archives. I get excited when I think about the possibility of adding information on non-vampire, human-based beings to our collection of knowledge. We already have the bones of the Carpathian Hill Witches, why not something on American werewolves? We could add a whole new vault! Wow, guess I've been bitten harder by B.I.T.E. than I realized if the thought of new research can seriously get me this excited.
As an added bonus, studying the wolves will help me pass my time here. The trouble will be finding a wolf who'll cooperate with me. This Jacob guy didn't even look at me when he came in today. He must still pissed about me being so mean to the baby last time. He can't be mad about anything I've done this time, because I was perfectly pleasant to the little tyke from the time Rosalie brought her in to the time he picked her up.
Everyone says Little Renesmee has grown at a tremendous rate compared to human children, but I wouldn't know the difference. My only interaction with human children in the past three hundred plus years has been to walk pointedly in the opposite direction, away from them. The Cullen baby's head still seems too small, but her proportions are normalizing as she grows, so she doesn't creep me out as much. I think I'll be okay with her - as long as she doesn't try to touch me.
Alice tells me that the brother in Jacob's pack is a rather eager pup named Seth. She's sure that he'll let me ask him a few questions and introduces us on her way down to relieve Esme with Edward and Bella. Seth is an overly-friendly boy, younger than Jacob. For werewolf purposes, he's larger than he's supposed to be, but he's much smaller than his enormous pack leader.
I'm disappointed. All I get out of Seth is that it's way cool to bust into wolf form and tear through the forest, and sometimes it's a pain to have to listen to all of his sister's whining when they're sharing their wolf brains, and vampires are actually really nice when you get to know them, and even the ones who are supposed to be mean are really just old softies. I consider teaching Seth a lesson on just how not-nice vampires can be – perhaps a severed paw would do the trick – but decide it's not worth the trouble. I wait patiently for him to finish his seemingly endless spew of drivel, and then thank him and quickly clear my mind of all the useless information he's given me. Except the sharing the brain thing. That was pretty cool.
I convince Seth to persuade his sister to let me interview her. It takes him a few days to get her to agree, and even then, she'll only do it in wolf form. I'm forced to wait in between questions and answers for Seth to transform back and forth between wolf and human so he can listen to her thoughts and then translate for me.
Seth's modesty further impedes our progress. When he transforms into a wolf, he gets huge, therefore, his clothes would bust right off of him. So he stands behind a big tree, takes his shorts of, transforms, waits for me to ask the question, listens to Leah's answer, transforms back into a human, pulls on his shorts, steps out from behind the tree, and tells me her answer. Then we do it all again. It's completely bogus. By the time he delivers her answer, I've forgotten what the question was. I express my discontent with the situation, and Seth, ever eager to please, assures me that he has a solution. I'm doubtful, but I agree to meet them back in the same spot the next day.
Leah is in dog form again the next day, but I swear that I see her eyes roll when Seth approaches, hitching an enormous pair of jeans up around his ribs. The jeans are big enough to stay on him when he's a wolf. I see where this is going, but I'm not sure it's going to work.
He transforms. The jeans stay on, but he yelps in pain. I'm guessing the zipper pinched in a sensitive area. He wriggles his hind legs, nods his furry head, and I ask my question. A few moments pass while Leah answers in silence, and then Seth transforms back, revealing the flaw in his plan – his hands don't transform any faster than the rest of him, so the pants slip to his knees before he can grab them. He makes for the tree and trips over the jeans, falling flat on his face. He scrambles behind the tree on all fours faster than I would have thought possible in his human form.
He pulls up his pants and steps out from behind the tree. He looks at me importantly, then his shoulders slump and his face falls. "Aw crud. I forgot what she said," he tells me.
Leah emits a low, disgusted growl. I try to exhibit some patience. The situation is clearly only good for one thing – to have a little fun.
"Seth, I think that we can make better use of your speed and agility. Can you handle a little free word association?"
"Sure, yeah," he agrees exuberantly.
"Great. Now, I'm going to need you to move swiftly between Leah and me. I'm going to say a single word, and I want you to pick up the very first word that pops into Leah's head and then transform immediately back to human form. I need you to shout out the word the moment you can, no hesitation. I'll be giving you another word right away, so you'll have to flash right back into a wolf."
Seth looks doubtful.
"Seth, I know you can do this. Do you know you can do this?" I say encouragingly.
"Yes," he shouts, nodding furiously. "I can do it. I can totally do it."
"Let's do it," I say and flick a playful glance at Leah. I definitely see a devilish sparkle in those big, wolfy eyes.
Seth is now a wolf. The pants are still on. They don't stand a chance of staying anywhere close to up during this process.
"Puppy," I say.
Seth manages to grab his waistband in the nick of time as he turns quickly back into a human to give me Leah's answer. "Obnoxious," he shouts and then poof, he's a wolf again.
"Young," I say.
"Stupid," comes Leah's answer out of Seth's mouth.
"Naïve?" I say questioningly, trying to give poor Seth some credit.
"Stupid," comes back his sister's stubborn answer.
I've got Leah's read on her brother. I get the feeling she won't mind if I take the fun up a notch. As I expected, he's quickly forgotten entirely about the pants in the lightning fast process, and they lay in a heap at his paws. He's been moving quickly, but so do my senses. What would be nothing but a blur to a human is crystal clear to me. I see everything. Everything.
"Appendage," I say meaningfully, enunciating every syllable.
"Little," Seth shouts breathlessly, giving his sister's answer.
I choke back a laugh as I say, "Itty bitty."
"Teeny tiny!" shouts Seth, dangling in the wind right before changing back into a wolf.
I hadn't pre-planned my words. They're just sort of free flowing like Leah's. I'm saying the first thing that comes to my mind. The next word out of my mouth is, "Pathetic."
Leah's head ducks in what looks like a canine laugh and barks out loud when she mentally answers.
Seth comes back and shouts, "Seth!" At the sound of his own name, he pauses. I see his boy-brain clicking as he reflects back on the last few volleys of words. "Hey," he says slowly, looking between us. Then he looks down. "Hey!" he shouts and yanks the pants up in front of himself as he backs away. He gets behind the tree and fumbles the pants on and stalks away into the forest, protectively gripping the enormous pile of denim to himself.
As he disappears into the trees, we hear him grumble under his breath, "Way to boost my self esteem…bitches."
I shoot a sideways glance at Leah and say, "I get the feeling he's not going to be too keen on helping us again."
We bust out laughing. Leah's guffaws come in rasping barks and mine peel through the forest. The wild abandon of the laughter feels wonderful as it pushes out all the tension that had previously filled me. I let the laughter take me over and fall to my knees on the forest floor. Leah is on her back, literally howling in mirth. It seems she also needed an excuse to cut loose. When I'm capable of any type of movement other than shuddering with laughter, I crawl closer to Leah and hold up a hand. She slaps me a high five with her huge paw, and we laugh some more.
The snapping of twigs nearby catches my attention. I look up and see the newbie, Bella, standing about fifteen feet away, glaring at us. Her appearance is alarming. Her eyes had been red when I'd first met her, but now they are absolutely flaming. Her hair is so severely matted with snarls that it stands out a good six inches from her scalp. Her clothes are torn and she looks positively wild.
"Just great," she sneers. Her voice is a menacing hiss. "You two together. Best friends."
Whuh oh. We could be in trouble here. Newborns are extremely strong, and if she decides to, she'll be able to shred us to bits and serve us for dessert.
Edward suddenly appears at her side and gently grasps her elbows. "Bella, love, it's okay," he says soothingly. "They're just doing an interview. It's okay." He leads her away, but not before shooting Leah and me a warning glare.
I exhale in relief. Peering out into the forest, I spot Carlisle and Alice in opposite directions. They were at the ready to step in if necessary.
"Leah," I say tentatively, "Edward is really the only other one who can help us out if we're going to continue the interviews this way. He's obviously a little busy with other matters at the moment, and he hardly owes me any favors. So…would you consider doing an interview in human form?"
She's rolled over and is now sitting up. She holds completely still for a moment, and then slowly nods her head up and down.
"Awesome," I smile. "Is it okay if I call you at home some time to set something up?" She nods again, and then we depart. It's odd to feel like I want to be friends with anyone, much less a dog.
*****
Edward gets one hour a day away from his lunatic wife. One hour. He uses his hour the next day to search me out. I'm sitting on a bench at the edge of the Cullens' yard, looking out on the beautiful mist that has settled into the forest. I'm thinking about my last time in a forest with Gregorio. I'm suddenly surprised by Edward standing next to me. I didn't hear his approach.
"I need to speak to you for a moment, Elie."
"Have at it," I say.
"Look, Bella's going through a very rough time right now, and I'd appreciate it if you could go easy on her. You know, maybe not hang out with Leah anymore. It makes her paranoid."
I open my mouth to protest, but Edward cuts me off as he drops himself wearily onto the bench next to me. "I know, I know," he says. "It's not a big deal, but she's been complaining about it, and I just want to do anything I can to make things easier for her."
"You're not going to be able to make it easy for her, Edward," I say gently. "None of us had it easy, and we all survived. Maybe you just have to let her go through this without the Edward safety net."
He pulls his hands through his hair and then exhales a gust of air as he leans forward with his elbows on his knees. He stares at the ground for a long time. I feel extremely awkward watching him go through this mental torture. I want to get away, but how bad would that be for me to leave him alone like this? Then again, maybe that's what he wants. I'm about to get up, when he starts talking.
"I didn't want her to become a vampire. I was dead set against it from the beginning. But everyone else, including Carlisle, seemed to think that it was fine. That this was the way things were supposed to be for her. I didn't believe that. I thought she should live out her human life. I was firm on that. But I guess after a while, I stopped listening to myself and started listening to them. I let myself be convinced, because that's what I wanted for myself. I stopped thinking about what was best for her.
"And then the whole thing with Renesmee. The pregnancy was killing her, and I watched her die a little bit every day. It was no longer a question to me of whether or not I would change her. It was the only way I was going to keep her, so of course I was going to do it. And then afterwards, everything came so easily to her, and she was having so much fun with it. It was like we were on another honeymoon, and I didn't have any doubts that I'd done the right thing.
"But now…now it's like all my nightmares are coming true. She's going to suffer. I can see that, and you're right; I just have to let her suffer. But she wouldn't have to go through this if I hadn't been so selfish, hadn't changed her…hadn't married her in the first place." His head hangs down further, and his shoulders slump. His normally smooth, flowing voice is dry and brittle.
Edward's raw misery is all too reminiscent of how I felt, how I still feel sometimes, about what I did to Kristoph. Edward knows that story. I've never told him out loud, but I know he's been able to read it on my mind since my wall came crashing down, sparing me the need to say the words. Sometimes this mind-reading thing comes in very handy.
I put a hand flat on Edward's back and begin moving it slowly back and forth, like a mother would for a troubled child. In a low voice, I tell him, "You did better than me Edward. I wasn't disciplined enough to stop …"
He turns his miserable head toward me and says quietly, "But you think he's better off dead, rather than trapped here. I know you believe that transformation is wrong under any circumstances."
Of course I wouldn't be able to hide that minor detail from him. I study his face now that it's turned toward me. I can see the shadows creeping under his pitch-black eyes. He hasn't been feeding. He's punishing himself. He thinks he deserves this torture that he's putting himself through. I know exactly how he feels.
My hand begins moving up and down his back. I want to reach in through his flesh and wrap my arms around his still, silent heart and make it feel better. My desire to help Edward has very little to do with our previous, tenuous relationship. It has a lot to do with a pathetic vampire lying helpless in a field, wanting to be erased from existence.
I think of Father Pawel and what he did for me. What would he advise me to say right now? I try to channel him and his God for guidance on what to say to Edward. Without much thinking, I begin to speak.
"What's done is done, Edward. You can't change it. You can torture yourself over it for the rest of your days, but you can't change it. You need to forgive yourself, and you need to do right by Bella. Wallowing in your self-deprecation and misery is not going to help her. She needs you strong; she needs you happy. You have to forgive yourself. 'Take away the awful stain of my transgression. Oh, wash me, cleanse me from this guilt. Let me be pure again. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.*'"
"I've noticed you thinking that before," Edward says. "What is it?"
"It's a psalm. In the Bible. I've found it tremendously helpful whenever I've been having a hard time."
Edward nods his head slightly, and I think I might see a tiny glow of hope in his eyes. "Your friend sounds like a wonderful man," he tells me.
I know he is talking about Father Pawel. My eyes sting in the place from where tears would spring if I were human. I miss Pawel. It's been too long since I've seen him. I'm grateful to Edward for the comment; it's nice to know that someone in this mythical world besides me can appreciate him. I look down at Edward and watch a new, dark cloud roll into his beautiful eyes.
He snaps his head again to the ground and says in a harsh whisper, "There's something else." His voice is grave. It becomes desperate as he wrings his hands, cracking his knuckles, and says, "Elie, this has to be between you and me only. I will not speak of it to anyone else. Can you promise me that you won't either?"
"Of course," I tell him. He reads my mind and knows that I'm sincere in my promise.
"I miss her," he whispers so slightly that I almost don't catch it. There was more pain uttered in these simple words than in anything else he's said so far.
"It's okay," I tell him. "She's going to get through this. You'll get her back."
"No," he says in anguish. "I miss human Bella."
This is ominous. Human Bella isn't coming back. I don't say anything. I don't know what to say.
"I know it's a hideous thing for me to say, because she transformed for me. She's done all of this for me. And at first I didn't even think about it. She'd been so sick with the pregnancy, and I was just so happy to have her up and moving again and knowing that she wasn't going to die that I didn't even think about it. It was such a relief to finally not have to worry about her any more. And it was fun having her as a vampire with me. We shared things and did things together that she wasn't able to experience as a human, and it was wonderful. But after a while, even before this change started happening to her, I did start thinking about it. About her. About the Bella I fell in love with.
"She was so remarkably clumsy and always so embarrassed about it. Her face was almost constantly red with blushing," he says wistfully. "I miss that. And she was so, so warm and soft, the softest thing I'd ever touched. I miss watching her sleep. For hours on end, I'd just watch her sleep. She'd dream about me. And, of course, there was her scent…it nearly drove me insane with the desire to drink her, but at the same time, it drove me insane with the desire to just hold her, protect her.
"I can't believe that I even miss that heinous, old, rusty, red truck that she used to drive. She loved that nasty thing. I constantly teased her about it, but really, I loved that she loved it. Then I took that away from her and replaced it with a shiny, new Ferrari. The Ferrari isn't my Bella. That old, red truck was Bella, and I took that away from her. I took everything that was Bella away."
My hand has been rubbing his wretched back as he's reminisced, and I'm stroking his far shoulder. In the silence that follows Edward's confession, I lean forward to rest my chin on his other shoulder. I'm sort of bracing him for what I'm about to say.
"Well, Edward, there's two ways you can look at this. First – you're absolutely correct in thinking that you're a total bastard. She changed into a vampire because she loved you and wanted to be with you, and you went ahead and changed her, and now you resent that she's different? You're pining away for old Bella like she's another woman – that's basically cheating on your wife, Edward. I mean, what the hell? You've moved beyond little prick, Eddie; you're full-fledged asshole."
Edward straightens up, jerking my head and hand off of him, and whips his glaring face toward me.
"Hey, you wanted to talk about it, and you should've known that I would give it you straight," I say defensively.
He grits his teeth together and growls, "You said there was another way to look at this?"
"Uh huh. The other way is this – it really is okay. People change. It's okay to look back on the good old days and long for them. I mean, I'm hardly the same vampire I was two hundred years ago when I first knew Carlisle. Hell, I'm hardly the same vampire I was two months ago. So even if Bella had stayed a human, she would have changed. Not quite so dramatically, so quickly, but she would have grown up. Maybe gotten a bit more graceful, or at least less embarrassed about her klutziness.
"I mean, say a man marries his college sweetheart – she's carefree, she's totally gaga for him, she's got a nice, firm ass. Twenty years, two point five kids, and one suffocating mortgage later, she's not so carefree, not so gaga, not so firm. He probably looks back and thinks about the twenty-something girl he married once in a while, but he still loves her now. Maybe the looking back actually helps him love her a little more. I don't know. But people change even if you don't transform them into vampires."
Edward's glare turns thoughtful as he considers what I've said. He looks forward and turns his shoulder pointedly back to where it was, indicating that I'm welcome to rest my chin there again. I do. More words come to me, and I say them.
"You remember her smell, right?" I ask.
"It's imprinted in my brain cells," he murmurs.
"Then it isn't gone, is it? And you said she always dreamed about you – so now it's like she's dreaming all the time because she has you." I think for a moment and then add, "I think you should get her that red truck back, though, or something like it. It'd be a nice gesture to let her know that you appreciate her individuality. Help her to know that you don't expect everything to change in her life.
"And if you're looking for something to do with the Ferrari, I'm sure Gregorio would look absolutely devastating behind the wheel."
Edward turns to me with a shrewd look, "With you sitting right next to him, no doubt."
"No doubt," I smile.
His look turns to one of sincerity. "Thanks, El. You've put some things in perspective for me. I think I might actually feel a little better."
I stare blankly at him. No one's ever accused me of making them feel better before.
Edward reads my mind and gives me a small, mocking smile. "Elie, Jasper's got nothing on you," he teases.
"Oh, Lord," I complain, rolling my eyes. I pull away and rumple Edward's already rumpled hair and whisper, "Get her that truck." Then I get up. As I walk away, I remark ruefully, "Gregorio better call me back to Romania soon. I'm going much too soft in this misty wonderland."