Caliban
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.
~ William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2
Rosalie has me by the ear, in her mind at least, if not physically, as we go out to the parking lot. Night has already fallen. The freezing temperatures that had made the school's tarmac a death trap for Bella have abated over the course of the day, just enough that we are surrounded by a weary drizzle. I feel the cold, tiny droplets slowly adding up enough to soak into my hair. If we stay outside long enough for our body temperatures to equalize with the air, it will only feel wet.
I hear Rosalie's wry annoyance with the weather. It is our cover, but also our curse. The train of her thoughts plays forward, turns sour, then bitter, in her mind.
It's like living in a tomb. We can't even walk down the street on a sunny day.
She conjures, not a memory, but a fantasy, spun from movies and photographs: herself in a stylish cream suit, with jauntily matching cap and gloves, Emmett tricked out in Sunday best, the two of them strolling arm in arm down a maple-lined boulevard; blue sky and puffy clouds above, children playing under a lawn sprinkler, sunlight dancing in rainbows from the drops.
"You're going to follow me, right?" she says, as she opens the door to her car. She has purposely parked it right next to mine.
"Yes, Rosalie, I am." I need to hunt, but I feel too dispirited right now to do anything but follow her meekly home.
"I'll be watching you."
Why does she have to be so prickly? Is it because she knows that I saw her unhappy daydream just now? That's not my fault. I never asked for this gift. Any more than I ever asked for Isabella Swan to be born … much less find her way to Forks. And only a fool would ask to be tortured as that girl's scent tortures me.
It takes effort to block out the thoughts of others, just as it takes my family effort to screen and disguise their thoughts from me, but we have all learned how to do it over the years. Rosalie and I drive homeward - she before, I behind - with some semblance of privacy for us both.
Tonight, neither of us challenges the local speed limit. Instead, I am given the dark, wet forest, sliding backward on either side. The tall, straight pines come right to the edge of the road, rank upon mossy rank, passing through the headlights' nimbus, turning briefly green, then back to black again. Shadow and darkness lead my eyes inward, to the ferns and hidden sanctuaries. The memory of a song runs through it.
Stronger than any mountain cathedral
Truer than any tree ever grew
Deeper than any forest primeval
I am in love with you.
The man who wrote these words is dying. Alice has seen it. He will not live out the end of this year. Struck down by one of the countless ills that human flesh is heir to. I wonder why I am alive, or if one can even call it that.
Everyone is there when we arrive at the house. They are eager to take me in, and yet uncertain as well. They try to hide their thoughts, but I am actively searching for Alice's. What has she seen, now that Bella knows … something? Alice is hiding from me and that only makes it worse. I am certain that Bella will never knowingly "tell" on me, but if Alice sees an accident … I have only my imagination to lead me. And all-too-recent memory.
Bella talks in her sleep.
I stand petrified on the doorstep. Surely her father wouldn't give credence to any vague mumblings. Do girls her age still sleep over at each other's houses? No. They go drinking. At each other's houses when their parents aren't home. In cars parked in some god-forsaken neck of the woods when they are. In clubs so far from home that no one knows their faces. But Bella wouldn't. She's not like that. Yet. Humans change. The thought of Bella drinking … drunk … fills me with a strange sickness. I don't even want to think about it. Surely, if we just move, anything she might ever say about the accident won't matter.
Esme is embracing me. "Come inside, Edward." In another time, I would melt into her arms. Now I can only follow her stiffly across the threshold. Emmett puts a large hand on my shoulder. "Carlisle's bidden us to wait, and that's what we're doin'. Ain't no one goin' to harm her tonight."
I hear the assent in all of their thoughts, even Rosalie's, grudging though it may be. Perversely, all I want to do is flee. The visions bloom in Alice's mind. The excuses I will make about thirst and hunting. The empty room with the nightlight shining against the dark. Jasper picks it up, too. He knows my moods as intimately as his own. Loose cannon, he thinks again. And all I care about is whether they will try to stop me. Or, worse yet, supervise me.
Alice's thoughts dwell on the possible routes I may take to Bella's house, and I begin to worry anew about what she is hiding. How much has my impulsive rescue this morning changed things? Is our family's decision already fated? At whose hands will she die? We have been able to avoid this kind of thing in the past, always so scrupulously careful. I catch a stray thought from Alice, that she has failed us, and I panic.
I want to batter down Alice's mind, to drag it out of her. She has no right to hide this from me, or from any of us. Jasper senses the shift in my emotions immediately. Get a hold of yourself, boy! He moves closer to Alice, angles himself between her and me. Emmett, who has just been getting a whispered earful of how I had snarled and shown Rosalie my teeth, also slips a protective arm around his mate. His thoughts are angry for the first time since all of this began. Raisin' your voice to our Rose! Will you raise your hand to her as well?
He keeps it private, but will have his say, cradling Rosalie to his chest, glaring at me in truculent silence.
You are selfish. It's a fact. You should make whatever pact you must with the devil, take what you must, and live with it like a man. You've no right to be a-draggin' us through it all like this. And Esme worryin' herself sick like she is. For you, first of all! And for Carlisle, and all of us.
I stump up the stairs to my room like a chastened child. I hear Esme move to follow me, see, in their collective vision, Alice's hand on Esme's wrist, the small shake of her head, the ever-so-slight and brief fan that it makes of her short, black hair. Jasper's sudden, unguarded pang of love for her almost makes me stumble on the step.
Go, Alice tells me. Just go. It's all right.
And though I know she meant it as comfort and permission, still, I feel cast out. I rattle around in my room for an hour, trying to shake the feeling, but it just won't go away. It's not the first time.
Blasting my ears with the latest in raucously nihilistic teen music that my iPod can produce helps nothing. I am not of this era, nor it of me. My eye falls on the slim, leather-bound volume stashed between a brace of outdated college chemistry texts in my bookcase. It is my journal. My oldest one, salvaged from among my personal effects by Carlisle when he changed me. He had not given it to me until I had been a vampire for nearly a year. It was too precious to risk me, newborn and wild, tearing into it for the traces of my human scent.
I pull it from its place gingerly. I cannot smell my old self on it any longer. It has been too long. I have conditioned the leather from time to time, so it is still supple, and the stitched binding is still holding strong. Things were made to last in those days, made to pass down to children and children's children. But the ink is fading inexorably. I had not imagined that I would be wanting, much less needing, archival quality.
There is no need to open the pages. I have committed every word to a memory that will outlast the pyramids. My concerns in those days were so youthful, so quaint.
Father says I am not yet a man. I know why, of course. He and Mother are praying nearly every day for the end of the war. But I will be a man, and soon. I can feel it, waiting for me, just around the bend. Over There ... or somewhere nearer to home? Perhaps it doesn't matter, so long as I make Father and Mother proud.
Carlisle did not bring me the mementos of my past all at once, but at odd intervals over those first few years. How he kept custody of them in the mean time I have no idea. My parents' wedding photograph, Father's cufflinks, Mother's jewelry box, the blue and white blanket that she had crocheted for me when I was an infant, my baseball glove, my school blazer. The blazer fits me still; the fabric is still holding. I have not worn it in a very long time.
The journal had been a surprise, a birthday present, in fact. But for each subsequent time, he would approach me so diffidently, showing me the outline of his intention in his mind first, in case the article might cause more pain than comfort. I never turned him down, though the gifts were bitter-sweet at best. I saw in his memories how all of this had been denied him in his making. Among all of us, Carlisle is the one who was orphaned. And Alice. Alice was, too.
Jasper's thought interrupts me from downstairs. Your pacin's making sorry music, Edward. Just go already. Just don't go to her.
And so I am shot from my window, like a bolt from a bow. I hit the ground running, the journal still in my hand. Of all the stupid things. To bring this with me, to where I am going. But I am too proud to turn back and then leave again, like an addle-pated boy. I place it, aging calf hide against immortal skin, inside my shirt to keep it from the light rain that is falling. The forest flows backwards around me, my passage leaving a trail of wind.
I cast through the forest, seeking a meal. I am so sick and tired of deer. Fresh spoor of a fox catches my eye and nose, and the creature is doomed. I catch up to it before it even has time to realize that it has become quarry. A quick scoop from the ground and it is in my hands, and I wring its backbone in two. Too much force. Blood is pouring into the abdominal cavity. There will be waste. This is wrong, but it can't be undone. I bite into the belly to salvage as much as I can. There is fur to be dealt with, always fur with the animals, to be razored away and spit out. And then drink. Pungent and musky-hot. Barely a snack. The small heart stutters and is still, I suck, and nothing more comes.
I sit on the forest floor, the dead thing in my lap. Their bodies always appear shrunken, once the blood is gone. I run my fingers through the rapidly cooling pelt. So silken and thick. This creature was healthy. Beautiful. The dark cannot hide from my eyes the color of its fur, a brighter echo of my own hair. The velvet-soft paws are black, the tail tip white, the face sharp and graceful. All of these are intact. Only the underside has been ravaged.
By me. This is what I am. A monster. I touch my journal through my shirt. I should bury it, with the fox. But Carlisle has taught us never to bury our kills, unless failing to do so would risk detection. We always leave the meat for others.
"We give back unto the world as we may, Edward. Howsoever that we may."
It's no use. Unless I bury the thing six feet under, a huge and unnatural hole, it will surely be dug up by something - raccoon, skunk, bear - and my journal with it. The thought of the faded pages, soiled and shredded and scattering on the wind, just hurts too much. I leave my journal against my skin, and place the dead fox in the fork of two tree roots.
I should be still thirsty, but all I feel is pain. All I want is peace. My feet move again, toward Isabella's house.