I looked at myself in the mirror one more time and felt pleased for what I saw: the red of my hair shone under the sunlight, and my new dress, adorned with heavenly embroidery on the most soft and costly cloth, rose colored. I applied some perfume, which blended with the sweet smell of toiletries and the flowers in the garden. I noticed I looked younger, so much younger!
I left the building, rejoicing in this lively excitement I felt inside of me. I smiled and greeted passers-by, sang a silly tune and walked steadily to my destination. The blue sky above stirred a new excitement inside me, and every detail of the city and of the people was magical in itself.
Yet I couldn't ignore the whisperings, silent voices announcing an eerie change in the joyful impressions of that day. I knew it was drawing nearer, louder. At last the hoarse rythmic talks blended together in unison, an outburst of surprise and shock that sharply and stubbornly reached my ears, insisting on pointing out to me the most impressive figure just ahead of me, strolling down the street at a majestic pace.
I recognized it instantaneously, and the realization froze my thoughts and my limbs. The outstanding outfit that man wore was no less familiar to me than the picture of my face. If I had lived a thousand years, I would never be able to forget the only person who could ever dress in that, and inspire that inhuman terror.
It was Erik, it was always Erik.
In a deja vù, he was once again the creature out of the Mascarade ball, every single aspect of his just the same as I remembered, the swirling long cloak, the large hat with its delicate feathers, the long sleeves that reached the end of his thin wrists with so much grace - the same grandiosity was repeated in that sunny day, except for one change - Erik was dressed wholly in black.
He approached me, and I couldn't quite see his face, covered by the brim of the hat, partly because the sunshine obfuscated my vision. The figure stopped just before me, where I had been paralyzed watching his unexpected apparision, touching my face with his hand, which felt warm and pleasant.
It was hateful living all this again, noticing as the same sensations took over my body again, it didn't matter how much I tried to shun it away. Once again he had power over me.
I could feel people staring as if their eyes burned. Every inhabitant had left his house, and joined together in that crossing between two dirt streets. It was a quiet observation at first, after a moment of panic which his presence had caused - which soon would be justified. I looked upon him and noticed he expressed nothing but beauty, and my lips, numb by amazement, shaped this word in a way he definetely read it: "Beauty". He immediately stepped back, stiff, and seemed to not recognize me any longer.
Erik continued his walk, purposefully, without looking back, and at one point, stopped again, moving his arm suddenly and powerfully, proclaiming to the whole city to hear, in a thunderous threat, ressonating at every corner, as if nothing and no one could hide from his determination and will, "Back off! Black Death has reached you! All of you!" And he laughed maniacally, repeating this warning over and over.
Even the skies seemed to duck in fear, the clouds covered the sun and turned darker, and as Erik disappeared after taking a corner, the most unpleasant odor had spread itself in the air. Without knowing where it came from, I kept walking, having forgotten my destiny, only preocuppied with the awkward feeling that had invaded me.
Screams joined the smell in a minute, a sinister symphony of moanings, cryings and whinings. I looked at the floor, startled by a hoard of rats that came out of the houses, as a cloud of grasshoppers, tangling with my legs. I screamed, too, and ran to an older man, hanging to him asking for help. When he turned around, I gasped and let him go, for his face, the face that had probably belonged to a wealthy business man, was destroyed by nasty spots, as if his skin had burned or just gone rotten in the morning air.
In disgust, I stumbled into three people I hadn't seen before, that seemed to have appeared out of nothing: two women and a man, leaning against the wall of a house, empty looks, their bodies covered by the same reddened, mostly black, spots and bruises, as well as nauseating bumps on the skin along the bare arms of the younger lady.
I tried to apologize, but they didn't hear me, they just mumbled senseless words of pleading. I began to cry, as more and more people showed the same symptoms, some crawling on the sides of the streets, some still trying to stand up. It hadn't spared one single person! The progress of the contamination hid the features and the age of those who had been stricken harder by this terror. Others had convulsions, and twisted their bodies in the most painful way, throwing up dark blood, shaking. But these manifestations, I was learning, were rather quick, for not long after them, there was just a filthy lifeless corpse left. I ran away from that street and took another, only to find houses that had been abandoned in a sudden hurry, their doors and windows flinging open, and sometimes a cadaver in the doorway, a warning that whatever that disease was, it had already visited that home.
Then I realized what the smell was: it was the stench of death mixed with the one of the bodies being burned in a big pile. I watched, horrified, as a bonfire made of human bodies burned before me in a few minutes, like dry wood.
I was too overwhelmed by the total hell that I had before me to have or express any specific emotion. For some reason it didn't seem strange that a whole city could fall sick so fast, like it would if a curse had been thrown upon it. I was just slowly trying to understand what was happening, and that eagerness to conceive the moment closed every possibility of a complete analysis. I was taken out of that stupor by a cry that, among the other cryings and moanings, became stronger to me, stirring in me the vital need of helping this one - it was from a child!
I entered the house, dark as it was, not listening to the warnings of the man outside who peacefully carried a dead person on his back, towards the fire. "Don't go in," he said. "If you don't have the plague, run, run as fast as you can, and never come back". Noticing my firm intentions, he added, "You will never leave that house alive, idiot!"
But I did. However, before that, I had to confront a most horrid scene, for the cryings led me to this little girl, who, at my sight, jumped on my lap and held me as she knew she was clinging to her last hope. "Please save me! Please, mademoiselle, save me!" she said tearfully but tenderly, as I looked at what I assumed to be her siblings' corpses laying on the floor. "Mama and Papa left me taking care of them, but I failed. I'm so sorry! I tried to be a good girl, but the Black Plague, the Priest told me, took them away!"
I petted the little girl's hair, as I related for the first time the apparition of the so-called Black Death with this sudden and greedy deadly disease. "Let's leave this place, sweetie," I said, and struggling to carry her, feeling myself weaker, I ran out of the door and placed her on the ground. "Now, give me your hand."
I led her away from the house, without knowing myself where to go. When I reached exhaustion, and nothing really urged me to go on, I stopped, and kneeled by her. I felt great relief in realizing she didn't show any signs of being infected, and smiled reassuring, "It will be alright, it won't reach us."
She still cried silently, and I felt my heart skipping a beat when I looked at her familiar face. She inspired in me the greatest care and concern, I just knew I couldn't allow that child to die.
"What is your name, sweetie?"
She rubbed her eyes, stared at me, and said, "Sophie. You know, I had a sister, who was taken by the Black Death, who looked very much like you."
I was torn apart and didn't know what to think! Sophie couldn't be there, couldn't be the same person! But they were exactly the same, the same black hair like my mother's, the freckles on their light skin, the smile, constantly there, even when they were so sad... But there was no time to think. I just knew I had to leave that place.
"Now, Sophie, look at me. Do I have any spots on my face?" She shook her head. So maybe there was still hope. As I thought of hope, a Priest passed by.
"Monsieur!" I called, in despair.
He looked at us, and contemptuously turned his back, walking faster.
"Father! I need to know how to escape! Please help us, otherwise, we will both die!"
He faced us for a minute and said, resignated, "We will all die in a way or another. God sent his punishment for all the sins he has seen! There's nothing we can do." He made the sign of the holy cross and walked away.
We didn't exchange a word about the incident, simply wandered, endlessly, and I was worn out. Sometimes, when passing by dead-living people stretched out on the streets, I had to pick up Sophie in my arms, keeping her out of reach of the desperate arms that raised in our direction. They knew that nobody who didn't have the plague would help, yet they clutched, tearing my dress apart and cutting the skin of my bare legs open. I tried to get rid of them, only to see more desembodied hands and arms reaching out, or to meet faces that didn't belong to this world anymore. It was an ocean of death, with hundreds of people covered by their bloody saliva or vomit, and the swellings of the pestilence.
I didn't fear anymore, and I didn't cry, nor did Sophie. In our journey, we met doctors who refused treating anyone for less then an extraordinary amount of money, and apothecaries with miraculous medicines to sell. But no one could tell us how to get away from there.
At last we came across a wood cart, carried by a man, where other corpses were piled. The man threw one by one inside a trench, slowly, for he knew there was no reason for hurry, he knew death came fast.
I watched the scene without a reaction. Suddenly, without the least sound or notice, Sophie, who I had by the hand, was gone!
I couldn't tell exactly how or by whom she had been taken from my hand, I only knew she had vanished. I left on a mad search, in every street and house. But there was no sign of her. I simply couldn't understand how a girl, who had been by my side just some minutes ago, could disappear like this! I could swear I hadn't stopped looking over her for one instant!
Defeated at last, I came back to the man, sat on the ground by that great tomb, and watched his morbid duty, to offer a careless anonymous funeral to the victims.
I knew I didn't have the disease, but the loss of Sophie made me wish I had. I looked at my arm, anxiously, hoping the skin would break open and the infection would show itself. Yet Death refused to claim me.
And from nowhere, shattering my net of thoughts, I heard my name being called by a faint voice. "Meg! Forgive me, Meg!"
It was a lamentation, a heartbreaking one, and I didn't know where it came from.
"I only brought destruction for both of us!" The voice raised, and I placed its owner. Somewhere on the cart, among so many corpses, one was alive and conscious, the corpse of somebody who, to my knowledge, didn't contract the plague. I saw Erik reaching out for me, but trapped under that disgusting mountain of flesh.
"Monsieur! He is alive, Monsieur! Please, help me take him out of there!" I begged the man with the shovel in his hand, tossing some extra dirt in the trench. He scrutinized Erik, and predicted, "Not for long, lady!" He laughed, and kept digging.
Erik had freed himself some, to the point I could see his bare chest emerging, as I ran to him and embraced the rotting body, his yellowed skin, that, coldly analyzing, didn't differ much from the dead ones around him. What had happened to all his dignity and nobility?
I didn't know. I knew only that I had to use all my strength to take him out of there, and that, at the moment I put my arms around him, his struggle for life was gone.
"Erik, you have to leave! Don't give up!"
He looked at me in the eyes, and pity, deep pity feeled me as he said, "How can you hold something like me, who belongs to this cart!" His voice was so full of torment that I started to cry, knowing I was too weak to free him from all that weight of his destiny. How could I take him away from the hands of death, when he was death himself ?
Yet I kept trying, and screaming for him to not let go, until the man who buried the corpses had mercy for my despair, and with his shovel, dirty with mud and body fluids, he dumped the other bodies into the ditch, and I, with my last effort and pull, dragged Erik with me.
He fell over me, so weak he could barely talk, wearing only rags, and I closed my eyes, in exaustion and dizziness. He was so light!
He had never looked so awful, but I didn't mind, I only caressed his skull, and held to his gaunt scarred torso, while he kept apologizing, in not more than a whisper.
Suddenly people, healthy people who I hadn't seen until now, started to gather around us and scream, "It is her!"
I looked up, as their spirits got more angry at each moment, "She is the one who brought the Black Death to this village!"
A woman across the street threw a rock in our direction and yelled, "I saw when the Black Death was touching her! It is her!"
Before they could have reached me and laid my sentence, I felt the ground underneath me shaking, as if a Titan lived underground. It shook once again, making those who stood to fall, and the ground opened before me in a bottomless pit, where I saw, at last, Erik falling into it, together with the other corpses. Other crevices opened, and the whole disgusting city started to ruin and fall inside the Earth, not knowing where it was going to arrive. The noise of the ground opening wide, as a starving mouth, deafened me, and I screamed and screamed again for help.
At last the help came. He embraced me tightly, repeating my name, until I realized I was in the light bedroom of Jonathan Ferrat. "It is alright, Meg, darling! It was a dream! Only a dream! Wake up, dear!"
I looked around, lost, concentrating on each item of the room, to shun away the images that still lingered.
"What were you dreaming, dear?" he asked, now that he had let go of me, only holding my hand.
I rubbed my eyes, confused, and muttered stupidly, "With the Black Death, I think."
He laughed heartly, loudly, playfully, "The Black Plague! That was so many years ago! You are getting too influenced by my talks about medicine! One of these days you will be doctoring by my side!"
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