Disclaimmer: Saint Seiya manga, anime and characters belong to their respective owners.
"The Blood of the Brother" is written by: Flavia "Millerna" Rizental – 2002
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The Blood of the Brother
Part I: The Gypsy Child
Gemini the zodiac sign for duality. The two lost brothers in the sky, forver revolving around one another. But his brother had been taken away, his life done with grotesquely and there was no one to blame but himself. His hands were tainted a vicious scarlet, the blood of the brother.
"Here, let me drink." She kissed him with those full red lips lusciously, I watched the brief flash of silver, the wicked fangs, yes. Then my brother moaned, so quietly I only heard him because as I lay in the dark corner where my bed was I had waited for that little sound before the suckling became more intense. If I looked over from my bed I would see their naked flesh, her unnaturally pale skin set against against his darker flesh, I would see her pale breasts pressed against his chest. I think we were thirteen back then. Thriteen and hopeless already.
It disgusted me that he allowed her to drink from him. I would never let her touch me no matter how beautiful her voice rang out or how compelling her lips looked as she licked the blood so delicately from her victims. How dared he let her do this to him? As if he were but a slave…a little boy kept for pleasure. My brother…a pet.
I think he loved her. I’m pretty sure he loved her, he wouldn’t have hated the rest of the world if he hadn’t loved her. Surely not. I loathed the thing that she was from the beginning as if the bells in my head had screamed Danger whenever she was near. The bells in my head, yes, there was something in my head, definitely. Or maybe it was that he was my twin and he wasn’t allowed to love someone other than me. Mine, brother, mine. Yes, it was a bit of the egoccentric, that he forfeited me in the name of a woman.
Woman?
Beast.
Lustful beast that made love to my young brother next to the bed wherein I slept, the blood she drank was for her, hersake, the sex for him. He enjoyed it and it angered him intensely if I were to complain about it, that he slept with the creature. She took his blood and he took her sex. As if it were a sick trade. I hated them both, I think. Sometimes I am certain I hated him. I knew I hated her.
Hate. Such a simple thing, so complicated a meaning…was it my fault that I hated what they had became or was it their fault that they inspired hate in me? At least something was inspired. Something created. Not like this meaningless coitus that took place on the other side of the room. For a sick moment I wonder what her ageless body did with my brother’s seed, could it somehow safe it away into her depths for future and latter use? Goddess, above, if you are above, pray it not be so.
Her hair covered the two moving shapes like a crimson cloud…blood? Always. I turned away, ignoring her moans, ignoring the way the little bed began to creak. I drove my mind away, willed it back to the beginning…and in the beginning…
In the beginning there was darkness.
Their scent, the little room suddenly reeked of it, scent of their union, how I hated it. I pulled my covers over myself and willed with all my might to sleep. Sleep was difficult to come and when it finally came it was donned by the demons.
The earliest memories were of seven years ago.
"Saga, what do you think you are doing?" The man had an edge to his voice, the kind of edge that let me know something was wrong, very wrong. I was a little boy then, I couldn’t be possibly more than five, no surely. I startled up with surprise, eyes glazed as I tried to phantom what possibly could have gone wrong. I frowned at the man, child lips screwing up as I wrenched myself out of the world of Dickens. Letting the book fall silently to my lap. I regarded the man.
He must have been no more than thirty-five. He was strong, with a broad back and huge arms. Short but stocky. He had wild dark hair and wild eyes, untammed, a gypsy. His name was Félix.
"Reading?" It held all the seemingly verity of chidlhood and to the child that was me it seemed like a perfectly good answer. Felix somehow felt otherwise and by the time I had found a better answer I’d been upperhanded to the otherside of the room and fell limply on my side. Damn, and I had done my duties right too. Then I fliched and lay against the warm and stood up shakily.
The gypsy was seething, anger flashing in his beady eyes, his brown face contorted by rage. "Kanon! Where is that idiot brother of yours? He was supposed to have helped collect the money today! Good for nothing! Useless! You weren’t given birth too, you were defacted on my lawn!"
I think I sighed with all the weariness of a child whose brother was Kanon. This was normal. And Kanon…it had been Kanon, then. Well, it made perfect sense. My beautiful, wild brother.
"I’m sorry." I wasn’t of course, secretely I cheered for my brother, how could I not?. For a moment I thought the man would hit me again and I squared my shoulders, waiting for the blow. It never came. Felix snorted and left the room after a few more rounds of obcenity regarding the nature of my birth.
Our birth, Kanon’s and mine. So much about that we could not be certain of. Were we gypsies like the crew of actors we travelled with? Were we this crazed man’s sons? Were we the lovely Margretta’s sons? We weren’t dark like them and maybe that’s where the truth lied in, we were so very different. Kanon refused to believe that we could belong to them, I think it disgusted him. He believed something greater and grander. He believed in a woman called the White Lady.
I did not. And we argued sometimes with heated voices that held no true conviction for either one of us. How could Kanon believe in something like the White Lady? It was a legend told to children. How she could fly to a boy’s window and drink his blood without anyone ever knowing she had been there. She was a hunter of the children, mourning something lost and amazingly sensual. The gypsy women sang her song, she had been seduced by a powerful man and left with his seed to face his equally powerful and very jealous wife. Her eyes were taken and so was her babe. The babe was fed to her and she was condemned to eat the little children for all eternity without sleep, without peace. A beautiful woman who became a beautiful beast. The White Lady.
Think about it.
Kanon believed this? This…crap?
The answer is yes, he did.
And I found it difficult to swallow that my unruly brother could. Kanon who was so full of conviction that nothing in life mattered. Truth didn’t matter to Kanon, destiny was crap, or so my brother claimed laughing at my inability to grasp the finer aspects.
So I told myself it was arrogance that my brother wanted to be more than the other children, more than the gypsies. And I convinced myself my brother was wrong, even as I loved him and prayed that he’d be safe. I excluded my brother’s thoughts from my own. And set my mind to becoming the only thing I believed I could become; an actor, a gypsy, a performer.
"Saga!" Margretta giggled, tossing a long brown lock over her shoulder. The light caught the shimmering rings on her hand and I was very much dazzled. But then I was always dazzled by Margretta. To say she was beautiful would not have been correct. She was full of color and life and song. All things a boy my age appreciated. She was not beautiful, her eyes were huge and hazel and ever brilliant, like a precious stone. Some of the finest eyes I have ever seen on a woman, with long curling lashes. But that was really the one beautiful thing on her face. Her nose was a bit too long perhaps, her cheeks a bit too round and her thin mouth was tempting but mostly because of the strange ways her smile would flash at innappropriate times. She was not the beauty of our group, she did not have that gorgeous shade of golden skin some of the other women had. She wasn’t Evandra and Evandra trully was beautiful, but she, Margretta, was the most sought after woman of our trouppe. I was a child then but I knew it was her personality that made her…splendid.
Margretta was the sort of creature who could walk into a room full of boredom and have a party with herself as the center of attention running in 5 minutes or less. The men adored her. The women did not. I, of course, was enthralled. She laughed the loudest, she sang the loudest, everything in her was just so…loud! Her skirts would whip as she jumped on top of a table and began to dance with that wild frenzy that was all her own.
Much to the dismay and hatred of Evandra, Margretta was our lead actress. It was she who got the most coins for her dancing and her…seeing. Her fortune telling caused for a long while some chaos among the group and I could remember Evandra screaming and Felix, with his tall boots and his wide belt threatning to hit Margretta. Margretta was a forseer, an activity she, as a very young woman, shouldn’t be yet performing. But she was so accurate! And there were women and men who came to see her every week. And gypsies liked money, so Margretta won out.
We was her charge. We lived with Margretta and her brother Félix. But had become Margretta’s personal plaything, much to my content. Margretta told me, with her breath in my face as she snuggled me close, how I would become a famous actor. I would play parts no one would have thought a gypsy boy could play! And I would dance like she did! Well, maybe not like she did, she would retort giggling insanely, maybe dance like Felix danced.
Ah, Felix, another splendid dancer and you would never know just by looking at him. But if Margretta was admired by our group then Felix was wholy worshiped. Maybe I would have liked him if it weren’t for his temper and the way he used Margretta or the way he hurt my brother. For if Felix disliked me then he hated Kanon. It was that hatred that finally made us leave…but by that time Margretta was no more and I left with a clear conscience.
During that time I was completely commited to Margretta, understand. Any abuse of her was, more or less, a blow to my very young pride. And I swore myself her protector. Silly dreams of a little boy. And how I would hound her! Demanding her kisses and hugs, demanding her songs or to be in her room and watch as she dressed herself. Mind you, I was innocent then.
But as I sat there that day there were no thoughts of Felix in my mind. Margretta was turning me this way and that as she made tiny adjustments to my costume. I don’t think there were any need for the adjustments, I think she was simply nervous herself. I was, after all, her little project in the making. And as I said, Margretta always won out. I was going to perform, imagine my excitement! Oh, I was no one of importance, just a little cupid come to whisper on my lovely Margretta’s ears as she lay softly on the ground and dreamt of a lover. Well, I had little speaking lines, two I believe.
Still, the lovely thing was nervous and she gave me quick instructions.
"Saga, try not to wiggle." I wiggled?
"And don’t acknowledge the public, even if they yell at you. An actor at play must focus on nothing more than his work" Well, obviously.
"And don’t run off as soon as you are finished, you should be there to bow and collect the money, remember Felix wants you to do that." Duh. I rolled my eyes and was promptly swatted by her hairbrush, it stung and I portested but she gave me a deadly look and I choose to scamper off. I jumped out of her trailler, closing the door firmly behind me and looked towards the ‘theatre’. I sprang towards it, excited beyond my wildest imaginings. The ‘theatre’was our fifty-foot tent and I being a youg boy decided to give this multi-colored monstrocity a tentative peak. There were people already gathering even with forty minutes to show time! They sat in high bleachers before the little stage. I pulled at my garments in sudden emberrasment as four well-dressed ladies and gentlemen passed me by marvelling at the little gypsy boy and his costume. I flushed.
And I saw what Margretta called "Aura", black clouds all around these people. I should have run but I was too young to know that rich people like them didn’t come to gypsy shows unless it was to hunt freely. Gypsies were the perfect plate for them, unknown, uncared for the government, unmissed. Almost indigent.
"Why! Isn’t he just a darling!" One of the women exclaimed, she had dark short clipped hair and wore pretty clothes, a violet summer dress with high-healed sandles. Kind of pretty. The other woman was plump and simularly dressed and now she too leaned over me to inspect this new bit of curiosity.
"Just precious!" The plump one agreed with that funny accent that was not my own, of course I spoke english, it was the only language to travell by. But this accent I hadn’t heard before. Where were we? I should ask Kanon latter…all I could ever remember was travelling constantly.
"Yes, but do not get to close, darling. I hear they bite and have the most awful fleas. After the flea bath, he’ll be just perfect!" A man in a gray suit took the arm of the violet-dress and pulled her away from me as if I were a vile threat.
"Richard really!" And the four laughed.
"Well maybe not that bad but he does look a bit wild, doesn’t he?" It was the second and last man and this one sounded dangerous to me. I glared at him. He grabbed my wrist and pulled hard on me. The plump woman giggled and I struggled against him.
"Mark look, he’s a cherub, that is absolutely precious."
"Is he now? All they are animals, really. Isn’t that why we come here?" And I saw the others were all smilling something very wrong with those smiles…wicked. I was young then but I knew instinctively to be afraid, something so wrong, so very wrong with these people. My vision went red and I thought I would faint but I didn’t and as I watched the world around me changed.
I couldn’t understand this but suddenly they didn’t look like people to me. They transformed to animals in my eyes. Hideous things, even the pretty one with the short hair, I saw her like a rat.
I screamed and was lifted off my feet by…Mark…only he wasn’t a man but a huge black spider. The plump woman was a leach and the gray man a black and sick looking dog. I kicked viciously at the spider, my eyes glued to it as I realised they were taking me away, away from the tent. I panicked when a hand went over my mouth and I was pulled against the man’s chest and my feet were held.
"We have a pretty treat here, don’t we?" They reached for my feet and tied them with a bit of rope, one of the women produced a blanket and covered me with it. I realised their intent, I would look nothing more than a child against my father’s breast.
I was in despair, my mind was whirling, I didn’t know what these people wanted but I knew it couldn’t be good and I surely did not want to find out. I think I started to cry when I saw they were carrying me to a car. Using streength I did not know I had I reached…
For Kanon. My brother, in my mind I screamed his name, in my mind I saw him by a river, I felt he was close by, he was sleeping, curled up on a bench ignored by everyone. I screamed at him and saw my brother flinch and jump awake. I saw his startled eyes as he fumbled for me, we touched and I let him know what had happened to me, that they were taking me away. My brother screamed to me, made promises of rescuing me and as I broke contact I saw him running to find me.
When I looked down again I saw a car in the distance, an elegant black sedan, I tried to memorise the plate but I was certain I would forget. It was in vain. Or was it? I heard the voice then, for the first time.
Saga, my little gemini. Will it come to this? A sudden demise by a blood club? And we had such great plans for you.
I glanced up at the four adults wondering if it had been one of them…
Do not be foolish, their wish for you is vile and terribly evil. Evil, Saga, child, do you know what it means? You will, very soon.
I choked. Save me.
Save yourself. Your brother will never reach you in time. The gypsies don’t know you’ve been taken and I don’t care. That leaves you. Destroy them, these things that would hurt you. Destroy them.
Destroy? How? I heard her laughter then.
With cosmo! Kill them with the power of the gemini!
Cosmo? A thousand images ran through my mind, probably lent by the voice. How could I have known back then? But I…saw. I saw cosmo. And I understood why these people looked like animals in my eyes. I screamed silently. Cosmo! Energy, cosmo! I…knew! My rage I could use it because…it was cosmo.
Yes, dear, yes! Everything is! Use it! Use it as you have in times past! Use it again and start your cycle, your downfall! Save yourself and I will help! I will show you!
She did. And crimson clouds sprang out of my body as one of my captors opened the trunk of the car, they sprang out…like fire. There were screams and I fell to the ground. But…the cosmo…came in great gushes…and I heard a voice…it was the voice.
"Bonfire of the innocent." And I saw the human-animals withering within the crimson depths, everything went…red. I think I passed out.
"Saga!" My brother, I heard my brother’s voice. I opened my eyes…I focused on the ceiling. A wooden ceiling, small and constricting. Margretta’s trailler. I glanced at my brother numbly, he had been crying.
"What happened?"
He wiped his eyes with a little fist in a savage gesture.
"We found you next to the tent. You were unconscious. Saga, but…I thought…I had heard…"
"Me. You thought you had heard me. Where are the others?"
My brother snorted, eyes rolling. "At the play, where else?" I rolled away from my brother pulling the covers over my head and asked in a small voice.
"Who found me?"
"Four rich people, they heard you screaming. Really weird, they had been driving by when they saw you colapse."
"Oh." So it had been what? A nightmare.
"Saga?" Brother’s voice and smell.
"Yes?" My mind hurt…so much.
"They said when they found you you had been talking to someone…" how unsure he sounded, how scared and confused but so was I.
"It was a bad dream that’s all." I felt my brother climb into the bed next to me and his arms go around me, so tight, warmth. I sighed.
"Tell me." His whisper tickled my ear and I snuggled against the blanket, peace stealing over me…I felt protected. This familiarity that we used to have, how precious it was to us, we were children with no parents, with no real home…we were all we had. My brother placed his forehead on my back.
And I did tell him, finally. In whispers and sobs, I told him my fears, I told him about the four animal-people, I told him about being taken how very afraid I was. He listened so quietly, so intently, nodding sometimes but never saying a single word. So I told him about Cosmo, about the crimson clouds and felt my brother stiffen. I waited for a while, my breathing even despite the fear.
"Cosmo."
"She said it was everywhere." I knew he understood, to anyone else it might have seemed like insanity, but this was my twin, blood of my blood. He understood better than anyone.
"The white lady, Saga. It was the white lady."
"Maybe." The white lady, danger, I felt my body tense as my brother proclaimed her name beside me, his voice so soft, so calm. "If so, she tried to kill me." He shook his head and I frowned, a little bit angry perhaps.
"Do you really think so? I don’t." I didn’t reply to that, I closed my eyes tightly and thought of damned sheep as I was taught to do.
"We will leave soon." Kanon pulled me tighter, then let me a loose, I had a feeling he was protecting me…against whom? Leave…why.
"We will leave because we have to." He finished with a sigh and I think I understood.
"Saga? Come on, pretty. Get up." A warm hand was shaking me. My eyes shot open. Margretta, looking bright and full of color, a red headkerchief keeping her locks in order. I saw gold earing dangling over me, casting little beams of light. Margretta grinned.
"You ran out on us yesterday. Got sick?" She turned away from me and pulled on the little cotton curtains over the tiny windows in our trailler. "Perfectly normal, don’t let Felix tell you otherwise."
"I’m sorry." I sat up and tossed the covers off of me, swung my legs over the side. She lifted an eyebrow at me then nodded.
"It’s fine." She let out a low sigh, "I should have trainned you better." I looked around the trailler no sign of Kanon.
"My brother..." Margretta snorted and slapped her thigh loudly, I guessed that was my answer.
"Saga, I need a few things from the market, come with me and help me carry, will you?" She
had a large tote bag and was glancing at a wallet. A wallet I had never seen before…probably Felix’s…
I didn’t answer because there wasn’t any reason to answer I simply changed my clothes quietly and followed her out. Normally I loved going to places with her, loved to see her bargain and buy pretty things, cheap jewelry, cloths, sandles, anything that was shiny was a possible tempation for Margretta. Felix and she often went into violent rages after too much of Margretta’s spending. Sometimes she would buy flowers, she would always buy honey, she loved to eat it. I didn’t. Neither did my brother, she told us we were bitter children, not sweet as she was sweet.
I don’t think she was sweet. I don’t think Margretta could be honestly good. And by this time I had a strong sense of what was good and what was evil and Margretta certainly did not fit in any definition of good. She could cast curses, she did often. If one of her customers refused to pay or, God help the poor bastard, bought a bad spell for someone. The curses were terrifying. Margretta was a natural. Gypsy, dancer, forseer, witch. She was so many things…and my foster mother too…she couldn’t be my mother, even if she told me she was, I knew she was too young, to lovely to be anyone’s mother.
Like I said normally I would have loved this little outing. I would have ran about ahead of her disturbing people with my antics until Margretta laughed and told me to stop. But today I was simply morose.
Cosmo, cosmo, cosmo.
It was as if it had come to haunt me. I lagged on behind her, dragging my feet and looking absolutely miserable, I think.
She had taken us to an open market, one of those quaint traditions that for whatever reason still stood in existance. I saw she had stopped at a booth up ahead. I frowned, I saw cages with chickens. She stepped out of the booth and began beckoning to me urgently with a slim brown hand. I trotted over to her, thinking there was no way out of it. When I was close enough she grabbed me.
"You are being so silly today." And she pushed me into the booth before her. It was filled with caged birds, mostly eating chickens, some handsome cocks…and pigeons. I understood people came here to buy the animals fresh for food. I groaned. Margretta pointed at the pigeons. Spells. We were looking for components. Components made of flesh and blood.
"See the white one? The fat dove? What do you think?" She whispered in my ear, she was crouched beside me and had directed my head with her hands towards the poor creature. I looked where I had been directed and met the steely eye of the little dove. A pretty little thing all folded up on itself. The bird cocked its head for a moment then went still. I felt a terrible sadness, the cage was so very small. And the urge was there, to the one miraculous thing and fling the cages open.
I stared at that bird and I wanted to say I didn’t like it, that in fact, I hated it. But how could I? Such a lovely little creature…and the untainted feathers. The boy in me ached to touch that animal, to feel it’s silky feathers against my fingers. But what would a boy my age do with a dove?
Margretta was waiting. I could have said that the bird wasn’t quite good enough. That would have bought it’s freedom. But I looked back into the deepest brown eyes I have ever seen and nodded. She smiled brilliantly.
"You have excellent taste." I nodded, wondering what she meant. And watched as Margretta called the boothkeeper to collect her bird, the transaction began, she bargained and won. Of course, she did. I turned to get a look at the other birds…these were for eating. I saw a gorgeous red hen, huge thing…and again the urge to touch the bird was almost overwhelming. Margretta saw me eyeing the hen.
"I’ll take the hen too. Saga, we’ll have a marvelous risotto, I tell you." The man nodded, argued prices with Margretta, gave in, collected the money.
And then the most fascinating part for a boy my age occurred…the killing of the so said hen…I watched as a burly, large woman came and took the creature from it’s cage and stretched it’s neck on a board. I was absolutely marvelled. Imagine, such streength to hold a struggling hen! The woman was fair haired and skinned, her breasts were huge and hung over her protruding belly, but her arms were simply huge in size and her apron - splashed with blood! I guess I must have been staring because Margretta gave me an equally conspiring look and began to giggle.
The hen was kicking now. The woman had pinned it’s neck and lifted a mean looking stained butcher knife. It flashed and I was entranced.The blow was quick and sharp and I watched wide-eyed as the head went flying in the air, little blood spurting. Margretta, in the roll of dutiful mother, pointed the best part…legs that still ran. The creature was kicking! It’s long thing legs moving ever so rappidly still…
I think I gasped, and maybe screamed a bit, because suddenly the three adults in that horrid little booth began to laugh. The obese woman placed the chicken upon the ground and I watched perfectly horrified as the headless bird ran a little, making the most futile circle.
I had never seen such a thing and the adults laughter was suddenly to loud and the tent too small and bright. And how the creature missing it’s head ran! I could philosophy about it’s moving feet, how it might have been searching for it’s head. How I can now understand such a search…for my head. But then just as fast as it had all started the creature’s legs simply gave way and it finally colapsed.
It was grotesque fascinatian. And I like to think that it only held me captive because I was a young boy…when I became a man…surely. But its death would be nothing to me once I became a man…I would see much more. And sometimes death is the sweetest, most precious thing you can give.
But this, this death of the chicken was the first death in my life. I was fascinated.
As I followed Margretta out of the market I held the dead hen and she the still living dove in a small wrapped box with holls along the side. She hummed rather happily.
Before I left the obese woman had asked if I wanted to keep the hen’s head. Why would I want to? I think I asked something like that. She laughed. She said the boys always wanted the head.
I took the head, wrapped in some old newspaper and tucked away in the pocket of my hand-sewn gray pants. My head, my trophy. And Margretta leaning close enough to me so I could smell her scent had whispered "I’ll show you what to do with it."
What do you do with a head?
As for that matter what do you do with a dove in a box?
I stopped dead in my tracks.
"Margretta?" We were getting close to the clearing where we had set up our camp. Being a gypsy meant never living within the boundries of the cities we toured. And it was temporary. Everything when you were a gypsy was temporary. And Margretta had taken us through a labyrinth of streets and alleys to get back to it. I saw some peculiar houses, quite dark, some extravagant but even as a child I knew that the further away we got the poorer the surroundings, the dirtier the streets. And you could see things in these darker alleys that you wouldn’t see in the main and lovely streets with those gorgeous dark and willowy homes.
"When you are like us, Saga – Kanon listen up – when you are a gypsy you must be aware that there will be those who will want to hurt you. But as I said they will only ‘want’." Margretta had explained when we were very little. She had a comb in her hair and she pulled it out to show a shiny little blade hidden inside her locks. She grinned as she flicked it expertly. "So be prepared. Kill if you would be killed. Destroy that which would destroy you. I have." And I remember she laughed without any mirth, a steel-sounding laugh.
"Margreta!" I spoke up louder this time and ran to catch up with her, she was four metres ahead of me, walking in that brisk no-nonsense walk of hers. But she was humming still, some folklore song. Kanon would know, probably. He knew these things better than I did. Their books, their songs…my twin knew them before I. She turned on her sandled heels, skirts twisting in a rush of color.
"Are you done moping, then?" She smiled slightly but it only served to pull childish string of petulancy.
"I wasn’t moping!" I had been of course. I glared at her she glared back and tapped her foot. I passed her up walking ahead of her, dangling the chiken with me. I began to humm too.
"Don’t be childish – speak if you will! Shut if you have nothing to say! Honestly, Saga, there’s not much to think over." She sounded so very exasperated that I stopped and looked back at her. Only to see her grinning at me.
And the dove clutched between her hand’s in it’s paper box.
I stumbled and tried to rationalize not an easy thing when you are barely five but then again I was always a smart child even Felix had commented on it. I tried to make understood things with my limitied vocabulary that which other children in our community never tried.
"Why do you need it?" She frowned and lifted an eyebrow my cue that I should explain myself. "The dove. Why do you want it?" I was impressed by her reaction.
For the briefest moment my Margretta’s eyes widened alarmingly. Full of anguish. And I breathed in watching her small shoulders slump and her chin waver. She looked so…small. I was the small one of the two of us…but how vulnerable she looked to me just then, if I could I would have wanted to give her my hand. To offer her comfort. Her eyes were luminous and she smiled so sadly. And then she shook her hand as if to clear it.
"You ask the strangest questions, Saga." Her voice faltered, her beautiful singing voice. I was filled with shame. "What do you think a gypsy woman like me would want with a Dove?" I shrugged, I didn’t want to prolong this. She laughed bitterly and shut her eyes shaking her head again in the same fashion as before.
"The men in our community think me a beautiful woman, Saga. Would you agree?" A tear slid down her cheek. "I said; Do you agree?"
I nodded and she nodded. She looked at me with those bright eyes and I couldn’t help but loof away from her…it was painfull to see her in the face of her own pain. I couldn’t understand it, I was too young to help her. If only I had been strong and old enough to help her. She had deserved being saved. But I didn’t, maybe because it was her fate the way it all played out. Destiny had not fallen under Margretta’s spell.
"I have forgotten, my precious love, exactly how many men have lusted for me. These men – they court me so tenderly with jewelry and clothes and perfumes. Even the men outside of our community, even those white men who aren’t gypsies. Can you imagine me, the wife of a white man?" And I couldn’t really but she sounded so broken that I nodded anyway. I felt all the inadiquacy of my age, I should have been able to make her pain less. But why would she suffer so? Margretta who laughed at men as she danced for them, tantalizyng the poor fools with the frenzy of her movements.
"And I have turned each and everyone of them down, Saga." She smirked. "And the women don’t understand why. After all, how could a woman like me not wish to marry and bare babes…oh, yes, marriage the only way to have sex. And doesn’t a woman enjoy sex? And aren’t I a woman? But I snub my nose at them, I am a woman and I have a man and I have sex!" She giggled and twirled with the box held up above her head like an offering. "And I have children, I have you and Kanon and you are mine."
"But we weren’t born of you." It was the wrong thing to say but forgive me…I was so surprised…Margretta had a man? Out of marriage. And marriage was sacred to the gypsy. I wondered what kind of man could keep Margretta’s interest.
"It doesn’t matter. I had everything I wanted, Saga. Please understand that crucial little bit, dear one."
"I still don’t understand." And I didn’t, only she looked a little angry perhaps…and I shouldn’t have asked because there it was. The same look Felix got as she came to my side and squatted before me in a manner a far cry from feminine. The box set between her knees. I was forced to look at her and I had a terrible feeling of being the hen and Margretta the knife.
"Oh, Saga, my precious baby." She cooed at me, "My darling, the dove is the symbolic sacrifice of the one who would dare come and destroy my family. My very love. The family I took so long in making. She has gotten in my way, Saga. No one gets in my way, love."
"She actually said ‘sacrifice’?" Kanon asked me as he grabbed some chips off my plate. I tossed an annoyed look at him which he rather blithely ignored as he munched on my food. We were together sitting on the curb eating our meal from home.
"She did." I stuffed the remainder of the beef down my throat and reached for the water canteen between my brother and I. Kanon beat me to it taking a rather mighty gulp. I glared and aimed at him. He chuckled and simply dodged. I sighed miserably and watched my brother’s young face grow serious.
"She is a gypsy, Saga. I think it is her nature."
"And what exactly is her nature, brother? Black magic?" Looking back he and I carried on strange conversations for children so young but we knew what were were talking about and we knew what transpired in each of our hearts. I watched his eyes grow sad. Sad for me.
"Oh, Saga. We aren’t of them, you know that. We aren’t her children or Felix’s children." I fell silent "And we aren’t gypsies! And we can sit here and perform for the crowd but it doesn’t change anything!"
I leaped up from the sidewalk and dusted off my slacks then dumped the little alluminum tray into a public trash can. I looked around me, this was one of the cities main squares, a pretty little greenery tribute to the splender of urban life. On the left of me the bus station loomed ahead, to the right a giant cluster of colorful stores stole the attention of passerbys. The square itself was entirely for pleasure, almost a little garden with it’s fine-mowed lawns, brown-wooden benches, trees growing almost everywhere and the pedestrian footpaths. All in all an excellent place for a couple of boys to make money as acrobats. Even as children we were made to work, it gave us something to do.
"Don’t be angry…" My brother afraid to hurt me. I ignored him.
"Who do you think she meant?"
"Hm?"
"The sacrifice, who do you think it is?" I turned to him and saw him look at me strangely.
"You really don’t know?" I shrugged it impatiently as if to say get on with it. He snorted. "You will, soon." Then he lit a torch and cast it into the air.
I ran as fast my legs could carry me, it was a painful pace and I fell twice on my hands and knees but both times I rose again, my anger and my despair working as my motivation. I bounded into the dark little tent, it was the middle of the night I should have been in bed for hours had I been a regular child but I was a gypsy child and such bounds were not my own. So I ran into the one place that was forbidden to me. The witches tent.
It was candle-lit and musky, an acrid smell made my nostrils flare. At first I heard nothing, then there was a curse. A man’s voice and my eyes fought to adjust to the light. A woman’s giggle followed that curse and I head something squeak…a bed.
I was young but what I saw in that little forsaken place was something that was not new to me, simply unfanthomable. My stomack lurched and my heart felt as if it would turn to stone within my chest, maybe it did. The room was both hideous and wonderful, there shelves and shelves of books and bottles and glasses, and cages where upon birds were kept, it was badly lit and like I said, it reaked of a strong smell, latter I would be accustomed to the smell, I would even come to worship it. In the center of the tent a silver star was etched upon the ground. Hecate.
But it was a little bed, almost a small cot, with tumbled blankets and sheets and pillows that had drawn my attention. I wanted to cry and scream, upon that bed lay Margretta. In Felix’s arms. Their naked forms glistened in the weak light, their arms and legs were entwined, I could hear their breathing, their grunts. Could hear Margretta weep his name, see her soft arms as they embraced him, as her nails sank into his back. I hope he felt pain, he cried out, and moved in and out of her savagely. Her legs thrust apart, it was something I could comprehend, this coupling, it was something I knew men and women did together. Hell, I even knew men and men who did this together and had heard of tales that told of women lovers. But this? The tent flaps framed my small body, I shivered more from the raging emotions in me then the cold.
His flesh against hers, brown skin melting into each other, bodies united and seperated by their heaving and thrusts, her hair formed a dark curly cloud around her face, his own unruly hair partially concealed his features. What I could see was a feral grin, her lips stretched, her hands upon his broad shoulders, clutching, possessive. And every gesture of his was spoken of a hatred, violent and careless, the way he clutched at her naked hips, and pushed into her, the way he bit into her shoulder until she screamed. It was horrible and yet…they had never seemed more alike to me. His face, her face, their hair and skin…a union of sibling, a union of pain. She screamed, she cried, and he cursed her, vile words coming from him.
I watched with my heart in my toes, I watched with tears in my eyes as he defiled a woman I had thought of as mother. But she was no mother of mine. She was nothing that ever was mine…and neither was he.
Margretta. And I understood, Margretta loved her brother, Félix.
And none but Félix. I felt a fool, I felt abandoned and betrayed. I turned as quietly as I came and stepped into the darkness to be met by Kanon, my brother, my witness. I glared at him and he nodded, looking into the slit of the tent from which I came.
"I told you." Simply spoken. And I wanted to hit him in that moment. Instead I hugged him to me, sobbing into his shoulder.
"We are all alone. You and I." I whispered against his shoulder and I felt him nod, I felt his arms go about me. My brother, the scent of my brother. Sweat and sun. How strangely comforting this little innocent embrace, how accepting. My brother and his smell of sweat and sun.
"Did you ever think otherwise?"His words hot against the back of my head. "But you and I are enough. Take what they can offer you now, Saga. And don’t expect more. You are not one of them."
Oh, but I wanted to be. I wanted to belong to a tribe, to a clan, to know that somewhere a child like me was wanted, a child too wise, a child that most found disturbing, a child who was anything but a child.
But Kanon’s words were true, I had my brother, I had Kanon, and it was enough. So I swore that I would learn from them, learn Margretta’s spells and Felix’s dances, I would learn and be better…at everything.
The year that followed I became Margretta’s student, her only student, I learned her secrets and her mother’s secrets and her mother’s mother’s secrets. I studied the generations, I became a warlock, or a wizard or something of the sort, call it what you like. I became an actor for Félix, I learned to lie and deceive and maybe, perhaps those were the greatest lessons.
And I learned of their people’s savior, I learned of a witch who called herself Hecate and I learned to hate and fear her.
But this night, tonight, I wept into my brother’s arms.
To be continued…
Note: Somehow this did not turn out as I had planned, in the original sketch of the damned thing it should have spanned over a much longer time period. Oh, well, blame the bad writer *sob*. But a second Part I will follow and finish the freak’s childhood, or so I hope :P!!!
This story is dedicated to my sister, Polis, because she is ever important and always in my thoughts. Because she gave support when others would not, because of the human being that she is. Thank you.