Hadrian's Wall (58 page)

“Extinguishing a human
life could be easy...a temptation, I would say. Driven by jealousy,
Ceredigion succumbed to this temptation, so he exposed us, breaking
one of the most elementary rules
—
one for which there is no
forgiveness or extenuating circumstances.”

“It fell to me to hunt him down and deliver
him to the Council. I knew what the sentence would be, but even so,
it should be given in assembly, so that all those who have devoted
affection and loyalty among his subjects never forget the
rules.”

“The mantles would attend the judgment and
oversee the execution, such as it ordered the treaty of mutual
supervision. Thus, the order would be maintained, as well as the
peace between the somber and the mortals.”

(...)

“I had to harden my heart when Elona dared
to enter in our fortress. Armed only with courage, she demanded a
hearing. I knew that her only wish was that I would bring back her
Hunta, the great love of her life; or that I would change her, in
order to forget that she once was a loved and happy woman”...

“But Hunta was dead and
nothing could bring him back... except for a host. But in this
case, it would not be Hunta anymore
—
it would be a beast of rotting
flesh.”

“If his blood were primordial, he could
survive Ceredigion’s onslaught... Unfortunately, there was no way
to guess who was inheriting the vitality of the first. In these
cases, the majority of humans who were infected died. It was
inevitable”...

“When I refused to change her, she pulled
her dagger from her cloak and struck her chest. With her last gasps
of breath, she told me that if I wanted her salvation I needed to
change her.

“The almond-shaped
eyes,
—
so exotic,
so mysterious to my impassive eyes, stuck widen open in horror to
my impassive eyes... Perhaps she was regretting her thoughtless act
or did not believe I would let her bleed out...bleed out until the
very end.”

“The fact is... I would.

“But then your image, my darling, was
incinerating all my judgment. I could not avoid the fate that took
you from me. My suffering was too much for me to bear.

“Just like Elona, I watched you walk
willingly to meet death... but she meant nothing to me. You, on the
other hand, meant everything.”

“I felt transported in time and space,
re-living your last moments. Thus, the events have taken place in a
flash. Unable to control myself, completely blinded by the pain of
the past that pulsed inside of me, I jumped on the poor dying girl
while the ultimate death throes shook her body. And then”...

“Behold that once again I had succumbed to
addiction. After nearly six centuries of being completely clean,
living by mechanical donations, the "taste" for assassination
threatened to fully unlock the beast.”

“Justus plucked the prey from my hands, but
it was too late. I had already infected her. If her blood were
primordial, only I remained to me wondering if she could react
being so close to death."(...)

“We later discovered that Elona’s blood was
primordial... an irony of fate that the blood of her beloved Hunta
wasn’t.”

“When she emerged from hell the first time,
she informed me that from that day her name would be different, so
she went in search of a new identity... When she returned, she said
that she would represent the community of her ancestors, the
glorious Mongols. Most surprising was her safety when she claimed
that she was prepared to stand beside me, consoling me for my
loss.”

“I was amazed at so much audacity. I frankly
told her that no one could console me. There was no rival that
could compete with you inside my heart.”

Surreal! The worst is that
I recognized that scene from my own nightmares. I was experiencing
a successive wave of
déjà
vu
. It was scary when I saw my
hallucinations and nightmares so clearly described in a text so
old. Nothing could stop me now. I turned
several pages and continued reading.]

“Since we were little
boys, we three were raised like brothers. The families did not care
about it. Our world was a world apart from Rome. The peace had
lasted a long time. There is not any animosity between
the Romans and the natives. Perhaps the Romans
who were living here no longer felt connected to the ancient
homeland. Their customs had become intertwined with the Celts’
customs, creating new rituals and ways of living. The Roman
culture—as pure as it was in Rome—was definitely lost.”

“My na
ï
ve childhood blinded me to things
that drove the human men. I did n
ot
understand what was happening around me... why people looked at me
with such horror and stayed away from me. After all, in my mother’s
home, her subjects always had affection and respect for me.
However, everything changed when the legions invaded our fields and
snatched me from my mother’s arms... I became a hostage because of
the Emperor’s determination to ensure proper behavior amongst the
rebellious tribes.

I was only six years old.”

(...)

“My foster brothers joined the Legion and
were trained to be brave soldiers like their Roman parents. When
the crisis began in the occupied territories, betrayals led to a
major retaliation—then another and another... We soon realized that
the Romans who did not take a stand against us would also be
considered traitors.”

“But my brothers could never harm us, so
they were imprisoned and tortured. The Legion did not forgive
anyone, nor did they accept traitors among their ranks. However, my
father transformed my brothers and took them with him wherever he
was hiding.”

“I heard about them some years later.”

“My father commanded my transformed brothers
to protect me until the hour of our liberation... Seeing them like
that, so different from me ... tough white flesh, disturbing
eyes... all this scared me. Was this what I would become too?"

(...)

“Unlike my brothers, my transformation
should occur naturally and no one could have predicted when this
would happen ... I was still human, thanks to the legacy of my
mother, but when the time came, I definitely embraced the cursed
legacy of my father.”

“That was not what I wanted, of course, but
I could not escape my destiny. I had the blood from the first. More
than that, I was the only original descendant. I was born to lead
my people against a threat which was imposed on humans. My father
had forged my constitution exactly as to both sources as a kind of
sign that the species should co-exist together.”

“And I could never forget it, but I still
was daring to dream that someday he would return and free me from
this burden.”

(...)

“For the Romans, I was a major threat, so
they kept me in bondage. The promise that the Roman emperor had
given to my father represented nothing to the two peoples right
now. There was no way to avoid the imminent war.”

(...)

The whip had not hurt my skin...only my
pride.”

“We were enslaved and used
as weapons of war against the rebellious Celts and Picts. We were
treated like beasts of the coliseum
—
released to entertain the
bloodthirsty crowd who wanted to see their enemies being
devoured.”

“However, we rebelled against the slavery
imposed by Rome. That’s when the war broke out.”

(...)

“The time to face ‘the red-eyes’ was
approaching. Everything was prepared for the final confrontation
and I had already made my arrangements for your abduction. I was
longing for the moment when you would be in my arms again. Although
I was an immortal and you a human, it no longer mattered... I would
live as long as you would live.”

“Not a day more.”

“After the war, when the ‘red eyes’ will no
longer represent a threat, I will take you away from my people and
yours”...

(...)

I closed the diary,
completely stunned. What the hell was all that insanity? A
hallucinatory journey through a world that could only exist in the
minds of some lunatic? What’s worse is that I felt like I was
participating in the events, as if I was following it all. Words
turned into images, sounds, and smells. Everything was so vivid, so
real! Exactly the same world as my nightmares.
Take a deep breath and keep calm!

The moisture on my cheeks
startled me. I told myself repeatedly that the codex was nothing
more than a collection of imaginative and fanciful tales. It was
just “fantastic reality”—a narrative style, something formatted in
the manner of ancient mythologies and many other works that have
surpassed the test of time, overcome the barrier of
oblivion...
The Odyssey
by Homer,
The Epic of
Gilgamesh
, Beowulf’s great deeds, recorded
in the form of a poem...or the Arthurian tales.
Whatever!
The point here is that it
sounded like advertising strategy.

Primitive, but
functional
.

So far so good, I had noticed that ancient
works exaggerated in metaphors, in figurative senses and in the
metonymies, perhaps in order to escape from censorship by whoever
was in power or because it really was the way the ancients
understood the world. But the connection between that language,
full of lines, and the true biography of the clan, was still a
puzzle to me. Where did the delusion end and the reality begin?
Yes, because none of it could be true. None of it made sense. It
could be the truth of someone interpreting the facts according to
primitive values that ruled a nebular age.

I decided to postpone this explanation.

I tried to ignore the puzzle that codex
represents and concentrate on the challenge of illustrating it. I
needed to be practical, right here, right now. What feature would
fit in the fanciful context, suffering, and obscure scene described
by the authors? Personally, I believed that Mr. Cahill should hire
a professional illustrator. He needed someone who really mastered
the techniques, not an amateur like me. He needs someone who
understands the various applications of shading, someone familiar
with the dotted technique of the great masters such as Gustave
Doré.

21

RED
LOOKS GOOD

Obviously, Doré did not work alone. He had
several assistants to finish his art work. Was it not so in most of
the studios of famous artists? Many works have only been sketched
by the great masters and at the end of an entire collective work,
it carried their signature.

However, knowing that even geniuses need
help did not console me. I was definitely not up to the task, nor
did I have the proper materials, but if I didn’t try to do
something... anything...I would never know how far I could get.
After all, artistic practice requires curiosity, initiative, and
training. I would have to start somewhere.

Unless a talent has
manifested itself very early as a fucking gift, it’s just the
constant exercise conducing us to improve the quality of our
work.
The
aspirants
to any artistic expression
needs to pursue it, regardless of the teachers’ evaluations or the
critics’ opinions.
They
have to refine their technique and expand their sensitivity
through tireless attempts—learning from their mistakes and keeping
the right frame of mind.

Unfortunately, my actual style had not
manifested since childhood as a “fucking gift.” My drawings were
grotesque, like those of any other kid my age. It was the training
I’d had that brought out a modest art expression and now I would
just have to keep training to see if something would develop
further. Without practice, it would impossible to know if my work
would become excellent, satisfactory, or remain mediocre.

Maybe I should do sketches
for the codex first and
inking
them later. This was an option I could not
discard. That would give me time to research the most appropriate
techniques while at the same time develop my own personal style
that might help to disguise my limitations while emphasizing my
strengths. It would also give me time to find someone to finalize
the art for me and contribute to the quality of the
work.

I believed that the shading
was important to work the psychological atmosphere of an epic
illustration and also highlight the fantastic language of the
narrative... Using charcoal would create the somber feeling that
the text of the codex described.
(Oh! See?
The somber!)
With a little luck, I would
get an effect close to what I wanted without having to seek
recourse with more difficult techniques which would take a lot of
time to learn.

I still had some difficulty with the ink pen
and the subtlety of the graphite pencil. I would have to refine my
technique with them, as well as produce a variety of layouts. I was
uncertain about the use of color. Strong colors came to my mind,
but for the look I wanted, I really needed more lugubrious
colors.

Wait!
So what if I used the colors only on the symbolic level? To
break the monotony of black and white, as an enhancement, an
effect... a detail that does not overshadow the main idea of
darkness in the picture, but would draw attention to it, provide
some highlight to an otherwise dismal depiction. It would be risky
because the color could disrupt the whole picture...unless I choose
only a few key objects for coloring, as in
Sin City
... In this case, I could
color the eyes—red, yellow, or jade green.