Incarnation
Authors: Emma Cornwall
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Contents
Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make.
—Bram Stoker,
Dracula
1897
O
n the stage of London’s Royal Opera House, Verdi’s
Aïda
was approaching its dramatic conclusion. Shortly, the bold warrior and his princess would suffocate in the impenetrable darkness of the tomb to which their illicit love condemned them. But not before the tenor sang his poignant farewell.
To die! So pure and lovely!
And through the yearning of thy heart
In the flower of youth to part . . .
Held breathless by the soaring music, I leaned forward so far as the constriction of my corset would allow. The box seats were a special treat for my twentieth birthday, the indulgence of my passion for opera that the other members of my family did not share. Beside me, my sister, Amanda, kept her lorgnette trained on the glittering audience. She was my elder by two years, and her cool, blond beauty contrasted with the untamable auburn curls, overly large mouth, and catlike slanted eyes that were my lot. Yet I loved Amanda all the same and
would miss her when she wed. At the same time, I envied her impending matrimony, not because of her betrothed—a stolid, boring sort whom I could never have tolerated—but because marriage would presumably bring the solution to the great mystery of sensuality, a subject that distracted me far too often.
Nearby, our father snored softly, his neatly trimmed white beard and mustache fluttering with each exhalation until our mother poked him with her fan. He started but pretended not to wake. Mamma looked very well turned out in a violet silk gown from Worth, acquired during our annual trip to Paris the just-past spring. No doubt she would remonstrate with Papa later but only gently, for their marriage was one of true affection. For the moment, she sighed and resumed her own study of the audience.
My family’s presence—so constant and commonplace in my life—did not divert me from the performance about to reach its tragic climax. I was gripped by the lovers’ plight. Surely no one deserved so terrible a fate as to be sealed away alive, condemned to eternal night. I would pay any price, make any sacrifice to escape so hideous a death. My skin crawled at the thought, as though a thousand ravenous worms moved just below the surface, feasting on me.
Even as I shuddered at so macabre a notion, the air turned dank and chill. An odor—not unpleasant—hinting at loamy earth, ancient stones, and old fire—teased my nostrils. I heard, as though far off, the wind as it moaned over wide, empty places. The torches on the stage flickered and went out. Darkness swept over all.
When the shadows parted moments later, a solitary figure commanded the stage. The stocky Italian tenor was gone. In his place stood a tall, lithe being draped in black. His pale skin
was luminous as the moon, radiating light. Ebony hair framed a high forehead above the straight blade of a nose, a chiseled mouth, and a square, firm jaw. His eyes beneath sweeping brows were wide, dark, and aglow with fierce intelligence. His appearance struck a chord deep within me. I knew him . . . somehow. But that knowledge was as yet so faint and fragmentary that I could make no sense of it.
Startled, I turned toward Amanda to see what she thought of so odd a bit of stagecraft, only to discover that my sister was gone, as were our parents and the entire rest of the audience. Their absence shattered the illusion of reality. I was dreaming, nothing more, a dream odder than any I had ever known yet from which I could not wake.
A strange lassitude gripped me. I seemed capable only of fascination—and surrender as the singer’s voice, so seductive, wrapped around me.
No, thou shall not die.
Thou treasure, too high!
Thou art too lovely!
The power and beauty of this being who commanded my attention banished all else. He reached out, opening his arms to me in a gesture that found its echo in my deepest soul. I could think only of him, respond only to him. Obey only him.
Compelled to mirror his movements, I reached out in turn. My arms, bare above long white gloves, glowed pale as the pearls that bound me tightly from wrist to elbow. The tips of my fingers extending to their fullest seemed almost to brush the air around him. A little more and I would be able to touch him . . . be drawn into his embrace . . .
But instead I encountered a rough barrier pressing down close upon me. It had the texture of wood, and felt coarse and cold to my touch. Confused, I strained harder. Abruptly, the stage and the being upon it vanished. There was only darkness, the smell of earth, a creeping chill, and the sense that something was terribly wrong. What madness was this? What travesty of twisted reason?
I must have been taken ill; a fever most likely, casting up such nightmarish phantasms as the mind is prone to under duress. But no, that could not be true. It was all real . . . all of it. Yet it was not. The performance of
Aïda
had taken place a few months before; I remembered it clearly. But no otherworldly singer had appeared to preempt the stage. The opera had ended as it always did, with applause for the dead lovers and a rush to get on to the rest of the evening’s entertainment.
A few days after that performance, my family and I had returned to our country home by the sea in Whitby. Shards of memory flew together and I realized that it was there I had encountered the luminous being. At a party on a neighboring estate, our eyes had touched, nothing more, but enough. From that moment my sense of knowing him began.
Several nights later, as we came from Christmas Eve Mass into the chill darkness around the country church, I saw him among the gravestones, leaning against the side of a tomb, a cheroot burning in his hand.
And once more, on the eve of the new year, I opened the window of my bedroom, intent on catching the snowflakes that fell so softly over the hushed world, only to find him sitting, seeming at his ease, on the roof nearby. He bestowed a smile on me before I retreated, certain that I was dreaming, to the safety of my virgin bed.
Memory pressed against the barriers of my mind. I resisted, clinging to the image of myself inviolate as I had then been, but the truth would not be denied. That same night, I ventured out, drawn by a compulsion I could neither deny nor comprehend. On a cliff above the sea, he awaited me. I went to him without hesitation, heedless of the chilled air and the sharp stones beneath my feet. In his arms, I accepted his embrace, breathed in the tantalizing scent of his cool skin with its hints of cedar and sage, and felt the touch of his mouth along the pulse of my neck where my lifeblood coursed.
Ecstasy swept over me, but too swiftly thereafter terror struck. Others knew what had happened . . . were hunting me . . . determined to destroy what I had become. Moonlight glinted on a stake held high, about to be driven into my breast. . . . The earth opened to receive me. . . .
A scream swelled in my throat, only to be silenced by the lyrics of
Aïda
drawn from my memory even as the singer drew me from the tomb of my unnatural sleep.
Ah, could my utmost pains
Remove this fatal stone!
Reaching out frantically in all directions, I faced the terrifying truth. I was not within the bosom of my indulgent family. Instead, I lay within the rude embrace of a narrow wooden box. Unlike Aïda, no lover shared my confinement; I was alone. Nor had I merited a gracious burial. No silk-lined, pillowed casket for me, far less a regal tomb. Dirt drifted through cracks in the crudely hewn boards. The decay of vanished summers settled in my nose. . . .