Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (34 page)

             
“Because your way of telling lies is too charming,” I winked at him and he smiled sincerely before going on to explain his thesis.

             
“But haven’t you noticed it?” his eyes were passionately fixed on mine and I nodded that I was understanding him, while trying not to get too distracted by his striking handsomeness. “They say: ‘Be yourself!’, and then the more I exaggerate and over-dramatize, the more natural they say it has been –”

             
“I guess that this piece of advice you’ve been given is for common mortals only,” I shrugged without joking and Cardew stared more carefully at me to totally sink in what I was saying; I couldn’t deny I was feeling flattered that he was paying as much attention to my words as to the way I moved. “I mean, for people who aren’t used to being perfectly in control of their emotions all the time –”

             
Thoughtful for a moment, Cardew let his stare rove somewhere above my head, then nodded slowly before answering.

             
“Maybe you are right –” his voice sounded a bit dreamy, but, nevertheless, the deep reflections which I had absorbed him in didn’t prevent him from noticing how the intensifying coldness of the air was already making me shiver perceptibly.

             
In a rather instinctive reaction, his arm instantly wrapped around my waist, and that made a surge of warmth rise in my chest, as though he had at once shielded me from all danger as well as from the oncoming cold. The park we were walking through was dark and moist, inspiring me with a variety of ill-boding premonitions, but his presence there was enough to chase the more rational of them away, and to make all the others seem too insignificant...

             
“I ordered some food before we went out,” Cardew informed me with satisfaction while widely opening the door in front of me, and brushed my lips with a welcome kiss before inviting me to walk in. “You can go look for your books if you don’t know where you left them, and I’ll check if everything in the dining room is alright –”

             
“So you’ve been planning it?” I burst into quiet but content chuckle, shaking my head. “Should I feel like a victim?”

             
“Like my prey, more or less,” he winked jokingly and disappeared, leaving me alone in the corridor.

             
The sound of an utterly familiar song attracted my attention as I was returning from the living room with a pile of textbooks in my arms, so I lightly pushed the door to the room where Cardew was, and peered inside to check what atmosphere he had created for me.

             
Crystal fairytale-like beautiful stemmed glasses, solemn seductive dark-red satin, silently softly burning candles – Cardew was keen on such luxurious indulgences, and I couldn’t help admitting that I myself was sharing this fondness of his to a great extent.

             
“You are making it look pretty romantic for just an ordinary rehearsal,” I remarked with a genuine smile and closed the door behind myself – a gesture which made him chuckle under his breath. “This is the song from that part of the play where we dance, isn’t it?”

             
“I doubt you can forget it,” Cardew turned to face me and the fluttering golden light of the candles – fire tamed to bring loveliness but almost completely deprived of the ability to arise danger – gave soft silky brick-coloured shades to his hair. “I was thinking of this hypothesis that dramatizing makes things look more real, and I wanted to try it out –”

             
“And I’m your human guinea-pig then?” I teased but he didn’t take offence.

             
“Many girls would metaphorically die to be in your place,” he shrugged with an angelical smile, but ceased the joke before I had had enough time to set my jealousy in motion. “Just that they don’t stand even the slightest chance –”

             
“Should I ask why, or are you in the mood of praising me without my begging for it?” I laughed while Cardew was hypnotically attracting me in his embrace and then made me twirl in his arms just like in the dance of the play.

             
“I can’t simply tell you that you are beautiful –” he smirked when I glared at him mock-threateningly. “Because you’re not simply beautiful, lovely, you are... brutally beautiful –”

             
“Brutally beautiful?” I repeated in quiet giggling. “What do you mean?”

             
Cardew was smiling, too, but his expression was earnest as he went on.

             
“That you aren’t pretty-and-helpless like the other girls out there –” the gray of his eyes was smooth and pearly like satin, their mild radiance deceptively calm when he smiled mysteriously and gave me a wink as if we were both hiding the same secret from the outer world. “You do possess a strong personality and this is something about you I truly admire – and you know that my criteria are too high for anyone else to reach –”

             
And he twirled me around once again, the soft flowing movement reminding me of my role...

             
Which made me think of the play in general and then – unintentionally – about the day when I first met him...

             
He had been standing there, so fantastically proud in his isolation in the centre of the stage, so impressive and unattainable, so hypnotically attractive...

             
What would have happened if I hadn’t gone to that casting, I wondered some time later while Cardew was escorting me back to my hostel and the two of us were walking hand in hand through the already calm town. Would we have met under different circumstances – in another time and place?

             
Or in another life...             

             
And would I then have again those nightmares about the sacrifice...

             
“Here we are,” Cardew’s melodious voice gently pinned my attention to the fact that we were on my doorstep; he chuckled noiselessly at my dreamy distraction, “Good luck with your studying –”

             
And he really left me alone like he had promised – just that this happened after such an amazing goodbye kiss that I needed several minutes in silence to recover from its mesmerising influence, and to tuck it far enough in my memories to be able to concentrate on something else at all.

             
‘If we go on like this, neither of us will study here next year!’ I thought while locking the door and heading towards the desk.

             
And then I didn’t even know how right I was...

                                          “Odda!” I suppressed my exclamation not to startle the restless spirit.

             
But I had immediately recognized the ghost girl in the long white gown – she was so frequent a guest in my nightmares that I doubted I would ever be able to forget her, even if I never saw her again.

             
I hadn’t had such troubled dreams since the one indicating the town I was to go to, but the new vision began very purposefully, as soon as I fell asleep, and it would be a pure lie if I said that it surprised me – I had been sharply on guard during this whole period, expecting to see something sinister again every single time I had closed my eyes since that first night of damnation...

             
I knew that it couldn’t all end just like this, without a culmination.

             
Odda’s ghost looked just in the way in which I could recall it from the nightmares before – half-transparent and woven of graceful celestial light, and it was her own gravestone she was leaning on, just that it all felt as if we weren’t in the cemetery as no other graves were to be seen anywhere around.

             
Just blackness...

             
The ghost turned her head to gaze at me with large and amazingly empty deep sorrowful eyes, and I shuddered at the thought that this time she could see me.

             
“Freya –” Odda’s voice sounded somehow hollow and muffled, and – despite the instinctive dread which was haunting my mind like unsubstantial ragged spring clouds – silver-plated by the precious rare gleaming gossamers streaming down from a crystal-clear new-born moon – smoothly floating over the ink-blue heavens of night – I instinctively took a step towards her to hear better; her face was covered in immaterial tears, and the intonation with which she pronounced my name sounded blurred from weeping, “Freya... Your life is in danger –”

             
“I need to speak to you!” I whispered, too, as my casual intonation would have sounded like rude shouting compared to her silent fragile tone. “Thank you for coming to my dream, I have to know the truth –”

             
“Cardew will kill you!” Odda’s sobs exploded into a dramatic outburst, and she hid her face in her hands to cover up the stream of tears. “He will kill you like he killed me –”

             
“What happened to you?” I took a step aside to be able to see her face if she looked up at all; the whole fallen gravestone was in her lucent metaphysical tears and I could feel grief rise in my chest, too.

             
Was it at her suggestion?...

             
“I... loved him –” the girl’s voice betrayed her and she just noiselessly shook her head and raised it to fix her transparently blue eyes back on mine; the tragical sorrow in them was so staggering it looked too heart-felt not to be believable. “Just like you love him at present, and I thought that he loved me back – like you think now –”

             
My skin felt icy as the whole of me was burning into dozens of emotions on the inside.

             
Was this more than a nightmare? Could ghosts really speak to living people?...

             
Was the poor hurt girl telling the truth...

             
But how could I doubt, why would she lie to me?...

             
“I am honest with you,” Odda sighed and bit her lips ruefully. “I know that you can’t trust me immediately, but let me tell you everything first –”

             
“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to offend you,” I hurried to say, as it was in fact true. “Please go on, I’m listening carefully –”

             
“Thank you –” the ghost sighed and sank in utter mournful silence – so grievous and total that I doubted she was intending to say anything more; her fingers were following the outlines of the words engraved on the tomb she was sitting on, and probably subconsciously lingering the most around the word ‘beloved’. “Cardew never told you he loved you, did he –”

             
“Well –” I wondered how to formulate my answer, having recalled the evening when he had been ready and determined enough – and he would have said it if I hadn’t stopped him. “He almost did once –”

             
Odda sighed again and went on tangling her legs from the edge of the fallen gravestone, her head swinging from side to side in a display of hopelessness.

             
“He just cannot pronounce it,” her voice sounded as though she was still in mourning of her own death, and I didn’t miss to remark in my mind that I wouldn’t make such an excessively self-pitying sorrowful ghost one day, no matter what happened to me and caused my perdition. “He is unable to feel anything, including love.”

             
“This is a metaphor, right?” I blinked in a lack of understanding – or rather, in the lack of the desire to try to understand. “I mean, everybody feels up to some extent, even if it’s just for the most basic things – cold, hunger, exhaustion –”

             
The edges of Odda’s mouth shuddered sadly and she broke another sigh into the heavy tragedy-soaked air.

             
“That’s the worst thing about Cardew,” she uttered it like a sacred confession – that made me shiver with fear. “He does feel attraction – and he can be too attractive in return – you have felt this, too, he’s great at it, irresistible –” her thick sticky regret was slowly dripping like blood through the cuts her words were leaving in my memory, and the dark torturing stains it was leaving behind were burning through my soul and leaving marks I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to erase to the fullest. “Attention, roses, stares, kisses – until you forget who he can be –”