Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (39 page)

             
Provoking? Maybe... but mixed with a great deal of disappointment.

             
“You only used to be my god!” I bit my lips and started to turn my back on him without a farewell – our last meeting before the fatal one...

             
The clear ringing sound of a slap resounded throughout the hall into the tense dead silence, and its echo repeated several times below the dark ceiling.

             
My body collapsed on the floor in Cardew’s feet and overturned several times before it stopped by the end of the stage, my hair spilling around as I raised my head a bit with a tortured moan.

             
There he was, standing above me, breathing heavily, his hands stiffly still as he was unsure what to do, and I was the only one who could see the hidden triumph in his eyes.

             
I repressed my smile and gave out another helpless groan; our improvisation had gone perfectly.

             
The same idea of this improvement in the script had blinked briskly in our minds at the very same moment, and we had understood each other without words: from aside it had looked as if my boy’s palm had met with my cheek in a painful collision that had brought me down, but the truth was that the contact between them had been nothing but a gentle caress – his other hand had skilfully and unnoticeably produced the soundtrack of the strike, and I had just flung my head aside as if because of the slap, and then thrown myself on the floor and turned on it a couple of times, into a twirling mess of sharply scarlet veils. Had he really hit me with such tameless uncontrolled force, I would have not only tumbled down on the stage but landed directly into the first rows of the audience, if not farther.

             
But when I jumped on my feet and tossed my hair around – a gesture my liking for heavy music had made natural for me – it was already my fury that was ruling the stage and the attention of the audience.

             
“Never treat a woman like this, no matter if you’re a god or a cursed human – never in your life, did you hear me!?!” I screamed, my forefinger threatening the supreme deity as if he was nothing but an ordinary mortal being standing in front of the rage of a whole mighty ocean, filled not with water but pure anger. “You failed as my god but to you I still am a goddess!”

             
And I finally ran off-stage, breathless and excited, hurrying to get to the place from where I could see Cardew without being seen, and to hear what he would add before following me.

             
The wave of admiration hit me more strongly than his fist would have, and I couldn’t suppress my silent exclamation: Cardew had chosen to show his character’s feelings not with words but with the expressions of his face only, and his surprise and anger slowly melted away into thoughtfulness, then sorrowful regret.

             
‘She was right,’ everyone could read on his character’s face. ‘I failed, but I still love her –’

             
Then, in several moments of silent staring, he shook his head decisively, and, after an inner struggle we all witnessed with crystal clarity, he voiced the decision he had managed to reach.

             
“The war of mortals will be stopped!” it was the supreme authority in his voice again, and, neglecting his hurt feelings, the deity turned his back on the audience and disappeared backstage – and, a step later, crashed right into my hug.

             
“You are the amazing one!” I didn’t save him my enthusiastic admiration. “Anyone can play well with you!”

             
Deaf to all other praise, Cardew laughed mildly and took me off the ground, twirling me around himself like in the dance, as if the two of us were completely alone there.

             
“But I cannot play like that with anyone else!” he whispered in my hair while I was taking my time to inhale the familiar distractingly appealing scent of his perfume before he left me on my feet again.

             
“Cardew, Freya, what were you doing?!” Mr Shelton appeared from nowhere and asked us with amazement – anxiety and worry not lacking in his tone either. “Did you break up, what happened?”

             
“Wait until you see the final!” Cardew winked at everybody and darted after me as I playfully caught his hand and lightly pulled him aside.

             
“Am I to be afraid?” the producer called after us and I turned to answer before disappearing.

             
“No,” my tone was as joking as serious. “But you should be extremely horrified! –”

                                          The scene with the battle was so attractively impressive that I felt sorry my role wasn’t letting me take part in it, too: the numerous effects of sound and light were heating the atmosphere, many people in medieval clothes on stage shouting and attacking one another, falling theatrically dead and triumphing over metaphorically killed enemies, rising and running around, everything merging into a real uncontrolled mess.

             
And the figure standing out in that gray-dominated noisy crowd was Cardew’s – strong, ferocious and victorious – the god among mortals, the star among specks of dust. The shiny chain-armour suited him more than I could have supposed, and in it he looked more roughly masculine and majestic – the obvious lord of the situation, the one blessed with the ability to win every time.

             
The producer hadn’t agreed to let Cardew have an alive horse for that episode, but everyone could only regret about that, as the sight would have been even more imposing. Cardew had claimed he was capable of keeping a stallion under perfect control, no matter what a chaos he was in the middle of, and I was sure that he was certain in his abilities as he dared to declare them like this; anyway, I could easily imagine him in the role of a medieval knight – and although that was not the part I would have thought he matched when I had first seen him, I couldn’t deny that his features were noble enough for it.

             
But was his soul?...

             
Well, it didn’t matter – he was too good a liar to pay any attention to the truth at all.

             
A suppressed moan pinned my attention to Cardew again and I even got surprised that I had for a moment managed to move my eyes off him; hurt by another god who wanted to take his place, he was falling towards the ground, his hand pressed to a realistically bleeding wound.

             
The sight made me shudder with shock – he had presented the pain from the fresh wound so naturally that I had to repeat to myself several times that it was all a part of the script, while I was watching the fake blood colour up his clothes in the same wine-crimson shade his hair overall had in that moment.

             
“He’s dying!” someone from the mortals called in panic. “Our god is dying! –”

             
And then it finally was my turn!

             
Cardew was twisting on the floor into heart-breaking torments when I appeared with sneaking movements close to the curtains, but – as everyone instantly caught sight of me, his treacherous enemy disappeared immediately and with silent dread, his courage evaporating in the heat of the limelight.

             
“Oh no!” I screamed hysterically and rushed towards Cardew – half of the cast had later joked with me about my hysteria being too realistic, but I had taken it for a compliment so as not to have to argue with people I didn’t enjoy even speaking to.

             
“Adorable!” my fingers fixed on Cardew’s shoulders and I vigorously shook him to make him come round, as he had lost his consciousness and was tossing around convulsively. “Adorable! I’m here, love, can you hear me?! –”

             
“Ah –” the young man urged his eyes opened and breathed out with difficulty, like he was drowning in the inhaled air; there was something magical about his ability to present everything so realistically, and I was sure that many film directors would do anything to work with him, as – in a movie, millions and millions of the small but flawless details of his performance would be revealed to the audience thirsty for perfection. “Am I dead, lovely? –”

             
“No, my love, don’t speak of death!” I exclaimed with real horror; his precise play was making me respond to it like a mirror reflection, and it was as though he was really inspiring in me the feelings I was supposed to show. “You stopped the war, now the world is saved! –”

             
Cardew’s breathing was uneven, and his fingers that squeezed mine were covered in wet warm blood, looking too real to let me relax.

             
“You didn’t want to let me fight... You have tried to protect me –” he uttered with guilt and lifted my hand to press it to his lips with feverish morbid passion.

             
“I was a coward,” biting my lips wasn’t helping much as I was struggling to tame my voice which was about to crash down to sobbing; he was really making the whole cast take their roles to heart, but I in particular had the honour to be stricken by his talent from almost no distance, and was feeling the tragedy on stage too genuine, as though he was really dying in my feet; I could suppose that I would need much inner strength to eventually recover from the influence this scene had on my soul. “And an egoist, I didn’t want to lose you –”

             
“You lost me a long time ago, lovely –” Cardew protested with quiet but ferocious self-accusation and, as he slid off the script again, I felt the appalling scene even closer to myself, horrifyingly close. “I failed as your god – you admitted it, too –”

             
“No!” my heavy tears naturally found their way down my cheeks and I didn’t have the strength to decide to wipe them away; after the play I received many compliments on that supposed ability of mine to burst into crying whenever I wanted, but only I was completely aware of how it had happened then: those tears had been real – Cardew had made me feel them for real. “I was wrong – and too angry to judge correctly! You’ve always been perfect –”

             
“Can you forgive me that I hit you in the face?” the deity named his greatest sin against me, and I pressed my eyes closed for a moment, although I didn’t hesitate about my reply.

             
“I do,” I made an attempt to smile angelically but the distorted mournful grimace that appeared on my face instead was one of pain. “I really deserved it.”

             
“No –” while removing the abundant tears from my wet skin, his hand involuntarily stained me with his – hopefully fake – blood, but I didn’t protest or pull back to preserve my clothes from it – his uncertain but gentle touch was an evidence that he was alive – still alive. “You were right, I made a mistake –”

             
“It wasn’t fatal –” I reassured him with the too-cheerful but shivering tone I really would use if he was wounded and in danger; the music behind was getting to its deepest and most dramatic tones, the thick luxurious caressing sound of a double bass intensifying the atmosphere as if it was filling it with sweet heated electricity.

             
It was time for one of the main character to die...

             
Cardew’s head swung lifelessly on his neck in my hands, and I called him with a panicked voice through the veil of my tears. The melody filling the hall with its radiant grace was going faster and faster, twirling around like an enraged oncoming hurricane, the contrabass burst into deep disconsolate sobbing, and several restless violins hurried to start soothing it, but their high-pitched laments were so sorrowful that I felt the urge to weep for real; a choir was singing somewhere in the background of the record and the sinisterly perfect unity of their voices was setting my hair on its edges – everything was so tragical and so beautiful that I prolonged the moment of the culmination, as, after it, my role would be over.