Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (44 page)

             
And – combined with my own ominous premonitions – this was already too much!

             
“I won’t die!” I protested stubbornly, without releasing all the anger aroused inside me, but still, sounding far from trustful towards her. “I believe that Cardew loves me, too!”

             
“But that’s just another reason for him to hurt you!” the half-transparent girl was ready to burst into tears again, and I could sense that it was not my supposed-to-be death that she would cry for. “Love makes him feel weak and –”

             
“He is too strong to hurt me,” I declared proudly and my chin rose automatically; my voice was giving away the unbreakable determination burning inside me as I pronounced my final decision, “But if it’s my death that he wants, then I’ll die with pleasure! –”

             
Odda looked at me with a mix of disbelief and pity, but something was hinting me that – had she been alive, she would have instantly thrown herself forwards into a fierce attack to tear me to pieces.

             
What had I done to her?!?...

             
“You’re blocking me on purpose, you don’t want me to help you –” the fury in her voice was already easily perceptible, and it didn’t take much to understand she was berserk on the inside as she turned her back on me and started to walk away while pronouncing, “Then I can’t save you.”

             
“Wait!” I called to stop her while still wondering why my resistance to follow her advice was making her so angry – what if her fate from then on depended on making the good deed of saving me?... “Why were you here now – you said we would only meet again if the worst has happened to me –”

             
Then Odda turned to face me again, long thin tufts of straight transparent-blond hair spilling furiously behind her back as she pierced me with her eyes with unusual ferociousness.

             
“You are dead, Freya –” her voice was, too. “Almost –”

             
And in the very next moment, I found myself laying awake on my back in Cardew’s bed, and Cardew himself was staring at me from above, his body bowed threateningly above mine, hands leaning aside from my shoulders, his face so close to me that I could sense his breathing more clearly than my own.

             
But not until I felt the harshness of the intense expression in his steely eyes did I realize that... I had been speaking in my sleep!...

             
Oh gods! Cardew knew everything!...

             
So Odda had been right.

             
I really was almost dead.

             
It was just a matter of time...

             
Time which had already passed.

             
                            “Cardew!” I cried out with genuine horror, and, obeying a spontaneous impulse, raised and clasped him in a tight shivering hug. “I’m so terribly sorry –”

             
I heard him exhale instead of an answer, and then he lifted me to a sitting position to gaze earnestly at my eyes point-blank; if there had been even a hint of menace in the rigid granite shade of his stare, I would have fainted straightaway, given how tense with fright I was on the inside – but, strangely, the expression in his eyes was somehow unusually empty.

             
As if he hadn’t chosen which role to play...

             
“Tell me everything, Freya,” his voice was flawlessly composed, as though he still hadn’t decided what emotion to present for me. “Everything you know about Odda.”

             
I blinked to chase my tears away, and stared back at Cardew, but could read no feelings on his face – a statue of silence would be more passionate than him in this moment, as though he had no soul just like it.

             
“I... Before I met you, I started having the same nightmares, repeating again and again –” I wasn’t brave enough to look in the immeasurable but locked depths of his eyes, so I was helplessly staring at his hand motionlessly laying on the bed cover. “I was seeing an ancient sacrifice – a nightmarish sacrifice – eleven men in a circle, and the twelfth one killing a girl with a knife –”

             
Cardew’s hand didn’t even tremble, and that encouraged me enough to go on.

             
“Then the nightmares changed –” I bit my lips not to burst into weeping again; I had always considered myself good with words, but that night everything felt so different I didn’t know if I was myself at all. “There started appearing signs in them which were hinting that you were the executioner and... I was so scared –”

             
His fingers shivered as if from coldness; I was on the edge of breaking down.

             
“Those visions went on –” my voice was hollow and weak, and I had to gather all my strength to carry on; oh, if only I could stop this confession, throw in the safety his arms could offer me, open up and let him read in my heart everything that I had ever thought and felt...

             
“I dreamt of a graveyard, and I saw the name Odda on one of the tombstones – the ghost of the girl from the sacrifice was there, too, and I realized that they were the same person –” I swallowed and hid my face in my palms not to look at him, although he was so motionless and out of breath I could swear I was all alone in the room.

             
My voice echoed emptily under the canopy of the bed. All I knew was that Cardew’s eyes were not on me, but I couldn’t define if he had closed them or was staring at the vain space.

             
What was he thinking of me? What was he feeling?

             
Was he capable of feeling at all?...

             
“I needed to know if there was anything true in those nightmares, so I went to several graveyards around, but none was the one from my visions,” I hurried to admit; a premonition was making me feel as though he knew everything in the whole universe, including my little insignificant secrets that didn’t matter anymore. “Then in one nightmare I was shown a map –”

             
Silence.

             
Heavy and lifeless, like the eternal ice that never leaves the depths of the frozen northern lands...

             
It made me feel so unbearably cold that I sensed the extreme craving for the fierce strength of Fire, even if its touch destructed me, and I opened my eyes to look at Cardew: the movement of my head attracted his attention mechanically, and he glanced at my face for a single moment before looking down again with a thoughtful expression; I was thankful that he didn’t stare at me right then, as my heart was already racing desperately, and would have simply exploded.

             
“And –” he was almost whispering, but no emotion was making his intonation tremble – it was even and inexpressive, as though he was a puppet which had somehow managed to gain control over itself, but didn’t know how to choose what emotions to fake, and its handsome face capable of expressing all human feelings in an outstandingly persuasive way was remaining as blank as its being was on the inside. “You went to my native town?”

             
“Yes!” I nervously bit my lips but yet, he didn’t react – due to his perfect acting abilities – or just because of his utter lack of sensitivity. “Cardew, I’m so sorry! –”

             
‘Calm down, lovely,’ his eyes comforted me as my tone was sobbing, and his voice was far softer than I had expected when he asked, “What did they tell you about Odda there?”

             
“That she was killed or had probably committed suicide, and –” the taste of blood was mixing with the salty tears running down to my lips. “That you were... one of the suspects of her death –”

             
The tension with which Cardew took his next breath made me startle and I instantly raised my head to follow his movement; a feeling blinked in his eyes for just a fraction of the second and I couldn’t recognize it so quickly, but I could swear that there had been alarm in it, too.

             
Had I touched an open burning wound?

             
“Did you see my brother?” Cardew’s voice had unnoticeably gone a bit wheezy, as if he couldn’t inhale deeply enough.

             
“No,” I confessed, wondering what that unknown young man was like. “But I met a boy named Preston –”

             
The edges of Cardew’s mouth winced slightly. “And he told you that –”

             
I made a pause to try to understand his attitude towards his former best friend by his intonation, but his tone was still so murderously even it sounded dead.

             
“That you have never killed anyone,” I glanced towards the dark overcast skies in his eyes – their leaden cloudiness was making me worry not about my life but about his soul.

             
Had it ever existed?...

             
“But –” Cardew placed an intentionally artificial smile on his stunning face and I shuddered with the ominous feeling this sight was inevitably inspiring. “You didn’t believe him, did you?”

             
If we were on stage, the background music would have reinforced with the intensify of an oncoming avalanche; maybe my character was supposed to fear, maybe – to be anxious and to crave for the chance to immediately run away, but in that moment all that the real me desired was to press Cardew in my arms and to confess the whole truth to him.

             
I restricted myself to the second, as although the balance of composure he was maintaining looked stable, I could intuitively perceive its fragility.

             
Maybe he only wished he couldn’t feel...

             
“It was not about his words, not about facts –” I slowly shook my head and sighed, rising eyes to my boy’s, and letting my honesty pour out onto him in its purest and most sincere form. “That night on my way back to here, I realized that your past doesn’t matter to me at all.”

             
A flash of surprise Cardew wasn’t fast enough to suppress exploded in his gaze, powerful and overwhelming, and I stared intensely into his eyes – not piercing him in an attempt to read his mind but, on the contrary, trying to make him read my own, ordering and begging him to see all my emotions there and judge them mercilessly, and once again expressing what I had just told him.

             
My hand stretching with the palm up stopped in the air between us in expectation of his decision, but he was too deeply sunk in his own inner reflections to take it. I didn’t reach for his secrets, although the hypnotic eye contact between us was already established – instead, I let him touch my soul so as to make him trust me, and he cautiously dived in its farthest depths to reach hidden secret corners for whose existence even I myself didn’t know anything.

             
It was as though he was hunting alone inside the unexplored caves of a metaphorical coral reef, where he could find precious pearls whose smooth majestic radiance would charm him, or he could meet lethal beasts his instincts would advise him to kill – if he hurt either creature, he would hurt me, too, but I had let him take this decision by himself – I believed he was strong enough not to feel threatened by their closeness and to start believing me because of what he had seen in my soul, not just because of the fact that I had let him in.

             
No, I wasn’t breaking down in front of Cardew, I was not under the control of despair, weakness or grief: I was just sitting in front of him, my face serious but my eyes smiling, illuminated by numerous feelings, and I was waiting...