Nightmarish Sacrifice (Cardew) (8 page)

             
“I can sense it,” my tone had instinctively lowered to respectful whispering; dreamy but increasingly wary, I stepped closer to the pieces of ritualistic rock, and stretched my hand as if to fondle lightly their rough shabby surface, but was gently stopped by the sinister feeling that a lightning would come out of nowhere and strike me dead if I involuntarily desecrated their rest with my not divine touch. “Do you know anything about them for sure?”

             
“No, but I like hypothesizing,” Cardew smiled and relaxed on the ground, negligently leaning his back against the largest piece of unknown granite-like stone as if he was feeling perfectly at home beside what had possibly been a pagan altar lavishly bathed in sacrificed blood just several centuries ago. “It does give a mysterious thrill if you imagine it lively enough –”

             
“Ah –” I shuddered lightly and hesitated whether to sit down at all; the recollection of the nightmare had returned to me with the full power of its oppressive mood, and I couldn’t chase the image of the horrified sacrificed girl and the circle of eleven out of my tortured mind.

             
“What’s wrong?” Cardew’s penetrating eyes fixed onto me with alarm, and that awoke the instinctive fright of him inside me again.

             
Danger, danger!

             
“Nothing,” I regained complete control over my actions and sat down a bit aside from him, pretending that I was too occupied with exploring the shapes of the stones and that this had been the reason for my distraction. “I was just wondering what kind of rites it had been used for.”

             
“Various,” he answered with a shrug and took a small dark-red satin pouch out of his pocket while his knife-gray eyes were searchingly exploring the calm depths of mine. “Do you want us to try a simple one?”

             
“Oh, casting runes!” I smiled more widely, having guessed what he was about to suggest; I was familiar with this kind of fortune telling, and was therefore feeling more in control of the situation. “A nice method of divination, indeed.”

             
“Indeed,” Cardew nodded, too, glad that I was enlightened in the question, and handed the pouch to me; its cloth was smooth and warm under my fingers as I lightly passed my hand over it before unbinding the strings holding it closed, and it eagerly opened on my knees with a silent melodious clink.

             
The set of stones was much like what I had seen and possessed myself, but, instead of some more common mundane material, Cardew’s were crafted out of shiny polished obsidian, and each had the striking unexpected shape of a perfect hexagon, exactly equal to the others, a single rune engraved deeply into each of them with another whole piece of refined intense blood-red gem.

             
”Ruby,” Cardew prompted with a wink. “In obsidian, that makes the combination dramatic.”

             
“For sure,” I uttered, staring at the breathtakingly beautiful precious stones. “But don’t they get scratched if they hit one another all the time?”

             
“They do,” he shrugged indifferently and reached to pick one to have a closer look. “Material things are not forever.”

             
I raised my head and gazed deeply into his face to purposefully attract his stare on me, but he didn’t look up, as he was observing his fingers play with the hexagon he had chosen – or rather, which had chosen him. The dim grayish light the skies were radiating was turning the crimson of his hair into ashy-dark, and his skin looked unnaturally white, as though he had never been kissed by the rays of the sun…

             
Kissed? Why were my thoughts always turning in this temptingly addictive direction when I was so seductively close to him, even when they were referring to it purely metaphorically?

             
“Then what is eternal?” I dared to ask and my intonation trembled slightly with quiet tremulous excitement; something in his tone had hinted me that he did know the answer, that he had managed to reveal by himself an ultimate secret metaphysical truth nobody else had ever understood, and the special mystifying sense in the air around was giving me hopes that he would at least give me a sign if I had been right about that.

             
Cardew insistently fixed his terrifying but adorable eyes inside mine, and the little part of me which wasn’t utterly hypnotized by them remarked that it was as if they were reflecting the dark ancient gray shade of the stone he had leant back on.

             
“The soul,” he pronounced it solemnly and I felt the word dissolve into the silence while still trembling around into my subconsciousness.

             
The soul...

             
“The soul –” I repeated hardly audibly and he nodded slightly, mechanically playing with the black gem in his hands; the ruby line cutting inside the hexagon was forming the rune of strength – just the same as the one I had seen in my nightmare – but I managed to overcome the reminiscence so as to be able to ask my vital question. “And how about... love?”

             
A short pause filled with unspoken thoughts followed, but I could perceive that Cardew already had the answer prepared.

             
And that this answer was not created just so as to please me…

             
“No,” he slowly shook his head after a moment and returned the obsidian with the rune back to the others, where it gave out a quiet tinkle as it hit against them, a new fresh mark scarring its mirror-smooth surface. “At least not in the sense you mean. Sensual love can only last for a lifetime – whereas love as a state of mind is eternal –”

             
Feeling suddenly helpless, I gasped for some life-giving air: Cardew’s intense staring was suffocating me, as though he was ruthlessly trying to get to the bottom of my soul with his penetrating eyes, as opaque-black as the obsidian pieces spilled in my lap, and I couldn’t breathe freely from the subconscious desperate effort to withstand his forceful attack.

             
Having noticed my uneasiness, Cardew smiled lightly and looked away, as if only to let me relax.

             
But what I had seen from his character was convincing me that he wouldn’t make an effort just to comfort me – maybe there was a secret in his eyes – a secret he absolutely needed to hide – and he was afraid that getting to the depth of my soul would leave his own one open for me to roam in...

             
“So –” he started again, far more cheerfully, and the safe friendly notes played joyfully in his tone. “Think of a question now, close your eyes, and pick a rune –”

             
“No way!” I protested with giggling and placed all the obsidian pieces on the grass between me and him. “I’m not closing my eyes when you’re here!”

             
“Why?” Cardew blinked with well-played naivety. “Because you can’t resist watching me? –”

             
Amused by his overly confident logic, I burst into loud free laughter and that prevented me from noticing that he had darted in a lightning-speed attack towards me – so I realized it a moment after he had already defeated me – easily as he had received no resistance – and I was lying on my back on the ground, his hands pinning my shoulders down, his cruel smile too close to me to let me be tranquil.

             
“Or simply because you’re afraid of getting attacked?!” he finished calmly and laughed noiselessly with utter complacency while watching me vainly toss in his arms.

             
“Both,” I laughed out rather defensively, as he looked so serious that I couldn’t determine if he was still joking, or my worries had become less unfounded. “Let go!”

             
Maybe because of my furious counter-attack, or just thanks to the fact that Cardew did loosen his grip indeed, I managed to finally wrench myself out of his arms, and, having regained my self-confidence, I cast him a rather scornful glance. “If you want to tell me something personal, go straight – I already warned you that I’d love to break your heart –”

             
Pleased, he chuckled with obvious content, and leant back on the monument again, his slant gaze capable of making me freeze into horror and set me ablaze with fury at the very same moment.

             
“Easy, lovely, I’m not trying to violate you,” he smirked slightly while his hand was mechanically shuffling the amazingly beautiful stones with the runes scattered on the land between us. “If I had wanted, you would have already been mine –”

             
“I underestimated you,” I started slowly, playing thoughtful while imperceptibly measuring the distance that was dividing me from him and the exact angle from which he wasn’t protecting himself well…

             
And then, as unexpectedly as he had a minute before, I flung myself in his direction and Cardew found himself brought down and blocked under my body before he could react or even figure out he had been aimed at.

             
“But you’re underestimating me as well!” I added triumphantly, and, using the fact that his surprise was delaying his actions, I hurried to move away from him so as not to turn his slight irritation into real intense rage that could result into immediate physical harm for me.

             
However, the boy just chuckled – not with the empty artificial laughter of a defeated enemy, but with the light indulgent gesture of a warrior who knows he has lost the battle but believes that the victory in the war as a whole belongs to him.

             
“Think up a question and pick a rune –” he suggested again and gave me a teasingly tempting wink arising the untypical for me desire to obey to his invincible willpower. “Don’t close your eyes if you trust me so little – just don’t look at the gems while you’re choosing which one to take.”

             
“Alright –” I sank deeply into my subconsciousness, wondering what I wanted to know; the nightmares about the sacrificed girl was the question torturing me for weeks, but something cruel and invincible in Cardew’s eyes was hinting me that he would be able to find out what the question had been about, and an instinct was making me hide from him what I had seen in my visions.

             
“Are you ready?” he turned to me as I was already reaching my hand, having focused my thoughts on the topic which was the most important for me right then and was not directly related to my nightmares. “Concentrate on the question – if it’s situation, imagine it has already happened – and let the runes tell you the answer –”

             
‘What will happen if Cardew and I start a love-affair with each other?’ my fortunately unspoken question could easily make me giggle awkwardly, but I managed to stay earnestly serene while concentrating on it and still wondering why this would be a safe subject to have in mind in case Cardew could somehow guess it, and one about the strange pagan ritual would not.

             
‘Imagine it has already happened –’

             
Perfectly able but too unwilling to resist to this advice of his, I did let the situation in question occupy my senses with its obscure obsessive attractiveness, but – although the picture I imagined was utterly appealing far more than I could confess, I tried not to think of it too intensely so as not to completely lose touch with reality. If I managed to truly persuade myself that the secret fantasy was true, there was a slight but existent chance that I would do something impulsive – something which would doubtlessly please Cardew but make me feel horribly humiliated – and, in order to minimize this chance, I hurried to pick the first gemstone that the tips of my fingers brushed.

             
“Turn it towards yourself,” he instructed me and I did, casting a quick glance at the ruby lines on the hexagon...

             
Oh dear...

             
“What is it?” intrigued, Cardew bent forward, and his hair moved lightly in soft airy waves, shimmering in lovely dark crimson with the faint reflected light of the sky. “Oh... Forget about it.”

             
“What does it mean exactly?” I asked, although I was familiar with the sign on the stone my fingers were holding. “Destruction?”

             
The boy nodded and gazed more intensely at the rune as I left the obsidian on his palm.

             
“I don’t know what you asked about,” he pronounced seriously, no mockery or any hint of a joke or seductive deception in his tone. “But if you love your life, never get into the situation you imagined.”

             
Icy thrills of dread were frenziedly racing down my back, and I couldn’t even define whether it was Cardew himself I feared, or the tremendous force inside the simple stones with ancient powerful signs which had revealed such sinister possible future for me.

             
So Cardew would be my destruction?...

             
Was he warning me against himself? No, I laughed in my mind – he wouldn’t take such pain only to protect me, and actually, it would totally make no sense to do it if what he wanted was to hurt me – why would he set me on guard when it would be easier for him if my defences were low?