The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide (44 page)

Joham was thrilled to have a son, excited and intrigued by his son’s ability to create a full vampire, and ready to join forces with him. However, Joham’s total lack of concern for Pire’s fate quickly turned Huilen and Nahuel against him.

Huilen was happy when Nahuel showed no interest in Joham as a father figure and sent him away.

Huilen was happy when Nahuel showed no interest in Joham as a father figure and sent him away. Whenever Joham visits, Huilen is civil but unforgiving.

J
OHAM

Joham was born in Portugal in the late 1560s. As a human, he was a scientist with a deep interest in the occult and how it could be proven or debunked by rational thought. He had an obsessive personality, and he found it impossible to let go of any pursuit until it was fully investigated. This obsession with the occult eventually resulted in his meeting a female vampire. This vampire was amused by his questions and offered to transform him as a way to satisfy his curiosity. Joham eagerly agreed.

After his transformation, Joham continued his scientific studies, mostly focusing on vampire abilities. Over time, he grew fascinated with the potential of a vampire-human hybrid. To test the possibility, he attempted to mate with a human female. His initial attempt was a failure, as were many
subsequent attempts; he was unable to restrain himself from killing the women involved.

After much practice, Joham developed the ability to be intimate with a human woman without killing her. Still, there were many casualties. Despite his preparation, he sometimes lost control. Others died from injuries inflicted by the fetus before they could carry it to a viable age.

His first success was Serena, daughter to a Norwegian village girl of the same name. Joham stayed with the mother until the child was born, monitoring the effect of the pregnancy on the girl while doing his best to keep her alive. He paid similarly close attention to his first daughter, charting her progress and development carefully. Of all his children, Serena remains closest to Joham.

Serena was born around 1810, after sixty years of effort on Joham’s part. After his success with Serena, things moved more quickly. His second daughter, Maysun, also named for her mother, was born in Algeria around 1820. Joham’s curiosity about the gestation and early childhood of the hybrid was already satisfied; he abandoned his human lover as soon as he knew she was pregnant, and then sent Serena to collect the child and rear it until it was old enough to be interesting to him.

During the interim between Maysun’s birth and Nahuel’s around 1850, Joham fathered three hybrids who did not survive; their mothers died too early in their pregnancies.

Conceiving Nahuel was Joham’s biggest challenge.

Conceiving Nahuel was Joham’s biggest challenge. For Joham, Nahuel’s mother, Pire, was a “singer”—not as potent as Bella was for Edward, but strong enough to make the situation exceptionally
difficult. Joham chose her because he wanted to test a theory he was forming. He had noticed that the more appealing an individual woman smelled to him, the more likely she was to conceive quickly. Pire confirmed this theory; he fathered a child with her within their first two weeks together.

Once again, Joham deserted Pire shortly after he saw the signs of her pregnancy. He contacted Serena and asked her to take care of the child after Pire’s death. He did not expect any complications, and left Serena with no way to contact him.

Joham decided not to alienate his son further by killing the aunt.

He came looking for Serena a few years later, when he assumed the child would be old enough to carry on an interesting conversation. He was disappointed to hear that another vampire had interceded, but was very pleased to have fathered a son. He tracked Nahuel and Huilen and introduced himself to his son. Already excited about the boy, he was even more thrilled when he learned that Nahuel was capable of transforming a human into a full vampire. However, he was unprepared for Nahuel’s reverence for his dead mother, and handled the situation insensitively. Had he known what to expect, he would have had a convincing lie prepared; during his many courtships, Joham had become an expert in saying the right thing. Joham tried to reason with them—after all, humans were no more than food to them now, and surely Huilen and Nahuel could see how little they mattered as individuals—but they refused to see his side. Joham decided not to alienate his son further by killing the aunt. Instead, he waits for Nahuel to grow out of his strange regard for his human mother.

Having successfully fathered both male and female offspring, Joham left off his personal experimenting for a while and attempted to find another vampire to join him in his endeavor. The true test of the validity of the hybrid as a race would be its ability to reproduce itself, and it would be an imperfect experiment if there were no hybrids of a different genetic history for his own offspring to mate with. Joham had to proceed carefully; he knew the Volturi might object to his project, so he confided in relatively few vampires. A couple were taken by the novelty of his idea, but neither of them had the discipline to develop the necessary control. Joham went back to his own experimenting, hoping that in time he would meet another male vampire with a scientific nature like his own.

Joham’s newest daughter is named Jennifer, after her mother. She was born in Ohio in 1991, and was raised mostly by Serena. Joham was more involved than with the others, careful to avoid another situation like that with Nahuel.

N
AHUEL

Nahuel’s very first postbirth memory is of Huilen’s scent, and of her face as she tried to lift him from his mother’s body. After he found himself essentially alone and abandoned in the forest, he followed that scent to where Huilen lay, convulsed in pain, teaching himself to crawl in his first day of life.

When Huilen’s transformation was complete, she and Nahuel began their nomadic life. Huilen was lonely without her sister, and she talked to Nahuel incessantly about Pire. She was only mildly surprised when Nahuel answered her back for the first time two weeks later; his startling development was already an accepted fact for her. Grieving for her sister, Huilen made sure that Nahuel knew exactly how wonderful his mother had been. She didn’t intend for him to turn this knowledge into self-hatred, but despite the love she learned to feel for Nahuel, she did hold him responsible for Pire’s death.

Nahuel and Huilen kept to themselves and became extremely close. They did occasionally run into other vampires, but Huilen never really trusted others, thanks to Joham’s treatment of her sister. She kept Nahuel out of sight during these encounters, not sure how others would react to him.

He was much more of an anomaly in the vampire world.

Nahuel found it very easy to pass as a human. The only perceptible differences between himself and the humans were
his physical abilities, which he could easily mask when necessary. He was much more of an anomaly in the vampire world. Visibly closer to human, Nahuel was also not quite as strong or as fast as a full vampire. His senses were also weaker, though exponentially stronger than human senses.

All of his sisters have visited him a time or two—on Joham’s orders. Joham hoped the girls could soften Nahuel to his father. Nahuel found Serena too much like Joham, but liked Maysun and Jennifer quite a bit. Nahuel returned only Jennifer’s visits; because she is the youngest sister, he feels protective toward her. He remains closest to her.

Huilen would prefer never to leave the traditional Mapuche lands, but Nahuel is more curious about the world at large. He’s talked Huilen into several field trips, including his visits with Jennifer.

T
here are two types of supernatural creatures referred to as werewolves in the Saga: those that pass on werewolf traits through a bite, and those that inherit werewolf traits from their parents. The first type, known as the Children of the Moon, are merely alluded to in the novels. The second type, the Quileute wolves, are the werewolves featured in the Twilight Saga.