Deep Roots (Iris' Atlantis 2)

I held in my hand a phone, trying out the camera in a dark room. The selfie camera found my bed and on it Valentina stretched out in a white silk robe. She pulled the robe closer to her and approached the lens, finally taking the phone off my hands and kissing them. Her dark hair fell free behind her back leaving somehow visible two dark marks on her neck.

"So, I can throw this out?" She asked, holding for me my brother's cross. "To the lake, was it?"

"Yes," I murmured, leaning closer to her neck, pressing on it a tender kiss. My hand sliding down, to embrace wide hips. "To where-ever."

There was a knock on the door.

I heard my mother's voice.

"... the neighbour's daughter... They come and I cannot keep it from happening."

Suddenly, the door was forced. A man stood in the doorway, a dark silhouette against the lit upstairs corridor. Light penetrated into my bedroom, a vivid, too bright and forceful light.

I dashed into the shadows. Peeking at my room from a protected closet.

Valentina's gown caught fire from the brightness.

In one swift movement she shook herself out of the burning silk. And stood then naked. Facing the man in the doorway.

A terrifying figure. Bearded and looming.

Holding aloft a decorative bible, he came into my bedroom. Found my closet.

The world was engulfed in flames when the man tore open the closet door.

--

I twisted free of the nightmare with such force that I fell off the bed and hit my head on a corner of the bedside table, cursing under my breath.

For a moment I doubled over, engulfed in the acute sensation of pain.

When the ache subsided, I sat in the dark, the streetlamps casting lights through the window. I felt disoriented. Hot, while the room around me was dark and cool.

I got up, with a clear intention to just get for myself a glass of water. With a short walk to banish the clear vision of the nightmare off my mind.

Rosemary, my landlady, was reading in the living room. She had lighted only candles for herself on the glass table. Plume's framed photograph stood on the same table, the metallic frame gleamed in the flickering lighting.

I hesitated in the short corridor behind Rosemary's back. Then turned back and closed the door to my rented bedroom as silently as I had opened it.

I laid my head back on the pillow, sure of two things: I wanted to talk to no one. And I didn't want to fall asleep.

The nightmare I had escaped seemed to guard my bed, waiting for my vigilance to slack, so it could scoop me up again into its claws. Reclaim its victim.

Valiantly, I tried to fight against it, staring at the ceiling and the light pattern cast by streetlights filtered through light curtains. But eventually, too soon, my heavy lids fell and cast me back into the arms of a wild dream.

--

I was kneeling on a flat stone, on a high hill, overseeing the lights of a city spreading below by a river. A full moon shone among the stars. Tall pines swayed in the wind.

I knelt with three others. All of us naked. The vampire queen sat to my right, my mother knelt on my left, and behind her was Timothy. A heaviness reigned over us. No sound was heard from birds, only the swaying pines and the incessant traffic from the city below.

A hooded figure emerged into my view. They were dressed in a dark robe and their face was cast so deep in the shadows I couldn't see it. They held a long dagger with an elaborately carved and decorated handle. The blade caught the moonlight and shone bright blue.

When they spoke, it was the leaves speaking rather than a human sound:

"Four are the gifts to the Unknown. Four shall be sacrificed. Four are given. Let us hear the worth of each, to know who is First and who is Last."

They cast the blade to point at Timothy, at my far right.

Timothy lifted his orange eyes to regard the hooded figure.

"I killed my uncle. I am not the First." He said in a serene voice. "I died once in flesh and once in memory. What remains in me to be sacrificed?"

The blade moved, it passed over me and stopped at my left. Then it was the vampire queen who lifted her gaze to regard the Judge.

"I am ageless. Who are you to tell me I am the Last? I am the true ruler in Atlantis, but am I worthy to be the First?"

The blade passed over me. My mother stared into the shadowed eyes of the robed figure.

"I have been raised in Divine Fear of God. I have prayed. I have gone to Church. I have lived well. While there is surely sin to be found, compared to all present, surely I am not the Last?"

The blade moved. The gilding shone in the moonlight.

A skeletal hand gripped the weapon.

I stared at the hand, the bonefingers now hovering over my head.

A silence reigned. The wind whispered in the trees. The traffic hummed in the City.

The moon grew in the sky, coming closer and closer to earth until it filled all of the sky and the rock where we stood was illuminated in clear monochrome contrasts of light and long reaching shadows.

The figure in front of me reached to lower their hood.

I was paralysed in my place. The merciless moonlight shone on the blade, almost blinding me.

I couldn't lift my eyes. Something absolutely terrible would happen if I did. There would be a judgment so unthinkable it would rip the world in pieces.

I knelt, paralysed. While the Judge crouched closer.

They came closer. The tip of the blade pressed now on my breastbone. My chin was also pressed down. I still stared at the beautiful, fateful weapon.

"Look at me." The voice demanded. It sounded more human now. It had a familiar sound to it. I tried hard not to recognize it.

"Which one are you, the First, the Last. Lift your gaze and know!" High pitched. A female voice.

I started humming. Still refusing to say a word or to lift my eyes from the threatening blade.

The Judge moved.

Relief washed over me. They would not demand the Answer. I didn't need to see their face.

The Blade turned slightly to rest on my breast at a different angle. The blinding moonlight was replaced by the reflected image of the two eyes of the judge.

My eyes.

I held the weapon in my own hands, the tip still pressing on my breastbone.