Upon
another morning we endeavoured to arrange a series of mirrors and instruments
of crystal glass through which bright sunlight, upon entering the room via a
small aperture which Leuwenhoek bored in a shutter, might break itself into
myriad colours and be displayed thus upon the walls and ceiling. I knew of
prisms of course and also the formulae by which the different colours within
sunlight itself are measured though Leuwenhoek appeared to have reached similar
conclusions from an entirely different angle. He likened the rainbows that we
observed to the notes in a scale of music with those notes of a lower frequency
being at the red end of the scale.
We
adjusted mirrors and other apparatus as the day progressed, engrossed in our
attempts to split the various colours already obtained into further colours
again until, a little after midday, defeated by cloud the sunlight faded into a
plain grey afternoon.
"Upon occasion I awake in the early hours and am unable to regain the comfort of sleep" I told him matter of factly.
My companion nodded in the oddly distracted way I'd come to recognise as typical of Leuwenhoek in a reflective mood, so I could tell, with almost flawless certainty, what, shortly, would be his response.
"Tell me of this unrest" he suggested quietly and without looking up from the table at which we sat.
"The night times when I sleep alone are always the worst for me," I began. "In particular those long cold hours which precede a dawn.
Then too early an
awakening invariably brings the twin dragons of doubt and despair back to haunt
me. And, in the same way the poor citizens of Wells had endured torment at the
behest of their own dragons so, when my own came, do I endure, though I will
admit much less stoically"
Leuwenhoek nodded slightly. "Go on!" he said.
"Moreover a cold limb or one which has lost all its feeling, a joint which has decided, for no other reason than badness, to ache or a nostril which has, inexplicably, become solidly blocked, conspire in their turn to make many an early morning for me thoroughly miserable" I continued "A change of position does little to relieve the upset usually, rarely returning me to a state where I am able to regain, if only for a few short hours, some semblance of sleep. Thus I begin my day, oft times, as weary as I had ended the previous one, as spiritually low as a man could possibly be while remaining alive, as drained of energies as a body left remnant, late of some feast of vampires……"
My companion laughed at this juncture.
"Vampires? Not really?"
"Yes, they are superstitions of course" I hastened. "There are no vampires in actuality, least ways not those which purport to bite their victims in order to drink their blood. Nevertheless there remain such creatures which might feast upon their victim in a different way……"
I recalled Leuwenhoek mentioning the phenomenon before, upon several occasions, drawing the topic into our conversation seemingly as an afterthought then, just as quickly, passing onto a different subject again.
This time he gazed at me shrewdly.
And this time I saw, in a sudden dully lit glimmer of shocked realisation, that my half believed suppositions were exactly right.
"Vampirism then?" he murmured thoughtfully. "Is that what you mean?"
"Indeed it is!" I said.
"It matters not, I suppose" he ventured "whether your adopted guise be male or female?"
"I have suffered equally in both" I replied
"I think then" he said slowly and after some moments "if your desire is to remain female, at least for the foreseeable future, we must set about the construction of your amulet"
"Are the differences very great?" I enquired "In the makeup of the amulet I mean"
Leuwenhoek shook his head.
"Spoken words within the ritual and one or two of the elements" he told me. "Though of the two, 'tis said an amulet constructed for the female is the more powerful!"
"Alright!" I agreed cautiously. To my consternation I began seeing new skeletons tumbling briskly out of newly reopened cupboards while older ones, those already partly released, became free to dance in a macabre circle about me.
"So shall we have the male or the female ritual?" Leuwenhoek enquired carefully.
"I assure you I have no desire to change again!" I replied immediately "So it must be the female!"
"Excellent!!" Leuwenhoek said.
We'd already discussed protection and defensive devices at length several times before. Both those of a passive nature and others, more effective, but also more dangerous, naturally and drawn some conclusions, none exhaustive, or so I'd thought. If anything, I'd been less inclined to continue with the venture the more we discussed it, Leuwenhoek on the other hand now suddenly seemed satisfied and eager to progress the idea quickly. Just like last time he suggested three different materials plaited together for the base of the amulet itself, calf leather, ox sinew and wolf fur and just like before, I'd argued that soft leather and fur were too similar so, if I had to have anything at all I wanted something different. We'd discussed feathers, urticaria fibres, willowbark and fishskins but he'd lost me by the time we'd half agreed on the colours of the threads for the whipping and got nowhere near even mentioning the different crystals, bits of bone and other materials which were supposed to be incorporated. Ultimately it would mean further expeditions to the market of course, along with several, no doubt abortive, visits to supposed purveyors of such obscurities as gamboge, imperial topaz and alexandrine.
"When do we begin?" I asked cautiously.
"As soon as we can, now that you are more agreeable to the idea……" Leuwenhoek murmured thoughtfully.
"I have never thought it disagreeable" I said "only that the time was perhaps not right before. Now I can see that it is"
"Soon it will be exactly right!" he told me. "In two days time both moon and related planetary influences will be favourable……"
"Moon?" I asked, rather more sharply than intended.
"Indeed yes! The most influential of planets!" Leuwenhoek exclaimed. "'T'will be full on the fifteenth!"
"So I'm to become a lunatic, am I?" I joked
"As I said before, your present guise suits you admirably!" Leuwenhoek smiled. "And the moon, being accepted as embodying all aspects of the female will suit our purposed admirably"
I said nothing further after that, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, simply waiting while he, in a businesslike manner, set about making arrangements for us to meet some merchant or other, or so he said, who could help us to obtain most of the materials we would need. I might have argued primarily for a female embodiment anyway, my double X chromosome predominating, conceding maleness only when the legs of one of X's crossed to make a itself into a Y. Which was not infrequent either, as I might also have argued. I held my peace however, not wanting to begin yet another in depth discussion where I'd have to hide most of my knowledge from him. Poor man! I felt sorry for him in so many ways and sad too that I could not give him all he wanted. By way of information I mean, to whit, the secrets I carried, nothing more. So I avoided a confrontation, bowing to him once again, hiding my light under a, by now very overcrowded, bushel.
One which sometimes threatened to overturn and reveal all
and everything to him.
No, I said nothing further until it grew dark when he, lighting lamps about the room and hastening to close shutters, made preparations for the security of the house for the night.
I could withhold my speech no longer then, while he bustled, and, distracted I seized the poker and set about enlivening the fire, an action which, presently, brought both maid and manservant hurrying into the room bearing fresh coals inside a copper bin.
Leuwenhoek, bearing no doubt some parts of our earlier conversation in mind, bade the serving girl repair immediately to my bedchamber, which task she undertook without a word. I had no say in the transaction nor did I offer any protestations when, with a short wave of his hand Leuwenhoek then also dismissed me.
…………
A single candle burned in my chamber when I got there, and that, set upon the windowsill illuminated little more than the shutters while exaggerating the ponderous heaviness of the drapes. The maid herself, when I discovered her, almost accidentally, had tucked herself discreetly into the left hand side of my bed.
In truth I had no struggle with my conscience then, neither did I expend energies needlessly weighing this problem against that possible outcome nor that debt burden against some other indefinable troubles. Many's the night I'd not found rest because of the ache and ague of worry, many's the time I'd wished myself elsewhere, elsewhen even, a different me starting out again with a nice clean sheet. Now for the first time in almost a year there was a woman in my bed and, strange to relate, I felt at first not a little discomfited.
The last time it had happened I recalled, with no little humour, I'd writhed and wriggled so long with my discomforts that she, I know not who by name or face, had crept and slipped unasked between my sheets to comfort me. That one I knew by smell alone, by her ripeness and readiness, about which she made no secret. This one, unsurprisingly lay naked save for a small lace cap which, or so I understood later, she retained upon her head for the sake of modesty.
Taking a deep breath I leant over her closely, catching at once both the sweetness of her breath and of her smile. Then, any introductory discourse being hopeless at so late a juncture; I having no Flemish and she, I am certain, little or no English, we set about breaking down the language barrier in other, more direct ways. In a moment I took her at her word, unspoken though it was, becoming thrilled in an instant by her quicksilver lithe shape in the candlelit half darkness. Maid and servant she may have been to Leuwenhoek and never, in all the world would I have dared approach her had she been clothed, yet in the lake of blackness in which we swam she became nothing less than a goddess to me.
In less time than it takes to write it she allowed me to explore every minute crease and crevice of her body unhesitatingly and eagerly. And I learned, sure enough, learned something, of something perhaps, though at the time I knew not what, except that if there are no boundaries there can be no guidelines and no parameters. How much better it would have been had she stopped me once or twice instead of allowing me, so utterly, a free reign.
Ever discreet she'd gone by the morning, leaving me nothing except the usual memories and an emptiness, both physical and mental, and that, when she avoided the plead in my eyes at breakfast, was the most difficult to come to terms with.
© Aahlu 2008-2010.
The Making of the Amulet
by
Aahlu
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Sat, 3rd April, 2010
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