Future's past...

[Josephine] [Journal. 30 Jan 2008. Location unknown.]

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:26:06 GMT

I do not miss them. I can not afford the casual pain it causes, the longing. Here the ocean washes up to my doorstep and I have peace. I am calm. The blood does not call to any thing except the moon here. And the stars.

I have the music of the sand and sea. I have the wind in the leaves. I have everything I need.

Except Donatien. Except Madeleine-Antoinette. Except...except...

I do not dream here. My eyelids close and I sleep. Sometimes two or three days fall into one another before I realize how long I have been sleeping. I am old.

I know this now. I am old.

I forget that anything exists except the sea and my stairs. Except the moments I wait for it to have meaning.

But I am hungry now. I am searching and I am hungry. I have ceased to be the thing they taught me to be. I have found the blood lust again...

It is time to return to the world, but what will I find there?

[Fragment. May 30th? Uncertain.]

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 23:20:19 GMT

My hands are shaking as I sit here and write this. I am furious this evening, and I can not tell you why. Is it the coming heat of the summer months? No. In Napa it is cold even now. Compared to the islands.

I don't know what causes my blood to rise. Perhaps it is the rumors come from so many places of the misbehaviors of my Covenant, hid behind excuses of the Mother and the Maiden. They are blasphemies and lies, those claims that breaking the traditions we hold so dear are integral to our worship.

I never thought to be so iron-fisted. But once again I find myself glad for my children, who I raised better. Who I raised to know. At least they make a good showing, in front of Ambrose. Not like this child Talon who claims to be an elder of our kind. Who claims that it is the fog of ages, his eternal slumber, which has clouded his mind. He should admit to the simple ambitions which he holds. We could work with that.

And the Sheriff-cum-Scourge. Who thinks to berate me for my inhumane behavior. Has he not noticed I am Kindred? I am no mewling kitten, walking through the nights to mouth pretty things for the Princes of Cities to adore me for. I am a woman, but more than that I am a Vampire, and let it never be said that my scorn was kinder than my hospitality.

Why am I so angry?

[Fragment. Undated.]

Thu, 17 May 2007 18:30:07 GMT

I slip out of the house and away from the watchful eyes of MA and D. Why do I feel like the child, and they the disapproving parents? But they must not know this, see this side of me. I am always so controlled with them, even when they see the facade of abandon, they believe the deeper mask hidden underneath. The calm, calculating, perfect mask.

But I'm not her. Tonight I will revel in what I am. A vampire. A monster. A shadow slipping from place to place, lingering at the edges of bonfires and feeding on the unwary. The innocent.

**

It is later, and I am up to my wrists in blood. This is not MA's clean butchery, nor D's carefully painful seductions. This is not the religious one's salvations, nor the imperious one's carefully meted punishments. I revel in the sight of it. The smell. The taste, copper and iron and darker than night on my tongue.

I listen to the whisper of the girl's scream, and idly wonder if I will cut her vocal cords, or if I will listen to the music until she is dead.

I realize it makes no difference.

**

As I fall into bed, exhausted, I banish them both from my room. For tonight my head is quiet. I have peace.

[Journal. 15 May 2007. Twilight before dawn.]

Wed, 16 May 2007 21:33:13 GMT

I vacillate between the states of mind. One minute I am a bubbling innocent child, and the next I am hungry with a force I can not name. I do not like this uncertainty. I do not like the changes that come over me when I am confronted with myself this way.

Donatien and Madeleine-Antoinette confirm my memories for me. I don't think MA knows yet that I am not certain any more, but D does. It frightens me. I do not wish to be one of those ancients who relies on her children to do everything for her. I am not a queen bee, to sit back, and be brought life on a plate. I must live it, experience it.

I must have control.

I provoke the Sanctified with my "blasphemies," but it makes them think. They must think. They cannot be the mindless drones which they have become conditioned to becoming, or we will all stagnate. We will falter and die.

Even to the godless, I am a mother.

What makes them my enemies, I ask. What causes me to be against them, and them against me? Perhaps I will be able to nurture these children in Monterrey.

I watch it all crumble in the face of time.

[A letter. Dated 21 Mar 2007. Postmarked Bodega Bay, CA.]

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:44:56 GMT

Dearest Madeleine-Antoinette,

Since the death of Lafayette I have been grieving a good many things, not all of them fit to be shared with the men of our family, but I think you will understand them. You have always understood the things I can not share with Donatien, nor explain to the holy one. I blame his religion for being in the way.

I miss being young. I envy you, right now, just a bit, with the experience of years and still the enthusiasm of youth. Perhaps when we are together you will indulge me by sharing with me some of your greater adventures. I shall simply listen to them and try to recall my own until the sun rises and we fall asleep as we once did, drunk on those words which pass between us.

I confess to longing for your brother terribly. I'm fairly certain you are the only one who understands just how much. Why doesn't he come to us now? What keeps him in Europe, so far from those who love him? I know you do not know, but I ask anyhow, as if to provoke the universe into answering this question I imagine written in both of our hearts. (Ah, had we been Daeva instead, that such melancholy wonderings wouldn't seem simply the idle fancy of women, but rather something soul-bound and divine.) One day, when he returns to us, we will have to pry the solution from him, what keeps him there, and why he does not come when we call.

You are ever my ally and my strength Madeleine, ever the mirror in which I am reflected and improved.

I remain, eternally,
Josephine

[Journal. 24 Feb 2007. Just after sunset.]

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:45:57 GMT

I am pacing out the confines of this room. I am staring at myself in the mirror and wondering why it is I have awoken agitated. Is it Sonoma? Is it Lafayette?

Something is gnawing on the back of my brain, and continues to as I lay out my clothes for the evening. Black and somber, though tonight I've no rose. I'll take a fan, something to gesture with, to occupy my hands. I must keep them busy or I will take to touching things again.

I dreamed of D. Tonight, just before waking. As I lay down the cotton skirt, the sweater, mimicing the old lines I used to wear, I wonder if he was thinking of me. Or if he is the source of this agitation which has crept beneath my skin.

But tonight I have to face them all again, the whole domain reminding me of a hundred years and more. It is a burden, I think, to be so old. One I do not relish, one I wish I could give up. Could I once again be the Josephine of Antigua, the Josephine of Paris, and not the Josephine of these dreadful Americas? Could I give up the Baron, and return to who I was?

This, I think, is asking too much from whatever mercy spared my life that night, and gave me eternity instead of death. I should not regret, for I have a duty even if I don't wish to acknowledge it.

I miss my sons. As ever.

Thu, 22 Feb 2007 03:28:49 GMT

Shall I tell you that story? Of how he asked for Maman Brigitte's blessing? Of how he came and he swore he had to have her, that girl with the blonde curls and the eyes like a tiger, brown and gold and hiding hints of fire? Is that the story you want tonight? The story of how I cheated the Baron and taught Papa Legba to dance?

I wasn't even half blood then. I was started out in my business, but you know I wasn't there long. I had a couple of fine things, and I had my cards, and my bones, and that was all I needed. I sold my body to the sailors, and their fortunes to any one who'd buy. Back then I wasn't in the business of seeing it too clearly, so I never had to lie.

He was a good Catholic boy, so what he was doing in that room I don't know, though I hear tell he'd been told I could get him what he wanted. But I had other plans, the whisper in the back of my head and the beating of his heart. It wasn't what you would call love, but as the smoke of the incense wrapped itself around him I saw what he could be and I wanted it.

"Tell me how to have her," he demanded and I laughed deep in my throat. I whispered the secrets to him, of love and desire, of joy and pain, and watched him leave. And the first raindrops fell.

♣

He ran into me outside the church, carrying the bag of dirt from the graveyard, and started when I did not hide my dirty hands from him. "I thirst, Maman," he said, using the title they had given me. I knew his look, his wild hungry eyes, the lust that rode him like a beast for her.

"You will not drink the water, chere, so pay the devil his due," I smiled cryptically and kept walking. I heard his footsteps behind me, all the way home, my skirt dragging in the dust behind me. Red silk and I let it fall to the dirt, like a trail of blood to find his way home by.

"You have cursed me," he whispered. And the winds began to howl.

♦

The tide washed my feet as I stood, watching the moon rise. I heard her song, heard the drums and the beat and the center of the world, and I moved with it then, into the waves and out of them, naked as the day I was born until I felt his eyes fall on me and his breath catch in his chest. Anger froze him like a stone and his smile sharp as knives, and I knew he would be ready soon.

"Tell me, chere, to whom do you pray?" My question had no answer, and none came to it but another question. A question of loyalty, and he split like a tree hit by lightning, falling to his knees in the sand.

He closed his eyes and I saw him, angel and man, in two pieces, the Baron calling for his due. I laughed, felt the rush of it in my veins, felt the rider on my back and turned away.

"Tell me no lies, Maman," he whispered.

I felt the heat of the sun so close to rising.

♠

We danced on the deck of the ship, he drank the wine of victory as the stars blazed above us in their orbit. The scent of hunting and loam clung to him, and I inhaled it, remembering darker days and brighter nights. Blue silk, green taffeta, hair falling about my shoulders like the young woman I appeared.

I fed him sweet cakes, I watched as he turned from her and she shattered to pieces like glass dashed on rocks. I knew that he was ready then. Knew as he pleaded, the knife a wire's width from his skin, "Whatever you will, Maman."

And that was when we met in the dirt, and I showed him the secret he'd always wanted.

♥

He is my childe.

[A letter. Dated 31 Jan 2007. Postmarked Baton Rouge, LA.]

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:51:46 GMT

Beloved,

The days here are lengthening, which makes me sad. The change brings a sort of oppressiveness to it, the beginning of what will be the summer heat, although now the only change is emotional, not physical. I am sitting on a balcony, a few hours after the sun has set, writing to you.

It was a night like this one when we met, at that gathering in New Orleans. If I recall, you had traveled in from the country, and I was one of the few women mingling in that company of men. You offered me the rum, and before I could stop myself, I felt the whisper of the Baron in the back of my mind, with a message for you about some family matter which was not being settled.

I wonder if the Baron had already made his decision then, for you.

I don't know why I am writing you except that I keep finding myself slipping into nostalgia and hazy memories. I find myself missing you when I smell the thick scent of jasmine on the wind, or when I watch a group of gentlemen playing cards. I sometimes drink black coffee to clear my mind, but even that acrid smell is full of memories.

I think of Antigua, of my home near the shore, from which I could hear the ocean. I think of the smells that rose off the coast, of salt and warmth. I think of the sugar, of my Embrace. I think of the number of times I sat on my balcony in the last hours before dawn, in my shift and bundled up in a shawl, writing letters and journals.

I think sometimes, now, of Louisiana. Of the place where we met, and all the places we learned about together, as I discovered the truth of society in the south. I remember hearing you learn the names I used, Juliette, which always sounded cold coming from your lips. I think of all the times we've seen each other over the years, of the things you learned through developing your powers, while I continued to serve the Baron.

I am attempting to evade these memories. I will not allow myself the decadence of wasting time on wishing for the past. It would only drive me into anguish with confusion and longing. It has driven me to pain and distraction if I am honest. I sit to the side, watching as others walk and dance their way through the night, and seek guidance. Assurance.

I miss you.

I return to Sonoma to settle some accounts, though it may take some time. I wish to see you at your earliest convenience.

All my love,
Josephine

[Journal. February 18, 2007. Some time before dawn.]

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 07:31:06 GMT

...

I have returned. He didn't lie at the gathering when he told me he'd saved as many of my things as he could. The mirror hangs on the wall, exactly the way I left it. There are the same paintings, the same books scattered on the table as the night I fled. I was fleeing in fear, but not of him. I fled in fear of the attachment I was feeling, of how much I wanted to stay. Forever. And now it seems as if forever has come back to haunt me, the stasis of the room exactly the way I left it. I have the urge to push aside some article, to set something askew, to set my mark on this place which is so full of a repressive nostalgia I think I'll choke on it.

It wouldn't have been wise to stay. He's always been political, and I...I am a woman of faith, profound and unyielding. And my faith demands things which I do not think he had in him to give. You can not serve the Baron and Papa Legba without a certain amount of surprise and change. And perhaps he tried, but it was always one of the things that pushed him. But now I am drawn back into his web, and I wonder if I chose to come back, or if there is some profound and universal gravity which brings us together. If it is such a force, I am doomed, for I will not have the willpower to escape it again, and one of us will end up destroying the other.

I have bet that this time I can make him love me. I am betting that this time I will destroy him.

I can't help but remember his hands on my shoulders to either side of my neck as he leaned forward past the curls I piled high on my head to kiss my cheek. I close my eyes and try to banish the sensation, but it is always there, with the memory of how many nights I passed in this room, when I was not running from him, always, to Louisiana, or to my ancestors home in Antigua where I was known to some few of them as Aunt Juliette, or sometimes as Maman.

Always those letters from him would arrive, and I would be drawn back, remaining for months as the intensity sharpened between us again, until the unforgivable words would be uttered by one or the other, and we would separate, and always I would return to my roots. I always dreamed that one time instead of sending one of those letters, he would come himself, but he never did. He never once came for me himself, and I am certain now he never will.

And yet, I think something is different this time. We share some memory of our youth, some connection to when everything was still like new. Now I do not think of the letters, of the stark black ink which bled slightly into the paper. I do not think of the number of times I fled, emerging from a train with my cards in hand, selling hope and snake oil until I had gathered enough to find a room.

Now I think of the words we traded softly as we strolled through vineyards, or along a bustling street in San Francisco. I think of wearing the heavy black hat with the black veil as we rode through the countryside, laughing and goading each other on to sillier and sillier stunts. And of course I remember the feel of his breath on my skin as he whispered in French the sweet nothings I'd always wanted to hear.

I try to banish all of this from my head, I sit at the dresser where I used to apply makeup and remind myself that this time I am dealing the cards, and he is gambling blindly.

It's funny to me that it is at Antigone's invitation that I have returned to the house of memory.