The Ballad of Aramei (8 page)

Aramei smiles at Viktor. “I must go,” she says. “Good day to you.”

Aramei meets Filipa halfway.

“Who is that man?” she says, eyeing Viktor from across the yard. She takes the basket from Aramei and carries it for her and fits her arm around Aramei’s back, clutching her shoulder.

“His name is Viktor,” Aramei whispers, “but that is all I know.”

Filipa looks at Aramei warily in a sideward glance, helping her farther across the yard and out of Viktor’s sights. “Did anyone see you?” Filipa asks sternly. “Sissa, he is not from here.” She stops near the east side of the barn, drops the basket and moves around in front of Aramei, grasping her shoulders in both hands, shaking her. “He feels dark. You must stay away from him. Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand.”

Aramei has no intention of defying her sister’s orders. Viktor is handsome, but like Filipa said, he is an outsider and their father would never approve of their marriage. And Filipa, taking the place of their mother nine years ago after she caught the fever and died, Aramei would never consider disobeying her. Aramei is only nineteen, Filipa twenty-five, but Filipa has been as much of a caretaker as their mother was and Aramei often forgets that Filipa is her sister.

“You trouble me sometimes,” Filipa says, taking Aramei’s hand. “I cannot decide if you are fearless or just plain heedless.”

Aramei lowers her head shamefully. Filipa is right after all; Aramei has always gotten herself into trouble and in tight situations while growing up. Instead of running from a snake, she stopped to study one when she was five and it nearly bit her. Filipa pulled her away just as the snake went to strike. And when Aramei turned twelve, she went out alone to look for one of their sheep lost in the valley though it was known that wolves had likely claimed it. They could have claimed her, too, but Filipa found her and brought her back before the sun slipped behind the treacherous mountains. Aramei had always been very smart, having surpassed Filipa in learning to read and to sew and to cook—Aramei is still better at all of these things than her sister—but she has always been slow to judge when it came to recognizing danger when it stood in front of her. Curiosity and a heart bigger than her head, they were Aramei’s greatest weaknesses. Little did she know that they would also one day be the death of her.

“Come,” Filipa says and she leads Aramei back inside their cottage.

~~~

A storm blew through overnight, leaving the valley in a blanket of cool, misty air and rain-soaked earth. Aramei is up before the sun helping her father and Filipa find Vela, their skittish horse that had burst free from the stable spooked by the cracking thunder and lightning. For nearly an hour they searched for the horse, finally splitting up just as daylight creeps over the horizon, bathing the valley in warm light.

Aramei pulls her coat tight around her form and heads toward the North Hill, where the sheep often graze. When she makes it to the top of the grassy hill and looks down at the base of the other side, there Vela stands, alone and calm, drinking from a water hole.

“Oh, Vela,” she says many minutes later when she makes it down the hill to where the horse is. “Father will have your hide one day if you keep this up.” She pats the horse on its thick, muscled neck. A low whicker shudders through its body and its chestnut-colored tail swishes back and forth. Aramei goes to fix a loop of rope around its neck when the horse starts to appear agitated, its ears perking and a few whinnies rattle its chest.

“Okay, girl,” Aramei says, patting Vela’s neck once more. “What is it?”

Without warning, Vela rises up on her hind legs, knocking Aramei onto the rain-soaked grass and mud. The hooves come down hard against the earth as Aramei rolls through the mud to get out of the way.

“Vela! Where are you going?”

The horse whines and takes off back toward the village, the sounds of its hooves beating heavily against the ground.

Aramei pushes herself up and goes to dust herself off, but gives up when she realizes it will take more than that to wash these muddy clothes. She sighs heavily, thrusting her slim arms down against her sides. Feeling that the mud has taken a hold of her left foot, Aramei gently pulls her sandal from the mess and steps over onto a mound of grass. “That
awful
horse!” she says exasperated.

“They can be fickle creatures at times,” says a man’s voice.

Aramei turns around, startled, to see Viktor standing in the shade of a nearby small cluster of trees. She presses her hand to her chest as if that might help to calm her heartbeat.

She lowers her eyes and pretends to be straightening her dress and dusting more mud from the fabric, although it only makes her hands messier. She closes her dress robe tighter around her body, her gentle fingers clutching the fabric together at her chest.

“You are not from my village,” she says, but doesn’t make eye contact.

Viktor’s body moves closer, but he stops at a comfortable distance of five feet.

“No,” he says and she can hear the pursuit in his voice, which makes her slightly uneasy. “I am just a traveler of these lands. I set up camp east of here—could smell the fires and something like sweet bread cake.”

“You came here for bread cake?” Aramei tries to hide the smile in her voice. She’s weary of him, but isn’t ready to dismiss him just yet.

Viktor’s charming close-lipped smile widens as Aramei finally looks at him, but her eyes dart off here and there every few seconds to keep from meeting his.

“Bread cake,” he says, “and a beautiful young woman.”

Aramei’s body stiffens and she gazes downward at her muddy sandals.

“I do apologize, Milord,” she says, “but I believe all of the women who make bread cake here are too old for your tastes.”

“You do not make bread cake?” he says with hidden, yet obvious meaning behind his inquiry.

Aramei bows her head and says, “I do, Milord, but….” She looks up toward the top of the hill expecting to see Filipa come running toward her any moment now, but she can’t decide if that’s what she wants or not. Only one man has ever showed interest in her. Aramei is very beautiful, but her father had always been somewhat of a bully towards potential suitors when it came to his daughters. This man, Viktor, somehow gives Aramei the feeling he might not be as hard to scare away.

Viktor waits patiently for her to continue, his face beaming and somewhat dark.

“…I shouldn’t be seen with you, Milord.”

“Why not?” he asks, stepping up closer to her. She takes two steps back to retain the distance. “Is it the woman?”

Aramei looks up again, finally meeting his eyes. “The woman?” she says.

“Yes, the one who pulled you out of my sights just yesterday?”

Aramei smiles bashfully, twisting a lock of hair between her fingers. “Filipa is no woman. She is my sister.”

Viktor coughs a small laugh and Aramei can’t help but join him, realizing too late what she had said.

“Well, I just mean that—”

“She is a man?” Viktor teases her with a very serious face, but Aramei can easily detect the smile behind his fine green eyes.

~~~

In the following days, Aramei snuck out to meet Viktor and they walked in the forests together, swam in the lake hidden between the North and South Hills an hour away from the village and once he even took her on a hunt. Viktor was an expert bowman. The two shared a meal over an open fire in the late afternoon before Aramei had to slip away from his company and head back home. Filipa and their father had their suspicions—Filipa more unforgiving of Aramei’s lies, but their father knew nothing about this stranger and Filipa felt it best not to tell him anything. Days became weeks and Aramei grew closer to Viktor, but he mistook Aramei’s affections and her willingness to be out with him as something more than what it was.

Aramei had lived a sheltered life, having experienced little outside of her village and village life was quaint and uneventful most of the time. Aramei found a sort of freedom in Viktor, but she was slow to develop a real attraction that went beyond the one she had for him when he first approached her as she washed the laundry in the pond that day.

And Aramei had no experience with men. She had never been with a man in any sense and had no idea that all this time with Viktor she was setting up her own demise.

~~~

Present Day – In the cabin

I wake up lying next to Aramei in the center of the bed; Eva is  sitting next to us, swabbing a cold, wet cloth across my forehead.

Lifting up slowly, I brace my weight against the mattress with my palms and try to pull my head together.

“Did I pass out?” My head is throbbing, my vision slightly blurred. I reach up and massage my temples with my fingertips, bridging the palm of my hand across my face.

“Not exactly,” Eva says, dabbing my cheeks with the cloth once more. “You went under.”

I open my eyes and look right at her. “Under what?”

“You were in Aramei’s mind,” Eva says softly so as not to wake Aramei, “living what she lived and knowing what she knows.”

I lift farther away from Aramei and decide to get off the bed altogether. “How is that possible?” I say, pacing across the floor barefooted. Eva must’ve taken off my shoes. I stop and turn to face her, my gaze penetrating hers from the foot of the bed. “That felt completely real to me…it wasn’t a dream, it was
real
, like I was
right there
watching her.”

Eva nods once, smiling faintly.

“You have been connected to Aramei in this way since the day you were bonded to Isaac,” she says, standing from the bed, too. She walks over to the table next to the balcony and places the wet cloth in a bowl of water. “Those who have been bonded by blood are often connected, but some connections are stronger than others.” She walks over and stops in front of me, folding her hands together resting on her pelvis. “But now that you are a Black Beast, and female, your connection to Aramei is strengthened ten-fold.”

I don’t know what to say because I’m too stunned by this information to understand it just yet. So, I just let Eva continue.

“She is trying to tell you something,” she says. “What did you see?”

“I-I…,” I move away from Eva, letting her hands fall away from my shoulders and I approach the bed again. “I saw Viktor Vargas…and I think—.” I gaze down at Aramei sleeping; a few strands of her silky hair move gently in time with her breath.

“You think what?” Eva says from behind.

I turn around to face her, but still all I really see is the scene with Viktor and Aramei still fading from my mind. “He was in love with her….”

Chapter 6

I STAY WITH EVA and Aramei for several hours, but Aramei remains sleeping and I can’t seem to get inside her head again. I even tried waking her at one point, taking both of my hands and shaking her body gently back and forth but it’s like she’s in a coma.

To think I could’ve been like this….

I’m anxious to get back inside her mind, but it looks like what I saw is all that I’ll be seeing on this visit.

“Aramei will not able to hold the connection for very long at a time,” Eva says while lighting a lantern on the other side of the room. The afternoon is quickly slipping away into the evening hours, and the cabin, shrouded by a thick forest, is becoming dark fast.

I sit at the table overlooking the downstairs floor, watching servants come and go, dust and mop and stand quietly until they are called for by Eva for any number of duties. One brings up a plate of fresh fruit and vegetables with Ranch dressing and some other weird-smelling sauce that I really have no interest in. I’d like a Black Angus burger or a melted ham and cheese sandwich, but I don’t expect I’ll be getting anything like that around here.

Before long, the area is bathed in orange light from the lanterns; the shifting shadows on the log walls slow and deliberate. Everyone here is so orderly, taking their time in every little thing they do as if to make sure they get it right the first time. They never speak. Never. When I think back on it, even when I saw Aramei in the cave so long ago, the servants didn’t speak then, either. At least not to one another. Just thinking about it makes me anxious. I could never live like they live, so submissive and disciplined and seemingly without any sense of self-determination or freedom.

But even still, not anything nor anyone else can hold my thoughts more than Aramei, who still has not moved or whimpered or fluttered her eyes since I came out of her mind.

I can’t believe I was even
in
her mind. Or rather, I do believe it. It’s hard to push extraordinary things like this away anymore. I
am
a werewolf, after all, and if that doesn’t help me believe that there are many strange things in this world that I didn’t know before, then nothing will. But regardless of believing it, some things are and probably always will be hard to understand. This is definitely one of them.

As I begin to wonder when I’ll be able to leave, I hear a vehicle pulling up to the front of the cabin. And before I think to head downstairs and see who it is, the front door opens and Trajan is walking inside.

Eva’s demeanor shifts back to that solid, quiet manner as she walks over to stand against the wall.

Trajan’s footsteps coming up the stairs make me edgy.

I take a deep breath and go to sit at the little table. When Trajan makes it onto the upstairs floor he doesn’t say anything to me at first. He walks right over to Aramei, leans over and brushes his strong fingers through her hair and then walks over to the nearest lantern, turning the little knob to raise the fire.

“I don’t think you…want to know what I saw,” I say to Trajan, jumping right in rather than letting it linger.

Trajan stops in the center of the room and folds his hands together in front of him. He peers across at me, his deep blue eyes piercing into mine and that fixed, expressionless look on his face makes me all the more nervous. He wants to know everything, like he said before, no matter how much I think it will anger him.