The Twilight Saga: The Official Illustrated Guide (16 page)

Influenced by his memory of the happy girl Esme had been, Carlisle bit the dying woman and took her to the home he shared with Edward to wait for the transformation to be complete. When it was over, Carlisle apologized for what he had done, but Esme was not unhappy with the situation. She remembered their first meeting, too, and had always considered Carlisle her ideal of a gentleman. Carlisle and Esme soon fell in love and were married.

The coven’s cover story now changed: Edward began to be introduced as Esme’s brother. In many ways, however, Edward regarded Carlisle as his father and Esme as his mother. Carlisle now had more than the companion he’d longed for; he had a family.

Carlisle wasn’t expecting the coven to get any bigger, but one night while on his way to work at a hospital in Rochester, New York, he discovered the nearly lifeless body of Rosalie Hale lying in the road. She had been beaten, sexually assaulted, and left for dead. Struck by the waste of a beautiful young life, Carlisle brought Rosalie home and transformed her, hoping in the back of his mind that one day she might be a companion for Edward.

Two years later, Rosalie had only reluctantly assimilated to vampire life. The relationship Carlisle had hoped would spark between her and Edward hadn’t happened. So when Rosalie carried the dying Emmett McCarty to Carlisle and begged Carlisle to change him, Carlisle did as she asked. Rosalie wanted a companion of her choosing, and Carlisle felt he could make amends to her in this way.

At this point Carlisle and his family moved to Washington State, west of the Olympic Peninsula. To his surprise, he discovered a local Native American tribe who had the ability to transform into wolves. The Quileutes had previous experience with vampires, whom they called the cold ones, and they considered it their sacred duty to protect humans from them.

Unwilling to harm the werewolves, Carlisle brokered a treaty with the leader of the pack, Ephraim Black, utilizing Edward’s mind-reading abilities to communicate. The treaty established boundary lines for both the Cullens and the Quileutes. The Cullens agreed never to hurt a human, which included never transforming a human into a vampire, since the Quileutes considered transformation the same as killing.
Both the vampires and the werewolves promised to keep the true nature of the other secret from humans.

The family continued to move when necessary, and in Denali, Alaska, Carlisle found what he’d been looking for when he set off for America—a coven of vampires who shared his philosophy and drank only animal blood. The two covens ended up close friends, viewing each other as extended family.

The Cullen family grew when they were joined by Alice Brandon and Jasper Whitlock, who had been traveling together as a couple. Since the family was now quite large, a new cover story was devised. Edward, Alice, and Emmett were now said to be the adopted children of Carlisle and Esme. Jasper and Rosalie, who looked alike, were passed off as Esme’s twin orphaned cousins.

Eventually, the Cullen family returned to Washington State, this time to Forks, somewhat north of their previous location. Carlisle took a job at Forks Hospital and became well regarded in the community as a doctor and a citizen.

Edward was born to Edward and Elizabeth Masen on June 20, 1901. He was their only child. His father, a successful lawyer, provided Edward with many advantages, including music lessons and the opportunity to attend private school; however, although his father provided for Edward in material ways, he was emotionally distant and often away from home on business. This absence was made up for by Edward’s close relationship with his mother; he was the center of her life.

Edward excelled at his studies and became an accomplished pianist. As he grew older, Edward became enamored of the life of a soldier. World War I raged during most of his adolescence, and Edward dreamed of the day he could join the battle. His mother’s greatest fear was that she would lose Edward in the war. Every night she prayed that it would end before her only son turned eighteen and was old enough to enlist.

Nine months before his eighteenth birthday, the Spanish influenza hit Chicago, infecting all of Edward’s family. Gravely ill, they were treated in the hospital where Dr. Carlisle Cullen worked. Edward’s father quickly succumbed to the disease. On her deathbed and fearing for her son’s life, Elizabeth Masen begged Dr. Cullen to do what was necessary to save her son. Somehow she seemed to know Dr. Cullen had a supernatural means to save Edward.

“Unfortunately Edward isn’t based on anybody—he is all imagination and wishing. I think his allure is partially due to his old-fashioned manners. He’s a gentleman, and those are hard to come by these days.”
—Stephenie

Moved by Elizabeth Masen’s plea and having already thoroughly considered the idea of creating a companion, Carlisle took Edward from the hospital late that night, carrying the unconscious boy to his home. There Edward became the first human Carlisle changed into a vampire.

“A
ND THEN HIS FINGERS FLOWED SWIFTLY ACROSS THE IVORY
,
AND THE ROOM WAS FILLED WITH A COMPOSITION SO COMPLEX
,
SO LUXURIANT
,
IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE ONLY ONE SET OF HANDS PLAYED
.”

—Bella, on Edward (
Twilight
, Chapter 15)

Edward formed a deep bond with Carlisle, who became a father to him, gaining Edward’s trust and love the way his natural father never had. It was Carlisle who first realized that Edward possessed mind-reading abilities; he noticed Edward answering questions that Carlisle had not asked aloud. Edward had always had a knack for reading people; after his transformation, this ability blossomed into a true psychic talent.

Edward’s new family gained a member when Carlisle transformed Esme to save her life after her suicide attempt. Edward was still young enough to appreciate a mother’s care, and Esme gave it to him. Edward grew to love his new “father” and “mother.” But as much as he respected Carlisle’s ideals and valued Esme’s gentleness and tenderness, he couldn’t help questioning what it meant to be a vampire.

After almost a decade of living with Carlisle, Edward decided to leave his new parents and experience an alternate
style of vampire life. He began drinking human blood instead of animal blood. Rather than become a true villain in his own estimation, he became a vigilante. Edward used his mind-reading abilities to target serious criminals as his victims—murderers, rapists, abusers, pedophiles, and the like. For his first victim, he tracked down Charles Evenson, Esme’s abusive ex-husband. In the end, though, he couldn’t accept taking so many human lives, no matter the justification, and in 1931 he returned home to Carlisle and Esme and their way of life.

“I like that Edward’s not so clean-cut, that he has a dark side, that he’s doing things that are not clearly legal or illegal.”
—Stephenie

Edward knew from hearing their thoughts that Carlisle and Esme were sometimes concerned that he had no romantic love in his life. When Carlisle transformed Rosalie Hale and brought her into the family in 1933, Edward knew that Carlisle and Esme hoped she and Edward would become a couple. But as stunningly beautiful as Rosalie was physically, Edward was not attracted to her somewhat shallow and self-absorbed mind. The feeling was mutual. Edward and Rosalie always treated each other as brother and sister, and were not always on the best of terms.

When the Cullen family lived in Alaska, Edward had another opportunity to find romance, this time with Tanya, the leader of the Denali coven, a group that also practiced a “vegetarian” lifestyle. Though Tanya was interested in Edward, he did not return that interest. It wasn’t until the Cullen family returned to Forks in 2003 that anyone captured Edward’s attention. There Edward met a human girl named Bella Swan. Bella was markedly different from every other
person he’d ever met in two impossible-to-overlook ways: First, her blood “sang” for him the way no other human’s had; second, her mind was the first he’d encountered that was entirely closed to his mind-reading abilities.