What Manner of Man: Chapter 31 🦇

Nor morning stars shun thy uprising face.

Dec 01, 2023

JOURNAL ENTRY (CONTINUED)

Undated.

When Alistair had finished describing his tragic history, his appearance was more than ever like some fallen angel as depicted by Doré. He looked broken; crushed under those centuries’ weight of history. As he’d spoken of it, his voice had altered strangely, taking on a harsh, inhuman quality. Something in me clamored to run away and hide at the sound — almost a growl — and I suppressed a shiver of instinctual fear. The man, overcome with anger and grief, was beginning to give way to the beast.

Conquering the momentary urge to draw back, I took up his pale hand and pressed it to my lips. He seemed to return to consciousness of my presence with a start — as if his gaze had been turned inward, fixed upon the shadows of centuries past. The light in his eyes was fearsome and strange.

“I won’t let you die —” There was a slight tremour in my voice as I spoke, but I was determined to fight. “Not now; not like this. I don’t care what it takes.”

Hope seemed to kindle, fleetingly, in his eyes, only to be snuffed out again by cold resignation. “It’s no use — when you took up that ring, you took the first step upon the forest path that has led, inexorably, to this. From that moment, you were bound to bring about my end as assuredly as each night is bound to end with day. We have been drawn by the same invisible hand to this time, this place. The god of Swallow’s Rest, who surely has some purpose in mind for you, intends that these events should be carried through to their conclusion.”

“For what purpose?” My words sounded leaden to my own ear.

“Perhaps you are intended to assume my mantle. You said you have felt the mystery which is Swallow’s Rest. At the temple you were initiated, and you have possessed the ring. Doubtless it will pass back to you and with it perhaps some part of the duties I once fulfilled. You may study, receive the ancient devotion. It is fitting — you would make a beautiful vessel, a fitting servant to any god.”

“Damn your god! Damn your god and damn mine, and damn anything else that says you must die! You’re wrong, Alistair. The people of this island, they are still here. They have changed, perhaps beyond your recognition, but it’s been two millennia! Their religion is no longer yours. Who would I be high priest for, what people would I serve?”

“You would serve Swallow’s Rest. There is nothing else.”

“I would have dropped the ring into the sea along with my cross, had I known. Serve a god that would punish you beyond justice or reason? No, Alistair. I have not rejected the bondage of one cruel faith only to take up another, like an ill-used wife who flees from her abusive husband into the arms of an abusive lover. Your god is made in your image. The people of St Silvan’s Head have their own relationship with the unseen spiritual world. There are other ways. If no path exists that doesn’t end in your death, we must forge our own.”

“You’re mad,” he said, with such fondness that it was practically a term of endearment. “You almost persuade me to attempt the impossible, but a life must be exchanged for a life — that is the principle of sacrifice.”

I could be still no longer, rising to my feet in agitation. “That mystery which we call gods resides first in the human breast. They can only find expression through us, can only rule our lives if we consent to be ruled. Any god that demands sacrifice of us can be defied by us!”

“I do not even know what I would become, were I to survive.” His pallid, shadow-haunted face seemed to me almost skeletal, sharp in all the wrong places. “I have no notion what it would do to me.”

“I would be there, no matter,” I said. “You said that Swallows’ Rest loved you in its way, as you were its steward — but gods cannot love like this.” I reached for him then, but Alistair flinched as if scalded. “Gods do not dread parting, they do not cling to their beloved in the night praying against the dawn. They cannot; not when death holds no sting for them. You and I are the same. The same heart beats in both our chests, and the same air is in our lungs. I would kill your god and mine to save you if I could. I need you, Alistair. You must live.”

“Victor,” he whispered, “Many people have passed through this house, many other priests, but never once has there been one like you. From the first, the way you spoke — the very way you carried yourself — marked you as different. There was secrecy behind your smile; something I didn’t understand. Above all, the astonishing transformation I’ve witnessed in you — these things you’ve been saying. In all my lifetimes, I have never witnessed such a capacity for growth. I find that I care for you very deeply; I feel such affection for you as I have rarely experienced. Swallow’s Rest has chosen well.”

The intensity of his gaze and the sweet, impossible things he was saying stole the breath from me. What cruelty this was, what torture! To have him so near, saying such things to me, yet flinching from my touch. I knew it wasn’t that he feared me; it was himself he didn’t trust. Nonetheless my heart could not bear it.

“You must trust me,” I pleaded, just preventing myself from going on my knees before him, “Though I have been blind, so have you. What you did was not evil. A god worthy of devotion would show mercy. Just as I was wrong to obey the cruel bidding of an unjust church, so must you defy this curse. I defy any god that will not allow us to be together in this moment.” I longed to try to touch him again, but refrained.

“You should put me again in chains if you must be near me. I cannot withstand the feelings you awaken in me. If I give in, they will pull me under, and I cannot account or what I might do.”

“You will not hurt me,” I said with simple conviction.

“Victor, there is a part of me which wishes for nothing less than to devour you, to take you apart with my hands, to taste your blood, to —” As he spoke his expression grew inexpressibly dark. “What it takes to resist — if I let myself have what I want, if I bend even to the slightest degree, I will not be able to stop any of it. Do you understand? I am changing; whatever you may once have admired in me is vanishing rapidly. Every moment it grows harder to see where I end and it begins.”

Beside us a length of pearly white fabric gleamed arrestingly from a twisted knot of rent garments and linen. It drew my eye, somehow familiar. Idly taking hold of the material, I began pulling it free.

It was the white robe — the one he had worn — “When you seemed about to take my life, you could not,” I said. “First during the ritual, and afterwards, twice more you were prevented from harming me, though you lost control.”

“That was because you possessed the ring.”

“Do I not still?” I retrieved the ring from my pocket and slipped it on my finger. “If you cannot trust yourself, then trust at least in this. There is no safe path before us! Even if it is all we ever have, I would rather know you once than never at all. I love you, Alistair, and if you do not hold me this moment I will simply die.”

His eyes fell shut. A sound somewhere between a sob and a moan escaped him and he reached out, blindly, folding me in his arms and pressing his lips to mine. He sighed like one, dying of thirst, whose parched lips felt the first drop of water they had tasted in days.