Chapter 84 - The Country of the Ground Scratchers part 2

We travelled in a southeasterly direction, moving through the low forested hills as the trees budded and spring came round to the continent of Europe.

As the weather grew warmer, Ilio took to wearing just a loincloth. I could see him maturing day by day, and it filled me with a mixture of sorrow and admiration. By the end of summer, he had grown at least four inches, and was transforming into a slim and muscular young man. His body rippled powerfully when he ran through the forest. His face began to take on the contours of the man he would become. By the time autumn came around, his thick black hair had grown down past his shoulders, and he began braiding it so that it swung about his face and shoulders in coils. Soon, he would be grown, and he would leave me to start a family of his own, I knew, so I took a secret delight when I caught him playing with the little wooden men and animals that I'd added to his collection, when the mood seized me to carve them.

It seemed that winter came in the blink of an eye. We settled in a cave in a mountainous region bordering the Pannonian Plain, in the country that is now called Austria, and it was there I spent my days teaching the boy the skills he would require to survive on his own.

I taught him to flake stone so he could make his own knives and arrowheads and chopping instruments. I taught him how to construct a bow, how to tan hides, how to cut and sew clothing. Ilio was a bright boy. A quick study, you would say in these modern times. He even improved on the snares and weaving skills I imparted to him.

I no longer tried to hide from him the peculiar quality of my skin. He loved me as I loved him and had grown accustomed to my strange appearance. He even joked about it from time to time. "You're as pale as a frog's belly!" he teased me one afternoon, as we bathed together in the pool beside our home.

Winter had passed, a mild season of cold, and spring had returned to the Alps once again. It was the first truly warm day of the season, and we'd dashed for the falls to swim, even though it was still cold enough to make us both yelp when we jumped in.

I twisted my hair to wring out the water. "You'd probably be a couple shades lighter if you washed more often," I retorted, teasing him in return.

Ilio laughed. "I like being dirty. The stronger I smell, the better I like it."

"That's not a good thing if you ever want wives. Women don't want a husband who smells like a skunk."

Paddling about in the pool, Ilio said, "Tell me about your wives again, Thest."

So I told him about Eyya and Nyala, what they'd looked like, how I'd won their favor. He listened with keen interest, then wanted to know what it felt like to mate with a woman, and more importantly, how exactly it was done.

His question caught me off guard, and I looked at him with my mouth open for a moment, too flabbergasted to answer him. I realized then, gaping at the boy, that he'd blossomed like the forest around us had blossomed. He was growing sideburns. There were wispy patches of hair on his chin and upper lip. There was no hair on his penis yet, but I noted it was bigger than it was before. My little Ilio was growing up.

Of course, you know if you read the first volume of my memoirs that I grew up in a very open society, sexually. The River People were ancestor worshippers, our culture based on group families and fertility rituals. We revered sex and celebrated it as the wellspring of our continuation. We didn't regard it with shame, or believe that it was the root of all evil in the world, as the modern Christians aver. In my culture, community orgies, psychotropic drug use and homosexual bonding rituals were the norms. It didn't embarrass me to explain the mechanics of sex to the boy, or admit to him how pleasurable the act was. I was only shocked by his sudden interest in it, how I'd failed to realize he was no longer a boy, and would be feeling his first stirrings of sexual desire.

"Have you never seen your uncle or any of the other men in your village engage in sex?" I asked.

Ilio shook his head. "No. They always put up curtains when they lay down with their women. At least, my uncle did. He said it was man's weakness that he must return to the womb, and that we should hide that weakness from view, lest others make a mockery of it."

I shook my head. "My people were not ashamed of their pleasures. It is the act that makes children… and keeps our wives tolerant of us. Why be embarrassed of it?"

"I'm not ashamed," Ilio said. Then he finally confided, "When I was cleaning my penis yesterday, it grew rigid and then a sticky fluid squirted out of it. It never did that before. It felt really good. Does your penis do that, Thest?"

I laughed. "So that is what this sudden curiosity is all about!" Sobering, I replied, "That's a perfectly natural thing, and, yes, that is what happens to mine if I… ahem! clean it too rigorously. Don't worry about it, boy. That is merely your body pouring forth its seed, and when you take a wife and you impart your seed within her belly, it will grow into a baby inside her."

Ilio nodded, relieved. "I just hope mine grows as large as yours."

"It may grow even larger," I conceded. "When it comes to that, the size of the branch varies with the tree."

It was a time I think back on fondly now, the raising of the child Ilio. I'd lost my own family when I was made into a vampire. In those first few decades of my vampiric existence, I was barely able to control my bloodlust, if at all, and could only watch my children grow from afar. I did not dare come near them, lest I bring them to harm. With Ilio, I was a much older Blood Drinker. I had more control of my hunger. I could enjoy the rearing of a child, for I considered him a son no less than the sons of my own flesh-- Gan and Hun, Gavid and Den. That's not to say I didn't hunger for his blood. In fact, my craving for his blood drove me to hunt the forest nightly, gorging on the blood of any unfortunate animal that crossed my path. My wicked appetite was bearable only when I was glutted on the blood of the forest wildlife, my belly straining with it.

Ilio was a good son. He overlooked my faults. He was respectful of my decisions, mindful of his chores and took great pleasure in my approval. He strutted when I complimented his skills with a bow. He beamed when I exclaimed over the size of a deer he'd killed, or the cleverness of his snares.

Over time, he noticed further peculiarities about my vampire nature. Once, when I laughed out loud at his wit, he took note of my fangs. He later asked if all my people had fangs like a wolf, and I answered, "Yes, Ilio."

When I asked if my teeth frightened him, he shrugged and said, "No more than anything else about you. We are just made differently, I suppose."

Finally, one rainy afternoon, he demanded to know why I left the cave at night, when I thought he was sleeping. He wanted to know where I was going, what I was doing.

"I am hunting, Ilio," I answered. "I do not eat food as you do. When you were younger, I pretended to eat so you wouldn't be frightened of me, but you are older now. You know that I love you, and I wish to be honest with you. I hunt at night when you are sleeping. I catch my prey and suck the blood from their bodies. I have an illness and that is how I must eat."

Ilio shuddered. "That's disgusting."

I nodded. "Yes. It is."

But later that night, as I waited for him to grow sleepy, he smiled at me affectionately and said, "You can go hunting, Thest. You do not need to wait until I sleep."

Returning his smile, I rose and unlaced my boots and breeches. "So I do not tear them, or stain them with blood," I explained, stepping out of them. I crossed the cave to the opening, naked, then looked back at him and said, "I will return shortly."

"Be careful," he called to me as he sat by the fire. He was stringing his bow.

"I promise," I chuckled, then flew into the night.

Sometimes, during my nightly hunts, I ranged further out than was necessary. I climbed to the highest tree I came across and I gazed out across the darkened landscape. To the east across the endless plains, to the mountains in the west, I reached out with my vampire senses, searching for others of my kind. I had not forgotten the evidence of their predations, the plundered village of the Denghoi, so I maintained a vigil, both for Ilio's safety and my own curiosity.

I searched the ground sometimes for more of those strange, crescent tracks, but I never found anything of note, no vampires, no strange beasts with moon-shaped footprints. I spotted human nomads sometimes, travelling in small groups across the grassy plains or picking their way through rocky passes in the mountains, but no other vampires like me. Still, I searched, and I often wondered what my vampire brethren looked like, how they behaved, what deities they might believe in or myths they might extoll.

The only vampires I'd ever seen were the fiends who'd accosted the peaceful valley where I'd been born: the strange little blood-drinker and his powerful, vile master-- the creature who stole away my life.

Another summer passed, then autumn and winter. It grew bitter cold. We hung hides across the entrance of our cave and huddled around the fire. Winter made Ilio surly. He was restless and cranky. My little boy was just a head shorter than I now. His face was pebbly with acne, his mustache growing in. I think he spent half the cold season sleeping and the other half masturbating. He was so hormonal the cave stank of his burgeoning manhood. Finally, when spring came round again, he asked if we could leave our home in the mountains.

"I want to travel again, Thest," he said, his voice husky, having deepened in the past three months. "I want to be around other people. I want to find a woman to lie with."

I nodded. Of course. I knew he'd fly the nest someday. This was as it should be. It should come as no surprise to me. "Where do you want to go?" I asked him, my heart breaking just a little at the thought.

"South," he answered eagerly. Did he think I would object? I only ever thought of what was best for him. "My uncle used to talk of a tribe called the Oombai," he said, "Though he usually called them the Ground Scratchers. They used to trade with the Denghoi before my people were all killed. He said they were an odd tribe, and that they worship some strange goddess who lives beneath the earth, but the women of their country are plentiful and very fair to look at. So he said."

I clapped him on the shoulder. "Then South it is, Ilio."