Echoes

I had lost count of the days.

I was summoned at twilight, instead of dragged from the hole in the mansion's depths.

The sky was dark grey, and a soaking rain pelted the ground. It left you with a cold you thought would never leave your soul.

Perhaps the heavens wept for me, knowing what was to come.

What they proposed to make of my person was like asking aluminum to become gold.

Both metals are useful, but only one is gold. I am not gold.

The handler who met me was a novice now. The one with the golden thread sewn across her mouth. The gold was gone, but her eyes were an even darker lacquered obsidian with a streak of malice. And that hatred was directed at me. "Today, you will finally learn silence."

"And everyone else will have peace, at last," snickered a few novices above her.

"Not the stillness of the mouth, as some require. You have mastered that." A different handler pinned the novices with a look. "This is the silence of the soul."

She pressed a seaworn stick into the palm of the woman with the lacquer eyes.

"Know this," my newly discovered enemy muttered as she installed the stick between my teeth like one would a bit for a horse. "I would gladly watch you die."

Straightening my back, unaware of the hatred for me growing among the initiates and novices. I performed my tasks. My example too hard for them to follow. They hated it because they didn't know I suffered more.

I rolled my eyes, which only further angered her.

The Ancients, whose feet fell so softly it would be easy to believe they carried eternity in their scent, led the way into the countryside. Fledglings and novices laughed and skipped like we were on a field trip.

While our group contained an air of excitement, the presence of the Ancients unnerved me. My gaze cast about, every nerve on edge as I surmised it meant a choice would occur. Whether to be chosen to serve or chosen to die, I did not know.

Our glorious brief freedom down a narrow dirt path quickly ended as we were filed single file through the entrance of what I could only describe as catacombs.

The corridor soon echoed with fear-filled footsteps, those of the fledglings and novices. Their laughter cut short now. Every breath we took reverberated too sharply, every heartbeat feeling like the sound of a drum that would invite punishment.

An Ancient held up their palm, and everyone snapped to a halt. Her words were concise. "Each of you will be tested. Many of you will fail."

She looked directly at me, urging me to move to the position where her aide stood. To my surprise, the woman spoke. I expected no instruction. To them, suffering was succeeding.

"You must learn the art of internal fortitude. No sound. No thought allowed to be heard."

I accepted my fate with a curt nod.

In a large cavern of echoes, I was hung by my wrists.

At the same time, the others were instructed by our Headmistress to sit and watch.

Here, the walls were carved to amplify sound. A breath became a loud rumble, a sob an unearthly wailing cry with the power to bring about all our deaths.

I understood then, thoughts coalescing into clarity as sharp as day. They weren't just listening to an auditory expression. They were listening for my will.

The room quickly filled with phantom sound. Echoes of past screams and their owners were drawn from a deep chasm. Real wraiths, their cries trapped in time but equally deadly. My mentor had prepared me for this. More than any of the other trials. To fail this meant the end of a journey and the very real possibility that one would join those who shrieked.

When I didn't perform as the Ancients expected, the novices and Ancients alike abandoned me to face the wraiths alone.

Hours bled together.

I counted time in the pain that threatened to shear my shoulders straight from their sockets. In the slow crawl of blood down my wrists, inch by maddening itch.

In that darkness, fragments of conversations between novices, my cellmate, and one particularly close wraith surface in my memory. "Let them teach you silence, little flame," my mentor's face swirled before me. But keep a song alive in your heart. That is your rebellion, " the wraith said, taking on my mentor's face.

His gossamer lips sang a jaunty tune that begged me to join along. Inwardly, I sang. My eyes closed so that I couldn’t see their flighty frames. I sang of the morning, the dawn, and to the obliteration of the vampire race like it was a sea shanty. Then came the still voice, rising.

The one I had quelled until now. Each memory correlated with a specific verse. Another rose in my mind like a shield. The words of another a sword.

Each memory I held was attached to a verse, another a shield I could hide behind, bows and arrows.

What I really needed, though, was a wooden stake, shaved to a nice little point at the end. Extra pointy.

The longer I stayed silent, the more the echoes receded and the voice in the silence became the only one I heard.

The madness within the chamber dulled.

I was less to them and unable to feed off my fear, they fled. In that nothingness, I was more to myself.

The Ancients returned on the fourth night. Their eyes were hollow and expectant as they cut me down. The handler stepped forward, her blade poised to slice the rope that still bound my hands. "Will you speak?” she asked.

I stared at her, my thoughts my own and alone. No vampire on the fringes looking in. I had even managed to push her out. "When the time was right, I would speak in such a way that armies would follow me to the light," I vowed in my heart of hearts.

I was as before. Gagged, bruised and bloody but unbowed.

She lowered the blade, a slight smile… the first I’d ever seen on her face. “Then you have passed.”

They untethered me, and I collapsed into the arms of a fledgling who caught me like one might a falling leaf. His eyes seemed familiar.

The handler, who had smiled, said, surprising me. “Teach the others to do the same, if you can.”

For a brief second, I thought she had heard my inner whisperings about the downfall of the clan.

I considered further, and the understanding came to me.

Let them break themselves trying. Silence is never just silence. It is also power.

That night, in the pit again, I lay in the darkness. My shoulders heaved as I wept. Not from sorrow, nor pain. But because I had tasted something holy.

Some might think it's the sound of their own strength. Or the defiance of their own roar.

Now I knew it was so much more.

Once I was out of here, I needed to find the angelic horde.

But first, I would need to face another trial.