be cold for me as well? How does he know I’m not cold? He can’t see I’m in a short-sleeved shirt and not shivering-- he’s blind. “Yes. It’s cold. But not for you” that is just plain strange for him to say that right of the blue.
“You must be busy with the solstice,” he says.
Where did he pull that from? Why would the solstice be a busy time for me? Why mention the solstice at all? We’ve never talked about the winter solstice, ever.
His words prick at me. They seem to have a meaning behind them. I don’t have a response. There’s an awkward pause in our conversation but the awkwardness seems to be coming from only me.
“I think I’ll have a smoke. Do you mind if I do?” he asks me.
I scrunch my face. I was hoping he’d wait until I was gone but here was an opportunity to move past his strange choice of words. “No, not at all,” I say.
He sits in his chair and grabs his pipe. He takes a match from a box and strikes it. He places the flame over the bowl and puffs. The stinky smell of whatever is in there reaches my nasal passages in an instant.
This stuff stinks! If I could throw-up I would but we vampires don’t have anything to throw-up. We’re like sponges, with the blood we ingest quickly absorbed out of our stomachs into our cells and organs.
He blows out some smoke and I swear it takes the shape of a bear before the shape gives way to a whimsical cloud, which then drifts into smoky nothingness.
I try not to, but I cough. I’m having a coughing fit.
“I’m sorry Young Fawn. I should not be smoking this around you.” He uses his callused thumb to quash the burning embers out. “I’ll wait until after you go.”
“It’s okay. I’m cool with it,” I say coughing, even though I’m really not okay with it and am glad he’s stopping.
I’m really kind of lost as this is the strangest conversation we’ve ever had since our first meeting in the woods where we met. If feels weird. Our talks have always been easy and flowing.
“How old are you now, Young Fawn?” he asks.
That’s right, we never shared our ages. I don’t know why, we just never did. It never came up. I guess I could see he was old and my voice told him more or less my age.
“I recently turned fifteen,” I tell him.
“Fifteen now! You’re no longer a fawn. Now Lioness of the Redwood Forests,” he responds with another eruption of excitement like when I arrived.
His words were instead like an unexpected jab. How did I go from fawn to lioness by turning fifteen which is the age vampires become adults? Could it be just a coincidence? Could it all be just coincidence?
“By now your abilities must be greater than ever,” he tells me.
Okay now something is up. My abilities now?
“What do you mean… abilities?” I query him.
“You know what I mean,” he responds directly.
“No… I don’t.”
“Of course you do.”
“No, I really don’t.” I say… but I think I really do.
“I know what you are. It’s okay. I’ve always known,” he says matter-of-factly.
“I’m just a girl.” I respond to him continuing what I’ve been taught to do from birth; lie to humans.
“Oh yes, just a girl,” he says with a knowing smile on his face.
Does he really know what I am?
“I knew from the first time we met at the river. I was waiting for one of you as I have these many years. I’m glad it was you that found me. In the older days if you had been wolfen I would have been doomed should you have been even a baby. I often wonder why you didn’t take me. You just said “hi.” Do you remember, Luna?” he asks me.
He knows my real name. He knows what I am. Then he used this word-- wolfen, a term I’d never heard before. Is he talking about werewolves?
“Wolfen?” Came out of my mouth. It just came out.
“Yes, our word for werewolves,” he says like we’re having a normal conversation about life.
He was so calm when he used “werewolves” that it was apparent he had plenty of knowledge and experience behind the word he had spoken.
“There are no such things as werewolves,” I say with incredulity added for effect.
What else am I going to say? My life is deception. Plus, they no longer exist, so it isn’t really a lie.
“Really? Then there are no such things as let’s say… vampires?” He said that while he looks right at me with his clouded eyes.
He had me cold. But I’ve been trained to act and deceive, so I continue to act and deceive. It feels uncomfortable to do it with him though because in our conversations I had never had to lie or deceive him about anything before. We never went into areas where I had to.
I also find it uncomfortable because he and I are connected almost on a cosmic level. But so deep is the code driven into us that I am willing to lie and deceive him to keep the secret of our existence, or at least to not admit it-- even though I desperately want to admit it.
“Vampires don’t exist either. I think I’d better go,” I say. But something has a hold of my feet and it won’t let me leave. Nothing is holding onto them so it must be my conscience.
“Yet here you are Lioness of the Redwoods,” he says.
There is another awkward pause-- actually, total complete silence. But he’s right I am still standing here.
“It’s okay to admit what you are Luna. Your secret and that of the vampires is safe with me. It always has been,” he tells me.
It’s on my tongue. I felt it leap from my heart to my throat and crawl into my mouth up to the tip of my tongue. I want to tell him “yes” I am a vampire. Yes we exist. We are part of the planet. I want this so bad.
“Sit with me,” he offers.
I sit on the ground in front of him, like teacher and pupil. This is how all of our talks went.
“Bloodfeeders and my people go back long before the hordes of foreign humans. Centuries of time. We, Yuroks were of the forest and at least in those days were as aware as the animals we lived among. You came to our lands and fed on us. Bloodfeeders were cruder and more aggressive in your attacks back then. You needed what we had and you took it. There were those among you that killed us with their hunger. They would take too much blood. They would take some of us and keep them to feed over and over again. We learned how to track bloodfeeders with wolves. We attacked and fought them. We laid traps. We managed to survive.
Then came the wolfen to our lands. No one knows where they came from
