Sashki Ch.4: Aki and Sashki

Chapter 4: Aki and Sashki



A dim glow welcomed me when I awoke. It was only a small amount of light but the sting of it made my eyes water. My body ached as I arose from my sleeping position. When my vision cleared, I searched my surroundings for clues as to where I was and how long I had been here. I remembered only that I had done something foolish. Details were beyond my reach. My eyes drifted to a lone candle sitting on a round wooden stool to my right. The flame that had woken me was burning brightly.

    As brightly as the sun..

    I heard footsteps enter the room behind me. I turned my head and my muscles tightened. Instinct told me to hide but I was paralyzed with fear. It was a man, and I immediately sensed that he was no ordinary man. He was like me, like that man I had met so many years ago. A beast. He was like me in that way, yes, but in most ways we were not alike.

    His skin was dark, probably not as dark as it had been during his life, but it was much darker than mine. His black hair was thick and fell on his back like a horse's mane. When I was alive, I had heard about the native people that lived in the wild. They refused to leave, yet refused to socialize with those of us who considered ourselves “civilized”.

    This was the closest I had ever been to one of them. In the church we often prayed for them, for God to help them discard their pagan ways and see the light. It didn't matter what we had believed in our lives now. We were both damned.

    In truth, I was scared of him. He kept his distance from me, not even so much as to glance in my direction. I waited for him to speak, but my patience was rewarded only by silence. He sat down on a large pile of furs,  similar to the one that I now noticed underneath me. He began scribbling notes into a small brown journal that he held in his abnormally large left hand. Beside him sat a stack of books.

    Then I began to notice stacks of books all around the room. There were shelves packed with them, with titles that related to all matters of science and religion, some I recognized and other things that I had no knowledge of. It was a library of sorts, but I had a feeling none of the books were available for loan.

    Suddenly, I felt the stabbing of hunger in my gut, and I groaned. That was when the native finally took notice of me. He peered at me over a pair of wire rimmed spectacles. His leathery skin glowed in the candle light and  I took note of the dark shadows beneath his eyes. He had been an older man when he experienced the change. He made a gesture that indicated that I should look behind me.

    I turned and saw a large rusted cage sitting on the floor near me. How it had escaped my notice before was a puzzle. In the cage were rabbits, and not just a few. They were crawling on top of each other and the smell of their bodily waste penetrated my nostrils. It sickened me, but my hunger was strong and I broke open the cage and devoured the rodents. After, I sat on the floor, still weak, but satisfied for the moment.

    A low voice spoke up from the other side of the room.

    “You will be having something more palatable later tonight.”

    He continued writing. Questions flooded my mind, I suddenly wanted to ask him so many things. I decided to go with the most immediate concern.

    “Where am I?”

    He sat his journal down by his side, and looked up at me with the glare of an irritated mother.

    “My name is Aki. This is my home. I found you at the bottom of a pit, weak and helpless. You were fading in and out of consciousness, talking under your breath about your sister abandoning you. You were pathetic. For some reason I decided to bring you here and treat your wounds instead of leaving you to be found by the evil things that lurk around that area. Does that answer all of your questions?”

    The look he gave me reminded me of a school teacher asking a question that they know you can't answer because you haven't been paying attention. I had been paying attention though, especially to the part about “evil things that lurk”.

    “Evil things? Is there something out there more evil than you and I?”

    As I expected, he gave no reply, just a patronizing stare. My face would have been flushing with humiliation if I had still been alive. I did not care for the way this man was making me feel like a child. I was young to him perhaps, but I was no idiot.

      I decided I did not want to ask him any more questions. I got up to leave, and sat back down when I realized that I had no idea where I was or how I could possibly find my way out.               

    After hours of mind numbing silence, he spoke to me again.

    “You made a good decision in being silent, you may learn a few things from me after all.”

    He smiled at me and it made me feel even more humiliated. I was like a dog receiving a tasty reward from my master. Everyone in my life had been striving to domesticate me, and now I was going through it all over again. I was in no position to fight it.

    Just then, his head jerked up and his body tensed. His eyes followed something invisible across the wooden planks above us. Footsteps shuffled down a staircase.

    “We have company,” he said, disappearing into the maze of books. I heard the unlatching of a door and then came the unmistakably human scent. A small group of natives accompanied Aki into my presence. He spoke to them in a language foreign to me, but he seemed to be telling them to address me as “Sashki”. So from then on, I was no longer Sister Anna MacArthur. I had a new name, and a new life.

    Part of my new life would be the bond with this group of natives, whose numbers were much greater than the ones who visited us tonight. We performed elaborate rituals with them, where they allowed us to drink of their blood. They believed that in return, they would be protected from the dark creatures that hid in the shadows of the forest.

    They trusted us with with other matters as well.  They viewed us as ancient and wise, and came to us for advice and healing. With my past experience as a nurse and Aki's knowledge of plants and herbs, I felt that we vastly increased the quality of life of the small tribe. Everyone benefited from this arrangement and it lasted for many years.

    Only recently things started changing. The Age of Information and Technology consumed the nation, and many of the descendents of the native tribe moved to the city. Aki and I were becoming legend and I knew a time was coming when I would be forced out. I had found my place, and now I was to leave it. The events that happened during the following months only furthered my suspicions that a change was about to occur.

    One particular night, Aki was out gathering herbs in the moonlight. I had read almost every book in our collection, but I spotted an unfamiliar cover peeking out from underneath Aki's journal. The book seemed to beckon to me. Normally, I would never dare to touch a private possession of Aki's, but curiosity got the better of me.

    The book was titled “The Mystery of Reincarnation: What Awaits You in Your Next Life?” and the author's name was listed as J. Keller. I opened the book. Many pages were loose and all of them were yellow and thin with wear. I thumbed through the pages carefully, scribblings of Eastern philosophies and mystical looking  diagrams, none of which I understood.

    Eventually I came to a section that had been bookmarked with a photograph. It was faded and brown, ancient looking really.  Though hard for me to believe, they appeared to be wearing Confederate Army uniforms. The scenery around the two men was a blur, but the faces looking back at me sent chills running down my spine.

    It was Aki, his arm resting in friendship on the shoulder of the man that I had cared for at St. Christopher’s on that fateful night so long ago. I clenched the photo in fear of my discovery. What did it mean? Aki had heard me speak of the one who made me, yet he had not come forward with this information. I turned the photo over and written on the back in lower case cursive was the name “Simon”.

    Who are you?

    I put the photo in a leather pouch that I kept against my breast and placed the book back under the journal. Then I went to my bed to await the morning. I never confronted Aki about what I had found, and if he noticed that it was missing, he did not mention it to me.

    A few weeks later, restless from my recent discovery, I made my first trip to the city in decades. I found myself at a small brick building surrounded by motorcycles. Inside, men and women played billiards under flickering neon lights. My tendency to dress in native style clothing helped me blend in with the crowd.  A wolf among sheep. I noticed a few of them carrying knives and pistols. Sheep with lethal weapons.

    I felt my head growing dizzy from the scent of man, but I had eaten from a tribe member earlier in the night and had control of my hunger. I was questioning what had possessed me to walk into this place when I spotted a familiar face in the crowd. Sitting on a red stool, legs crossed, sat a petite woman with magnificent golden hair, falling over her shoulders in soft ringlets.

      It was Lydia, surrounded by a small group of  dangerous looking men. She grinned and motioned for me to come near to her. She shooed the men away as I approached. I sat down next to her, trying to hide my discomfort with the situation.

    “Anna, it has been ages.” She spoke to me so casually and with such eloquence, as if all those years of her madness had never happened. I did not know the woman sitting in front of me. I had nothing to say to her.

    “It must seem strange to you, seeing me here. I wasn't myself when we last parted.”

    “What are you doing here?”

    She distorted her face in mock puzzlement.

    “Are you not happy to see me, sister?”

    “You're not my sister.”

    She glared at me, and for only a moment, I thought I glimpsed a sadness in her eyes. She was quick to turn her face from mine and switched focus to the original question.

    “I came here to take care of some business for some of the more prestigious members of my covenant”

    “Covenant?”, I asked with suspicion. I had only heard the word spoken with bitterness by Aki.

    “Yes, The Circle of the Crone. You should consider joining us.”

    “Not interested, sorry.” I rose to my feet, prepared to leave.

    “Wait,” Lydia extended her arm and touched me, making my skin crawl.

    “I've traveled to many places these past few years.”  Her voice trembled. I couldn't imagine why.

    “I've heard many rumors. Vampires like to gossip, they can be as bad as Granny's sewing circle.” She laughed, but I was not in the mood for humor. I was ready for her to get to the point so I could be on my way.

    “What of it?”

    She cleared her throat and looked at me as if reconsidering her next statement.

    “I had business in the outskirts of Seattle not long ago, and I heard talk of a vampire. One with a Southern drawl,  hair as black as tar, and a charming grin. He seems to have a distaste for rules, and is fond of causing problems for those who someone as young as myself would cower in fear of. He's one cocky bastard. It reminded me of someone I had heard of before..from you.”

    Initially, I was shocked that she had actually heard and remembered things that I had told her so long ago. She had understood me the whole time, and I had thought her brain was nothing but mush! Then I realized what she was telling me. My sire was alive, and apparently kicking. Somewhere near Seattle.

    Of course, there was a chance it wasn't him. I had a strong feeling that it was, and Lydia must have felt it too. Why else would she tell me this, other than to torture me in revenge for what I had done to her. I deeply considered that possibility.

    We locked eyes and all I saw was pity, not the bitterness I had expected. She was telling me the truth. I knew then that I was going to Seattle. I took Lydia's hand in my own and squeezed tightly. I did not tell her how thankful I was, but I'm sure she felt it.

    “Goodbye, sister.”

    I made haste out of the building and into the busy street. I was not looking forward to parting with Aki. I hoped he would not be around to see me leave.

    When I arrived at the home Aki and I shared, I flew down the stairs and into the library. I gathered every book and map I could find on Seattle, Washington. I threw everything I thought I might need on a long trip into a large leather sack. To my dismay, I saw Aki glaring at me from across the room.

    “Aren't you forgetting something?” He said in a casual tone, nodding toward a moderately large ball of white fluff curled up on the floor. It was Bonnie, our coyote. Aki and I had found her as a pup, abandoned by her mother due to her albinism. I had immediately bonded with her, and cared for her as if she were my child. It had been three years since then. She had grown enormous in size and strength during that time. In my former life, I would have been quite intimidated by her.

    But it was not my former life, and I felt closer to her than anyone I had ever met. Lydia, Aki, Simon (if that was even his name) meant nothing to me compared to this canine. She looked up at me with her dazzling red eyes and I knew Aki was right. I wasn't going anywhere without her.

    “Come Bonnie.”

    She jumped up, tail wagging. I smiled at her excitement. A rare occurrence for me.

    Aki stood to his feet as I walked through the door. Of course, he said nothing. He stood there, just as I would always remember him. His face stern and expressionless, his body built like a brick wall.  I knew there was a chance I would never see him again. It was the last time I could ask the question that had been burning inside of me for years.

    “Why did you save me?”

    I expected no answer from him. I never expected answers from him. The words that now fell from his mouth came as a shock to me.

    “For what reason did you infect your sister with our disease? Loneliness is the bane of our existence. It is inevitable and everlasting. Never forget that.”

    There were no hugs, no kisses on the cheek, and no long tear filled goodbyes. Aki smiled at me, and I smiled back. I had a suspicion that he had known how this would play out all along. That I had not found that old photograph by accident. Then I was gone, racing through the night, Bonnie at my side. The journey had begun.



***Go on to Chapter 5