Authors: Romina Nicolaides
In March 1204, when I was about nine years old, Crusader ships began to arrive and drop anchors outside of town. Unrest simmered throughout the city and the rate of incidents amongst the two communities increased once again. People speculated as to their reasons and whispers between the Latins told that they had come to exact revenge for the massacre of almost two decades earlier. The Greeks of course refused to believe that a force put together to protect the true faith would attack other Christians but that disbelief quickly crumbled when they set up camp in the town of Galata across the strait and prepared to attack. The whole city waited with bated breath to see if the reinforced fortifications would hold and when it began to look like it would be breached, we loaded a few mules with as much as we could carry and headed inland towards the west with no plan but only the hope of escaping the city with our lives.
We would travel during the day and camp in the city’s outskirts during the night as we headed westwards. A day or two after we left we were caught up by some refugees who had also left the city and a few days after that more would follow. The ones that had been fortunate enough to escape with their lives described scenes of immeasurable horror. Looting, vandalism, and destruction were unleashed by the Crusaders on the city and the survivors spread out in the surrounding areas like fleeing rats scrambling to escape a flooded sewer. The more the days passed, the stories that reached us got worse and worse. Churches and convents were destroyed, stripped of their art and religious paraphernalia which were then loaded onto ships for Venice. Men, women and children were killed, nuns were raped, the weak taken into slavery. The Latins in the city finally got their blood back by joining into the Armageddon.
Away from the city we tried to survive in the forests as best as we could. More families had arrived and a makeshift refugee camp had been formed. Rations were meager but people shared as much as they could. We survived on foraging, hunting and what little grains we had brought out of the city. The people from the surrounding villages viewed us with suspicion but could be parted from their crops at the right price. Though we had brought as much gold as we could carry when we left the city, it was all we had and it had to be wisely spent. By the time winter came, half the families in the camp had perished from hunger, disease or injury and our future looked bleak. The dark imperial forests were hostile and city folks like ourselves had few survival skills.
Reaching the end of the first passage Kati could not believe her eyes. Who was this Theodora Laskari? What did the Countess have to do with something that had taken place over four hundred years ago, if her basic mathematics was correct? Some of the words were big and hard to comprehend but the Countess’s priceless journals essentially told the story of a refugee.
Our existence in the forest continued and for almost six years we lived as nomads on the outskirts of the city with the fewer and fewer refugees who remained. Over time they found their way to the newly founded Byzantine Kingdoms and our invitations to join continued, but my father would politely postpone. Though he always suggested we should head towards Nicaea in the coming spring, he secretly hoped Constantinople would regain its former Greek majority and we would return to our lives like before. His heart had always been in the city and in truth he didn’t want to stray too far.
One cold winter night about six years into our exile my family and I were away from camp. Normally we would avoid straying at night but after another raid we were forced to check our traps for damage. We could not afford a night to go by with damaged snares as we would have nothing to eat the following day. While I was inspecting one of the traps that I had built I noticed a deer some trees away and decided to go after it and shoot it with my bow. An opportunity like this was rare as this was a large animal and could feed us for days. The light of the moon guided my steps and I chased after it for quite some distance but eventually lost it. Realizing I had gone much further than where I would usually venture, I was overwhelmed by an unnatural sense of calm and quiet. There was frost on the ground and on the trees, and a few fallen leaves but everything was dreadfully still. It was too quiet for a forest at night and I became frightened. Before I could finish a thought about trying to find my way back, something landed behind me from the nearest tree, pinned me to the ground and sank its fangs into my neck just under my chin. It wore a thick woolen pelt which was matted and wet but this was no ordinary beast. I felt the searing pain of the bite where my pulse was strongest and sensed the upper and lower teeth sever the skin on both sides of my throat swiftly releasing a large quantity of blood before I began to lose my senses.
The creature would most certainly have killed me had it not been for my father finding us and shooting at it. My attacker was not hurt but had no choice than to leave me with what little blood it had not drunk and escape as quickly as it had appeared. My last memory was of my father pushing against the bleeding wound on my neck and holding me close to his chest. I woke up in camp three days later in one of our makeshift tents to my mother’s untold relief, where I was left to slowly recover from bouts of high fever. By dawn of the third night the fever had settled but the sunshine it brought with it now caused me a lot of pain and distress. In the days that followed I would avoid it with fervor and hide until night time when I felt at peace.
My parents grew worried and afraid that I had become possessed by some demon or spirit and were extremely frightened of me. God fearing as they were they believed that only evil thrives at night and that no good can come of a person afraid of the daylight. They began to avoid me and became extremely protective of my brothers when I was around them. When one night I was caught drinking the blood directly out of a fox my father held a knife to my neck and told me to leave before he was forced to sever my head from my shoulders.
Distraught at the loss of my family and home, I wandered the forests alone. I embraced all that was beastly about me and I ate whomever I wished whenever I came upon them. All I could feel was my hunger for blood and it was a long and difficult learning period. My victims often fought back and I was frequently hurt as I had not quite mastered the art of a stealthy approach. Hunting with a bow and arrow was much simpler compared to direct contact with one’s victims. After a couple of years of living alone I secretly returned to the camp and would watch over my family who had not moved far. I would climb the trees where they were camped and listen to them talk around the fire. There were a lot of rumors going around of more creatures such as myself in the forest and I heard how they prayed to the Lord to spare them my terrible fate.
I never found out who bit me but I imagine it must have been a lone feral Afflicted like me or a gypsy blood drinker. There were groups of night gypsies just like there are day gypsies and they wandered the forests for victims and secluded spots to set up camp. In those days no one was safe anywhere and in truth we were lucky to have survived as long as we had. The forests were filled with mercenaries, barbarians, beasts, Afflicted and many others looking to make a living, find a place to sleep, a town to pillage or something or someone to eat. Cities were equally deceptive and dangerous with only the illusion of order and protection beyond their walls.
One night after going out to hunt I returned to camp to see my family off for the night but I was faced with a scene of devastation. No one was to be found anywhere. Other than the blood there were no bodies and no one had been left behind. For weeks I searched high and low for them, for a trace or a clue, an inclination of what had happened to them but to no avail. The trail ran cold and I believe they were taken by some passing force in a final attack they were unable to fend off or run from
.
For the first time in all my life I felt truly vulnerable. I had nothing and no one to turn to and was alone in this vast and dangerous forest with not even the illusion of a familial nest. For weeks I would continue my life like previously by sleeping in my makeshift light-proof tent in the forest canopy by day and by night I would hunt for animals or people to feed on while always looking out for signs of my family. Perhaps it was this intense search that drove me to continue without thinking too much about anything. I was alive but a shadow of myself…
Unsure of what to make of these stories, Kati looked up from the book to realize she’d been breathing faster and faster. She went back to the beginning and read the words again in case she was mistaken, but the meaning was the same. She ran to her room unconcerned about who might see her and retrieved both the grammar book and the thesaurus and ran back to the binding room. She put them both on the floor and checked on the meanings of sentences she had doubts over but her knowledge had not failed her, her understanding was good.
The girl’s story had affected her deeply and the combination of emotions she was experiencing was difficult to order. What kind of demonic magic was this? Was it real or some work of fantasy like the Aeneid that Oriana had taught her about?
The journal continued in this vein for several more pages, and each and every page captivated her.
The following winter was one of the harshest I had ever experienced in all my years in the forest. The hunting was sparse and the travelers even more so. The forest canopy was dry, coarse and scant providing next to no shelter from the elements or the light. More by necessity than desire I was forced to head further west in search of shelter and food and soon arrived at a small walled town. I managed to make my way in with a group of other travelers.
Once inside I wandered the town as quietly as I could until I found an abandoned home with some odd markings on the door. The house was not new but not too old either and it seemed like everyone who had once lived there had left in a rush. From a quick look around it appeared that this entire section of town had been abandoned and that no one ever came past here unless they really had to. I seized this opportunity and quickly entered. I looked around and was surprised to see that what few belongings these people had had been left right where they were as if frozen in time. The table had a bowl and two ceramic cups on it, the rest were in a cupboard untouched and covered by a thick layer of dust. There was a pig leg hanging from the rafters but it had decayed and gone dry and moldy from the time it lay there untouched. I wondered why no one else had taken over this house after the original lodgers had left but at the time I knew nothing about disease so powerful that it could wipe out half a city and terrify the other half to the point of never approaching the victims’ houses.
Over time I slowly made that space my own. In the day I would sleep in my basement and at night I would venture outside for food. I started with the sick and the homeless. They would hardly notice my attacks as they were always collapsed outside on the ground, and most importantly no one would miss them when they died. The parish would eventually realize they were dead and would collect and bury them without much inquest. When they ran out I moved onto the prostitutes.
I had learnt my craft by this time and could approach and silence a woman quite quickly and with little struggle. Like the homeless, they too were somewhat invisible so no alarms were raised. When they ran out I brazenly started moving into people’s homes for my feedings. To my good fortune, a few years after my arrival in this town, I discovered that the king of these lands, Tsar Ivan Asen II had gone to war against Constantinople and Nicaea so all the battle-worthy men in the village were sent to fight, causing a significant drop in the male population and an increase in whispers, rumors and fears. This little blessing allowed me to roam more or less unobstructed amongst the remaining women and children and the fat, infirm and elderly men.
Gradually the years passed and I realized I wasn’t aging like I should have been. Children in the street grew up to become fully fledged adults with children and
grandchildren of their own and I never looked a day older than sixteen which gave me cause to think about the blessing of my condition and its connection to the magic of blood. Human blood is so addictive. You can go without it for weeks, but when there’s a glut of it you can never have enough. There were nights where I would finish a family of six or seven in their home and then do the same again the following evening. As is wont to happen in cases of mass death, however, the people in the town began to panic. I could hear talk of demons or plagues from outside the taverns and from people talking in the street. They began to heavily barricade their homes and would not stay out late for fear of the curse that was decimating their village. They would search for fearsome beasts and find none as no one dared approach the plagued houses of the past. Then they would blame each other and cast unwelcome folks out of the village, blaming them for this misfortune. Sadly for them the ones that were ostracized were the first to be found dead the next morning with their throats slashed and deprived of every last drop in their veins. The town priest seized upon this chance to condemn the town for their salaciousness and ungodliness so no one was particularly disappointed when his turn also came. Many began abandoning the town to avoid this devilish curse but some held firm and stayed to brave the storm with means of defense ranging from weapons to crosses, prayers and incantations. The last few families to remain in the village were the hardest to reach but eventually they too ended up in my gut. At the end of this feast I was left with a shell of a village so more out of necessity than desire I too was forced to leave for pastures new.