Blood Vivicanti (9780989878579) (2 page)

I was in a strange and
beautiful room, like an enchanted chamber. My bed was king-sized,
draped in a white canopy, covered in a cloud-like duvet, twelve
pillows, each a different size. At the foot of the bed was a
fireplace beneath a widescreen TV, both were roughly the same size,
both were much larger than me. In a corner was a table and chairs
shaped like twisting vines. Thick green curtains were drawn over a
floor-to-ceiling window in a nook. And through a slight parting in
the curtains silvery moonlight was spilling in across the
floor.

My senses greedily devoured
all this fresh data. My photographic memory swallowed all these new
sensations. Stomaching so much all at once was dizzying. Like being
drunk on knowledge. My cup runneth over.

I could perceive the
structure and form and purpose of things.

The golden carpet – my
eyes could see all its tiny fibers. My mind could count each one.
Somehow I could envision the machine that had woven them together,
the carpet inspectors who’d made ticks on their clipboards, and the
carpet layers who’d crawled all over my room.

And the tufted chair in
the corner – somehow I could see deep into its craftsmanship. I
could perceive the intent of its craftsman. I saw that the chair
had been commissioned over two hundred years ago. The craftsman had
been an angry Italian. He’d been lonely, a widower, an obsessive
compulsive by our standards. He’d made the whole chair in a day and
a night. Then he’d tried to destroy it. Now it was mine.

How did I know all
this?

The laptop computer on the
table – I saw it now – another man had personally handcrafted it –
all of it – inside, outside, keys, screen, ports, and cards. I
could also see that the man was a gifted engineer. He had
programmed it with his own operating system. He’d loved his work.
There was no other computer like it in the world. And now it was
mine, like the chair.

Yet how could I know this
too?

The tufted chair and the
laptop computer had been made centuries apart. Yet they were
connected by patterns of human behavior. Both men had a passion for
working with their hands. Both loved freethinking and
independence.

Separating them only was
means. The two hundred-year-old craftsman had been poor. The
contemporary engineer is exceedingly wealthy.

How could I see all this in
mere objects?

My ability to know knew. My
ability to understand was trying to play catch-up.

Slowly I
inhaled.

The scent on the laptop,
the scent on the chair, the scent on everything in the room, I knew
that scent. It was the scent of the man who made me a Blood
Vivicanti. It was the scent of Wyn. His scent was everywhere. I was
in his house.

I inhaled again. I realized
more.

No, I wasn’t in his house.
I was in his
mansion!
A great big mansion that seemed to go on forever, like a
magic castle. Wafting into me were the scents of too much wealth
and much more worry.

The strong scent of fresh
pine needles told me I was elevated a few stories from the ground.
The scent of Cool Beans Coffee House far in the distance told me I
was still in Idyllville. Filling this mansion was the strong scent
of new – new cars, new computers, new things – I love that
scent!

Yet that scent also
perfectly blended with the scent of old. Ancient history dwelt in
this mansion too.

All these old and new
scents of the mansion also mixed with the clean scent of spring
water and smooth river-rocks. The water and the rocks were not in
the mansion. But they weren’t far away either. They seemed right
beneath me. They hummed of mystery.

My clothes were gone. I was
naked beneath the sheets. New clothes were laid out for me on the
nearby table.

No one else was in the
room.

I slipped from the
bedclothes. The air was cold and fresh and it gave me goose
bumps.

The luxury carpet was thick
and soft. It felt good beneath my feet.

Folded neatly on the table
were undergarments, a white t-shirt, a red V-neck sweater, and blue
jeans. Snug shoes lay on the floor.

All my new clothes fit as
though they had been tailored to my petite size.

The clothes had tiny rough
filaments that only a Blood Vivicanti can feel. They scratched my
skin, satisfying places I never knew had been itching for
years.

My clothes smelled of fresh
laundry. I love that scent too.

Yet their aroma was also
the scent of direction. I could tell where they’d come from, how
they’d been handled, the kind of people who’d touched
them.

I opened my chamber door. I
peeped through the crack.

The hallway was more ornate
than my room. Empty too.

I crept from my room into
the hallway. Like my room it too was carpeted in luxury. The
hallway was lined with various chairs from various periods in
history – the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, and
even the Computer Revolution.

On both sides of the
hallway, soft cream-colored lights hung in sconces. On one side
were marble statues of Christian saints and Greek gods. On the
other side were suits of shiny armor standing in chivalrous
formation. Small tables between them had flower heads floating in
bowls of water. Computer panels were imbedded into the walls near
doors that led into other rooms. All the other rooms were
empty.

I had this wing all to
myself.

Hanging from the walls
were several paintings that I’ve come to love.

San Giorgio Maggiore at
Dusk
. Monet.

Starry
Night
. Van Gogh.

No. 5
, 1948. Pollock.

Girl Before A
Mirror
. Picasso.

None were copies. All were
authentic and I could particularly smell the scent of each
painter.

I could relate to the
Picasso. Still can. Sometimes the girl in the mirror is too much
Blood Vivicanti and not enough Mary Paige.

I can also relate to the
Pollock. A reviewer once referred to it as “baked macaroni.”
Sometimes I feel similarly when I’m bloated on too much
blood.

The scent of the hallway
exposed the fullness of its history.

I could smell Pollock
painting. I could see his fingerprints in the paint.

I could smell knights of
yore fighting in their armor. I could see the spots where their
blood had been wiped away.

I could smell the
electricians who’d been in the hallway. And the carpenters who’d
been building and the housemaids who’d been cleaning and the mice
that were always scurrying through the wainscoting.

My mind could envision
their images before me – like ghosts.

My photographic memory
recalled facts that I had read about the paintings themselves, and
general facts about painting canvases and houses.

My memory recalled more
facts – facts I’d read about interior design – facts about
floristry – facts about housekeeping and heraldry and hosting
parties like Mrs. Dalloway. All these facts came together in my
mind. They touched one another. Then they wove together into a
lovely pattern of human behavior. And they helped me perceive how
everything in this hallway was connected in some way.

The arrangement of the art
and furniture explained the psychology of the one who had arranged
it. It hadn’t been Wyn.

I could smell Earl Gray
tea steeping in a kitchen. The kitchen was a few stories below me.
The bitter aroma of the tealeaves stretched out before me like a
lightshow, revealing a map of their history. The scent told me that
they’d been grown in India, stored in London, imported in a
hermetically sealed container, and flown in on Wyn’s private jet
plane.

In the same way that my
clothes had been tailored to me, these tealeaves also had been
gathered specifically for the taste buds of a Blood Vivicanti. They
were for
my
particular sense of taste.

All of it was Wyn’s gift to
me. He knew my Blood Vivicanti senses would be more intense than
any human sense. He knew the right scent that would perfectly
please my sense of smell. He knew the right flavor that would
rocket my taste buds into orbit.

Wyn is a scientist. This
means that he has the emotional capacity of a Vulcan. Yet his
capacity to show kindness always surprises me.

Wyn and I are similar in
that way. We have to think about being kind. We don’t do it
naturally. We have to watch how kinder people behave. And then,
when an opportunity for kindness arises, we have to tell ourselves:
What would a kind person do?

Thinking how to be kind is
how we are kind.

At the end of the hallway
was the master stairwell. It was white marble. Down the middle ran
a long black rug.

My body moved nimbly now.
My footfall hardly made a sound going down each step. I didn’t have
to tiptoe, but I did anyway. I didn’t feel safe yet, like a cat
left to her own devices. I was acting the way I once did in grade
school: I was trying to go unnoticed.

Life had taught me thus far
to avoid looking at my own power. So at that time I couldn’t see
how powerful I’d become.

I could have slammed my
foot down and shaken the stairwell with the force of an earthquake.
Perhaps even shattered it to shards.

I must be careful how I
walk.

The stairs ended in the
main foyer. It was as ornate as the upper floors. It was as large
as an ordinary house. The floor tile was a black and white
checkerboard pattern. The walls had bright white wainscoting. The
wallpaper above was rich red cloth. Along the walls were matching
red sofas with ebony frames. A grandfather clock stood beside one
sofa, ticking and tocking. A round marble table was in the center.
On it stood an immense spray of sweet smelling orchids. The
delicious scent made my head spin.

The aroma of the tea had
moved. Now it was coming from an adjoining room. It was a library.
Tall bookcases almost touched the high vaulted ceiling. Small
staircases led to a platform halfway up. Books of all shapes and
sizes and of all subjects filled each bookshelf. Their various
colored spines painted the room like a rainbow.

Some books were from the
12th century and some were from the 21st. It was the scent of human
progress throughout recorded time. There was the scent of long-dead
monastic hands that had illuminated tomes – and the scent of
ancient printing presses – the scent of Koenig's steam-powered
press – the scent of the Stanhope press – and the metallic scent of
movable type. I could smell it all, the whole history of the world
in miniature, all kept hidden here in this mansion, in a small
village peopled by quiet villagers, aspiring artists, and teens
like me.

One bookcase appeared to
be missing a book. Only Blood Vivicanti eyes would have seen
it.

I had the peculiar habit
of noticing the shape of something’s absence because I was always
secretly hoping that people would notice the shape of
mine.

Wyn was in the library,
sitting in a comfortable leather chair. He was wearing another
expensive suit. His dark hair was slicked back. A book was in his
hands. He had been flipping through its pages fast, reading with
superhuman speed. The way I read books now.

For instance: Yesterday,
in an hour, I read Proust’s
In Search of
Lost Time
. It took me so long because I
reread a few times the episode of the madeleine.

I’ve never eaten a
madeleine cake.

But my china doll’s name
is Madeleine. Driving my tongue deep into her neck reminds me of
our first date. I was still human then. We had been sitting on the
swing set. My Madeleine had tasted so sweet and
delicious.

The mind is a playground of
associations.

Wyn paused his reading and
he watched me enter. He didn’t say a word. He was observing me the
way Darwin observed nature.

Becoming a Blood Vivicanti
means becoming a part of a family. But each person is a unique
species.

Wyn wanted to know more
about me. He wanted to see if I would survive for much longer.
Maybe he thought I was endangered.