THE GIFT

THE GIFT

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall….

But I do not.

A travesty.

An obscenity.

A monstrosity.

A creature of utter darkness, cursed to roam the shallows of the night. Feared, cursed, abused, held in great fear, viewed in great hate. The Dark One did not merit so much hatred. The Dark One…the poor fools who read the bedtime story written by that semi-educated Englishman, belonging to that cheap race of shopkeepers, give me great esteem, but wholly wrong me, not comprehending my credo, my reason, my very cause to exist.



I remember. The nights in the old dwelling-place of mine, so replete with the fond memories of my ancestors, the greatest warriors the world ever saw, who lived and died like the monarchs that were, defending the small principality that they were the hereditary monarchs of, against the non-believing heathens who worshipped the crescent with so much of fervour. Before me, there had been my grandfather, the Dragon—what a man he was—all fire and brimstone (and not the way the shopkeepers use the idiom-rather, he was a man who would quote Tacitus, Xenophon and Thucydides in the original tongue, and translate the same to Wallachi for me, a babe in his laps; and also, forge his own swords, sharpen his own arrows, and teach me values, especially that I was a Son of the Dragon, and a Defender of the Faith)! And my father, a loving father and husband was he, and Faithful—his death made me stony, but also taught me my station in life—the Protector of my People, and my Faith. Ah! Was I to know, a man of nineteen well versed in Latin, Greek, German, Turki, and the Arts of Combat, a lover of my beloved Faarna, later to be my Queen, what awaited me? Was I to know that I would be the hated of all mankind, yet chosen by one far above to protect but the same?



It had indeed been a lovely life, then…I remember my marriage: so unlike today, we, the Boyars, the hereditary rulers of our nation, would marry a woman of our choice in the Church, and consummate the marriage the same night at our castle—my beloved Huneadora vested herself like a new bride and welcomed my lovely Faarna into her recesses—and how we made love! All the passion of youth, all the fervour of true love, all the inexperience of our age, all the warmth of our nakedness on our flower adorned marriage bed…I remember it as if it was yesterday, as if it is now, and Faarna looks at me sated, with tiredness, pleasure and vibrant love in her eyes as the cock crew, announcing the end of our marriage night…how she smiled, my beloved –that shopkeeper ‘s apprentice, when he created that travesty using my name, and that of my Royal and Honoured Line, did write well that one line---I indeed can love…or rather, could! NO “three sisters” for me, I have never loved another…



It was Faarna who decided my Fate. Or was it Fate herself, that fickle and cruel Lady, so much crueler than I could ever be.

It had been the fortieth year of my reign, and I had been on my eleventh campaign against the Crescents. It was one of their accursed spies who intimated Faarna of my death. My beloved, fiery, passionate, impulsive Faarna—it took her a moment to cry “Wladisalw”, another to throw herself from the bower…. I returned, to find her lifeless form, heavy with my dead child, dashed to the edges of the moat, bloodied, silent.

I avenged myself. I meted out death, destruction, and one of the most painful forms of chastisement, leading to death, and one that would have the chastised screaming for succor by the swift ministrations of the Grim Reaper. I reveled in the destruction, the death-and-night-and-blood that became the very cause of life itself. I avenged Faarna’s death by the most vicious methods possible, but found no peace—no amount of fear that I saw in the eyes of the non-believers or my subjects would give me a moment of succor from the memories of the warmth and passion that was my beloved Faarna—I became a berserker, going on rampages wiping out foes and my poor subjects alike at the very hint of insubordinance—and was awarded with more hollowness of the soul.



Then I met him. Old. Wizened. Sage. With a wisdom beyond human conceptions. And a fable to tell, one which seemed so full of promise, especially a drowning man like me, clutching at every fragment of life as it passed by, listless and ever flowing, and totally inaccessible. He showed me the Path. He had been the First Initiate, one of the very first to be chosen, to be made an example of and also encharged with a responsibility beyond common human measures—to defend and ensure protection of something that was mankind’s salvation. I shall not lie—cruel mankind’s salvation was hardly what mattered to me on those nights when I had invited my new found visitor to Huneadora, and offered him viands and an excellent choice of vin rouge, et blanc that he declined all in all…a curious aspect of him that I was to learn of later. What I knew not was that I had already been chosen, and by one far divine and far more powerful than he ever would, or could be. He spoke to me of how he had been the first to be “gifted”, when the Master had first spread the teachings of his love, and how he had been in constant communication with the Master, who guided him in his duties, which he had no choice but to perform (Ah! The Master’s Word..The Master’s Love..it is indeed so very pure, so intoxicating, so beautiful…had my grandfather known what beauty he had defended, and had he known what was to become of his line, he would, perhaps, have died a truly happy man.)…then, he accorded me with that which would empower me . Of course, he tested me of my purpose—by then, I had been recipient of the Master’s visitation –in dreams-already, and his intoxicating beauty had chosen for me my path—and then, equipped me, to follow the path that would be so full of temptations and falls, but which had but ultimately one goal—to ensure the Power and Path of the Most Beautiful and Righteous One –propounded with the aid of the Ultimate Sacrifice—would continue unimpeded , and forever.



It was a Herculean task. Far difficult than what I had conceived it to be. I had been Boyar , beloved and feared by my people, Defender of The Faith, commanding great respect and riches, and the love of the most beautiful woman in the world—henceforth, I would be a shocking travesty of my former self, a travesty of mankind itself—and to ensure my continued existence, I would be equipped to sustain myself in the most reprehensible manner ever dreamed of by man, and which disgusted the very life  one so battle hardened as me, even.



But the reward, in itself, was great. It was not my mentor, Lazarus, who convinced me of the same , but the beauteous visitations of The Master, as he came to me in his dreams.

“Vlad”, he would say, pronouncing my name the correctly (and what does one expect of the supreme being save correctitude?) “ do you not love me?”

“Would you not feed my sheep?”

What was I to do, but accept?



Then began the endless nights. Of visitations to the various sites that guarded, often without coherent knowledge, His relics and reliquaries. Sacred. And to be taken under my protection.

And the hunts…driven by The Hunger—at first, I tried to contain myself, driven to disgust by the horrendous ramification of the Act…but, as time heals all wounds, after a century or two, it became more of a necessary habit, than a fearsome abomination.

Lazarus visited me, if not very often.

He taught me the process, extremely difficult, and dangerous to the enactor of it, of extending the ranks of the likes of us. And I did, at times, training them to be  Defenders of the Faith. At times, darkness in the way of power and greed, as the gift entailed, turned them, forcing me to destroy them mercilessly. It was a long, tired journey—to build a parallel world, defending and preserving the same Divine Beauty that our weaker and lesser-lived “cousins” often could not—by losing faith, and the strength to believe in the beauty and power of The Master. And in my sojourns, I acquired a name. Of the  worst nightmare that man has ever dreamed up. Of the cruelest travesty of Nature. Of the Hell-born. Of the greatest enemy of the very Faith I so aptly defend. And I accepted it all, with a half-amused smile on my century old face. And considered letting them know that I had been chosen by none other than the God they so chose to delegate against me, and granted the very “curse” that was bestowed upon such  poorly creatures as Lazarus and me, who embraced it in all its glory. Gifted . By the Same

Nosferatu.

Stregoica.

Pokol.

Upir.

Names bred in hate and fear.

Equated with the Evil One.

Will the creators of cheap fictions and uneducated and superstitious country-bards ever know that I , Dracul, Son Of The Dragon, await the nights, when in my sleep like trance, my Messiah visits me, and bids me arise: his son, his chosen, the finest defender of his Faith, to commune with him, and know of True Grace ?