This Perfect Blood

    And then the silence of ten thousand drums swirled around my feet as I stepped into the dust. Behind me, there was nothing, mountains of dry leaves and their blood and the blood of others, but the bodies couldn’t be seen. I was thankful, but I did not know it. All I knew was the roar of silence hitting me like the flood of redemption on some unmoving thing, ancient beyond memory. I think I might have smiled. I don’t think I was happy until the music started playing.

    It crept out slowly from the souls of the fallen, from the souls of the dead. It wasn’t like the battle song, all metal and flame, and it wasn’t sweet or peaceful. It was. It was the harmony of something I couldn’t understand, that I would never understand. The secret chord, the answer to every question and the question for every answer. It splintered the trees, shook dust from the stars, and in days gone by these rich minor chords would have made me weep, shout, scream in joy and pain. Not today. Not now. This was music to please the God above, and it filled me with childish wonder and the wisdom of time.

    Slowly I looked down at myself and tried to regain my balance. The white shirt I had been wearing was stained with dirt and sweat and God knows what else, and my arms and ankles were covered in dried blood. It might have been my own, it might have been another’s. It didn’t matter to me at the time; shapes were rising from the leaves and ashes of a dead civilization. I made my way forward.

    A tree twisted up from between jutting rocks, its branches broken and a small fire burning in a hollow by the base. Gathered around the trunk was a small group of people, five or six at the most. Some were wearing heavy cloaks, others were not dressed warmly at all. One small woman was kneeling, warming her hands on the fire. All looked familiar, but I could not place where I knew them from. Strains of the music were still playing, but a haunting, slightly sinister melody had began to weave itself in. As I approached the group, there were no greetings. They did not acknowledge the Song.

    Suddenly a gaunt man with impossibly dark hair turned and stared at me, boring painfully inside. He opened his mouth to speak, but his thin frame was racked with a impetuous, harsh cough. I waited, and I saw that when he took his hand away, fresh blood trickled down his palm. So much blood, so much.

    He held his pale hand out to me. “Hermione,” he whispered with his not-there smile. “I was hoping you’d be here.” These simple words matched with a new low sweeping in the Song. So perfect. So much blood. He pulled me close and kissed me, and I tasted the metallic hunger on his lips. Like a quick revolution, I kissed him back, and as I pulled away his blood fell from my lips. I couldn’t remember who he was, but I knew I had tasted him before, maybe in another life. So perfect, so much blood. This perfect blood.

    He let go of my hands, and the absence of his fingers burned. I wanted to grab him, to touch his lips again, but I did not know what he was to me or why there were such fathomless wells of anger in his eyes. When I licked my lips I could taste him again, and I could taste something new. Something bitter and surprising.

    Fear.

    He turned back to the group and his eyes were iced flame. He began to speak, low at first and growing in volume, but the words were like another language to me. They blended with the Song, a dissonant chorus from depths beyond memory, and I began to remember.

    Not to remember, to realize. Out of the surrealism of my broken world, new thoughts and fears bubbled to the surface, pushing free in gasps as I shook. God, there was a battle here. Oh God, did we win? God...

    I was on my knees, retching, because I knew. The man did not stop speaking, but he flicked his red eyes towards me and stared, watching with impossible patience like a silent hunter. I saw what he was staring at. My shirt had come unbuttoned, and he was remembering, tasting my flesh. Captured once, captured again, and a red sun was rising.

    “No.” I was on the ground now, and he was above me. “Not captured, not this time.” He pulled me up and I stumbled against him, but he caught me and kissed my neck. Did I recoil? I don’t remember. His breath was on me and in me and he said, “You’re dead.”

    Somehow this did not surprise me. I nodded, and my voice came as some ancient sea chest opened after years and centuries of forgotten solitude. “Did you win?”

    He grinned again, the last time I saw him or anyone else smile. “I think so. Maybe not. But you can’t stay here.”

    I wanted to ask him more, but he bent in and kissed me lightly, then deeper, then let go.

    I did not hit the ground. The Song stopped as I slipped into oblivion, and every breath I drew was hallelujah.