The Old

They lay face to face, naked on the bed, and Chris reaches out to him.

“It will be better this way,” he says. “This has a way of cutting through the fog of words.”

“Is it possible?”

“Between us,” Chris says. “I believe. It is usually done between two Drinkers, but I think it can be done between us.”

Chris presses his forehead against Lewis’s, and in the warmth of the apartment, after the old radiators have pinged to life, it is almost too hot for sheets. They meld into the warmth of each others, limbs linked. But the lovemaking has already come, and then Lewis thinks: “Or is it coming?”

The firelight shines on Chris’s body, and Lewis thinks Chris is wrapped up with him, but then how can he be watching him? Where is this fire from? No, and the grass is green, and there are the lengths of palm fronds, and beyond the drumming is heard

“Se mwen ki Bondye nan Bondye
Bonte Bondye a
Lespri Bondye a kontan!”

As one they got up from lovemaking with a delicate swiftness, and dress, and Lewis mourned the loss of the sight of Chris’s body. Before he had been so narrow and thin. Living up in the hills he was lean with muscle and the buttocks now covered were round and lovely to the touch. He was not himself, not exactly, and when he could see through Chris’s eyes, he saw the man he was, darker, balder, eyes wider apart than his. Better looking! But a voice spoke to him. Stop thinking. Only watch.

They moved through the hills, and the singing went on while the conch blew, piercing the night air.

Se mwen menm ki Pitit Bondye a,
yon fwa wè li toujou konnen!

Moun ki wè m 'wè papa a
Moun ki wè papa a wè mwen
Vreman vre, mwen menm ak papa a se Youn!

Tonight they came down through the hills, black and brown, Indian and African, and white, poor English, Irish, Scot, screaming with torches and machetes, and they came upon the plantations, burning, torching, and the power moved through Chris’s body. He was no Drinker, not yet, but this was more than the power of a man. This was the power of a man filled with magic and desire for a witch, and he hacked his way through overseers, always watching Melek on his horse, dropping his sword on those below like Ogun himself, and the words of the song continued in his head.

I am the God within the God
the goodness of the God
the joyful spirit of God

I am the Son of God, once seen always known!
He that seeth Me seeth the Father
And he that seeth the Father seeth I
Indeed, I and the Father are One!

Over and over again he sang to himself, “Indeed, I and the Father are One! Indeed, I and the Father are one! Indeed!”

And it was on this indeed that blood invaded his vision as Melek was struck and fell from his horse, and shouting, Chris lost his concentration. But as he turned to duck the blade, it struck him, and then another, and then another, and sword blows slicing him, battering his head and cutting up his body, his vision went red and then dark and then he knew nothing.

“Can you do anything?” he heard a voice above him asking.

“No,” the woman said, “but you can.”

The other voice, Kruinh’s, said, “That is not lightly done.”

“And this is no light thing,” the woman said.

Chris opened his eyes and, opening his mouth, coughed up blood.

“Wha….:” he began, his mouth thick with blood, his chest open with lacerations.

“What?”

And then he called, “Melek!”

“Dead,” Kruinh said simply.

“And you will be soon too,” the woman said. Her white hair was in a mushroom aureole about head. It was The Maid.

Chris’s eyes widened and then went dim. He coughed again.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” The Maid said.

White faced, green faced now, Chris turned to Kruinh, and Kruinh said, “She is right. And if you make the choice, if the choice does not suit you, you can turn away from it, step out in the sun and end your life.”

Chris nodded rapidly, coughing up more blood, though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was nodding to.

Kruinh bent down toward him, and for some reason, now Chris smelled the blood all over him. This close, Kruinh’s teeth were most visible.

“Do you wish to live?” Kruinh asked, “or to die?”

And Chris croaked, “Live!”

And no sooner had he done so, then the fangs, precise and sharp, were in his throat, and blood was being drained from him as something else entirely new entered, setting his veins, setting all of him, on fire.

Lewis opens his eyes and asks, “What was it like?”

Chris does not open his eyes. His long hands are on Lewis’s cheeks.

“Pain. There is a great pain, but not mawling, for this is rather a surgical procedure. The bite that gives life is not like the bite that only kills. The bite that kills is with the top teeth. They deal death, but they do not usually exhaust the body of the blood already in us. Sometimes it does. Sometimes as the blood is taken with the top teeth, after a time, the old blood is released with the lower two. When you are not making a drinker, you do not bite with those lower two. The old blood is not red or thick. It is like water. It is called ichor. It is what blood transforms to. It makes the Drinker live forever but beyond that gives no permanent sustenance. It must be renewed. When you Make, you Make with both the lower and the upper teeth and so, when Kruinh made me, I felt the pain of his teeth in my throat, the headiness of my life slipping away. But next I felt the pain of the lower teeth, and I felt my body filling with that thing which is life to a Drinker, but final death to one who is mortal. And so, my last minutes as a man, as a mortal human, were in the strong grip of Kruinh’s arms, my throat caught in jaws, pain lacing through my arteries and I…not drifted off to sleep, for it is not really like drifting to sleep...

“I died.”

I cannot say anything about it. Not really. I cannot remember it. Later I saw it done to others, but of course you cannot really describe your own being dead. If I saw a white light I do not remember. If I went to heaven I cannot say. This is the reason why, by tradition, we stay away from houses of death and from funerals. Because we have died, but still death is a mystery to us. We have passed through death but we do not know what it is.

“When I woke up, everything assaulted me. Even though it was dark, the darkness was too much. I could see everything. Everything rocked and reeled. The low noises were too loud, every movement was too much. I opened my mouth and began to scream, but a hand lowered over my mouth gently, and my head was placed to a breast.

“Calm, calm,” a voice whispered, soothingly. “Calm, calm, there there.

“Drink,” he murmured.

And obeying, like any infant, not even thinking of the strangeness, I bit into his chest and felt Kruinh wince with a pain that he said, and I have experienced, was also a pleasure, and I felt, for the first time, the pleasure of blood entering my mouth, some of it, yes, going down my throat, but most of it saturating tongue and gums and roof of mouth, being absorbed directly into me, as if my body was a sponge, for that is what drinking is for us.

“Yes, yes,” Kruinh crooned, “Drink, drink your fill. You must have your first drinking. You are a child again. You are a baby. Drink.”