I miss the urgency. The search for meaning throughout the human race is vital. Everywhere, people, they seek their purpose, their destinies. Find meaning now, they think, because it doesn’t last forever.
I too seek meaning. Find meaning now… because it can’t go on like this forever.
They are just illusions… promises. One will either do something or they won’t. Any words before that decision are only superfluous. Later, they can be confessed or they can be denied, at the speaker’s discretion, to suit his or her own purposes.
I never speak in promises. Not anymore. If I state my intentions in advance, it is fact.
Facts can’t be broken.
I have killed willfully and I have killed by accident. There were times I was only looking to feed, but, in my excitement, I would yank a man too hard and snap his neck. I was unaware of my power, unaccustomed to the strength.
I still haven’t grown used to it, not completely. You would think by now I would be. But, once upon a time, I was frail, powerless, breakable, and I still remember very well how that feels.
The year that I was born, a book called Malleus Maleficarum was published. It was a manual for witch-hunting, so inciting that even the Catholic church was against its publication. For witchcraft to exist in a person, it claimed, three elements were necessary: an evil-intentioned witch, the help of the devil, and the permission of God.
The book was used for years to torture and kill innocent people. No one guilty would ever have fallen victim to its simplistic traps. And none of them did.
I am not a witch, but I know a thing or two about the three elements. It hardly takes all three. No evil-intent is needed to be pulled into evil. And there is no such thing as the devil.
There used to be a story in Estonia. It starts as many stories do. A starving peasant girl is captured stealing food from the marketplace. She is brought to the palace for punishment and locked down in the dungeons. Stealing is punishable by death, and the king is well known for giving the maximum penalty. When he comes down to pass judgment, the girl offers the king all she has ever had to give. Herself. In exchange for her release, she will do whatever the king asks of her, let him do whatever he wants with her. He doesn’t refuse.
The girl is cleaned up and sent to the king’s chamber. There is no gentleness, no sensitivity. There is only the king’s desire and the girl’s supplication. And when it ends, there is release only for him. She is taken away to the harem, where she has earned her seat.
Was it a better fate than death? Only she knew that. But, the moral stands, when you give yourself for freedom, you end up a slave.
I have traveled in this manner before, hopped aboard ships for otherwise unattainable destinations. Being buried beneath thousands of tons of metal is the only safe place for me to be on a long journey. When the sun rises, an airplane or train becomes a deathtrap. So, I have traveled like this. Numerous times, on more than one continent. Nothing has changed. Every ship hull is full of desperate women just as this one. Hundreds of years of progress, and women still offer their bodies as sacrifices to escape nameless pain.
I have been called.
I anticipated a test. I wonder if this is it.
So it begins. The journey. Or maybe just another journey. There have been so many. Is this one really any different? It’s strange what I remember and what I forget. I try so hard to remember. And to forget. Some things are difficult to. Some must have been easy. Half a millenia and I certainly don’t retain half a millenia’s memories. Though there are some things that will stay with me forever.
Forever.