Dracula in Love

she? The experience of two nights ago had been as real to me as any waking moment I could remember, but now I had to wonder if Vivienne had planted those ideas in my mind, and they had taken hold, transforming into an experience that I recreated and called my own.

I sat down on the grave of Winifred Collins, whoever she was, and put my head in my hands. I wished that I could be more rational, more sleuthlike in assembling all the information I had gathered with all that I had experienced to construct some semblance of reality that made sense to me. I needed a firm identity that I could hold on to, but as things were, that identity was in constant flux, and growing ever more sensational.

Feeling disturbed, and with more questions than answers coursing through my mind, I walked slowly back to the carriage and gave the coachman the location of the cottage where I had lived for the first seven years of my life. Perhaps I would find something there-anything at all-to help me sort out what was happening to me. “Ah, yes, off the old Circuit Road,” he said confidently, and put me inside the coach.

We drove down a country road lined with barren trees that I remembered from my childhood. I used to think that the jumble of scraggly branches cradled at the tops of their trunks were giant birds’ nests. Crossing a stone bridge that straddled a narrow, rushing river, we turned away from the sun, driving past old cottages hobbled with neglect-fallen chimneys, overgrowths of reedy grass. When we reached our destination, I saw that my parents’ house had fared no better. Weeds filled the garden where I had played, and windows and doors were crudely boarded up so that I could neither enter nor see inside.

I walked around to the back of the house and sat alone on the steps, feeling discouraged and rootless. I did not know exactly what I was looking for, but I had hoped to discover some connection with my past. I thought I could hear the current of the river charging over the big black stones I had seen in its midst as we had crossed the bridge. Or perhaps it was just the sound of the wind whipping through the valley. I contemplated taking a walk to the river while I still had a bit of daylight. I stood up and turned around.

“Mina, Mina, Wilhelmina, hair as black as night!”

I heard girls’ voices singing as if they were standing next to me, but no one was there. I knew those voices, had heard them before.

“Mina, Mina, Wilhelmina, eyes so green and bright!”

The voices were encircling me now, frightening me. I swirled around to try to see who or what was singing, and I stumbled backward. I tried to break the fall with my hands, but I kept falling and falling until darkness enveloped me, and only then did I hit the ground.

I laugh and spin, singing with my friends. I am giving a tea party for them, I know, because I see the little cups and saucers on the play table with low benches where I sit every day and play with my toys. My dress is of plain forest green wool, but the other girls are wearing beautiful tunics the colors of gems-ruby dresses with sapphire mantles and dappled with jewels that dance before me like little insects on fire. My hair is dark as a crow, but theirs is red and gold and even longer than mine. A ray of sun slashes through the turbulent Irish sky, and I see that my friends’ perfect skin shimmers in the sun, making them almost translucent. We all hold hands and sing songs, dancing in circles until I am dizzy. “Mina, Mina, Wilhelmina!” They sing my name again and again, making me feel giddy and special. I fall to the ground laughing. My three friends laugh at me, holding out their hands to lift me up, trying to get me to dance, but I am too tired to join them. While I am lying on my back, catching my breath, they drain all the tea from the cups on the little table and then they disappear. Suddenly, my mother’s face is above me, and I ask her where they have gone, and her look turns dark and angry. “You were alone in the garden, Mina. Why must you always cause mischief? You know that your father does not like it when you invent these stories. Why cannot you be a truthful little girl?”

“I am a truthful girl,” I insist. I have seen the girls and held their hands in mine and listened as they sang my name with their beautiful, high voices. I do not lie, and I do not understand why the adults insist that I do.

“Go kneel in the corner until your father comes home,” she says.

She drags me in the house, and I kneel with my face to the wall, my stomach turning sick because I know that when my father comes home I will get a spanking. The light outside changes and it is dark and I am still kneeling and it is very painful. My mother finally tells me to get up and eat my supper. My father is still not home. My mother’s frown is a fixture now. Over a lumpy stew, she tells me that it is my fault; my witchery is keeping my father away. “This house will be without a man if you do not change your ways,” she says.

The past faded away. I realized that I was curled up like a baby in the garden, my stomach still upset from the memory. I was cold and cramped, and I did not know what to do with myself. I stayed there for a while, waiting to see if the voices of the girls would come back, but all was silent except the distant sound of the river. I sat up, thinking that a walk to its banks might be what I needed to clear my mind. Perhaps the sight of the rushing water would sweep away my bad memories.

Luckily, I had worn a thick woolen skirt and calf-length leather boots against the unforgiving coastal weather, and I set out through a half-cleared path that I had trodden as a child. My skirt caught on thistle, and as I bent down to free it, I saw that a small red fox-a female, I somehow knew beyond doubt-was staring at me as if asking whether I was lost. I found myself telling her that I knew my way, and she turned and skittered into the brush, waving good-bye with her bushy tail. Beech and oak trees, some with broken branches and misshapen trunks, covered the glen leading to the river. The sun’s glow had faded almost to dusk, and I hurried so that I would not be trying to find my way back in the dark.

Tall grass lined the banks of the river. The current was even mightier up close than it had looked from the bridge. The water leapt over the black rocks chaotically, angrily, spilling its white froth as it raced to the mouth where it would be set free into the sea. I walked closer to the river’s edge until water splashed my skirt. I took off one of my gloves and reached out to put my hand in the water. Its bracing coldness shocked me, and I withdrew my hand, but I saw a strange reflection in the water, as if two people were standing behind me and I was watching their shadows on the current. I heard men’s angry voices and something like a howl. I turned around. The same strange feeling of falling came over me, and I shut my eyes, but did not like what I saw in my mind’s eye-two bodies intertwined beside the river, two men fully clothed, grappling with each other, hitting and punching. Shivering violently as if I were wet-as if I were in the midst of the water treatment again-I opened my eyes.

The Count was sitting on the ground next to me. My teeth were chattering and my eyes wet. Tears came running down my face-but from what cause, I did not know. He put his arms around me, and I sank into him. His wool coat was thick and scratchy, and I burrowed into his chest.

Do you remember?

I do not want to remember.

You must, Mina.

Images that I did not want to see and sounds that I did not want to hear came back to me: the sickening thud of a punch; a preternaturally strong hand upon a neck, gasping, choking; a body gone limp and disappearing into the water. “No, no, no!” I screamed, beating my fists against his chest until the futility of it overtook me and I let my arms drop helplessly and looked up at him. “Why?” I asked. “Why did you do it?”

“For seven long and painful years, I watched you and I did not interfere,” he said. “You were born with tremendous powers. You were unlike any mortal child I have ever seen, and you suffered for it. You were just a small thing, even for your age, and I used to take the form of animals and visit you so that I could watch over you and protect you. Sometimes we talked, sometimes at this very spot. But whenever you told your mother that you had had a conversation with a fox or a hare, she got very angry with you.

“Your father was suspicious of you from birth, but he did not panic until he saw you change shape. I think you remember the night. Your mother tried to convince him that he had been drinking and was imagining things, but he knew better. He wanted a confession from you that you were in league with some sort of evil entity, so he tied you to your bed for two days and starved you. But, of course, you could not tell him what he wanted to hear.

“He decided that you were a changeling-that the fairies had taken his real child away. He wanted to throw you on the fire to see if you would burn like a human child, for it is said that changelings do not burn. I did not have to interfere because your mother was able to stop him. She insisted that they consult a wise woman, which was against everything he believed in. The old woman told them that you were a fairy-struck child and that he must take you to the river every morning before dawn for seven days. If he dipped you twice in the water, calling upon the Blessed Trinity and all the saints to heal you, it would chase the magic out of you. After two days of this, you