Little Doll (Blackmoth House #1)

Chapter 10 Nova

Chapter 10

Nova

I returned to my stone room at Blackmoth House before the sun, but Carmilla was gone. Flitted away as a moth on the night winds, back to where she came from, I supposed. I discarded my soiled clothing in a heap on the floor and fell into bed, naked and exhausted. Sleep came hard and fast, and I sank into a place that felt more like a grave than a bed.

It was another sleep full of vivid and wonderful dreams. But in every dream, there was the soft little girl’s voice in the background, calling my name. By the end of my sleep, from having endured her mournful whisperings, I woke with an ache in my chest like a chasm of sadness.

My eyes blinked open, and I still heard her calling. At first, I thought it was the last remnants of my dreams bleeding away from reality.

“Nova! Noooooovaaaaa,” sighed the youthful voice mysteriously.

Fane had arranged an armoire in my room and filled it with brand new clothing and night clothes for me while I’d been out with Cousin Carmilla. I scampered across the cold floor and threw open the heavy doors of the thing. I looked forward to examining the clothing my brother had selected for me, but just then, I reached in and extracted a long silky black robe which I slipped into and tied around my body.

The material felt like moth wings brushing my skin.

This time, when I stepped out my bedroom door, I was in a tower hallway made of stone, with one small window letting in the moonlight. I drifted to the window and had to step onto my toes to peer out. I was high over the garden where the black roses tipped their buds down as though to escape the light of the moon. Mist snaked over the grass like a living thing. I saw bats dipping and swerving in the sky and heard the call of an owl somewhere nearby. There was also a rather vocal frog down there somewhere, whose song reached all the way up to me in my little tower.

The space was small and led to the top of a set of stone steps that spiraled down and out of view.

“Nooooovvvvvaaaa… ”

The eerie sound of the little voice sent shivers down my spine. I no longer believed it to be from my dreams or a figment of my imagination. I was… Sensing someone. Someone nearby. Someone’s thumping heart. Who was she?

I placed my toes on the top stair and stepped down… Only to find myself on a new set of stairs.

This was an elaborate stairwell. One that reminded me of Blackmoth House, but yet not one that I’d seen before in my home. It was a wide staircase of fine cherry wood, covered with an ornate red and gold woven rug which covered the center of each step. The soft feel of the rug was a relief after the cold stone on my feet.Polished cherry wood paneled the walls. Up and down the stairwell hung portraits tall as I was of people who had my same dark looks, and Fane’s, and Carmilla’s and my father’s. Yet, I did not know them, nor had I ever heard of family members outside those who lived in this house.

Perhaps these were the vampires.

“Nooooovvvvvaaaa…”

The little girl’s voice sounded closer. Gas wall sconces on either side of the steps made slight whooshing sounds and lit up, illuminating spider webs heavy with dust hanging from them and from the paintings.

One at a time, the sconces leading up the stairs lit up, like will-o’-the-wisps leading the way through a forest.

I lifted my toes to take the first step up.

And then I found myself standing outside a plain black door in a different corridor. A plainer corridor cast in darkness, dusty and dingy like a long-abandoned servant’s hall.

“Nova.” The voice whispered my name, but she sounded like she was right next to my ear.

I knocked on the door.

“Come in,” the voice said.

I stepped into an opulent windowless room that looked like a combination child’s bedroom and an antique toy store. The sheer lavishness of this room took me aback, but for the moment, one thing captured my attention.

A fire crackled in a fireplace about ten steps directly in front of me. In front of the fire was a rocking chair. In the chair was my brother Fane. Holding the most gorgeous child I had ever seen in my life.

With flawless pink lips drawn up like a heart, her face was round and rosy. Her eyes were huge and blue and a sea of wavy blonde hair that shone in the firelight framed the whole pretty picture of her. Her face was placid, her eyes trained on me.

She wore a dress of the finest silk, black with intricate lace details and embroidered iridescent beads. She looked like she could be nine or ten years of age, but she was tiny, like a child much younger. Strange and beautiful was this creature. She looked like a… Little doll.

Fane gave me a wide and delighted smile even as he cuddled the child to his chest and rocked her. He held open a storybook in front of her as though he’d been reading to her.

My brother? Fane? Reading to a child?

“Wh… Who is this?” I asked.

I took tiny steps forward and although the girl’s facial expression never changed, not revealing any emotion or thought she might have, her wide, sparkling eyes remained trained on me.

“This is our sister, Astrid,” Fane said in a voice that swelled with pride. I gasped. He patted her shoulder. “Say hello to Nova, Astrid,” he prodded.

The child called Astrid gave a curt nod and extended her tiny hand politely. “Hello, sister. I am Astrid. I’m very pleased to meet you.” Her voice was the one that had haunted my dreams and the hallways of this home since my illness.

I reached her and took her hand, surrounding it in both of mine as I bent to my knees in front of her.

A sister.

My eyes pricked with the threat of tears. “I… How?” I stammered. So many questions raced through my mind. “It’s wonderful to meet you too, Astrid,” I murmured, mesmerized by her st aring eyes. We stared at each other for a long time, what felt like half the night. I switched my attention to Fane, who, to my absolute shock, had tears slipping down his cheeks.

“Fane, are you crying?” I exclaimed.

He smiled. “I’m just overwhelmed, Nova,” he told me. “You have no idea how I’ve longed for this day.”

“How can it be true that we have a sister and yet I never knew?”

Fane stood, scooping Astrid up with him, and perched her on his hip. She still clung to my hand, so I stood as well and followed.

He crossed into a separate area of the room, a play area. Incredibly ornamented and sophisticated dollhouses surrounded it. There must have been ten of them, all looking painstakingly handmade and filled with tiny furnishings and beautiful dolls. Amongst the playthings was a settee upholstered in a pale pink. Fane placed Astrid down on the seat, then sat next to her. I took the seat on her other side.

We all situated ourselves together on the settee. Astrid leaned into me, reaching her tiny arms up delicately to encircle my neck. My heart pounded and swelled with warmth. I wrapped my arms around the little girl and held her close.

“Nova,” Fane said, his voice breaking with emotion. “Astrid is like you.”

All the blood rushed straight to my brain and my ears rang painfully as I gaped at my brother open mouthed and then down at the beautiful child who had drifted off to sleep in my arms. A child vampire? Certainly not. How could the merciful God above allow such an atrocity as this? I’d just discovered I had a sister, only immediately to find out that the little sister is a monster.

“How?” I choked out.

Fane rose quietly from the settee and began to pace. He absentmindedly snatched a doll from the attic of its house and tossed it back and forth between his hands as he spoke.

“You see, Astrid is very old. So old that not even she is certain of how long she’s been a vampire or how old she was when she died.”

I gasped sharply at the word. Died. My eyes welled with tears.

“She says that she became a vampire because she was walking in a graveyard and wandered into a tomb where there was a preserved vial of blood on display. As a seven-year-old child, she was curious and touched the vial, clumsily breaking it. As it smashed on the stone floor, ancient, moldering blood splashed up and some of it got into her mouth.” He stopped pacing and gave a flourish of his hand. “And as you know, the rest is history. ”

Astrid felt like ice in my arms. I cuddled her closer to me, even though I had no warmth to offer her. “The way you started that tale with ‘she says’ makes me wonder if there is another version of the story?”

My question gave him pause, and his smile slipped. “Well, yes, there are… Rumors.”

I frowned. “Well? Come out with it then.”

Fane sighed and turned a fleeting glance to Astrid, then focused back on me. “Astrid has never been able to survive on her own. A child vampire is an unpredictable and wild thing. So, she has been passed down through generations of our family to be looked after, which is how she ended up with Cleo and with Father. But some have said that Astrid was wild and unpredictable even before becoming a vampire. Some have said that she was… Different. Some have said that Astrid slipped out of her bed at night like a ghost, compelled to roam the graveyard, collecting shed snake skins, insects and other dead things. And they say that when she found that vial of blood, that she… Drank it on purpose. Not because she wanted to be a vampire. No, she was only a child. She had no knowledge of our curse or even what a vampire was. They say she drank it because she wanted to. Because she wanted to taste it. Because she craved the taste of death.”

I felt my face go pale and felt a little weak and dizzy. But I clung to my darling Astrid tighter to hear such terrible claims made about her by her own family.

“Whatever the truth may be, Astrid’s transformation was horrific,” Fane continued. “The infection was swift and brutal, nearly sending her straight to hell. But when she managed to survive, her parents weren’t prepared, and she murdered them in a fit of starving lunacy. She massacred her entire village, in fact, and if it were not for another ancestor of ours from a neighboring settlement, another vampire coming to take her under her wing and rescue her, she surely would have been executed.”

“She seems perfectly lovely now,” I said indignantly. These tales were angering me. Whatever the infancy of her malady had caused her to do could hardly be held against her now, centuries later. Especially since she had only been and would always be… Just a child.

Fane stepped close and reached down to caress Astrid’s soft cheek. “She is perfectly lovely, Little Doll,” he said wistfully. “I love her beyond measure.”

My heart melted. Fane never showed anyone meaningful affection in my entire life before, and it was sweet to behold.

“But it is true that she can be wild and unpredictable still,” he went on. “That is why she is kept under lock and key, a hidden away secret, concealed by magic. When her first benefactor rescued her, she built this place; Blackmoth House. She filled it with hidden rooms and enchanted it with magic to move the rooms around and make them impossible to find. For a long time, Astrid lived here happily until a zealot priest murdered her adopted mother. Astrid remained locked away and starved in a secret room all alone until our family returned to inhabit this place again. It was Cleo who finally discovered Astrid. Besides her original quirks, and being a vampire child, she had hundreds of years of loneliness and starvation in her psyche. It’s been… Difficult.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“Cleo was a loving carer to her and raised her as a sibling to Father. Father loved her muchly; as I do… Until he married mother. By then, Astrid was hidden away again and confined to these quarters and for the first year of their marriage, Mother never knew she existed. But when she found out, she was furious. She hated Astrid.”

He shuffled side to side and seemed to ponder what he wanted to say next. Secrets yet to be shared hung heavily in the air between us.

“And so, she has remained here, all these years, and Father pretends she doesn’t exist. Cleo remains a steadfast carer to Astrid, but as you know, Grandmother has grown old. So, most of Astrid’s care falls to me.” He bent and slid his arms under her, lifting the sleeping child into his arms once more. He leaned his cheek against her forehead and cuddled her. “I love her so.” Fane took a deep, jagged breath. “Oh, how I wish I had been afflicted with the curse, so that I could take care of this little child forever.”

With shaky legs, I stood up and walked towards my brother and sister. I placed my arms around them and leaned my head against his shoulder. “I’m here now, Fane. She’ll be safe forever. I promise.”