Chapter 10

“It’s okay Nikki. I’ve re-checked all the doors. Everything is locked. Everything is fine. Here.”

“Thanks… wait is there…?!”

“No sugar, no milk, just honey. The way you like it.”

“Thank you.”

I sipped the cacao. Hot. I held it with my two hands against my belly. The warmth against my womb. I can’t believe I let that creep fuck me. Spooked. 

We had brought a tiny round salt lamp with us to the cabin and the warm glow gave a reassurance like a campfire keeping the wild animals at bay as they circled the cave, furtive in the shadows, watching, seething. Waiting for the death of our fire and the permissive dark.

I sighed.

She pulled the pink fuzzy blanket around my shoulders tighter.

“Tell me what happened.”

Sex. Soup.

His laugh and the poem he composed for me on the spot. Something about my eyes. I forget. We sat down and we talked. He told me about his school days at Eton. I told him I thought he was an Old Harrovian. He laughed. Etonian, I’m afraid. He said.

Something strange. My head. It felt heavy. So, I propped my temple against my knuckle, elbow on the arm of the chair, and listened. He recited poetry to me, some his, some Christopher Marlowe’s, some Guillaume de Machaut’s. I loved his French Accent. Very Left-Bank, I said. He said he lived in France. Where? The South, he said vaguely. What did you do there? Wrote poetry, learnt how to cook, got over heartache. Heart ache? He stared blankly at me. He widened his eyes, and they grew sinister, unblinking, and round like an owl’s. I used to have a heart you know, he said, but some Belle Dame Sans Merci stole it and left me cold. I chuckled politely but my feeble laugh turned into a yawn and another yawn, and then he began to chant.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

I love that poem, I said. He said nothing but sipped his coffee and looked into my eyes. Oh Keats! I said. And he began to chant again but this time I heard nothing. His lips moved. They moved fast. Like he was reading, swiftly. Or talking to himself but his eyes were pinned on me. Louder please. I can’t hear you. Then, I can’t see, because my eyes grew fuzzy and I began to sleep. I woke up looking at the stars and the black shadows of trees against the night sky. I heard his breathing. I could feel his skin against mine and that’s how I knew we were both naked and he carried me in his arms.

I woke up, a single candle burned in a chamberstick and the rest of the room was in shadows. I couldn’t lift my head. I felt paralyzed. The bed was empty, but a large window was opened. I could feel the breeze. I could hear foliage shiver in the night wind. Then the candle died out. I went back to sleep in the dark.

I felt something nuzzle my face. The damp smell of the deep-delved earth. I patted its head. A rough coat with thick muscles underneath. I woke up. I turned on the bedside lamp. I realized I was in my room. Alone. The windows were still open, and I couldn’t move my legs. The indigo dark of night outside. My eyes roll. Feeling weak. I fell asleep again with the lamp on. I woke up. I saw the spotted back of a leopard, its speckled sinuous tail slithering up in the air as its hind legs jumped on the sill and out the window into the woods. Panic. The muffle of fatigue; I passed out. I woke up shivering in pitch black. The room was dark. The lights were off. A naked man sat by my bedside. A silent silhouette. I felt his hand as he leaned over me. He grabbed something. The quiet strike against cardboard, the hiss of a match, the intense orange light. The glow of his golden hair. His green steady eyes. He lit the candle in the chamberstick. And his calm voice.

“Were you afraid, Nikki, when you saw me just now?”

My lips began to tremble, but he wanted an answer. So, I whispered, no.

I passed out, tears wetting my temple.

When I woke up, I heard you open the door.