Diamond Eyes - 5. Chapter 5

By the time Vanus returned to the orphanage the entire day seemed like one long continuous blur. Sensations, information, questions, compliments; he could feel it all pressing down on him like a great weight. The day before yesterday I was simply Vanus Kaufman the unwanted orphan. Now I'm about to be the head of a dynasty. What if it's all just a dream?

There was hope and with hope came the fear that hope was just a dream. Before fear had been an easy thing to overcome because he knew what he was afraid of. But with each passing second he could feel the edge of an unknowable future pressing towards him and he was about to plummet over the edge.

There's a very important, very obvious detail you keep forgetting. They didn't want you. They didn't want you. They abandoned you in this place. All the riches and power in the world can't change the fact you will always be an orphan.

"Van, are you asleep?"

It was Jill.

He sat up. "I'm awake."

She hovered in the doorway. "I didn't see you at dinner."

"Wasn't hungry. It's been a long day."

She bit her lower lip sheepishly. "Do you want me to leave you alone?"

He patted the empty space next to him in answer. "I'm exhausted but I won't be able to fall asleep for a while.

Jill came over and planted herself on the bed, her brow furrowed in sisterly concern. "Is something wrong?"

"Not wrong…just confusing. I'm not sure if I can make heads or tails of anything."

She bounced excitedly. "Tell me. Tell me everything."

He smiled. "I don't want to bore you."

"You've been to the Imperium when no one else has. Did you see any daemons?"

Of course she would want to know about the daemons.

"Surprisingly I saw very few." He told her of the imps he'd seen in Zeph's garden; he made sure to describe them to the best of his ability. He told her of Azrael and removed the binding that covered his wound.

Jill listened raptly, without interrupting. When Vanus finished she was unusually quiet in a way that meant she was thinking hard about something. “So it’s happening,” she said in a thick voice. “You’ll officially be a member of the Imperium.”

“Yessss,” Van said slowly. He sensed this conversation was about to go in a direction he didn’t want it to go in.

“But they oppose the Theocracy.”

Van bit back a sigh of frustration. “So what if they do?”

“They’re corrupt, Van!”

“And the Theocracy isn’t?”

“They don’t consort with demons!” Jill shouted, flinging her hands up in the air.

“And neither do I.”

“You will.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because they are going to want to recruit you for whatever political schemes they’ve cooked up. And why wouldn’t they? You’re fast and you know how to get in and out of places before anyone notices you’re there.”

“Jill…” Vanus paused, fighting to choose his words carefully. “I have no interest in joining the Imperium. You should know this because I have no interest in politics, or organized religion. I just found out who my real family is and the only one who is even left alive is a cousin I’ve never met. I’ll have a house and money…”

Jill smiled at him as if to say she wasn't a fool. “Vanus, I know you. You might be distracted by the lavish lifestyle because you’ve never had it, but how long do you think it will be before you get bored. When the cocktails, the fancy parties, and the fancy clothes don’t excite you anymore. You’ll go back to thieving or the Seraphim knows what.”

“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. I won’t know until I get there, will I? And right now that’s all I want, is to get there. I’m tired of living in squalor. I am tired of being filthy. I’m tired of being called demon eyes when people think I can’t hear them. And most of all I’m tired of being hungry. Aren’t you?”

Jill sniffled, wiped at her nose. She refused to look at him. “Sometimes…I don’t know. It could be worse. I’m still alive and you are too. The Seraphim have blessed us.”

“The Seraphim can go to the Infernal Depths for all I care!” Vanus seethed before he could stop himself. He began to pace back and forth. “They haven’t blessed me…not once! And neither for the Rephaim for that matter. Damn it, Jill, what is it you want me to say?”

It wasn’t until he turned around that he realized she was sobbing. Hugging her knees, rolled up into a ball. His heart softened and he hated himself for shouting at her. She’s scared. She thinks she’ll never see me again. “I’m sorry.” He went to her, took her shaking hand in his. “I didn’t mean to say all that stuff. I don’t want you to think I’m angry with you because I’m not. Are you angry with me?”

She shook her head feebly, her cheeks fluffy and inflamed with emotion. “You haven’t done anything wroonnnggg…I guess I’m just scared. Vanus just promise you won't do something foolish, to get yourself killed.”

He smirked. "I'll try not to."

She pursed her lips. "Have you been to see the house?"

Van took a deep breath, trying to expel the tension from his body. Might as well get it over with. "When I leave tomorrow, I won't be returning to the orphanage. This is my last night here. Mr. Fritz is taking me to Kaufman Manor to get a feel for the place was how he put it."

"So you're really leaving me?" Jill rested her head in the slot between his head and shoulder.

"I was thinking you could come with me."

"Go with you? Go with you where?"

"Kaufman Manor can be your home too."

She raised her head, her eyes bloodshot; her skin looked waxy in the candlelight. "You're being serious, aren't you?"

"Y'know I have no sense of humor, Jill. Mr. Fritz has already discussed it with Sister Alysious. Assuming you want to, of course."

"Yes, yes, yes!" Jill's bony arms wound around Van's shoulders like iron bands; she squeezes until he couldn't breathe. She peppered his face with kisses. Then her face fell. "Doies that mean I'll have to become a subject of the Imperium, too?

"I haven't and I won't," said Vanus emphatically. "I won't live under anyone's thumb again. Not the Theocracy's or the Imperium's. It will just be you and me, the way it's always been and the way it will always be."

That night Vanus couldn’t sleep. He tossed and turned, kicking off the blankets, pulling them back on, cold one second, and then uncomfortably hot in the next. So, he wandered the hallways of the orphanage, breathing in that familiar cabbage smell for the last time. He’d never been good at saying goodbyes. Children constantly came in and out of the orphanage all the time. The older ones who were carted off by the Theocracy rarely stayed more than a week before they ran off never to be seen again. If not for Jill, Van probably would have done the same long ago. She was the anchor that kept him in place, the only family he'd ever known, and now that she was leaving with him there was nothing to keep him in the Maeville District. Otherwise Vanus had never been good at saying goodbye.

He ran his hands across the wall, feeling each crack, knick and scratch. He'd grown up in this house, breathed in its dust, hid under its bed and inside its closets; it hadn’t been much of a childhood but at least he’d lived long enough to have one. A true goodbye was in order.

Eventually his footsteps led him to the stair that went up to the attic; a few years ago it had also served as the music room, but was now full of crates and old furniture. How long had it been since the last time he’d been up there? Two, three years?

Why are you here?

He couldn’t answer his own question—or maybe he simply didn’t want to. What did it matter? He would never walk up these steps again, of that he was sure.

The last time he’d been up in the attic it had been set up as a classroom with easels and a blackboard on wheels Vanus could still smell the chalk Maurice used as he spoke, tracing music notes on the board in white. The piano was also there, at the back of the room, where it had always been as if waiting for Vanus to pay a visit. The lamps and chairs covered in white drapes revealed the truth of the room: it was full of ghosts.

Maurice’s voice filled the room, deep but passionate. People always treat music like it’s mathematics, and in a way it is. But music is also art and art is a gift of the individual soul. Never let someone tell you how to create music.

“People have been telling me how to do things my whole life,” Vanus said, and imagined Maurice was in the attic with him, listening.

He pulled the drape from the piano. A cloud of dust exploded into the air, blinding him. He coughed, waving his hand. Once it dissipated, he at on the creaky old bench and carefully wiped at the keys with the hem of a drape. He hadn’t touched a piano—this piano—since Maurice had left the orphanage. He remembered how miserable the music teacher had looked that day, holding a suitcase in each hand. It was one of the few times Vanus recalled shedding tears. Now he touched the keys gingerly, the way one might touch a lover. Have I forgotten how to play, or is it like muscle memory?

“I wondered if I’d find you up here.” It was Sister Alysious. “Come to say your final goodbyes?”

His shoulders stiffened. He remained facing the piano, refusing to look at her. “There’s nothing to say goodbye to. Nothing but dust and memories.”

“Is that why you resent me so much? Because I fired him after I found out what you and he were doing together?” She lowered herself on the bench next to him, sweeping her skirt beneath her. Vanus shifted uncomfortably, but resisted the urge to escape her. To walk away would have been to admit defeat.

“You sacked him for loving me,” he said. Something wet trickled down his cheeks. “Because you’re a bigot who sees the world in black-and-white.”

“Was it love?” Sister Alysious said. “Or was it temptation?”

Vanus sniffed, wiping the tears from his cheeks. “I guess I’ll never know, will I?”

"He took advantage of your youth, ignorance and your need for love."

"You don't know anything about him, or me," Vanus seethed. His eyes glowed with an internal fire. To her credit Sister Alysious did not flinch away when most would have fled. "He loved me. He wasn't afraid to touch me or look at me. He treated me like a human being, not a diamond eyes…"

"It may seem that way to you now," said Sister Alysious. "You have a long life ahead of you; longer than most. Believe me that is a luxury many do not have. I hope one day the Seraphim will lift the scales from your eyes. I hope one day you will realize the truth. It happens all the time in orphanages. They prey on the ones who are isolated due to rejection by their peers. Then they raise them up on a pedestal to make them feel special. It took me so long to see he was doing the same with you. Perhaps I simply didn’t want to, and for that I am just as much at fault as Maurice is. I told myself he took to you because of your talent with musical instruments. You do have a gift with music, Vanus, one I hope you will foster one day…But then I started to notice how you acted whenever he was around. The way your eyes would glow like lamps. You smiled and laughed; you opened up like a flower and the walls you always hide behind came crashing down. I’d never seen you look so happy before. Or since.”

“He always told me I had beautiful eyes, that he’d never seen anything like them,” the orphan said in a thick voice. “No one had ever said that to me before. People always look away, or talk behind my back and call me a daemon. Maurice never did.”

“You do have beautiful eyes. They’re the only way to tell what you’re thinking. They burn like violet fire when you’re sad, angry, or happy.”

Van gawked at her, stunned into silence. Did she just give me a compliment?

The nun let out a heavy sigh. "There won't be a second when I will not worry about you and Jill. Especially Jill."

Van's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

Alysious smiled. "You I am not so worried about. You've always forged your own path. Jill on the other hand, is much more malleable. In a lot of ways she is like clay. Her soul is too gentle for a city that is do full of ugliness. There have been many times I admit, if it were not for

you she would never survive in this place, and would certainly perish on the streets if alone."

"I would never do anything that puts her life in danger," Vanus said vehemently. "I will always keep her safe."

"Yes," said the nun, watching him intently, "but who then who will keep you safe."