Inktober 2019 #23: Ancient

[alara]

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Darla called, limping across the living room to the front door. Goodness, who was ringing the front doorbell? She knew everyone in town, and they knew to knock at the kitchen door, even the Amazon package delivery people and the driver for the new Indian restaurant over in town. She’d barely been in the living room for a week, ever since she’d hosted the last monthly meeting of the book club.

She reached the door, unbolted the lock, and pulled it open. “Can I help–?”

And stopped, staring.

She should have pulled aside the curtain and looked through the window before opening the door – what she’d done hadn’t been very secure. But the person on the other side of the door wasn’t the kind of danger she could have called 911 about.

Waves of shining auburn hair, brilliant green eyes, pale, unfreckled skin… and no sign of age. At all. Forty-five years, and the woman on her porch looked exactly the same.

“Jolene…?” Darla whispered.

“I haven’t been called that in a while,” the woman said, with a beautiful smile that made you want to do anything to see it more often. “Can I come in, Darla?”

“Can I stop you?” Darla asked, intending it to come out sharp-tongued, but instead it sounded wondering, a genuine question.

The creature that had called herself Jolene forty-five years ago laughed like sweet bells. “Oh, my word, you certainly can,” she said. “I can’t do anything I’m not invited to do. I thought you knew that.”

Darla’s eyes narrowed. “Well, I don’t know whether it’s safe to let you in or not, but I won’t be unneighborly. Let me get the sweet tea, and I’ve got a plate of lemon bars, and we can sit together out on the porch and… um, catch up, if that’s what you’re here for.” To be honest she couldn’t imagine what Jolene wanted or why she was here. Had she come to try to seduce James? Did she know he’d been dead for six years?

“Thank you,” Jolene said. “I do appreciate it.”

In a few minutes, Darla was sitting with Jolene out on the porch. It was a beautiful fall day, the leaves in full multicolored blaze, maybe a little more chilly than was best for sharing sweet iced tea and lemon bars on the porch, but she had her sweater on and Jolene… honestly probably didn’t feel the cold, Darla imagined.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Darla said, which was usually a polite platitude but this time was the exact truth.

“Did you expect me to?” Jolene smiled and tossed her head slightly, her hair, so perfectly matched to the fall colors all around them, flying prettily over her shoulder.

“Not really,” Darla said, “but to be honest, Jolene, I never expected to see you again. Are you here for James?”

Jolene shook her head. “I know perfectly well you wouldn’t allow me to see him, and it’s not why I’m here. But how is he? Did you get the life you were hoping to have, when I gave him back?”

Darla sipped her tea. “We had forty wonderful years together, nearabouts. Had three lovely, healthy kids. He died, six years back.”

“Oh.” Jolene seemed taken aback. “Oh, I forgot. That does happen to your folk, doesn’t it? I’m sorry to hear it. How did it happen?”

“His heart. It was quick, thank the Lord.” She shook her head. “That was an awful time, make no mistake. I felt like I couldn’t go on, like I just wanted to fold myself up and join him in his grave, but my friends and my children and grandchildren got me through with the help of the good Lord, and now? It’s never stopped aching, but it aches less. Not as hard, not as sharp.” She caught herself. Why was she telling Jolene all this?

“Was it worth it? When you and I talked, it sounded like you thought it would end your life if he was gone. Now you tell me, six years after he’s truly gone forever, it doesn’t matter so much?”

“It’s a different thing,” Darla said, her voice calm and patient, not stinging with anger like she wished she could safely do. “I’m old now. Humans… we die when we get old. It’s not something I’m happy about, but it’s the way it is and there’s no changing it, so no sense getting too upset. And… I had forty years with him. When you tried to take him from me, we weren’t even married yet. We’d been dating for a year. If you took him from me, I didn’t know if I’d ever find another man to love.”

“In my experience, when young women say they’ll never love again if their man leaves them, and then he leaves them… it turns out they were wrong. They find love again. Almost all the time.”

“I suppose you’ve got quite a lot of experience with taking other women’s men,” Darla said, and this time the bitterness couldn’t be kept out of her voice.

“A lot,” Jolene agreed, seeming unoffended at Darla’s tone.

“Then why didn’t you? Why did you believe me, and leave, and let me have James?” And why are you here now?

Jolene took a few moments to apparently think about the question before answering. “You showed me respect. Deference. You praised my beauty and acknowledged my superiority, and then you begged for my mercy.” She shook her head slowly. “In five hundred years, no one else has done that. The men try to kill me, and the women spit on me and call me names, as if that’s going to get their lovers back.”

“The men? You try to take men’s lovers too?”

“I don’t try, Darla, honey, I succeed.” She leaned forward slightly. “Your folk call us demons, but we’ve got nothing to do with Heaven or Hell. We live in this world and no other. But we feed on love. We make our prey love us and then we drain them dry.” Jolene leaned back and took a sip of the tea Darla had given her. “You’d probably have loved again, but James wouldn’t have.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“You just asked,” Jolene said in a very reasonable tone. “You call us incubi and succubi, for male and female ones, but all of us have the ability to be whatever a human we want to love us wants. I can be a man, and take a woman away with me and leave her husband broken-hearted and swearing to kill me, or I can be a woman, and take a man.” She shrugged. “Or, you know, men and men, women and women. Humans are complicated. I led a fellow who loved little boys once to his death by looking like a beautiful boy.”

“I can’t say I can hold that one against you.” Darla sipped the tea. “But the others? Good, God-fearing men and women, and you seduced them and led them to ruin, and left their lovers with broken hearts in your wake? That was a terrible thing to do. Why are you here bragging about it to me?”

“Because—because, for the first time in my existence…” Jolene took a deep breath. “I’m not bragging, Darla. I’m being honest. I feed on the love those poor souls feel for me, but it’s never true love. Never anything deep and lasting, like what you had with James and your forty-five years. I can’t help what I need to eat, but for the first time, I…”

“If you’ve got something to say, I think you’d best say it.”

Jolene leaned forward across the table and put her hand on Darla’s. Darla was too shocked to pull away. “Forty-five years and I still remember you,” Jolene said. “Do you think I remember any of the others? The ones who screamed at me, who called me slurs or threatened to kill me, or even tried it? But I remember you. You knew what I was. You were afraid. But you spoke with respect, and you didn’t try to use a cross to banish me, or harm me, and you didn’t speak to me as if I was an evil demon. You told me I was beautiful, and that you knew I could best you when it came to winning your man. And you asked for my mercy, as if you thought I was a creature that had any, and I – I found that I couldn’t not give it to you, once you had asked. No one has ever asked before.”

“It’s hard, for humans to admit weakness to someone who threatens them,” Darla admitted. “It’s very hard. But still. In five hundred years, I was the only one?”

“Yes.” Jolene’s eyes were fixed on hers. “Darla, I – I want… I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking how brave you were to challenge me for the one you loved, and… no one has ever loved me like that. My lovers are food. I don’t feel anything for them, and it’s just my magic and my techniques that make them love me, and if I let them go they forget all about me. Did James ever speak of me again?”

“No,” Darla said. “Never.”

“I want… to court you.”

That made Darla try to stand up, with shock, but her bad leg wouldn’t hold her and she had to sit down again immediately. “You what?”

“I know. You think I’m a monster, and by some lights, I reckon I am. But I’m a monster you treated with more respect and kindness than any other human who wasn’t under my spell has ever shown me. And I want to know… what it’s like to feel love, not just to eat it. I want to know what it’s like to have a mutual relationship rather than just being a predator.”

“All this, because I was respectful to you? My Ma would have washed out my mouth with soap for treating any person with disrespect. I can’t be the only one.”

“You’re the only one I’ve met.”

Darla managed to get to her feet. “How could this possibly be a thing? You admitted you seduce women as well as men. How can I trust you not to be trying to seduce me just to feed on me?”

“I can’t lie, Darla.” She laughed, a sound like a summer day. “You know what kind of being I am, but you think I can lie to you?”

“How do you entrap your men if you can’t lie?”

“Oh, I can mislead, I can bluff. Leave things out. Let them hear what they want to hear. Humans are good at that. I say something vague and they decide they’re sure they know what it means. None of that’s a lie, not truly. What I can’t do is look a person in the face, like I am, and say to them plain words, and have those words be a lie. So I’m saying this to you: I’ll never hurt you on purpose again. I don’t want to feed from you, and I won’t. I want to court you, if you’ll have me, and I hope I can learn what it feels like to love, or to be truly loved, not for magic or beauty but for myself.”

“And if I say no, I’m not interested?”

“It’d depend on why. If you say to me, I can only love a man, well, I can be a man for you. If you say to me, I can’t love you no matter what you look like… well, if I wanted to make someone love me, there’s a whole world out there I could do that to. From you, I only want it if it’s real, and if it can’t be, I’ll leave here and never darken your door again.”

“I’m flattered by all this, but why me? I’m just an ordinary woman.”

“In five hundred years I’d never met a person like you, man or woman.”

“I’m old. I’m going to die before too long – hopefully I’ve got a good twenty, thirty years left in me, but I can’t reasonably expect more, and you’re ancient. You’ll go on, maybe not forever, but a long, long time after I’m gone.”

“That’s my fault. Took me forty-five years to swallow my pride and realize that ever since I’ve met you, I’ve longed to know you better than I’ve known any other human. Never met anyone like you in the time since we met, either, so it’s not like I have choices, and the only thing that matters to me about your age is that it’ll end you sooner than I’m ready to lose you, but if I don’t court you and try to win your love now, then I’ve lost you forever anyhow. Beauty’s my weapon; I don’t care for it for myself, one way or the other.”

“And if I said to you, only if you swear to me that you’ll never take an innocent man or woman away from the one they love again? And never prey on an innocent who doesn’t already have a love, either?”

Jolene frowned, a beautiful little pout that should have made her look petulant, but didn’t. “I have to eat,” she said.

“Take men who beat their wives and women who are even worse users than you, women who toy with men for fun rather than needing to eat to live. You said you could go after men with sick intentions toward little boys and girls. Take them. I don’t begrudge you your food if you prey on the predators of humanity who are human themselves and don’t have the excuse that it’s their nature like it is yours.”

“I could do that.”

“For the rest of your existence. Even after I’m dead. I can’t love someone who I know will destroy innocent lives after I’m gone.”

Jolene raised her eyebrows. “You are demanding.”

“You said you wanted to court me because I’m the only one who ever showed you respect and courtesy. If I’m the only one and I’m what you want, then pay my price. You can walk away any time you like.”

“And if I swear to feed only on humans who prey on other humans, then you’ll love me?”

“No. Then you can court me, and try to win my love the human way. I don’t love you, Jolene; I don’t even know you. All you ever were to me was a woman-shaped… being… to be feared, because you were trying to take my man from me. But you didn’t do it, in the end. You gave me back my happiness. I think maybe you could be a creature I could love, from what very little I know about you, because you’re honorable and you showed mercy to me.” And she was beautiful. Darla swallowed. That part shouldn’t matter; Jolene herself had admitted she could look like anything, and beauty was only a weapon to her. But it didn’t change the facts. When she had bared her heart to Jolene and begged her to show mercy, all those years ago, she’d been able to do it in part because she’d been half infatuated with the succubus herself. If it hadn’t been for the Sight she’d inherited from her grandma, she might never have known what Jolene was, and she might herself have been lost, falling helplessly in love with the predator stalking her James. Even knowing what she was, her unearthly beauty made Darla’s breath catch in her throat.

It was Jolene’s nature. People wanted her for a friend, people wanted her to think highly of them. Anyone who loved women could fall under their spell, and Darla had loved James passionately her whole life but it hadn’t changed her ability to desire women as well. She’d been faithful, but James was dead, and wouldn’t begrudge her finding someone else now.

If Jolene was lying, and lying about her ability to lie, then, Darla thought, she was already lost. Best to proceed as if Jolene was telling the truth. She was sixty-five years old; she didn’t have much left to lose, if Jolene betrayed her, if she was nothing but a predator and she was able and willing to lie. But if Jolene was truthful…

“I wouldn’t mind it, you courting me. We could date. See if you still like me when you know me better. See if I like the person you are when you’re not a predator hunting game. But you’d have to swear to me that you’ll harm none of my family and that you won’t again feed on an innocent person, that you’ll take your prey only from the humans who hurt other humans.”

“I can swear that.”

That was a weasel expression, something a person who wouldn’t lie might say to mislead. “Then do it. Swear it now.”

Jolene laughed again. “Of course. I swear that whether or not you let me court you, and whether or not we form a relationship, I won’t harm you or any of your kin or anyone you care for, deliberately, and I’ll try my best not to cause harm by accident. I swear that whether or not you let me court you, and whether or not we form a relationship, from this day forth I’ll take my prey only from the men and women who prey on their fellow humans. Does that suit you?”

“I didn’t tell you you had to say ‘whether or not I let you court me’.”

“I know, but you should have. I added it because I didn’t want you to pretend to love me just to keep me from harming the humans you call innocent. I told you, I mean to win your heart the human way, and that means I can’t be offering you gifts if you take me but not if you don’t; I don’t want you to love me for the gifts I give, or to pretend to love me to keep away the threats I can make. I want you to be free to choose as you will.”

Darla let out a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. “You’re right, I should have. I didn’t think of it. Thank you for adding that.” If the being calling herself Jolene could be that honorable, maybe this could work. “I agree, then. I won’t promise you love, but I’ll promise you a few dates and we’ll see where it takes us from there.”

“Then what would you like? Dinner? A movie? All I know is what the men and women I’ve hunted expected from me, or expected me to do.”

“Can you eat real food?”

“I’m drinking your tea, aren’t I?” She smiled. “I don’t much care for lemons, and I apologize. But yes, I eat human food and I enjoy it. I can’t cook it particularly well, though; never needed to. People under my spell thought anything I gave them was wonderful.”

“Well, then. You come over tonight around 6 o’clock, and I’ll make us a meal and teach you how to cook it, and we can eat, and talk. How does that sound to you, for a first date?”

Jolene’s eyes were bright. “I would love that, Darla. I’ll be back tonight.”

---

Oh, I feel stupid even saying this, but this is based on the Dolly Parton song “Jolene”, for the approximately 12 people in the world who didn’t know.