Embrace the Night

Page 12



Gabriel nodded.

"I always wondered why there were no cards with the gifts." She smiled up at him. "I've loved all your presents, especially the music box."

"I'm glad they pleased you, cara," he said, rising smoothly to his feet. "And now I must go." "Oh." She looked away, but not before he saw the disappointment in her eyes.
"Do you wish for me to stay?"

"Yes, please."

With a sigh, he drew a chair up beside her bed and sat down. "Shall I read to you?" he asked, glancing at the book she'd been reading.

"No, I finished it. But you could tell me a story."

"I'm not much of a story teller," he remarked and then, seeing the disappointment in her eyes, he acquiesced with a slight nod. "Many years ago, in a distant country, there was a young man. He came from a very large family. A very poor family. He was sixteen when a mysterious illness spread through their village. He watched his whole family die, one by one, and when they were all gone, he laid them side by side in their cottage and then set it on fire.

"For many years, he traveled the land, and then, when he was nine and twenty, he met a woman, and for the first time in his life, he fell in love, so much in love that he never questioned who she was, or why she would see him only at night.

"And then one day he contracted a fever, and he knew he was going to die the same horrible death that had claimed his family. Though he was loath to admit it, even to himself, he was terribly afraid to die.

"The woman he loved came to him when he was on the very brink of death. Weeping from pain and fear, he begged her to save him.

" 'I can do it,' she said. 'I can do as you wish, but the price will be dear.' " 'Anything,' he said.

" 'And if the price is your soul, will you still pay it?'

"Foolish man that he was, he agreed. And the woman, whom he had thought was an angel, carried him away in a dance of darkness. And when he awoke again, he realized he'd struck a bargain, not with an angel, but with a devil. And though he would now live forever, he would never live at all."

"I don't understand," Sara said, frowning. "Who was the man? Who was the woman? How could he live forever, but not live at all?"

"It's only an old fairy tale, Sara," Gabriel replied. He glanced out the window, then stood up. "This time I really must go," he said. "Rest well, cara mia."