“Merging two kinds of sexual outlaws, the lesbian vampire is more than simply a negative stereotype. She is a complex and ambiguous figure, at once an image of death and an object of desire, drawing on profound subconscious fears that the living have toward the dead and that men have toward women, while serving as a focus for repressed fantasies. The generic vampire image both expresses and represses sexuality, but the lesbian vampire especially operates in the sexual rather than the supernatural realm.”
Andrea Weiss, Vampires and Violets: Lesbians in Film
The halls of Edelweiss Estate are silent. Eva has dismissed every one of her employees already, given them all hearty severances and as best as she could, arranged for their employment at other establishments across England, across Europe. Her act of passion and destruction should not be at their expense. Call her cruel, call her wicked, call her many things, but she is not illogical. No one should suffer besides this house in which she poured her memories and the lifetimes she cannot get back.
It is quiet.
The lights are dimmed, mostly for effect than anything else, mostly because there is something poetic about a doomed manor steeped in moonlight, and Eva decides that it is time now, but first she must visit each of her favourite places for the final time.
The kitchen
Ah, perhaps the room Eva has used the least, beyond telling her staff what to make for events or helping to taste the wines – but it is the room she encountered Snow for the first time this stint in Swynlake. It plays like an intro, the first stirring notes of the violin in “Scheherazade.” She lingers in the doorway. The lights are off here and the way the shadows cast upon the stark white marble conjure the image of Snow’s svelte figure draped across the counter.
Something catches in her throat. She turns to leave.
The upstairs library
The settee that Snow used to dramatically fold herself upon has been mostly untouched since her death. Mostly, because the day after, Eva sat silently on it and slowly leaned into the plush velvet, pressing her face into it as close as she could, inhaling the last bits of Snow’s scent.
The greenhouse
She will probably miss this one this most. She has cultivated the plants, tended to them herself. While she has many landscapers for the grounds, she personally took the time to care for her greenhouse plants. She strokes the leaf of a peace lily, the only goodbye to the greenhouse she makes. She wonders if the plants know.
The music room
A grand piano rests in the center. A gift to Snow some birthdays ago. It has gathered dust since her death. Eva glides over. She plays one note. Two notes. Somewhere in the distance, she can hear Snow sing.
Snow’s bedroom
Gowns are still strewn over the floor, as if Snow has just stepped out. The curtains on the canopy bed are half open. A memory preserved in time.
The ballroom
Eva recalls the grand parties – not just the ones in the summers of the 2010s, but the ones before, in decades prior, in centuries prior. She remembers the first ball they ever threw here – Snow’s debut into society – and when all the guests had left, they danced a waltz together and Eva held Snow in her arms. The moonlight spilled in through the windows and though no music played, the two women danced to their own melody.
They fought here too, Eva remembers. They snarled, they scratched. But for as bitterly as they fought, they loved with more passion.
The rose garden
Snow’s grave is amongst the roses. Eva does not bother to kneel, but she does look fondly upon it. She reaches a hand to touch the curve of the headstone. She made sure to specify that this spell would not harm the grave. In the paperwork she left to the town, leaving the property to Swynlake, she maintained that it should be cared for – the grass around it trimmed so it would not run over with weeds, the stone kept up. If Eva visited, perhaps some decades down the line, she would seek the grave out first.
The moon is high in the sky now. In sixteen days, it will be two years.
It is here it must happen. It is now. Any longer and she would doubt herself. And Eva does not like to doubt herself.
She reaches for the little bottle the witch entrusted to her and hesitates, not because she is wavering about her decision in this moment, but because she wants to take this final moment to mourn.
The moonlight – the roses – the grave –
With a single finger, she unstops the bottle.
What comes out of it, she cannot especially see, but it rushes out all at once, a sort of haze, and the moment it touches something that something bursts into flame. The roses catch quickly, their blooms going out like mini supernovas.
The fire sweeps into the ballroom, the floor to ceiling glass bursting and shattering.
The drapes of Snow’s canopy bed, the gowns upon the floor, they all go up in a brilliant blaze of scarlet fury, as burning and heated as the nights of passions.
The flames catch on the pages and pages of sheet music, onto the grand piano. They burn and crackle, drowning out all the other sounds.
Eva’s plants cannot scream as they burn. They are plants, they do not think, but perhaps if they were capable of some sentient thought they would ask her why. Perhaps they know.
The books in the library catch fire swiftly. The settee less so, but when the flames finally lick upon it, it happens all at once.
The flames burst through the kitchen, eviscerating all that was once there. No countertops, not slinking figures in the shadow, no memories of a reunion on a dark night. Fire, flame, ash –
As the fire rages on, Eva gives the flames – Edelweiss, her life in Swynlake – one last lingering look. And then she walks away.
As Eva nodded, Mel cast a glance toward Diaval, who fluttered over to the shelves to fetch one of the small vials that would hold the memory. Memories had to be handled with minimum interference, you see– they were utterly fragile, spun as thin as spidersilk and yet as fluid as water. They could shift with a flutter of an eyelash, if someone breathed a word–
You needed quiet to take a memory. You needed concentration. You needed respect.
And so Mel opened her palm flat and twitched first her index finger, then her middle, her ring, folding the fingers carefully as the memory painted itself in the air.
It was beautiful– mostly moonlight, the air smelling like frost and grass in Mel’s little cottage, winter sneaking back in for these few precious moments.
It wasn’t hard in the end to coax the memory into the bottle. Mel figured that was because Eva had already decided to let it go.
She slid the cork in place and let the memory sit in the vial on the table. If Eva were to bring it up to her ear, she’d hear the voice of her beloved one last time. Mel hesitated– wondering if she should offer her that gift.
But memories were so fragile, remember. Even that indulgence could change it.
“Thank you,” said Mel. “I should be able to fashion what you need within…a moon’s time. First I want to do some research and consult my partner and I’ll need to visit your grounds at some point. We can schedule that– payment can be given when you have the spell in hand.” Her eyebrows ticked up. “I can let you know my terms when I visit Edelweiss, if that’s alright with you.”
Eva knew that sorcerers did not actually take the memories or the feelings or the smiles or winks or what have you. But still – she felt as if something had lifted from her. It felt both lighter and heavier all at once, and it was not an unfamiliar feeling, and she let it settle over her, as it crawled up her throat and nestled around her neck.
At the sorceress’s words, she nodded. She did not mind payment – not at all. She had money, she had the dark magic that clung to her and would interest a reckless sorceress like Mel. All her worldly possessions, she was about to burn to the ground anyway.
The only thing she would not part with was Snow’s grave. She would leave that on the grounds. The stone would not burn. In the will and documents she left in a vault for the town to open ”just in case,” she made a note that the grave should be left untouched.
She would return, perhaps, years down the road, in the dead of night, and lay fresh roses upon the grave – years later, when it would be overgrown with grass and wildflowers, wild and free as Snow would’ve loved.
“Sounds perfect,” she said, then glanced at the snow leopard, who had curled up at her feet. “I do have – one more small request. Not a request, per say, as a simple question. There is the matter of my pet, here.” Frou Frou remained asleep. “I am afraid traveling with her is out of the question. I do not know anyone else in town as equipped to deal with such a wild, beautiful thing as you and wanted to know, perhaps, if you were interested in her.”
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