Offer Me
LEAVE A “OFFER ME” IN MY ASK, AND I’LL WRITE A DRABBLE ABOUT MY CHARACTER GIVING YOURS A GIFT.
Venice, Italy. The late 1500s. She could remember it all, as she could remember everything. The perils of a memory that relied heavily on the visual; that snapshotted moments and kept them indelibly impressed upon the mind, until they began to weigh. Until her back ached from carrying all of it. Nothing was lost. She could remember the buildings, stretching high in their charm and imperfection. She’d fancied it, and had almost cared for it enough to want to stay. Ultimately, the man was the least of what she remembered. A man she’d destroyed. Rather, it was how he had treasured his copy of a particular book that she could not forget. She had meant to steal it from him – she wanted that particular token, that memory – but had been run out of the city before she could. His men looking for her, spewing accusations she’d heard too many times. Seductress. Witch. Whore. Of all the words, she’d encountered those three most frequently. Mankind did have quite a limited vocabulary.
It had nearly fallen into her possession; an edition similar to the one the man’d had, sitting upon his luxe mantle, comparatively primitive and simple. Set in black and white, some pages stamped askew. The man who’d made it had been the first, even before the more widely circulated copy – Delilah knew things of movable type, of bookmaking, of the artistry of it. The first edition translated into Italian. A name not many individuals knew, though in Italy he surely loomed large: Nicolò Malerbi. She could not say why she wanted it, other than the ease with which she could get it. The man’s own name had departed her long ago, and yet she remembered that book. The reverence with which he regarded it. The way he had run the pads of his fingers over the edges, as if any sort of certain grip would damage it beyond repair. Corrupt its nature. He’d never let her touch it. Once, she believed it would have scalded; but there she stood, holding it within her grasp. Poised in front of Abel’s cell, her heart inexplicably quick-paced. It was all hers. A joke she would have laughed at, had Rowan or Salome ever glimpsed it. A thing she could not have explained, if Gale were to have found it. The pages were hers. The print on the back, signifying its authenticity. The detailing along the cover, impossibly dark ink wound into filigree, making the whole thing appear wrapped in otherworldly vines.
Within, words that he could understand – a language she had once wrapped about her tongue, fixed into the muscling of her jaw, whispered in moments of ecstasy and clipped in the turn of deceit. It was not her language to own, and so the book had always felt far from her. Its words all but nonsensical, even though they read perfectly in the cavernous darkness of her mind. It was nothing as simple as the divide between Italian and English and French that separated her from its allure; the language of the Lord, as saccharine and useless as Delilah dismissed it as being, was simply incomprehensible to her. It meant nothing, even though the words married in phrases and birthed sentences lovely in syntax. She could never grasp its larger purpose – get lost in its fantastical appeal.
She might not be able to, but he could.
“I acquired this years ago,” she said simply, eyes downcast. Voice entirely composed, lax. As if gifting something to a prisoner so casually was in the realm of acceptable behavior. “Right after the war, in fact. Funny how instability allows for opportunistic hands to take what they want.”
Delilah ran her palm lightly over the set of the cover, the embossing of the binding. It was a luxuriating, longing touch; a parting travel of her hand along the raw edge of the vellum, a single glance at the print on the title page.
It was not a Gutenberg, but it was beautiful.
“You should have it. It’s taking up precious shelf space.”
