A Hundred Lifetimes

Nine

To say that I was confused was an understatement. I stood up from the bed and dashed out of my room, fully awake at 2 in the morning. I was shaken. All that time, I had thought that the dreams I was having were visions of Clara’s past, yet there she was in one of them, offering me tea. There was only one explanation—she knew me, and I knew her.

All those dreams that I’ve had, were they really mine? Were they from the life that I had forgotten? The grandmother giving me a gift, the mother teaching me to sew, the brother helping me up when I skinned my knee… were they mine?

I ran, as fast as my legs could take me, down the stairs and across the main hall to the right wing. I had to find the museum. When I had asked Mary about it in passing, she had said, “Oh, it’s just something Mr. D keeps himself busy with. He likes to collect things from Cherry Lane's past. It’s kind of boring, really, just a bunch of memorabilia from his family, Clara, and his old friends. Real nerdy stuff about the old days,” then proceeded to talk about her date that night.

“Second hallway on the left, third on the right, turn left and there it is at the end,” Mary had said, and so I followed her instructions. I doubt she ever thought I would actually ever go. Especially not during the dead of night, but I did. I stopped a feet away from the door, panting. My hands shook as I held the doorknob.

I didn’t even have a plan. I didn’t know what exactly I was looking for, but I knew I had to learn more about the person whose body I had. Clara was the key to my original life, I thought. It was no mere coincidence that she had seemed so familiar—so much so that with just one look at her photo, I inadvertently shifted into her. There was a reason I was inside this mansion that belonged to the man who knew and loved her.

I took a deep breath and slowly opened the door. All the table lamps were on, enough only to dimly light up the ground floor of the room. With the light from my phone, I walked towards the messy table nearest to me and began my search.

“Are you lost?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin. I dropped the old book I was holding and whirled around, just in time to see Dorian stepping down from the narrow staircase that led up to the second floor. He had a robe on, the same one he had worn when I first encountered him in the mansion. Strands of his wavy hair fell on his eyes, and he used one hand to make them stay on one side of his face.

“N-no, I was, uh,” I stammered, unsure whether I should tell the truth.

As he sat on the backrest of the couch that was facing Clara’s painting, he patiently waited for me to speak with his arms crossed. His eyes watched me, expressionless, as I scratched the back of my head.

“I was just curious,” I finally said. “About Clara, I mean.”

His eyebrows twitched upward a little at the sound of her name, but he kept silent. Was he angry? I thought, because I snuck in here. He stood up and went to the pile of books sitting on the table, just beside one of the tall bookshelves

“I’m sorry, I know you told me to avoid this part of the mansion, but I just—I wanted to know more,” I quickly said. “I can go if you—”

“Well, since you’re here, you can stay.” He began to carefully place them one by one on the shelves. “I’ll go, I just need to finish putting these back.”

“No, don’t,” I said too loudly and too fast, as I took a few steps towards him. That made him turn his head towards me, looking surprised. “I was thinking,” I continued, embarrassed, “that maybe you could tell me about her?”

Dorian considered this as his eyes followed me. He was probably wondering where all this was coming from, especially since I literally told him to get away from me just a week ago. I took cautious steps towards where he was, just to show him that I wasn’t scared, and stopped when he was 4 meters away. “I figured, you know, that you probably know best about her,” I added. With his eyes bored into me, I settled on awkwardly pretending to look at one of the display tables.

“I suppose it’s only normal that you’re curious about her, you do look terribly alike that you’ve gotten into trouble for it,” he said. I felt myself relax as he resumed putting away the books. “What do you want to know?”

I wasn’t sure, really, but I answered, “Well, for starters, how you knew her.”

“Clara and I, we were once arranged to be married,” he solemnly began, looking down at the book in his hand. “We met when I was 22 years old and she was 20, at a ball that my parents threw.” He turned towards me, his arms crossed in front of his chest as he leaned sideways against the bookshelf. “I was immediately taken to her—she was beautiful, elegant, smart and kind. It was as if she could do no wrong.” A corner of his lips slightly turned up as he reminisced, and I couldn’t help but stare at him.

“But,” he continued, “Clara disliked being arranged. She was her own woman, after all, so I decided to pursue her and she made me work for it.” He stopped and pulled at one of the drawers. He raised a handful of envelopes to show me, then handed them to me. “As in the older times, we exchanged letters and rarely met, since I was busy with my studies and preparing to take over the family business.”

I looked over the letters, careful as they were quite possibly as old as me. The cursive handwriting was thin and graceful, and the content, well, it left more to be desired. Clara, as she sounded in the letters, knew full-well that she was a lady of different caliber. She even implied in one, that if Dorian were to visit her, he should bring a sparkly gift that fits her slender neck. I wasn’t sure if that’s how high-standing people talked in the day, but with my years of living in this earth, I’d say she sounded like a gold-dig—

“Regrettably,” Dorian was saying, “the times I visited her house to see her, she was often away to travel.”

Somehow, I thought, I doubted that, but I didn’t say anything and let him continue. “Eventually, after four years, she agreed to marry me out of the blue. My parents and hers had died by then, so I went to my grandparents who were living far away to get their blessing, but I…” he hesitated, “I ran into some trouble, and on the day we were to be wed, Clara—she died.”

I lowered the letters and stared at him. The pain in his voice was apparent, as if it had just happened yesterday. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I found myself saying.

Dorian took a deep breath. “It’s alright, it’s been a century now,” he said. I handed him the letters, and he placed them back into the drawer. When he looked at me again, he had a sad smile on his face. “I’m sorry,” he gently said, “it’s just that you look so much like her.”

“I’m not Clara,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time.

Dorian pursed his lips and leaned his back against the bookshelf, looking at the painting of her. “I know,” he said. “Your blood smelled familiar, but different.”

“My blood?”

He faced me again, “Yes. Speaking of which, now that I’ve answered a question of yours, would you mind answering one of mine?”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Depends on what your question is.”

“Callahan,” he said thoughtfully, “he mentioned that you were possibly not human. Are you not?”

I stared at him, clearly reluctant. “If I answer, would you tell me what Callahan meant when he said you owe him?”

Dorian smiled, finally brightening up the gloom in his face, and I couldn’t help but smile back. “You got me there,” he said, sounding amused.

“Anyway,” I cleared my throat, trying to straighten my expression, “you don’t have to tiptoe around me anymore.”

Dorian frowned at me, and asked “What do you mean?”

I looked down at my feet to avoid his gaze. “I mean, I’m the guest here, and Mary and Clarissa clearly trust you with their lives, and obviously miss having you around. It just doesn’t seem right that all of your routines are being wrecked by me, so…” I looked up, and saw him staring at me with those big, hopeful eyes, like a child who was about to be bought ice cream. “So, I, uh, give you permission not to avoid me.”

A smile formed on his lips, and I added, “As long as you promise never to try to get my blood.”

He was grinning now and nodding. “I promise.”