FINAL

Vamps Final

My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgwick is a vampire book different from all of the others. This story does not deal with the image that most of us have of the charismatic handsome rich and powerful vampire of Hollywood, but more the dark and terrible monster of Eastern Europe.

Were you to read the legends of Eastern Europe and Russia, you would find many cases of supposed vampires which led to widespread terror. The vampire to them was far more than a story told to scare children, or to make romantic movies out of, it was a sickening reality. Hey believed, as they believed the sun would rise the next day that vampires were real and common.

This particular account of these legends begins with a scene in a dark and deserted forest at night. A farm hand I out chopping wood when he is attacked and killed gruesomely by what is believed to be a wolf or some other manner of creature. The body is found hanging by the trees and is promptly buried in the cemetery of the small town.

Soon after the events with the farm hand a woodcutter and his son move into the town. They build themselves a small cabin on the far edges of the village and surround it with what could only be described as a moat and several other attempts at protection. Though the son wonders why they are doing such things, his father is known for actions such as this and seeing as he is now almost a man he has learned not to question his father’s motives. The two of them had moved around often from the time the boy was born and every time they did his father took the same extreme measures. His father also carried with him a box that he was forbidden to ever open or look inside, his father kept it under a loose floorboard.

Though they were suspicious of the newcomers the villages welcomed the wood they chopped and hauled into the village often. While on one of his regular trips to the village with his father the son meets a young woman. He is soon very taken with her and wishes to marry her, but she is already promised to a wealthy merchant’s son and therefore they meet in secret for some short while.

Within weeks of them being there reports come of livestock such as sheep and cattle being terrorized by a sort of creature, their throats ripped out in the night. At first the farmers brush these incidents off as wolf attacks, a sign of the frigid winter making it harder for them to hunt. The object of the son’s affections, Maria, has been caring for her ill mother for years, but as the frequency of these livestock attacks increase her mother’s health worsens.

Soon Maria and her betrothed husband marry, while the son watches painfully at the back of the church. She refuses to look at him through the whole ceremony, and soon succumbs to tears, most assume it is out of happiness but the son knows differently. Not hours after the ceremony, once it grows dark and Maria’s husband is staggering home after a long night of celebration with his comrades, one he does not return from.

His body is found dismembered in the streets and his funeral follows soon after. The son believes that maybe he now has a chance, but he does not know the customs of the area. It is customary when a man’s wife dies for her to cover herself in black and be locked in a small one room cabin in the woods for a mourning period of one month. Not even an hour after the funeral Maria is snatched away, clothed in new black garb and sent, followed by a group of older women of the town to the mourning cabin.

The son attempts to find a way to visit her, even though it is forbidden. One of the women from the village bring her food every day and the only things she are allowed to do are pray, read the Bible and knit from the children of the village. There is no way he could go to see her, especially now with the “wolves” about at night. He decides to risk it anyway and one night he sneaks out from his father’s cabin and walks through the woods to the mourning cabin. He knocks on her boarded window which she son opens. She is obviously surprised to see him, but not out of sheer gratitude. She confuses him by telling him he has been by here earlier that evening and had promised to come every evening that she was incarcerated.

He wonders what she means and she explains to him that she had a figure knock on her window not two hours earlier. The figure was standing far enough back by the time that she rose and opened the door that all she could see was his silhouette in the darkness. When she asked him to come closer he told her that this was when asked she could truly say she had not seen him. She hadn’t questioned him and soon the figure made his declarations that he would return every night that she was locked in the cabin.

The sun steps into the light from the fire smoldering in her fireplace so she can see clearly that it is him. Confused, Maria and the son decide to set a trap for the mysterious figure. The next night when he returns, the son is already hiding in the cabin with Maria. She opens the door when she knocks and when he goes to leave she asks for a hug. He agrees but only if she closes her eyes. She does so and talks about how horrible the person smelled, and while she hugged him she quickly hooked a small pin with attached yarn to the back of his coat.

In the morning the son leaves the cabin and follows the trail of string through the town into the cemetery where it disappears into the dirt of the grave of the farm hand.

Seeing as I hate ruining the end of books for people, if you would like to know how it ends either talk to me privately or read the book (however I must say I suggest the latter as it is much more entertaining)