When Nina Kain ruled the town, the people, who weren’t used
to monarchy and even more so to pristine magic, watched with awe
and fear how a demonic queen can rule. It seemed that a figure
of a divine woman with a sweeping wave of dark hair is soaring
in the sky, her exquisite features wrapped in clouds; she seemed
to be a massive monument of an ancient sovereign. They said she
was almighty. They said that at night, in her true form, – her
head touching the sky, her figure slim and lithe as an ivy branch
and as the lightning, – she walks around town, lightly moving
her pale shoulders, and takes what is hers, but gives with godly
generosity what otherwise mortal men could have under no circumstances.
That’s what they used to say and that’s what they say today.
Now that it has been fifteen years since her death and her biography
is history and legend, it is worth looking at Nina’s image and
separate the truth from fiction.
First of all, the truth is that during the short period of her
rule, Nina managed to shake both souls and minds of people who
weren’t at all inclined for reasonless exaltation. The truth was
that she was indescribably beautiful – even the most captious
judge would find her appearance both perfect and demonic. Imperious
gestures of her delicate hands, milk-white skin, pitch-black eyes,
majestic deportment and iniquitous forms of her bitten lips. The
truth is that the people’s memory gave her such features that
both refined tyrants and enlightened emperors would love to have.
However, the most interesting thing is that everyone called her
a witch despite the fact that she never demonstrated some supernatural
deed, not once. In fact, she actually didn’t have any “special”
abilities. She couldn’t throw lightning, nor could she do any
tricks, nor stop enemy legions by means of gesture, nor transform
lead into gold. But what really was? The masses’ memory is the
most sober historical source; it cannot be cheated or bribed by
planned falsifications. What happened?
This woman emanated this special sort of energy – the energy
that allowed her to create things that shouldn’t be. Next to her
seemed possible – and in fact were – such things that wouldn’t
be possible under any other circumstances. This energy was extremely
strong within her. It was like a fiery column that stretched from
her head to the sky, one could almost feel it. Being unable to
make this image more vivid, the people invented a legend about
a woman that was extremely tall, reaching the sky, and went about
playing with the town as if she were a child playing with toy
bricks. That is actually the image of the Mistress Nina on children’s
pictures of that time. Rapture, violent happiness and passion
were the feeling that filled the space where she went. That was
her witchery.
Her nature suited that of the Kain family. The Kains have this
heritage of inclination for brave and dangerous experiments, impudence
and absence of any desire to acknowledge any laws, no matter if
they are the laws of physics or history; this virtue was the very
environment that Nina was most comfortable with. Their manner
of ruling by means of invisible power, regulating the directions
of the people’s mood, its uprises and storms, all this gave her
great opportunities. Nina took the town in her warm hands, squeezed
it into an obedient lump of clay, softened it and began shaping
the realm of her dreams.
Meanwhile people loved her more and more! Her passion was, in
fact, contagious; her strict eyes burned with furious mirth, which
had no effect on her mimics or behavior. Nina was the kind of
person that is so vividly seen in Maria now: one of coldness,
absolute self-control and total sobriety, with the ability to
perform foolhardy deeds.
From another source:
“…The whole time that Nina was the Mistress of the Kain family,
she held the town in fear. Paradoxical, but that was the cause
for the increase of love towards the Kains, that took place lately
– compared to Nina, all the other members of the family looked
extremely humanist. Nina broke and crippled dozens of lives, families
broke up because of her, and houses were taken down on her command.
Any, who she didn’t think to be her equal weren’t worthy of taking
into consideration at all – people for her were some kind of ants.
When Nina was bored – and that was quite a frequent event – she
behaved as if she were Dracula, simply went around the city looking
for situations that could interest her and solved different things
according to her understanding of justice. She could easily take
a child from a stupid mother, give him to the Master of the Abattoir
for him to make a steppe scout out of the child. She could enter
a house and order its inhabitants to show her the most precious
thing they had and if the people tried to conceal the real item,
she would order for the liars to be dealt with. No matter how
strange, but the people were quite patient about this. Nina was
taken for a beautiful and awe-inspiring protector of the town,
who had to be propitiated by means of bloody sacrifice. When Nina
died, the inhabitants took a deep, easy breath, but continued
to treat her as before, in fact, even with more piety, because
now she obtained another quality that was added to what she already
had – she was dead.”
Back
