Glynis learns to fly and returns under the Beckoning

Glynis learns to fly during a night of shared wonder with Ariana, discovering a freedom that seems to exceed even the laws of nature. But the exhilaration is broken by Vlad’s Beckoning: pain compels her to return to the castle, where contact with his medallion releases her from the summons. The episode places a new supernatural ability beside an older conflict over who controls Glynis’s body and movements. Her flight is real, but it does not yet mean she is free.

The desire for freedom

Glynis’s first flight resonates with a desire for self-direction that predates her transformation. As a young woman, she objected to the unequal expectations imposed on women and wanted to live without the restrictions that kept them from acting as they pleased. That wish was not simply a rejection of feminine identity: she imagined living her life as a woman while enjoying the freedom conventionally granted to men. Later, the castle gives that conflict a new form. Though she has escaped the limitations of human society, she describes herself as Vlad Dracula’s slave, frustrated by confinement and by the requirement to exchange her own clothes for an imposed costume.

Her changing clothes mark small, concrete efforts to reclaim choice. At the castle, she takes a favorite gown of fine Italian silk, blue in color, and puts it on without a corset, preferring her own clothing to the outfit she has been made to wear. The gesture does not free her from Vlad’s rule, but it asserts control over how she presents herself. Against that background, the later sensation of lifting from the ground is more than a display of vampiric ability: for a moment, her body moves without the usual social or physical constraints.

A first flight shared with Ariana

The flight begins on a beautiful night. Glynis feels the wind over her fingertips, relaxes, and senses her feet slipping free of the ground. An invisible power lifts her, and she laughs. The movement is at first a private discovery, but Ariana joins her: she takes Glynis’s hand and rises too. Holding hands, the two vampire sisters float higher, above the treetops, and drift over the forest.

The scene makes freedom both bodily and shared. Glynis does not merely imagine escape; she experiences her weight leaving the earth, the wind moving over her skin and through her hair, and the starry sky opening above her. Ariana’s participation turns the discovery into companionship rather than solitary triumph. Their joined hands offer a brief counterpoint to the coercive bond that ties Glynis to Vlad: here, connection accompanies chosen movement, and the sisters rise together. Glynis understands the flight as a freedom she had never dared hope for, extending beyond ordinary limits into freedom from the laws of nature themselves.

The summons breaks the spell

That freedom proves temporary. When Glynis is with her vampire sisters at Erzsébet Dolingen’s tomb, an intense pain tears through her abdomen and brings her to her knees. Elina identifies the cause as the Beckoning: Vlad is calling Glynis back, and the pain will worsen if she does not go. Cneajna urgently confirms that his power is all around her and warns that he must not come looking for them there.

The wind that had carried Glynis over the forest becomes an enemy. Storm clouds overtake the moon, and the night grows darker as she stumbles out of the graveyard. Hearing Vlad’s voice, she feels as if an anchor has been lodged inside her and its chain is pulling her forward. She gives in to that force, hurtling through the wind until she reaches the castle and falls against its great door. The contrast is sharp: flight had meant willing ascent with Ariana; this return is movement imposed through pain, away from her sisters and back to her captivity.

The bond and its limits

Inside the castle, Vlad motions for Glynis to follow him to the library. Still suffering, she asks him to release her from the pain and reaches for him as she stumbles. She inadvertently clutches his medallion to keep from falling. The bond flares hot within her and then ebbs; once the force of the call has lifted, she can stand trembling. Vlad brushes her aside and continues through the castle, while Glynis follows irritably. The brief release does not undo his power over her; it shows instead how directly the bond can seize her body and how her contact with the medallion coincides with the summons ending.

The episode’s later circumstances keep that distinction between movement and freedom in view. Vlad plans to take Glynis to Buda to visit Andrew, but he dictates what she may bring: she must avoid clothing or jewelry her brother would recognize, wear dresses her mother bought in Paris, and use Erzsébet’s jewels. After they arrive, he has special veils made to conceal her appearance from Andrew and insists that she wear one around him. Glynis finds the veil heavy and bothersome, and finally tears it off in frustration. At the opera, in a black-and-gold dress chosen for her, she feels radiant and calls herself Countess Dracula, yet her sense of display exists within a life still shaped by Vlad’s decisions. Set beside that life, her flight remains a vivid but incomplete emancipation: she can rise above the trees, while the Beckoning can still drag her home.