by Ian Grey (Vampire: The Dark Ages | Fiction)
I remember walking through the heather, the dawn mist on my face. Tears too.We were a poor family, ever since bandits had butchered father not long before my birth. Though my sisters and I were pretty (or so the local boys would whisper to us in hopes of a friendly roll), there were none who'd marry us. Father had taken his wife while serving as a soldier amongst the Bohemians, but the Serbian peasants of his homeland were not so open-minded. This reflected on us as well - though each of us bore it in our own way. My elder sisters ended up taking it out on me, but all that did was make me tougher, and smarter.
We lived in a thatched hovel, and were lucky to tend a few sheep and a chicken I lovingly named "Baba". What little spare time I had I spent exploring the woods and the bogs beyond.
My simple life ended not long after I had come to my womanhood. It was spring and the peat bog had thawed somewhat. I had been off tending the sheep, letting them graze on a hill a half-mile from the house. I had been napping, the honeyed smell of fresh blossoms making me lazy, until the chill of evening brought me around and I found my flock flown. Half the night I spent rounding them up, except for one. My mother was understandably upset and beat me sore with a strip of taut hide.
I found the missing sheep a few days later. What was left of it, half stuck in the bog, its side ravaged and gored by wild animals. They'd been busy. The wool was salvageable but the meat had dried and shriveled on the poor beast's bones, and the maggots found good lodging in the remnants of their feast.
It was perhaps a tenday after that the stranger arrived at dusk. A new neighbor who said he managed an estate just beyond the hills, Yusef was not the handsome prince of fairy tales, nor the gruff but healthy farmer we might reasonably dream of catching for a husband. No, he was pale and sickly in the candlelight, a bent and gnarled old man with a head as bald as an egg and the stringy grey and white whiskers of a goat sprouting from chin and cheeks.
But he wanted a healthy, pretty young wife and cared not if a dowry was attached.
He seemed enchanted with my eldest sister. She was the pride of the family, her hair a mess of blond ringlets that put the rest of us to shame. My hair was just as golden but it was as straight as straw (never mind how it snarled and fought the teeth of a comb). Though mother made a show of tears, my sweet sister was packed and out the door as soon as a meager wedding-gown could be sewn. She left with her new husband to be the following night.
The moon seemed to frown, a yellow face large on the horizon, lofting on the tips of the grassy hillocks. Not even the insects played to serenade my sister's passing.
The house was quieter after that, we had more room to spare. But two nights later Yusef returned, spry and hearty, a gleam of wrath in his eye belied by sadness etched on his lips. His bride had fallen ill, and he needed help caring for her - a farm has much work to be done and he had not the help to spare, so he begged mother to send the second of us to nurse her till her strength returned.
What could mother say? She smiled and agreed, despite worried glances between the lot of us.
Two days came and went and not long after the sun and moon had traded their roles in the sky we once again welcomed Yusef into our house. Both my sisters now suffered from the strange wasting malady, and he had come to collect me to care for them.
"Mother?" I asked hesitantly.
"Hush girl, your sisters need you" she said, softly, sternly, "trust
your brother-in-law, he'll see no harm comes to you." Seasoned eyes looked
out of her tired face, and with a peck on the cheek she helped me pack.
Next Month: How Adelaithe came unto Yusef's home, and what Yusef confessed to when they arrived...
