WHISPER, shadow and bone

an inherited creature

prologue

an inherited creature

Marianna Aanenson was seven when she watched her sister burn.

It had been a cold and bleak day, nothing out of the ordinary for the little girl or her family. Ice ran through their veins just as much as blood and their skin had rarely ever known sunlight. Such was the reality for Fjerdans, one that they were blessed to live by Djel. Still, Marianna had hoped the day her sister's life ended would have been marked by something more than ordinary.

Because ordinary would not stop the burning, no matter how much little Marianna prayed that it would. Her prayers, pious and desperate, stopped nothing. The entire town had come out to watch the spectacle and whispers floated through the air. Even then, young but never stupid, Marianna listened as she walked slowly through them.

The daughter of the commander is a witch.

That entire family is an abomination.

The commander will be the one to light the pyre, it is only right.

It is what she deserves.

Marianna knew the truth. She knew Grethe was a witch. She knew her family was an abomination. She knew her father would send her sister to Djel to pass judgement. But she did not know what her sister deserved.

Surely sweet, kind, gentle Grethe did not deserve death. Her sister, who held her as the wind's rage matched her father's, who tended to her cuts with soft eyes and loving hands, who was only three years older, did not deserve to die. Grethe had simply made a mistake, her young mind reasoned, one that could be corrected.

The night it had happened, Marianna had begged her father with tears in her eyes to send Grethe to the convent. To forget that her sister had wind in her veins just as much as ice. To deliver her sister anywhere but to justice. Her father had only looked to her with eyes as cold and cruel as the land around them, eyes that she had inherited. The only words he had for his youngest daughter, the one made in such likeness to his oldest, ( to the witch ), spat out of his mouth venomously.

She will die for her sins.

Those words emptied Marianna's little body of any warmth she might have once held. In her naivety and desperation, she had exclaimed what sins?

For that, her father beat her bloody.

It was not until later, when her mother tended to her wounds ( with hard eyes and even harder hands, so unlike Grethe in every way ) that Marianna got her answer. Her sister's sins were not her own, but an inherited creature. Something Djel cursed her with. Her mother had explained that Djel made Grethe to challenge their faith. But with a sharp tug to Marianna's braided hair, the woman declared their faith had not wavered and neither should Marianna's.

Her mother's shallow, grey eyes sparkled as she spoke of the rewards they would receive for their show of faith. How the townspeople would never question her father's word again, how they would not comment on his Ravkan features, how they would forget his mother had been a witch too... how they would forget Grethe ever existed.

Marianna had felt something stir in her chest at that. Something ugly and hot. So very hot. Even years later, Marianna was only ever able to liken the heat to the kind that killed her sister. It was then that the girl discovered she had her own inherited creature.