The Empty Ones (Fantasy Romance)

4. Blood and mud

When I was younger, I was very afraid of dying. Death meant the lack of power and choice. Or so I supposed, because otherwise my mother wouldn't have left me. Or so I liked to believe. 

The blood trickling down my legs made my heart beat so fast I feared it was going to burst. Blood meant pain and death, and this blood came from inside, and without a reason I could pinpoint except imminent death.  

I cried and felt like I couldn't breathe, coughed and wheezed,  under the somewhat curious, scrutinising, amused or contemptuous gazes of the girls around me.

Then came the laughter and with it the humiliation, shame, and rage.

"Manab girl, you are bleeding all over the bath chamber floor," said an unknown girl with long brown hair and split pupils. "Has nobody told you to use the chamber at the end of the hall when you have your moon bleeding?"

"Moon bleeding..." I muttered, even more frightened.

"Yes, you manab bleed and breed a lot and disgusting." I stared at her, paralysed. "Like all the low races," she added in a whisper.

I tried to keep my body from shaking, but couldn't. Afraid of her somehow, I made an effort to stand and leaned on the wet wall to sustain myself. It was so damn slippery, and my shaky legs fled from under me.

A hand caught my arm just in time before I hit the marble floor.

The girl called Itotia looked at me for a brief moment, then turned her gaze towards my aggressor.

"Mala, I will crack your head in half if you say another word, so you can see what else I can do except breed a lot," hissed Itotia. "Come on, girl, I will show you where you ought to go, so you don't get a beating from the sisters," she said to me in an only slightly calmer tone. 

I leaned on her more than I should while we moved to a more secluded area of the bath.

"Am I going to die?" I whispered. "Is it the stone that does this? Is it killing me?"

"No. You just got your moon blood, and by the way you act, it's likely the first time. Your mother must have died early on, right?"

"Yes, when I was born. How did you know?"

"Because mothers usually explain these things to their daughters. Most do, not all. Well, congratulations, now you can bear children. And to spare you one other embarrassing question, no, children do not come to be out of thin air; you need the seed of a male for that. Don't make me explain how you get that, though; you will find out soon enough."

That was a lot of information to digest for my very innocent brain. Hara never wanted to explain to me exactly how women get pregnant, and apparently neither did that girl. It also seemed that the ability to get pregnant was marked by this strange bleeding.

"Will it stop? The bleeding, I mean."

"Of course. Else you would die. But it comes again in the next blue moon cycle. Other races don't have it that often, maybe once every two, three or six moon cycles. That's why Mala said what she said, because if you bleed more often, you are more likely to have a child. Or so they say, but honestly, as far as I saw, it doesn't really appear like it. The gazal bleed only twice every star circle, which makes them a not-so-good match for childbearing, as beautiful as they might be. Or so do people say. But while I was still living with my mother, the ghazal girls in the brothel got with child just like the rest, not less as one might expect." 

I had so many questions I didn't dare to ask, so she continued talking. Itotia was rather tall, one of the tallest girls in the priory and her features were prominently southern. So was her accent. The way she talked was the most familiar among the girls around, but the words she used or the circumstances she described weren't. I had no idea what a brothel was or why she was living there.