The Origin of Isaac

II

"Isaac? What’s the matter? You're all red in the face?” She gasped, “Is it time? Have you come of age sooner than I’d anticipated--”

“Mum, I--the baker he--” He stopped stammering, pulling the bloodroot pouch from his pocket. “I brought back the herbs you--”

“Forget the bloodroot!” She said with a rough tone that made him quiver. She sat him down, pulling a chair in front of her son. “Now tell me everything that happened, and leave nothing out.”

“The baker mum. . .he. . .” He tried to tell her, but he couldn’t quite explain it.

“What did the baker do? So help me if that man laid a finger on you, there will be a full reckoning to come.”

“No mum, he didn’t touch me.” He squirmed in his seat, not sure how to tell his mother the truth. She waited, and with each second, his heart grew heavier before finally coming clean. “Mum, what’s a witch?”

For a moment, she looked surprised, but her expression softened and she smiled. “The men have been talking about witchcraft, eh?” 

Isaac nodded furiously. “They were talking about you mum. They said you were a witch!”

Instead of feeling insulted, she laughed softly at that. “Can’t keep you sheltered forever, can I?” She looked wistfully at her son. “I told you where you came from, didn’t I?”

“Across the great ocean. From the motherland.”

“Ah, not our motherland. Our kind, or more specifically, your kind are more distant.”

“What do you mean? Am I a little goblin, Mum!?”

She couldn’t stifle the laugh that came, and wiped the tears from her eyes. “No! You’re not a little goblin! I don’t even know where you picked that up. No my son, you’re what is known as vampire.”

“A vampire?” He said, the word new in his vocabulary. “Is that like a goblin?”

“Goblins don’t exist,” she corrected, “vampires do. Well, most of them did. But there was a war, a great war long ago. There aren’t many left today, sadly.”

He looked at himself in a glass reflection. Everything from his rough ginger hair to his hazel eyes were identical to his mother's. “But. . .I look like everyone else.”

“That you do. On the outside. On the inside however, you're much more fantastic.”

“But Mum, you aren’t a vampire! Does that mean--” His mother took his face in her hands, looking him deep in the eyes.

“I’m your mother, Isaac. We may not be the same, but you came from me nonetheless.” She released his face and let him think about what she’d said. “And before you ask anymore questions, there’s something I’d like to show you.” With that, she stood up and began leading the way into the back of the little home.

For as long as Isaac could remember, which was roughly all of his natural life thus far, there’d been an odd door, locked and barred like a dungeon cell. Every now and then, he’d see his mother wisp off to wherever those doors lead. For years, he’d relish in the thought of what magical world lay on the other side, or more excitingly, what manner of hideous monster!

She led him to these doors now, and as she removed a key from a pouch on her hip, the lad’s heart pumped faster. He’d finally get to see what awaited on the other side, and he was both scared and incredibly excited. But when the door creaked open, and his mother guided him within, he was surprised and somewhat let down when he saw a simple stairway.