A Beautiful Sacrifice

Chapter Sixteen

There was a time when she had played with spin tops on the hard ground with her next door neighbour.  A little boy the same age as her and together they had laughed with each other and as kids been amused by small things. Those days had dwindled away as she got older but that innocent joy always was in her mind. As they got older it was no longer proper for her to be playing with a boy her age, such closeness was reserved for real couples. In time the spin top had been replaced with a bowl and spoon and she had learnt to while away her days baking cakes and making pies. Learning to cook and sew and be a proper wife.

                As the days passed and she grew taller, filled out her dresses and learned how to pin her hair up neatly she had looked in the mirror and seen the wife she would become. The mother she would be. She would be faithful and she would be dutiful. She would be like her mother and she had often touched her stomach thinking of the children she would bare. She may never love her husband but she would have a companion. She would have security and children of her own flesh and blood. A life. She would have a life and place within her community. She had been prepared and she had not shunned her suitors. She had welcomed them gladly and looked for the qualities of a husband as they looked for wifely qualities in her.

                But then they had come. It was like a storm; every house in the village holding twenty year old women had had three soldiers assigned to it and they barged it, broke down the doors and seized the women. Lily’s gown had been pulled roughly from her neck and she had tried to clutch it to her, hold it to cover skin that was meant for no one else but her future husband. A sharp stinging slap to her face had shocked her. She was no criminal so the soldiers should not have been rough with her. And yet she clutched at her face while they pulled down her dress to see the mark on her shoulders. Thankfully they had pushed the material back up once they had seen her birthmark but it did not end.

                They dragged her and she dug her heels into the floor. She begged and pleaded for her father to do something. For her mother to tell her father to do something. She looked as a last resort to her brother, the second male of the household, to aid her in this but he just stared and they carried her away. She had spent days in a prison cell, starved and told what would happen to her. A vampire would come to drink her blood, to drain her and kill her and that her sacrifice was to save the village. She was told to be happy she was saving many people but along with the information and the warnings were the jokes and jibes aimed at her and she spent her days fearing and dreading the day when she would be killed.

                Unable to wash and to even brush her hair she had fallen into a terrible state. Wild looking and mad almost and they only made it worse when on the fateful day they threw ice cold water on her body, striped away her dress and placed her in a more alluring one only to take hold of her arms and drag her out.

                But that night she had not died and she had seen the village for what it was. Unfriendly, selfish and cowardly. She had been let down by her parents. They had forsaken her and she had no one. She had learnt to understand that vampires were not the monsters they were painted to be and in a warm house she was given clothes and water with which to wash. Her wounds had been tended to and she had been fed. She was given a chance to love someone who did not hurt her. He did not force her and despite holding the truth and real situation from her, he offered her love, comfort and protection. He had let her walk around and paint. He had given her freedom and introduced her to a family that would never abandon her. A father who did not shout at her misunderstanding but showed her gently what her mind was avoiding. A mother who hurried around her and took pleasure in caring and watching over her. That was a family she wanted to belong to. She had come to want to be there and to try. And so she had.