Crescent (Old Version)

+ Part 2 +

Rosie, like me, was born in the dark. 

I remember the day she was born like it was yesterday. In the middle of the night, I'd heard my mother screaming. I'd woken up in terror- they had finally found us- and I heard my father call the mid-wife. 

I remember my mother writhing in pain in the bathtub when the midwife came. I remember my father scolding me for peeking through the bathroom door. He'd closed the crack I'd been watching through, and I waited for hours on the landing outside my parents room until he'd emerged, alone, his shirt dark with blood and his hair sticky.

"Is mommy okay?" I asked him.

He looked down at me like I was a ghost. Like I was a stranger in my own house. He sat on the floor beside me and put his head in his hands. "She's fine, Brenna... You're a big sister now. You know what that means?"

A minute later, I heard sweet Rosalyn cry. Rosalyn. I'd come up with that name. She sounded like she was hurting, struggling just to take her first breath. My sweet baby sister. Even at ten years old, I knew I'd love her until the day I died.

We didn't go to the hospital. We always had to hide, and it never occurred to me that there could be others like us outside of the few families we knew in the neighborhood. But, the day Rosie was born was the day I knew: Our gift would be the death of us. 

We'd been hiding ever since.

||||||||||

The air was frost cold. When I opened an eye and peered down at my limp body, all I saw was red.

Blood caked my shirt and chest. It crusted the skin on my neck, my stomach, and my shirt was stained in it. Beneath it, an angry red track lay just below my collarbone. I could feel the soreness of it, the bruising in my muscles beneath it, but the raised mark brought it all coming back to me:

The fire, the gunshots, my family, the van... 

I shot upwards. My mother was gone. I was still locked away, rocking in the back of a truck, but this time, I was in what looked like the back of a cargo van. It was colder now; Even with my warmth, my teeth chattered. Even though it had been snowing back home, the air felt thirty degrees colder.

The van jolted to a stop suddenly.

I heard the front car doors slam closed, and I braced myself as the same two men who had thrown me in here unbarred the door. Snowy wind gusted inside, but I saw that it was the commander that stepped in between them.

"Get out," he ordered. I knew fighting would be useless. I didn't know how long I'd been unconscious or long it had been since I'd eaten. But, I could feel it in my bones: the gun shot had taken enough out of me already. 

I should be dead.

I stumbled out into the bitter cold, and I felt a cobbled path beneath my feet. Snow clouded my vision, but it was the fortress in front of me that stopped me in my tracks: Gigantic stone walls and circular towers straight from a story book shot up into the looming clouds.

Behind us, the van had parked on a hundred-foot long bridge that was surrounded by a chilling drop on either side and guarded by a forest of snow and ice on the opposite end Before us, a lowered drawbridge led to a courtyard that almost seemed frozen in time. A maroon colored banner hung from the largest of the three towers, it's picture distorted by the wind as the soldiers led me toward the medieval stone and iron entrance on the opposite side of the courtyard. The commander shoved me directly through the iron gate.