Blood Sacrifice

Chapter Five

The boy regained himself before I caught my breath. The punishment didn’t seem to affect him as much as it did me, and I guessed that the force behind his slashes wasn’t quite as severe. I watched him from my place on the floor. He looked for his discarded shirt and quickly tossed it over his shoulder before he turned to me once again.

“Are you okay?” he asked, looking at me through helpless eyes.

I didn’t answer him.

I swallowed heavily and held a hand to the bruise on my throat that the contraption had marked. The slight pressure made me wince. I shook it off before I nodded slowly and tried to pick myself up off the floor. I would answer him with my actions. Despite my condition, I was too proud to let him help me. My dignity demanded that I do it by myself.

The first movement itself caused pain to spiral over my entire body from the mess of open flesh on my back. I cried out in pain and the small amount of energy that had been restored vanished and instantly, I collapsed to the floor again.

I didn’t want to look up at him, to see the pity in his eyes. He was handling his punishment a lot better than me. I wondered how he looked so strong. Was he in as much agony as I was? Or had his beating from earlier preoccupied most of his pain sensors?

They focused on me, I thought to myself. They had to have focused on me.

“Please…let me help you,” he said extending his hand to me.

My eyes flicked to see him from the position that I had landed in. For a long moment, I just stared at him. I wondered why he was trying to be kind. People at this orphanage weren’t nice. He didn’t know me; he had no obligation to help me. I frowned as I remembered that I had had no obligation to help him into the tree, but I had.

My eyes seemed to wander to his eye that had been blackened in his earlier punishment. It was then that I remembered that he wasn’t an enemy…he was just one of us.

Just another victim of Over the Moon orphanage.

Very weakly, I lifted my hand to his. His posture seemed to relax once he realized I wasn’t going to be hostile. He helped me sit up as he crouched beside me.

“You’re the girl that helped me into the tree earlier,” he said as he studied my face.

I nodded, again without a word.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Clara,” I replied, struggling to keep myself from falling back down. “And yours?”

“Nick,” he replied. “Now that introductions are out of the way, I’m gonna try to help you to your feet. Do you think you can stand yet?”

“I don’t know,” I replied honestly, “but I’m going to try.”

“This’ll hurt, okay?”

“Okay,” I said as I gritted my teeth in preparation.

He wrapped an arm over my lower back, just barely avoiding the gashes that marred me. He steadied me with his other hand as he helped me to my feet. He was right when he said that it would hurt. The pain as my spine shifted straight sent a ripple of agony through me once again. I was ready to collapse once more. If Nick hadn’t been holding me up, I would’ve done just that.

“Where’s your room?” he asked softly.

“The first hallway from the front room,” I responded as I looped my arm over his shoulders.

It was slow progress to move. I realized that he was limping as he helped me. I wondered how much of a punishment that had given him this morning. I couldn’t image him warranting it. I shook the thought away and tried to help him as much as I could, but I found that walking caused my dress to rub against the cuts. Each scrape of the fabric against my wounds felt like hot coal singeing away my flesh.

When we left the torture room, I was happy to see it go, but the awkwardness of moving through the swinging doors caused me to almost stumble forward again. Nick steadied me carefully.

“Aren’t you in pain?” I asked him cautiously as he tried to comfort me yet again.

He nodded. “Of course I am, but I can see that your situation is much more dire.”

I didn’t question it as we slowly began to cross the front room. I was glad to see that the Matron had disappeared again. I knew that she would get a sick twisted joy out of seeing us so horribly maimed. Nick’s jaw hardened, and I guessed he was thinking the same thing.

After we made it to the beginning of the hall (the place where the Matron had caught me only fifteen minutes before), I stopped moving. Nick looked at me curiously.

“Are you okay?” he asked yet again.

I nodded. “I think I can make it to my room from here.”

“I don’t think you can,” he said. “You underestimate how much of your weight I’m carrying.”

I swallowed heavily and looked him directly in the eyes. “I don’t want May to know I’m hurt. I don’t know if you saw her or not, but she was devastated when Agnus got adopted. Really, I don’t know why.”

He shook his head. “A little too late for that. Your uniform is soaked in blood. Even if you pretended you were okay, she’d still see it. She’d know something was wrong. Let me help you.”

I frowned as I stared at him. I hated that he was right. I knew that I couldn’t win every battle, this being one of them.

“Okay,” I said finally.

He nodded and readjusted his grip on me. Before we reached the room that I shared with May, he turned to look at me.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, what is it?”

“What did you do to get that punishment?” he asked.

“I gave May my breakfast,” I replied.

He looked away with a cloud of emotions in his eyes. It wasn’t hard to read the disgust in it as we approached the door to my room.

“This is the one,” I said to him.

He nodded, and whatever he was thinking about seemed to have left his mind.

“May Moore?” he asked as soon as we stepped into the room.

May was lying face down on the bed; her long blonde hair was a mess on top of her. She looked up at the sound of his voice, her eyes wide at the thought that someone besides me was in our personal space. By the redness of her face, I could tell that she had been crying still.

“Clara! Where have you been?” she asked, sounding almost bitter.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come to comfort you right away,” I said to her as I tried my best to wiggle from Nick’s grasp. “You must believe me when I say I tried.”

He sensed that I wasn’t balanced and stubbornly kept a hand on my lower back in case I suddenly lost control of myself again. The look on May’s face changed suddenly as she caught sight of Nick.

“Wait…why are you with my sister?” she asked him.

“I’m helping her,” he replied as he tried to push me towards my empty bed.

“Helping her from-“ May stopped midsentence as realization seemed to dawn on her.

She stormed up to me, blue eyes sparkling with waves of emotion as she studied my face. “You got whipped again, didn’t you?”

“No, May, I’m fine.” I tried to argue.

“Excuse me, Nick,” May said as she took his place behind me.

She pushed me stomach first onto my bed. I heard her gasp, and I knew that she noticed the blood. The agony of the fabric in contact with the wound again was almost enough to allow me to not care. I felt her hike up my dress suddenly so she could get a look at my back.

“Oh, my God, Clara!” She gasped as she caught sight of the horror of my back. “What did you do?”

I turned onto my side to look at her. I noticed that Nick was still standing by the door as if he had something to say. I ignored him as I focused my attention on May. The shock on her face suddenly turned to realization and sorrow.

“This is because you gave me your breakfast, isn’t it?” she asked. A tiny tear streaked her face. “You have to tell them you’re giving it to me, so that they punish me!”

“No, May, Honey, no,” I said. “It’s because of the tree, I was climbing the tree again. It has nothing to do with you.”

I never wanted her to think that she brought me any pain. She deserved every morsel of food that I gave her. I knew that if she found out the true reason for my wounds, she would refuse any food I gave her. She was starving, and I couldn’t allow her to pass up a meal that could potentially save her life.

May sighed and suddenly remembered that Nick was still there. She turned to look at him.

“Thank you for bringing back my sister,” she said moving over to give him a small hug.

She backed away, and he smiled at her. “It was no problem.” Then he looked at me. “Be careful from now on, Clara,” he said.

“You’re one to talk,” I replied.

May quickly ushered him out of the room and closed the door behind him before she turned to look at me.

“Why do you do things like this?” she asked me as she walked over to the bed and lay down next to me.

“I don’t know,” I said softly as I stroked her blonde hair.

In my mind, I knew why I did it. I would do anything to keep her safe.

“Sometimes, it’s hard to believe you’re just my sister,” May said.

I scrunched up my face. “What do you mean?”

“The way you protect me…sometimes I almost feel like you’re my mother,” she admitted.

“I promised our Mom I would take care of you,” I answered honestly.

Her face darkened, and I knew that she was again blaming herself for our mother’s death.

I frowned. “May, you have to stop doing that,” I said.

She looked up at me with tears bubbling in her eyes. “Doing what?”

“Blaming yourself for…you know,” I said.

“It was my fault though,” she muttered.

She adverted her eyes, and I ducked my head to catch her gaze again.

“It wasn’t your fault. She knew the risks of getting pregnant at her age,” I said.

May shrugged. “It doesn’t make me feel any better.”

I sighed, unsure of what to say to that.

She rested her head on the pillow. Her blonde hair splayed out as she looked at me.

“I have a question,” she stated simply.

“What it is?” I asked her.

“What was our mother like?” she asked.

“She was a great woman, always dedicated to helping people. She always followed her heart and did what she thought was right even if everyone else disagreed.” I paused for a minute. “She was a lot like you,” I admitted.

May looked thoughtful.

“You should cheer up, May. I know you never got to meet her, but she lives on in you. You should be proud to be her child,” I said.

May looked at me, a cautious smile playing at her lips. “You’re right.”