The Vampire’s Feeder

The loveliest flowers are often the deadliest… [Yara] I had always been better with children than I was with most things in life. Children were… simple. Loud, at times, but they didn’t look at me with pity and judgment the way the adults did. It was easy to win the trust of a little child, easier to adore their innocence when they’d climb onto my lap. And when I sang, they’d close their eyes and trust me with their sleep. I was on my third song when little Thomas finally gave up the fight. He had been the stubborn one tonight, all restless limbs and wide, dark eyes that kept finding my face as though checking that I was still there. I understood the feeling. I kept my voice low and urged him to keep his eyes closed, my fingers moving through his hair, and somewhere between one breath and the next, his whole body softened the way only sleeping children and the dying truly could. ‘What an odd comparison.’ I mused but sat with him longer than I needed to. I always did. The little boy had lost both father and sister in quick succession and I’d volunteered to help ease his night terrors with a song. The villagers loved my songs… When I finally rose, I gathered him against my chest as slowly as I could manage, because my arms had been shaking for the better part of an hour and I was not willing to let that be the thing that woke him. He had gotten heavier since the last time. Children always had a way of doing that the moment your back was turned. I steadied myself, crossed the room, and found his mother waiting near the doorway with her hands already outstretched. She took him from me, settling him against her shoulder in one scoop motion, and the look she gave me over his head was all the payment I desired. "You're a wonder, Yara," she said quietly. I shook my head, because it was easier than explaining that this was simply the one thing I had ever been good at. Singing. Well… aside from being a burden. I left before she could say anything else or invite me to stay for dinner. The dry, throaty cough came back before I had even cleared her gate. It always came back. That was the thing about it. I pressed my sleeve to my mouth and waited, bent slightly at the corner of the market road, until the worst of it passed. The doctor had told me, back when the first frost settled over the village, that it would go with the cold. That it was the season, nothing more; that girls as thin as I was often felt the winter in their lungs, and that I should rest, keep warm, and not tax myself unnecessarily. I had believed him. Yet, the cold had broken months ago, and the cough had not. I kept that to myself. My mother had enough to carry without adding my faulty lungs to the list. She was standing at the door when I came home, which told me everything before she even spoke. My mother did not wait at the door. She was a woman who was always on the move—cooking, mending, carrying things from one room to another with the energy of someone who had learned, very early, that idleness left too much room for grief. So, if she was standing still, holding something in both hands, it meant the something mattered. The letter was worn at the fold, as though it had been handled more than once since it arrived. “Elias.” I knew it had come from him and I read it standing in the doorway, still in my cloak, and my mother watched my face the way she always had, like she was reading the words through my expression rather than needing to see them herself. He wrote the same way he talked: long, looping sentences that tried very hard to sound certain and only partially succeeded. He was well. He was not afraid. He often tried to say romantic things but his words were always so adorably clumsy. And then, toward the bottom, where the pen had pressed a little harder into the page: ‘Wait for me, Yara. After the war, I will come back with something to show for all of this. Wait.’ I pressed my lips together, then the letter to my heart. “That’s so like him…” I muttered, looking up at the sunset, “still believing that glory was the point, that war was a stage and he only needed to perform well enough on it” I loved him for it as much as it frustrated me. ‘Don't die, Elias,’ I thought, folding the letter along its original crease. ‘That is the only thing I have ever actually asked of you. Don't die, and we can sort out the rest when you get home.’ I tucked it into my coat and went inside after my mother. The bells started before we had finished dinner. I had the bread halfway to my mouth when the sound split open the quiet of the evening. My hand stopped. Across the table, my mother's hands stopped too. We looked at one another but neither of us spoke. There was no need. Every person in this small village knew the difference between the bells. The fire bell had a frantic, doubled rhythm, as though it was tripping over itself in panic. The trader's bell was cheerful, almost festive. This bell—this one—was slow and often went on until everyone arrived at the village square. It rang as though it had all the time in the world, because it did. The Priestess was here. I opened my mouth to speak but the words didn’t come. "Your cough," my mother’s brows creased. "Use it." I nodded. We both knew what happened around this time of the year. It was time to choose a girl who’d be sent to serve in the king’s castle. A girl who would never return home.