-When will we know? – the old beggar asked in a hushed tone; it was a sensible matter.
-They should have said something by now! – the loud baker didn’t care for other people susceptibilities, the information should have been provided, she was entitled to it and, in her family particular situation, not in danger.
The October draught robbed some of the bakery’s warmth, the dawn’s gloom keeping most inside their small wooden barracks. Everyone was saving their candles for the darker days of winter; few would be stirring with little to do in near darkness. The lumberjack lads had left not long ago, the wood business was good this time of the year and nearly impossible when the storms arrived.
Both looked around, while old bread changed hands, eyeing accusingly the occasional passersby for their ignorance. Everyone knew the information was not forthcoming, the news would run the village when a crying family would shout their grievances, sometimes not even that if the unlucky one was from somewhere else, the village wouldn’t be informed and they would linger in this harbinger limbo of uncertainty.
- No lost child found by the riverbank? – the baker asked, disgusted with the beggar’s slobber consumption of the boon she had been gracious enough to toss in his direction.
- None, we’ve been looking. No chance your new daughter might been chosen?
This was offensive. – Of course not! – She wasn’t concerned. She had birthed two meek lads, no sisters to worry about, her fertility long gone with the butchered birth of her second boy, twisted when he shouldn’t have, aptly named Turner. She still blamed him after all these years, he was already waiting for his own child at present and she secretly wished for her grandson to give him trouble. The dribbling man was asking for her first son’s new mate, a small looking thing, still in the throes of hate and rebellion. – She’s expecting! – No one could really tell, and she was probably too young to carry the condition to term, but the suggestion would keep her from consideration. In the meantime, the young girl was to learn the baking trade, be useful, and try to do something out of her useless son.
As the beggar walked away, his short leg giving him an imposing limp, Turner stepped away from the oven and stood beside his mother, a little shorter than her.
– No idea who can it be?
– Who?
– The chosen?
– Of course not, I don’t know the runes!
– They must choose one for the Old One soon.
– Everyone knows, what’s your point?
– I’m wondering, there are not many possibilities…
- Just two, directly related to the council, but we will force them out!
– You think they will hide them?
– They will try everything they can, we all do.
– I hope mine’s not a girl.
– If you don’t get a girl, then next time they might come for your wife, everyone is trying to birth girls you fool!
– Then why are there none?
– The mating ceremonies have been too soon, the girls too young, the early conception ruining their bodies, rendering them infertile.
– This has been going on for all my life!
– And longer still. I barely remember the old days, I was half my size, had a baby crush on the Old One.
– You?!
– Hey, I was a wee lass, he was young, strong. He treated me kindly, smiled broadly, was the village pride.
– Then what changed?
– He changed, got overwhelmed by his bloodline.
– Why does he stay?
– The council doesn’t want to let him go, they still have pride in his bloodline, will do anything to keep it. You can wait, they will find a poor lass, it will happen! Now hush yourself to the oven, don’t let that dough burn or none of us will dine.
There were no real preparations, no festive atmosphere. It was a forced situation for the entire community. The Old One could not disappear without an heir, and no woman could bear his children. So, from time to time, a lassie was chosen to be sacrificed to the unsurpassable draining of their lifeline through the needed gestation, if she didn’t perish earlier by his uncontrollable brawn. Since no solution was found, the event ended up as a countdown to the unlucky one probable demise.
Everyone rushed their daughters’ engagement, no age was too young, no pretender too poor or too wicked unless they hazarded being the chosen one. Some of those girls would cry, some would curse their families and damned their luck, not really believing in the tales of the Old One. The fathers locked their jaws, mothers thinned their lips, the engagements concluded, and the girls weren’t available for the sacrifice when the time came, alive to hate their parents every day. Most welcomed whatever hate they were awarded of the living and safeguarded girls, this was considered a need rather than a choice.
It was the council’s responsibility to choose a maiden, not really pure or young, any female of bearing age. Some loathed the task, others gleefully slandered the occasion, satisfied with the grasp they had on the community through the fear of their power of decision making. If no available female was found, then a volunteer out of the mated ones would be procured. No one was so daring, so it would come down to a forced volunteer. Still, they searched, consulted the registries, sent envoys to confirm the families of the community, making sure there was no young girl unregistered. Sometimes, hunting parties would set out to miraculously “find” a girl from other villages. Those would arrive gaged and unwilling, a very welcomed undertaking, sometimes even paid by the more desperate parents from the community.
There have been seven mates over the last forty so years. Before those, when the beast was young, hopeful and naïve, two accidental pregnancies took those lassies from this plane. He swore no more would die for his bloodline, so the elders coursed him to lay with his mates. If he refused, as time went by, the lass would become ill and suffer immensely until her final demise, by his hand, once more, although indirectly. He chose to become the savage creature they all consider him now, lost in the forest, surrendered to the monster inside his blood, doomed to mate another and kill her, through the gestation of his child, his brutality, or his inaction, none a choice he could accept. He considered vanquishing the entire council, but soon found that the curse was as unbreakable as he was undying. It was anchored on his almost extinct demonic bloodline, that immense power that would ruin the world should it became unbound, sealed in his blood, the very same reason that exonerated the council for its actions since they were preventing greater devastation. And so, years after years, he gave himself to the crescent rage. Now, there was a possibility his monstrous strengthened rage would kill the woman long before she fell ill or he tried to lay with her, so said the rumours.