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I can still remember the screams of the person I first bit. I was merely a babe and did not want the milk from the nursemaid, I wanted blood. She slapped my little cheek and switched the side I was nursing on. I left the other one alone and sucked happily on the unharmed teat. Even at that age I knew I had to hide my true desire.

Funny that I can remember my first drink of blood at such a young age, but the memory of my mother’s face continues to fade from my mind. My mother was a woman of great strength who guided and protected me curing my young years. Children teased me for having no father, but she stood strong, clasping my hand tight in the market. With proud eyes she would sit in her stall selling our herbs. I vowed always to have my mother’s strength.

Even though people feared me, they knew my mother grew the best herbs, but being seen buying a whore, as they commonly called her because of me, could brand you a sinner too. Instead of buying outright, they would come by late at night and purchase them with a cloak of darkness covering them.

One day, when I was twelve, as my mother and I sat at our stall in the market tying herbs together to dry, a man stopped by our booth. He was a stranger, or he would not have stopped. His clothing was indeed strange to our land. He looked over our wares, holding a sprig of rosemary he held my eyes and dropped a coin in my mother’s hand.

“Sir, you have paid too much.” My mother attempted to hand the coin back but he held up his hand insisting she keep it.

“Madam, keep this coin you are keeping something rare and precious indeed.” He continued to hold my gaze then tipped his hat adding, “A child of my master is a great thing to behold.” Then he left twirling the rosemary between his fingers.

“Do you know that man, momma?” My curiosity was indeed peaked. Did he know my mysterious father?

“Antigone, I myself cannot remember all the events that lead to your arrival.” She went back to tying herbs avoiding my question yet again. I was not going to take it this time. I grabbed the herbs from her hands and threw them on the ground.

“I want to know!” I believe I yelled loud enough for everyone in town to hear but my mother told me later I only whispered.

“Then I guess I will tell you.” She bent down and picked the herbs up off the ground before she started talking again. “A man, dressed similar to the one we just saw, came into town and stopped by my stall. Back then it could get quite crowded here, but he waited until he was the only one left. He plied me with such words that I closed early and invited him to dinner. Since momma and poppa died I’d been keeping the house alone. He ate plenty and talked sweet. I don’t remember much after that, feelings mostly. I awoke the next morning and I just knew I was with child.”

She played with a few strands of my hair with a wistful look on her face. “The only other thing I was left with were these scars.” I watched as she tipped her head to the side. Two scars were all that were there, but seeing these made me slightly embarrassed as well as hungry for blood. My mother caught my expression. “Oh it’s time for your special stew again.” She could always tell when the need arose in me. She did not understand it, I know this now, but she never thought less of me for it.

I loved to watch her cook, she always hummed. As I said before, I can’t remember her face as well, but I can remember her humming perfectly. The stew she made had meat and potatoes but my serving had cows blood mixed into the stew. I ate as I would any other time, keeping the urge to lift my bowl and gulp the blood down. This particular night, as I was finishing my stew, there came a knock on the door. My mother answered and brought in a small bundle with a note attached. Her family was poor, but her father had taught her to read. She read the paper and her face paled. I asked her what it said, she only shook her head.

“It seems someone wants us to raise this child.” She beamed and put the sleeping child in my arms. I found that note years later it did not ask us to raise the girl, it had read:

‘A gift for the daughter of my master, may this innocent child’s blood make you strong and make you understand who you really are.’

The thought of feeding on children always repulsed me and later in my life I helped formulate a law to keep vampires from feeding on them too often.

We named the little girl Miriam and she brought more love into our household. The towns stares became more intense as they watched us with little Miriam. She helped a great deal the older she got and she too knew of my special strew. I soon reached my eighteenth year and we started to notice new developments that made me different from the others in my family.

“Nene,” Miriam called out to me using the name that she, as a baby, nicknamed me. “Your teeth are pointy like a wolf.”

I laughed along with her cheerful giggle an put my hand to my mouth to understand better what she was talking about. My front teeth felt normal but the ones just off to the side, they felt longer and sharper then any of my other teeth. They always had been longer and sharper, but they felt even more so now. Frightened I looked into the surface we used as a mirror and opened my mouth. Sure enough, my teeth looked like the teeth of a wolf as Miriam said. I looked at my mother but she continued to smile and knit; if my mother would not let this new development bother her then neither would I. I smiled less in public though; I did not want to give people more to gossip about.

I began to feel urges too, urges to use my teeth to bite into things. I was bringing a rabbit to my mother for stew one day and could not resist the urge to puncture the neck of the poor creature and suck the blood. I was too ashamed to go home so I fled into the woods. Hours later my mother found me and seeing the rabbit’s mangle body nearby did not as me anything.

“I guess making your special stew will need to increase.” Was all she said before taking my hand and leading me home. We walked in silence but she held my hand tightly to comfort me. Neither one of us spoke of the incident to Miriam but later she told me that mother told her a few years down the line, after she took sick. She wanted Miriam to be able to help and protect me and to do that she needed to know all.

Soon the villagers became hostile to me and my mother. A new religious group came to town and convinced everyone that my mother did evil things to have a child like me, that she must have slept with the devil himself to create a blood thirsty monster. I did not understand the term ‘devil’ but everyone seemed quite afraid. I also did not understand how the town came to know of my thirst for blood, but I did know that it was finally time for our little family to move on.

We had not good-byes to say, my mother and I, so we watched Miriam’s good-bye to her one school aged friend. The young girl glared at me and made me wonder just how close Miriam and this other girl were and what kind of secrets they shared.

We moved several times while I was between eighteen and twenty-two. We settled, finally, in a small village in North Romania, the people there feared our family, but let us be and some even traded with us. We settle again and none too soon, for momma took sick after one week in this new village.

It was not long after we noticed that I was not changing, that I never got ill, that I never lost a tooth, though Miriam, only ten, had lost one of her adult teeth already. I felt ashamed that I should be so lucky while she lie dying.

“My daughter, you were given a special gift, do not fret over it.” She told me to comfort me one evening.

“What good is this gift if you are no longer with me, I will truly be alone.” The end was closer everyday and I feared to be alone.

“You will only be alone if you choose to be. As long as you breathe, promise me you will care for others so you are not alone.”

Those were the last words she spoke to me. I promised her then watched her drift off to sleep. I made sure her chest still rose and fell evenly before leaving the room to go about my chores.

The next morning I brought a broth to my mother, but she lay still in her bed. Miriam and I buried her in our flower garden and lamented our loss. She was my greatest friend, and as I look back now, she was the only one who loved me despite everything about me that told her she shouldn’t.

My mother had taught me herbology well and soon the villagers knew, despite my unusual teeth and dark red hair, that I had herbs and remedies for almost any ailment.

After five years, Miriam and I moved on again. Vowing to put a new marker in a garden no matter where we ended up. The reason for our move; I had not looked like I aged a day.. Other girls around my age showed signs of getting on with years. Many had loose skin and graying hair. Eyes turned to me and my still red hair and smooth skin and voices cried witch. It was time to move.

We managed to make our way into a foreign land to the north to settle. True to our word we planted a marker in our new garden, planting all of momma’s favorite flowers around it. I always put a marker in all my gardens for her, she is always nearby and I never feel alone with it there.