He continues, “Besides, I suspect the madness has nothing to do with the elixir at all, and more with what we see and must do in the Fade Marshes.”
My knuckles turn white as I grip the vial. All our combat practice suddenly seems so foolish. I’m a forge maiden, not a hunter. I’m supposed to make weapons, not use them. This has all gone too far. “Please, don’t go tomorrow. Stay here in the city and protect us. Don’t make me have to use this.”
“I’m going so you won’t ever have to fear the vampire again.” My fool of a brother steps forward and places both his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going with the vanguard so that vampires won’t make it here.”
The vanguard. Driun will be on the front lines. My heart begins to race.
“Don’t, Driun,” I say hastily. “Davros loves you—”
Driun snorts softly.
“You’re the brother of the forge maiden; he will let you stay as part of the town’s defense if you ask to defend me. You don’t have to go so deep into the marshes.”
“I have to.” His voice has dropped to a whisper. Even though we’re alone, he glances around. “Davros wouldn’t let me stay in town because he has prepared me for this night since I joined the hunters. I’ve been chosen for a special mission, Flora. I can end this.”
“End it?”
“End it all.” Driun hugs me tight. It’s like the hugs Father would give before the full moon. But this time… I know this is the last I’ll see my brother. He’s saying goodbye.
“Please don’t go,” I beg. My throat is gummy. Eyes are burning. “I don’t care about any special mission or old stories. There will never be an end. We will always be hunted. So stay here and live with me.” My insecurities and fears are multiplying. I am the fool Mother always warned of and I give in to desperation when I say, “Don’t make me get married off to whatever hunter Davros pleases. How will I know it’s someone decent if you’re not there to intervene?”
Driun releases me. “I will never let you live a life of misery.”
“But—”
“Tomorrow,” he says softly. “When the Blood Moon thins the Fade and the vampire lord himself leads his legions through it, I will be ready and waiting. I will kill the vampire lord—the mind of the hive—and I will put an end to this endless war.”
My heart seizes in my chest. My throat is too tight to say anything else. I knew the vampire lord would come. But…I never imagined my brother would be the one poised to attack him head on.
“You can’t,” I whisper.
Driun wears a sad smile. “Not even a bit of confidence for your older brother?”
“Older by minutes,” I say on instinct. He chuckles. “Please, I—”
“The decision is made. I’m doing this for all of Hunter’s Hamlet. But also for you. If the vampire lord dies, then you won’t need to be a forge maiden any longer. Hunter’s Hamlet will be like any other town. You won’t have to work here every day. You won’t be married off. You and I could finally go to the sea.” The sea, the symbol of that all-encompassing dream of the world beyond the walls.
“I have all I need here; I don’t need the sea.” It’s a lie. One I’ve told myself so many times since I was a girl that I believe it more and more the older I get. Time has a way of snuffing dreams. “I need you and Mother safe and the forge hot.”
“You wanted to go to the sea when we were children,” he counters.
“We were seven. Things were simpler then.” I shake my head, wondering just how we could be so alike and yet so different at the same time. Driun was always fighting—fighting for more, for Hunter’s Hamlet, for dreams I stopped dreaming long ago.
“You could be so much more, Flora,” Driun says softly.
“All I want is not to see another one of our family die.”
“Then promise me you’ll protect Mother, so the only thing I must focus on is keeping myself alive and killing the vampire lord.”
When he puts it like that… “Fine. But you must come back.”
“I will.”
“Swear it. Swear that when the sun’s light hits the bell tower following the night of the Blood Moon you will be marching home.”
“I swear I will come back.”
I grasp him tightly. As tightly as I’m holding on to my emotions. He’s sworn it to me. He’ll come back.
Yet, my heart knows the truth. Maybe it’s because we’re twins. Maybe because he’s a hunter like Father was. Maybe I just know from being born on the soil of Hunter’s Hamlet that death is already in the air.
He might swear he’ll return, but…
He’s lying.
Days after……
Today’s the first day in my life that the forge was not lit.
Usually, every morning, Mother is the first to rise. She heads downstairs and puts the kettle on for tea, then she heads to the smithy and begins to wake the slumbering coals in the hearth, stoking them into high flames to create a bed of heat for us to work from. The forge glows an angry orange as if in contempt that it must wake before even the sky. By the time I make my way downstairs, I can feel the heat all the way at the kitchen window, and Mother is already working the bellows. Before the sun rises, we are ready to melt silver and steel together to make the special alloy that only we can craft.
But today, the house is quiet.
All of Hunter’s Hamlet is filled with the most horrible, deafening silence.
I’m up before Mother. Not utterly unheard of, but on top of everything else it’s a reminder of how strange the day is. I stare out my window at the quiet streets. There’s no smoke from the baker’s chimney. There aren’t laborers trudging out to the fields that fill the gap between town and the Fade Marshes. The only people outside are before their doors, beginning to hang on their eaves the delicate silver bells we have spent months smithing.
Mother and I join them.
We don’t say much. The hunters have told us what to do to prepare and it is not so different than any other full moon. There’s only so much we can do to prepare for vampires, even less for the vampire lord himself. The old stories are vague on what to expect from the ruler and hive mind of the vampires—some say he’s a winged monstrosity, others claim him to be able to draw the blood from all living creatures within his sight with a mere thought. I’m not sure what I believe, other than that he’s certainly the cause of every bit of hardship and loss in Hunter’s Hamlet.
What Driun said weighs on me as the hours tick on. His words—his lies—were sharper than the sickles I forge. Sharper than the weapons I have hidden in the main room downstairs. I look to the fortress, as though I could catch a glimpse of him, but he’s behind those high, thick walls. Not for the first time, I wonder what’s going on within all that stone.
But hunters’ affairs aren’t meant for me. I haven’t taken the vows of a hunter. I will not wear a mask tonight. I am the forge maiden and my place is here as much as his is in the Fade Marshes. We can’t change our roles, no matter how badly we might want to.
The bell tolls.
The bell tower of Hunter’s Hamlet stretches up from the center of the main square. It is as old as the fortress, said to have been built thousands of years ago, at the same time as the walls that surround all the land of Hunter’s Hamlet. One of the hunters serves as the bell ringer. I always thought it was a pointless task. None of us forget when the full moon has come. We certainly don’t need a ringing reminder each dusk before full moons to be in our homes. Every toll is worse than the last.
I lower my hands from the silver bells stretched over our door and look to Mother. She stares at the bell tower. At three stories tall, it’s the second tallest thing in the hamlet. The tallest is the fortress at four, which I’m certain is the highest structure ever built by human hands. Mother’s features are as hard as the iron we hammer and betray no emotion. I mirror her expression. We cannot be delicate.
“Do you want to go see the procession?” I ask.
“Of course.” She shakes her head, as if trying to banish the worried thoughts that I know are there. There will be no banishing them, not tonight.
We join the rest of Hunter’s Hamlet, heading for the main road that cuts through town. I’ve never seen so many people in one place being so silent. There’s only the sound of our boots on the cobblestone streets. I hear weeping coming from one of the windows we pass underneath. It does not quiet.
The main road stretches from the fortress to the center square and bell tower, and then on past the lower wall of Hunter’s Hamlet. It cuts through the farmers’ fields and heads north through the salted earth. Then, it goes past the realm of my knowing and into the Fade Marshes. No one knows what’s at the end of it. No one has made it that far into the lands of the vampire and lived to tell the tale.
