Chapter One: We Are Running. We Are Hiding. We Cannot Be Found.

I came to this world with my family nearly thirty years ago. When we first arrived, we lived in a cottage nestled deep in the woods of Sweden. The cottage was old, dilapidated with holes in the roof and patches of moss growing between the planks of wood that covered the floor.

Mother did the best she could, making soft cushions out of hay and thick animal pelts to sit atop the furniture Logan fashioned out of the trees he'd chop down for fire and repairs. She used the brick oven to roast what game Logan and I could catch with our arrows and bare-hands.

In our spare time, Mother and I crafted glass into beautiful sculptures to be sold at a nearby market. My younger siblings would collect the smoothed bits of broken glass from along the nearby shore and we would press it firmly between our hands, molding it into perfect pieces that surpassed those any humans could craft. Mother tried once, at Logan's request, to teach some of the halflings this skill. They didn't possess the magik needed; too much human, too much Logan, in them.

Logan had grown up in this place nearly one-hundred years ago, before my mother found him and he was lost to this world. His father was a woodsman and his brothers were hunters. He lived thirteen human years before Mother first came to him. She was in the form of a doe, and though his gun was set and gauged to kill, she somehow evaded him. It was later that night that she started her lure, calling him out of the safety and warmth of his home and into the darkness of the night. Always unguarded, without the protection of iron or silver like other kids she had encountered in this world, he was easy prey.

Though she appeared to be a girl near his age, dark brown curls bobbing around a soft cherubic brown face and amethyst eyes, she had already passed her first century. She says she fell for his eyes, bright green and perfectly round orbs, his startling blond hair, the heavy brows and prominent jaw, the sinewy muscle that pressed against his pliant flesh even at that age. When he spoke, his voice still soft with youth, he cast his very own spell on her. A year later, when he was still just a child, she took him.

There was no changeling left behind to sooth his mother's loss, as was custom among the fae. No clues or scene to hint at some untimely and mysterious death. No magicked corpse left to serve as a body for burial. No peace for his poor family. He had simply vanished.

When Mother brought him to us, I was just a child in my first decade of life. She told my father he was a lost human she found injured and on the brink of death during her travels to his world. My father always held a weakness and curiosity for those humans, and so he allowed her to keep him. Not five years later, aging more quickly than he and Mother liked, Logan ran his silver carving knife along my father's throat.

Together, Mother and Logan collected the blood, filling jar after jar of the satiny red liquid. When they were done, Logan hoisted the pale and graying body onto his shoulders and carried it out to a clearing in the forest behind our secluded home. I trailed behind him, my affection for Logan having grown, curiosity peaked as always.

I watched, sitting a distance away (my mother warned me about getting too close to the iron at the end of the weapons Logan had kept), as he hacked the body to pieces. Watching as his arms and stomach tensed when he wielded the heavy ax above his head. Watching the way his muscles stretched and moved as he brought it down, the sizzling sound of the iron slicing through Father's body like butter. When he took a moment to wipe the sweat from his face, he turned to wink at me, an affectionate smile on his blood-speckled face.

It didn't take long for Logan to be done with his task. Mother joined us, clothing stained and stinking, to help Logan load the pieces into our wheelbarrow. Father and I often used it to collect the ripe fruit that grew on the trees surrounding our house. On better days, he'd dump me in the bed of the barrow and we'd whiz around for hours.

Once we got back at the house, the meat was skinned, the muscle tenderized, as mother whistled in the kitchen, Logan cooing and smiling with his arms around her. Some was roasted, some was stewed, some marinated and left in the oven until it dried out and shriveled in sticks. Over the next few days, as the endless moon₁ hovered above us and the world was cloaked in darkness, Logan devoured the body. And on the last night of the lunus₂, a phenomenon that occurred only once every five centuries, he was immortal. Almost. A spoonful of my father's blood every full moon was all it would take. And when that was out, the blood of his kin would do₃.

We lived in the fae world together for nearly thirty years, Mother and Logan blissful and unburdened by the blood they had shed. Mother had sold the lie, convincing everyone that Father had run away to the human world, abandoning us both with only Logan to provide our care. Even Grandfather was convinced, his son was always so curious about the humans, and took measures to make sure Mother and I were cared for. With Father's blood and flesh mingled with Logan's, it was easy to except him as a replacement son, especially as Logan constantly doted on his only granddaughter.

Things had gone well, had gone according to their plan, and then they made a mistake. They chose Grandmother instead of me.

When the blood ran dry, Logan's soft spot for the raven haired child who so closely resembled his lover, deter him from taking my blood next, though Mother had suggested it. Instead, he devised a plan and convinced my mother that Grandmother would be best. Her blood was older, he'd said, stronger.

They'd gotten as far as the murder. The same carving knife was slid across Grandmother's throat as she sat with us for lunch. My grandfather, bonded to her in a way that was rare for our kind, felt her abrupt departure from our world, and stormed our home within minutes, his small but strong army of men closing in after him. In his rage, he killed Lochan, my first and eldest halfling brother.

All the halflings were eventually killed, throttled and drowned before us in the fae's High Judgment Court, the king seated upon his thrown, stone-faced and ready for any possible rebellion against his orders. Mother and Logan sat shackled together against one side of the grand hall , while I was held loosely by one of the king's men near them. Logan cried shamefaced as they laid his seven children, imperfectly human, at his feet. Mother stifled a sob produced from grief at his pain.

The punishment didn't end there.

We were banished from the fae world, a bounty placed above our heads and hands irreparably branded with the seal of the accursed. I was punished alongside them, though Grandfather plead for my amnesty. I had witnessed both murders, with blood on my lips, and to the court,in a crime considered to be of the highest magnitude, it didn't matter that I was just a child. I was permanently tainted by the acts and couldn't be allowed to walk among the fae.

We lasted in those woods, the woods were Mother first found Logan, the woods to which we banished ourselves, for nearly ten years before Logan's immortality began to drain, his body aging rapidly to catch up with his human years. Mother loved him, if only him, and couldn't see him die. It wasn't long before she came after me, the only full-blooded fae within her grasps.

As I slept, she bound me to my bed. Holding the silver knife by its beautifully carved wooden handle, she pressed the edge against my wrist, capturing nearly a pint of my blood into a basin on the floor before she was interrupted. Logan was furious, refusing to so much as look at her for weeks on end. But eventually, with some coaxing and his ever-aging body, he relented, though he made her apologize and swear on her name to no longer harm me.

Fifteen more years passed before they came. We'd stayed together, and I volunteered to replenish Logan's supply when it emptied. Mother and Logan birthed more sons and daughters, devilishly wicked half-fae siblings.

And for while, things were good. But with halfling children running rampant in the woods, wreaking havoc on nearby towns and luring small children to horrendous deaths and tortures in the woods, it was only a matter of time before we were found again.

Author's Note

Thanks for reading. Feedback always welcome.

Reviews

[Vian]

Very beautiful. I loved the settings. The descriptions were perfectly detailed and held my attention just so. As improvement I think you could do with some more emotion based description. I could sense some disgust in the prologue and anger at the injustice in the first chapter but it could do with some expanding. I adore that you've given explanation to your magickal world and hopefully you keep to the 'rules' of your world. I am eagerly awaiting more.

[Avery]

I really love where this is going! It makes for an interesting and twisted plot