Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

It happened the eve of her birthday. It snuck in through the window as she slept, tore out half her throat and gorged itself as her blood flooded the sheets. It forced its own blood between her lips, and then it was gone. Ingrid was woken by her handmaiden’s scream.

They said she was sick. Writhing in her sheets, Ingrid could do nothing but believe them. Terrible burns formed on lengths of skin when the curtains were left open. They tried to feed her, but as soon as they successfully forced something down her throat, she emptied her stomach again. She became mindless whenever they tried. Biting the hand that fed. Oddly enough, the tiny trickles of blood calmed and rejuvenated her more than any scraps of food she might’ve retained. They learnt, of course, and started wearing gloves. Eventually they stopped feeding her at all.

She doesn’t remember much of it, of course. Flailing, bedridden and starved, nigh tortured. She was hardly conscious throughout, her mind couldn’t possibly work more than to register her pain and force her to attempt to satiate her hunger. But, she knows that it was agony. The worst thing she had ever felt, even considering the rest of her existence. Sometimes, in a moment of silence, Ingrid thinks she might have caught the memory of a memory of it, blind to the world for everything but the hole in her stomach, stillness of her heart, fire in her sheets, and maybe, possibly, her sister’s voice. Incomprehensible, and she had forgotten what she sounded like within a century, but she felt she must have been there, speaking to her.

And she knows that this episode went on far too long. Any other person should’ve died. It was months she spent in her bed at the Weston Manor. A fortnight she was moved in a carriage (she remembers the rise and fall). And several months more before some foolish chamberlain attempted to mop her brow without gloves. It was the first time since they had cut her off and sentenced her to wither away to nothing but scarred skin and brittle bone that she was fed. Her eyes shot open and her hands, nails grown long, shot up to grasp the poor boy’s wrist, pulled it to her mouth and dug her teeth into the vein with a strength she could not have had. There was no one else around. Those that heard his screams were too far. By the time they arrived, the boy was hardly alive, the length of his arm torn and a deep animalistic gash in his neck. And Ingrid was sitting up in her bed, blinking, peering around the room, drenched in blood from the jaw.

The next few weeks, though still a blur, left more of an impression. She tore through the staff of the small manor, never calmed, never satiated. When the last heartbeat was bled dry, that was when she came back to herself. It had been so long, and it was her first proper meal. Her strength — though not her rational mind — returned in full force, more than it had ever been perhaps. She smelt their blood. As they hemmed and hawed over what to do with the remnants of the body, what to do with her, she was still there, still hungry. Now just rather more capable. One of them tried to kill her, and that cemented the rest of their fates, really. Neither she nor anyone else could stop her. 

So she woke, unwashed and stained vigorously with multiple layers of blood, the body of the groundskeeper at her feet, and full. It was horrible and he was hardly recognisable — Ingrid had not the met the man in life, but even if she had, the few features left intact and unmuddied might not have induced his identity to come to mind. It took her ‘unmarriable demeanour’ and all those fretful, at the time pointless, lessons on decorum and composure not to break apart at that very moment. But because she was a lady noble-born, she rose on unsteadied feet, dusted off blood-stiff nightclothes with shaking hands, and stumbled off to the manor’s great doors to slip inside with great effort, all with a perfectly blank face, barely the slightest frown.

All for her efforts to crumble as she opened the doors to the remnants of carnage.

So she had fallen to her knees against the door, out on the porch, and sobbed. It did not help that her tears were now solely blood. After a while, the crying stopped, yet the heaving for breath and broken wails remained. When she faintly noticed pink on the horizon through it all, her ragged cycle of breath paused. For a minute, two, three. Then she noticed, and forced herself to start it all over again.

The sun eventually peeked upon the manor house, and Ingrid had enough wherewithal to shove herself inside, away from the wretched agony, and into the heart of the massacre. She was hardly crying anymore, tears absent and breathing become almost tiring at this point, and despite it all, had been of clear mind since the groundskeeper’s death, so she wrenched herself to her feet and tore through the halls, only coming face to face with corpses in various states of decomposition in every room.

The kitchen, each bedroom, the drawing room, the dining room, the bathroom, the courtyard, the ballroom, the staff quarters, each and every hallway. Every room within the manor walls. And Ingrid, of unfortunately reasonable thinking and nowhere near ignorant enough, could put the pieces together. She, the sole survivor. Each dead, mainly bled from the throat with what looked like bite marks. Blood, all over herself without any visible gouge upon her person.

She discovered a closet, after some time, mercifully without a body in it, and with nothing else she could do without staring at her victims, thought.

It was all dream-like, everything from beforehand. Her last solid memory, which she grasped onto like a saving grace, was dinner — turkey — and then going through the motions of her bedtime routine the eve of her birthday.

She was sick, vague hushes of voices in those first couple weeks when they were still trying to feed her affirmed. It came on suddenly, having felt perfectly healthy the night before. And it made her devour the staff of whatever family recovery house she had been sent to.

She had to stop herself from breathing each time she forced her mind upon that conclusion.

Well. Remaining symptoms included: burning in sunlight, blood tears, lack of necessity of breathing, and upon further inspection, an absent heartbeat.

She was dead.

The easy assumption was that she was in hell. Purgatory, possibly. She had never been particularly religious, but there are only so many rational conclusions when you seem to be, by all intents and purposes, dead, yet still retain your mind, and your body that burns in the light of the sun. Her sickness had killed her and she was sent to hell. For not being an honourable enough daughter or possibly for no reason at all. The only things in any way disputing this theory was the absence of the devil or any meaningfully devilish figure (or really anyone at all), the perceived reality of the environment as surprisingly normal, and the incongruity of the murdered staff.

She clearly killed them, that was of no question. She felt the new elongated canines in her mouth. But why would she mindlessly eat all these people? She had thought of hell as a punitive realm, not as one which made them indulge in immorality. There was also the question of why there would be a fully staffed manor house in hell. There was the chance of the bodies being nothing but set dressing, meant to distress her. Tasting iron even still, Ingrid couldn’t bring herself to see any truth in that. Of course, she didn’t know much about hell, nor any afterlife. Therefore her counter-arguments had as little substance behind it as the idea of hell itself (discounting her symptoms, now).

There wasn’t much use dwelling on her reality as it was, not without learning more, which would require exiting the closet, something she staunchly refused to now at the given moment.

So what should she do? When eventually she had enough thinking, and would have to leave her cramped sanctuary.

She remembered starving, in that fevered time, and throwing up absolutely everything that they tried to ply down her throat. Except blood. Figuring out her diet with certainty and making a plan for how to achieve that diet with regularity was the utmost priority. She was not keen on repeating those months. She was also not keen on eating any more human beings, so she would have to retain absolutely no doubts that she was replenished by blood alone before she acted on satisfying herself.

Other basic needs, then. But she was dead. Did she even need water or shelter if she was dead? She got hungry, however, so quite possibly. Although, if she drank blood, water didn’t seem to be urgent. Likely wouldn’t even be a problem, there was bound to be a well around there somewhere. And as for shelter, the manor was in perfect condition, and she was its only resident.

…

Hell.

She tried to scrounge at any other rational musings she could make about her situation, but came up with nothing. The rest of her stay in the closet was spent indulging emotional thoughts, they were all that remained.

When the cracks of light in the closet doors disappeared (though Ingrid’s vision did not worsen in the dark), she emerged. She immediately strode out to the gardenshed, found a shovel, assessed a suitable place on the grounds, and started digging. When the sun rose again, she went back and huddled in her closet. The next night she continued. And rinse and repeat until she felt the grave was reasonably big enough. She thought it made more sense to make a mass grave, rather than individual ones. One by one she carried the rigid bodies and placed them into the dirt. She tried to be gentle, but she did not spend any more time than necessary. She filled the grave with dirt once more, finishing just as dawn was beginning to make itself known. 

She did not go to think in her closet this day, instead shutting every curtain, finding any supply of water within the house and mopping up the gore. It wasn’t very effective, the water insufficient and dirty. In the night she went out roaming, eventually happening upon that well and bringing back as many pails as she could. By the next night the house was decently cleaned, and only then did she bathe herself, picking out a dress from the main suite, from a collection of her own clothes lovingly sent over with her.

The next day, she slept. It was the first she had gotten since she’d awoken. She spent it in that same closet.

She started sleeping every day after that. Huddled in the closet.

She added it to the list of symptoms that her back ached with loyal regularity.

The food in the kitchen proved entirely inedible, even the healthy and ripe. She luckily had the forethought to keep a pail of water on hand. Not a single proper meal since her feast. Despite which, she was not yet hungry.

A controlled objectivity carefully noted that down. Would she usually be allowed such a long time between absolutely necessary meals, or was this retained satisfaction due to the size of the meal?

Interestingly, even the meat was off-limits for her digestion. Except for if she left it raw. It wasn’t greatly rejuvenating, but she didn’t toss it back up again.

Eventually, she scrounged up a feeble bow and a quiver of arrows from the shed.

The world shifted as each night she went out and tried her hand at tracking (improving, especially thanks to her discerning sense of smell, but useless without the rest), archery (irritating, and usually only tested on unmoving trees), and trapping (very successful!). Leaves browned and gilded themselves, drifting gradually to the forest floor, Ingrid capitalising promptly by sweeping them over her trapping pits. Days grew darker and crisper with cold. Snow fell, blanketing the land for a few days, a brightness to it uncharacteristic of the image of winter. And then it melted.

Ingrid did not linger on the poignant absence of any devil or divine justice. Everything but she herself was a loving mirror of living. But she had no insight into the reality of what was clearly now her condition alone, so she moved on.

But she adapted to her diet with vigour. Most of her meals were from her snares, rabbits and squirrels, a couple foxes, once a badger. Small meals, but they sufficed. She caught a couple deer in the pits before winter set in. When it did, she held a hunger strike for a scant few weeks, nothing in the grand scheme of things. Her greatest pride, however, was the single rabbit she had shot. She closed her mouth around the puncture the arrow made with reverence.

She made it a habit to drink each beast of its blood, after it was dead of course. She could not catch a live one, nor was she keen on killing something as she gorged herself. Not yet. But because of that, the blood was never very much, especially for the smaller animals. Sometimes she picked the bones, skinned her quarry, ate the meat, but it yielded little. Not enough for the effort. Mostly she left the bodies out in the forest for the scavengers and decomposers.

But as her bowmanship improved, aim ever truer, the question of arrows grew in presence. Her supply was limited, and all her (crude) arrowheads she’d crafted in anticipation of this problem were pointless without the goose feathers. 

She ventured away from the manor in the midst of spring. It did not take long to happen upon a farm with geese. The efficient way of doing this, of course, was to take a couple, husband them back at the manor.

But iron was strong on the wind. She could smell so much blood, every direction. The beast that settled in her stomach rose to attention, her fangs heavy in her jaw. Faintly, she thought she could recognise the presence of humans nearby. A farmhouse just out of sight.

Ingrid, quickly, her head light and dazed and senses all too sharp, tore through the gander. When she was full, there were hardly any geese left at all, and they had fled out from the shelter door. She attempted to recover what feathers she could from their mangled corpses, and hauled herself out of there. By the time she had gotten back to the manor with a bag of bloodied and bent feathers, having gone at full sprint, she was not in the remotest tired.

Several nights later, she returned to the farm, climbing over the reinforced fence, stepping over flimsy fox-traps, and watching from afar as the new guardian dog cowered, eyes flashing. This time, she was not so overwhelmed and closed the gate of the shelter behind her. The paltry number of geese pressed themselves against the opposite wall. She took two, each fighting valiantly. The others were left there, silent.

She had kept them in a bathroom in the house, and plucked the flight feathers necessary, until she was ready to move them into their hastily constructed shelter — a sitting room with a door outside, a poor attempt at ‘geese-friendly’ housing. She had scattered some shredded grass, and berries and nuts she’d gone and found in the forest in the room, haphazardly. They took to it cautiously. As dawn drew close, she opened their door, and they waddled out in a desperate attempt of escape.

The following night, she tracked them, their blood on the wind, and hauled them back home to be shut inside the goose room. They did not agree with her hushed reassurances that there were more dangerous things than she in the dark, but more likely did not hear her. She let them out in the morning again, and she found them the following night. After a long cycle of this, the geese drew calmer, did not wander so far, were passive as they were brought back, even to the extent that they would follow her. A while more, and they were almost friendly to her.

Now, Ingrid was not very familiar with animals at this time. Traversing and mastering nature was an ongoing pursuit. But everything she had been told and had learnt about geese was that they were nasty creatures. She noted this change with a certain suspicion.

By this time she had moved to sleeping in a bedroom, finding the effects on her body upon sleeping hunched in a closet adverse. Its window faced south. Though, of course, this did not matter much as every window within the manor was stuffed with curtain after thick curtain. Daylight had not made home in the building for a long time.

With many failed attempts under her belt, Ingrid managed to learn the art of fletching, and took to her archery with a renewed vigour. Once, she shot an animal as small as a chipmunk. Another time she felled a deer. She had a good meal that night.

And then, effectively, she was surviving.

It was an odd affair, for someone without a heartbeat, but she was. She could eat everyday, discounting the winter, if she wanted to. Yet she did not need to. Water was quickly revealed to be useless to her. There was only one thing. She could not recall the last time she had had a conversation with a living being.

This thought gave her pause. An odd nervosity twisted her guts. And she went on living.

Dawn — usher the geese out, then to the southside bedroom; dusk — goose-tracking; twilight — hunting; midnight — checking traps; the witching — wandering the woods, wandering, wandering. Oddly enough, as she walked, explored the forest, she found more creatures coming out to meet her each night. She gave the occurrence the same suspicious treatment as the geese. But she did not take advantage of this, she was perfectly well-fed. 

Stranger more, she rather enjoyed their presence. Even the geese, attempting to plant themselves in her arms from time to time.

She had never been particularly good with people. Her parents would host dinners often, and she would only give the cursory greetings before marching off. Her tutors scorned her unsociable behaviour, her parents never halted their complaints of it. She never made any friends, and any possible suitor, or his parents, would think her odd or worse, become offended for some reason she could never decipher. Her sister was kind to her in a way that did not exist elsewhere, but they were never close.

She had not seen a living human being in so long. Had not coherently spoken to one longer. She had smelt the farmers. She thought once, looking northwestwards, towards the farm, but fingers twitching, eyes darting erratically, heart still, thought of it no more.

But she did explore, tested the limits of her forest. Several more months, seasons passed, and she knew much of it like the back of her hand, each fallen tree, each jagged cliff. And it was no small domain. 

To her south ran a wide snaking river. She followed it for a while, until the trees grew sparser and, struck with an odd hare-like fear, sprung back into the forest’s hold. She planned to build a bridge across it one day. She was becoming that, she was slowly realising. A builder among the forest. A leader and farmer of wild animals.

East was a proud mountain range that stuck up in the gaps in the canopy, better seen in the winter. It did not look so far away, making a bold impression upon the starried sky, yet even when seasons were turning into a scant yet still resounding few years her mental cartographic project had not reached its base.

Southwest were a few meadows, some dotted with wildflowers. Ingrid watched the rabbits leap and the deer frolic in the moonlight from the trees’ shadow. One bold fawn one early autumnal morning pranced up to her, then raced off into the meadow again, looking back at her. She turned away and went back home.

But north and northwesterly Ingrid dared not venture if she did not have to. That was where the rest of the human beings were.

When she began hunting, she encountered a trail that led from the manor northwards. Fresh out of a mindless massacre, Ingrid could think of nothing worse than encountering another man, for them to learn of what she’d done, or for her to slaughter them as well. So she attempted to block its path. She fell three trees, giving up when that became rather a lot of work, and attempted to draw the undergrowth out onto the trail. Later, when the forest started liking her for some incomprehensible reason, it assisted with this endeavour, and the trail was barely visible after a dozen seasons or so.

Though once, early in the night, before she had taken the geese, when she was trying her hand at tracking, not so far from the path, she smelt it. Human blood. And then, a gentle thumping rhythm of footsteps that she could attribute to no other creature than man. The footsteps moved quietly, slowly, stalking. Ingrid, struck frozen, could feel the heartbeat. Steady. Her fangs poked into the sides of her cheeks. She settled into a low crouch, hands bare, fingers flexing. And then the undergrowth rippled, and she fled. 

Ingrid didn’t like the north. The furthest she got, she caught a glimpse of a snare not her own, and legged it back home. 

She was better-fed now. Satisfied. There was more chance of her having little to fear when encountering a human. But nothing could prove that. She insisted to herself that she would not risk it. Yet she would not admit that her reticence was more and more related to an anxiety in talking to people than a fear of taking her meal again. She had shut that up rather finely, in her early circumstances.

So she took to the east more than any other, and the times she traversed westwards, she had claimed to herself were accidents, simply enchanted by the distant smell of pig.

Once she got close enough to see the shepherd dog’s eyes flash, its fear acrid. The animals were still afraid of her there. She was only welcome in the forest.

And yet.

She hadn’t meant to stray too close that night, truly. Despite the apparent love the forest now had for her, each animal still retained its survival instinct. It took one false arrow, and the stag was off. She didn’t really need this meal. But it was winter. And there were rarely any meals as big as this. And so something in Ingrid’s stomach pulled, and she started salivating, and she was after it.

Singleminded, she pursed the Hunt. Her expertise in the woods guided her step. Over root and thistle. Running low to the ground. Bow readied, arrow nocked, though something compelled her to throw it aside. Ahead of her, the deer twisted and leaped. Yet it was taxing, and Ingrid did not tire.

So it ran, and she followed, and it leaped, and she flung her bow away, and it faltered, and she flexed her fingers, eyes narrowing, and it slowed, and—

“Marry! Y’olright there, miss?”

Like the deer before the arrow, she froze.

And came back into awareness.

The man squinted through the darkness at her.

“Whaddya doin’ out in this cold, miss? Aw, you must be freezin’!”

She hadn’t noticed.

“Miss? Are you orright?”

She didn’t blink.

“I- It isn’t much, but we got a fire goin’ inside.”

The man shifted closer. His eyes widened. 

“Oh, miss, oh dear, come on now. Frightful. Come now, let’s get you inside, eh?”

He placed a hand on her arm. His heartbeat was pumping warm. Her fangs had not abated.

Silently, she followed.

The man uttered anxious reassurances, bringing her up to the farmhouse. The smell of his blood stuck heavy in her throat.

It was warm inside. Inviting. The woman gasped at their entrance, and ushered her over to the open fire.

“Dear girl! What were you doin’ out in that dreadful cold? You’re a wreck, dear!”

It was hot. A couple weeks before, a thunderstorm obscured the sky. She had enjoyed a longer night than usual, until the clouds parted briefly. Her sister used to point the phenomena out to her. Called it the rip in heaven’s tapestry. Ingrid suffered its wrath. This fire was not like that.

“Oh, are you ill, oh dear, are you hungry?”

She turned her head. The farmers were staring at her. The man was wringing his hands. The woman laid a blanket over her shoulders. Worried.

She found her voice. “I’m well.”

“Oh, right you are,” the woman scoffed. “You’re filthy, dressed in rags in this weather, and look as pale as anything! Look half-dead, dear.”

Ingrid did not know this, and an odd sensation she had not felt in a long time rushed through her. She faintly named it as shame. An element of her affliction was that mirrors did not behold her. She had not seen herself since she was alive. She hardly knew what she looked like. She should have expected that she would appear sickly, as if with the white plague, dead.

But she had not changed since cleaning up the massacre. She had mopped her face, from her meals, from time to time, but she hadn’t cleaned herself. It seemed unnecessary, for one living alone in the wild, where they’d eventually get dirty again. To care for the hygiene of a corpse. She had enjoyed the freedom.

It was a sickly feeling, to be self-conscious.

“Oh, shush dear, we have a pail full, I’ll give you a wash,” the woman continued, eyeing her. Ingrid looked down at her dress. And looked away, into the fire. “Tom, get the poor girl some food, would you?”

The woman pulled her aside, away from the fire, into another room. She left her for but a moment, returning with a pail and a scrub brush. It was one of splintery wood and rough bristles. Ingrid, mind moving rather slow and yet rabbit-quick at the same time, realised they were peasants.

“Ah, no-“ she tried, voice hoarse with disuse.

“Nonsense,” the woman tutted. “Oh, what are you waiting for, dear? Are you shy? Bah, I’ll turn around.”

Ingrid shuffled for a scant few moments. The woman, back turned, did not move. So, quietly, swiftly, she unlaced her boots, shucked off her dress, embarrassingly soiled and a little stiff with blood down its front. Quietly, hesitantly, she moved for the pail and brush. It took several minutes, in which Ingrid stared at the woman’s back throughout. Her eyes flit to her neck once, and she immediately wrenched them down and pulled her body taut, then continued with her ministrations. 

“Are you almost finished?”

“Yes.”

“Good, there’s a dress and some undergarments just by the wall there.” She had not noticed the woman put them there. “They’re mine, but should fit you. You’re tiny enough — what’ve you been fed? — I can always tailor them if needed.” Ingrid, holding the dress, clearly better suited for the winter than hers had been, noticed with a terrifyingly guilty pang that it was made of a rough sort of fabric and cut simply.

“Are you sure?” She croaked.

“Of course,” she could hear her frown. “I’m not about to let you rot in your filth, nor freeze to death. Where do you live, did something happen? Whoever let you out like that is shameful. How long have you been there, looks like you could have been living in the wild for five days! Or more! Oh dear, are you alright? Do you need help with the dress?”

Ingrid, throat constricted, this time not with the iron wafting in the air, nodded. Then she realised her error, and forced out a paltry, “Yes.”

The woman was all business, helping her into the dress dutifully and without fuss. When she was finished, she put her hands on her shoulders, and stepped back. “Now, I ought to ask. Do you have somewhere to stay? And be tended to? I can’t, in good conscience, let you leave to die.”

“I have a home,” she said, staring at her feet.

“Alright,” doubt laced the word, but the woman retracted her hands. “You can stay for dinner, though. It’s the least we can do. But ah, first, where are my manners! It’s Holly. And you?”

She was silent for but a moment. And then, hoarsely, “Cordell.”

Ingrid was ushered into a chair at a tiny table, thankfully near the fire. The man returned, smiling, to place a plate before her. Pork. Cooked pork. The couple stared at her, expectantly. She dropped her gaze. One second, two, three, four.

“Aren’t you goin’ to eat? You’ve got to get some food in you, dear.”

She picked up the knife. The fork. Handled them delicately, as she was taught. Carved a sliver. Brought it up to her lips. Chewed slowly. Wasted her still-extended canines on a meal she prayed this once that her body would accept. And then she heaved, and ejected it back onto the plate again.

“Dear!”

The man stood with a start, and Holly was at her side. “Oh, dear, are you alright? Ill, poor love. Cold as ice!”

“Come now, you can’t leave like this.”

“Quite right, you must stay the night, dear. We’ll escort you back home in the morning, can’t we, Tom?”

“Right!”

“I’m fine, but the utmost thanks,” she started, wiping her mouth on the back of her palm.

“Absolutely not! Tom, a bed?”

Holly stood her up, and Ingrid found her face awful close to her neck. For a moment, her appetite returned. That furious instinct she chased the deer with returned. She flinched away, almost toppling over, but Holly caught her.

“Oh dear, oh dear, have a rest please, dear, we’ll get you right.”

She was led to a haphazard bed, several blankets and a pillow strewn across a table, and made to lie down.

“Please, dear, don’t stress yourself, we’ll get you home well. Just get some rest.” Holly drew back, face strained. Ingrid could not tear her eyes from her neck this time. Holly watched her, and would not leave. Ingrid, deprived of all will except this last desperate scrap, forced her eyes to flutter shut.

She could hear Holly’s heartbeat. So, so close. Beating just a bit quick with anxiety. The man’s heart too, not too far back, racing the same. With a moment, Holly moved away, her intense focus leaving. They both left to another room. Their hearts calmed. They deliberated, in hushed whispers, on the poor young girl, clearly on death’s door. Could she die during the night? She didn’t even tell them of any family.  Oh, what were they to do?

Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Fangs heavy, no more satiated. Salivating. Ba-thump. Ba-thump. Body tense. Wound taut like a bowstring. Eyes open. Ba-thump. Ba-thump.

Quietly, stiffly, she sat. She stood. The heartbeats rung loud and clear. They were slowing down. Perhaps falling asleep. It would be so easy. She had been living off morsels alone since that great feast. This was her chance for a proper meal. She was so hungry.

And then, suddenly, as though an arrow had just fallen at her feet, she startled. And leapt, rushing towards the door. The guardian dog had been pacing outside, anxiously, in a violent manner, though it cowered at her exit. She cast out past it. And she ran.

She would realise, during this dead sprint, that she had left her boots in the farmhouse. That she had thrown her single bow to the ground. And yet she kept moving, and did not dare falter.

The next night, she would go back to the bow, led mercifully by a fox. Then she would smell it again. See the flicker of firelight through the trees. And freeze, hand hovering over the wood. A man would emerge — a different one, that she had not met. He stank of concern. He said something. And then he would raise a hand, and this time, Ingrid could not do it.

For some indecipherable reason, she waited there afterwards, blood dripping down her chin, onto Holly’s dress. Shivering. The man’s heart beat weaker. But he still breathed. She had not massacred this time. A clean bite. She watched as he opened murky eyes, visibly confused, dreamlike. And then she fled.

She did not leave the manor for the rest of the winter.

Spring shrouded the mountains in a host of colours. The constellations twirled around the tallest’s peak. Ingrid, stepping out her front door, wearing one of her own sturdier dresses and a pair of servant’s boots that fit her well enough, took it as a sign.

The forest welcomed her back in full force, deer and foxes and songbirds, badgers and mice and hares all emerging to prance alongside her. They only shied away when she reached out and snagged a rabbit, snapping its neck between her teeth, but returned but a moment later.

She walked well into the night, not pausing when she caught sight of the moon directly above her. Dawn spilled across the horizon. She collected branches and dug into her thick leather bag. Tied the branches together with twine, dug them firmly into the ground, and fitted the canvas over it. She tucked herself into it for the day ahead.

When she emerged, it was to the exploration of a bear. It startled at her sudden presence, unable to hear or smell blood pumping through her veins. Simply curious, as forest animals often were. Regardless, she flashed her fangs at it, and it bowed away.

She reached what she had named the mountains’ base shortly into the night. And promptly realised she did not know what she expected to find her. She paced, a few hours more, along the border between mountain and forest. Waiting. Watching. 

She went to turn back at midnight. By the time the howling begun, she had stayed just close enough that she could see the flash of yellow eyes on craggy peaks.

The seasons turned to years, and Ingrid kept to her routine strictly. Sleeping through the day, hunting for the first hour of evening every few nights, wandering her territory for the rest. Other than her single project she occasionally chipped into, the bridge, it was a tedious unliving, but it suited her fine. Until her geese grew old, and died.

She could have let it lie. She had accumulated plenty feathers. She likely would not have needed to stock up for another several years. And yet she tucked herself off towards the farm.

Cresting upon its borders, she was immediately drenched by the overwhelming stench of death. Wafting from the farmhouse. She crept towards the geese-shelter. They fought, like their predecessors, as farm animals did. She crept out, geese screeching and rioting under her arms. And paused.

There was no other smell. No wheat in the fields, no dirty animal, no iron tang of blood. But there was still two heartbeats trudging along from inside the farmhouse. One crawled along to its next pump. Tiring.

Ingrid thought for perhaps a moment longer, and then she bowed her head, and dropped the geese. She caught the flashing gaze of the guard dog as she approached. A very old creature, now. It watched her, and slumped its head back onto its paws beside the door. There was another dog now, she only knew through the thundering of its heartbeat, its fear indistinguishable. The death scent choked.

She raised her hand and knocked.

Shuffling, from the stronger heartbeat. No aberration, it had already been awake. A woman blinked out at her.

Ingrid cleared her throat with great subtlety, forbid any stray twitch of the fingers, and met her resolutely. “Hello, Holly.”

“I- sorry? Do I know you?”

She shook her head. A brief turn of the head, out towards the farm. “No, I just- I heard, from town,” the words come broken to her tongue, foreign in her mouth. “Is he well?”

Holly did not wilt. She was only tired, and certainly not naive, not distracted. She averted her eyes, but spoke plainly. “No. He’s not going to be.”

Ingrid nodded. Her lessons all those years ago told her consolation was in order, yet the apology did not come. Holly nodded back, eyelids drooping. The night breathed. 

“How long?”

“I don’t know,” there was veiled frustration in that. Mixed in with the thick grief. “Too long.”

Ingrid nodded again, out of a lack of any proper response conjured to her mind. Something else came unbidden. She had not meant to speak it.

“Do you want to say goodbye?” She cut herself off, once she registered the words, but Holly snapped up, alert.

“What do you mean?” She said, eyes narrowed, though rather more tired than suspicious. 

Ingrid did not flounder, perfectly still as her thoughts rushed. She let it out in the end, albeit quietly. “Mercy.”

Holly stared back. Her face shifted. Her eyes fluttered closed. She heaved a still breath. When she came to, the grief was heavy in her features.

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry,” and she went to leave. A warm hand took her wrist.

“Stay.”

The woman did not speak. She had her arms on the table, distant. Ingrid sat where she had sat all those years ago and tried to listen to the dogs’ heartbeats. 

The night shifted through the windows. It grew darker, and the moon shone midnight. Paler, for that first-morning haze, then darker again in preparation for dawn. She would have to leave soon were she to make to the manor in time. But Holly did not move, so neither did she.

The guard dog was still awake, still sitting loyal by the door outside. Its younger fellow had gone racing around the farm, wearing off its nervous energy, and had fallen into a deep slumber out, far away, by the fence. The heart from within the house pulled itself along.

“Will he know?”

It was said with perfect quiet, barely a disturbance in the air. Ingrid was not startled by it. She simply shook her head.

Holly nodded, across the table. And nodded again, and stared into her hands. And then she moved.

Ingrid stayed in her seat, looking out at the paling sky. 

The door to the bedroom creaked open, and Ingrid did not mention her reddened eyes, nor the murmurs her sharp ears had grasped. She stood, and followed.

Holly closed the door behind them, and Ingrid paused. “Are you sure you want to see?” She asked.

“Yes,” she choked, arms shaking. Ingrid bowed away, and opened her mouth. She turned towards her, and Holly breathed, and went over to hold the dying man’s hand.

It wasn’t quick, but it was quicker than it would have been. It should not have hurt, at least. Ingrid tried in vain not to notice what it did to her. Death gradually faded away. All that was left was Holly’s heartbeat.

When it was done, she wiped her mouth, took one last look at Holly, and left.

It was daytime when she went, but still she went. It hurt, it hurt like nothing else, but still she stumbled forwards. The forest allowed little reprieve. It hurt. And Ingrid knew it was coming. She choked on fire. She went on.

She did not know exactly when she collapsed. She hardly knew anything else but the burning, then. But then there was something, and there was shadow, and suddenly without the burning keeping her going, she had fallen into fitful sleep.

She awoke to the moon, to deer and squirrels and foxes and badgers and owls all gathered around her, and the old guard dog atop her. It dutifully stepped off as she came to.

It followed her home, watching from a distance as she ran her fingers through her hair and stumbled over roots in a way she had not done for years. She ignored it, and the rest of the creatures poking out of the shadows, shutting the door sharp behind her. 

She went through the motions of breathing as she coursed through the halls of her manor, changing into her toughest dress, shucking on the best fitting workers’ boots, slinging a heavy winter coat over her shoulders. She took up her leather bag, tent secure inside, tossed in string and a needle and knife and a small cloth. She pulled her bow and quiver across her back, and heavy hide gloves onto her hands.

When she left, she found the dog waiting at the door. She spared it barely a glance, even as it padded after her still, and made a southwesterly course.

The meadows were dim, dipped in nightly blue. The frolicking deer and leaping rabbits paused and stared in her silent procession. A stag bowed his great head. The wind at her back, Ingrid trod across the open field, the sky twinkling at her. The forest across the way swallowed she and the guardian dog whole.

This day was it, she deems now, the day she became what she is proper. The next decade or so — Ingrid didn’t count — she spent wandering. Most days she huddled in her tent, half of them she stared at the fibres of her cloak, all too aware of the sunlight that was likely beating down upon her meagre shelter. Some she found some shed, or abandoned barn. Never a bed.

She ate less than she did at the manor. Unfamiliarity came with a nomadic lifestyle, which meant most creatures harboured that primal fear the farm animals did, and as a result avoided her thoroughly. She was also far more sparing with her arrows, with only a limited amount in her quiver and unable to craft anymore. Most of her meals she caught as the bear did: with claws and teeth alone. She was swift, and cunning, and strong, and she never tired. When she had prey in sight, she almost always caught it.

Her best meals, though few and far between, were humans. With less to eat, she was hungrier now. Not significantly. Not sickeningly. But it tickled at her stomach. Most humans she fed from woke up again. Most, as there was one particularly bleak winter in which her hunger strike lasted from the end of the autumn to mid-spring, with a frail hunter wandering into range. She was just a little too hungry. She couldn’t help herself. Feeding on humans became a worthy sacrifice. It was certainly kinder to them than the alternative.

The old dog did not leave, and Ingrid, miraculously, did not feed upon it. It paid her company, sleeping alongside her in the tent. It attempted to hunt as she did, but was elderly and brittle. She fed it the meat she drained, and in particularly barren weeks, attempted to forage edible-seeming plants. Yet, it still needed to eat far more than her, so it grew frailer still. It became an unlikely priority of hers to find it whatever food she could. Over herself, even. She found herself talking to it. She soon knew it as Gwynethby.

But she was so very old, and as the years passed, slowed by her side. Ingrid watched her often, carding her fingers through her fur, hearing her heart beat weak. When they reached the cliff over the sea, she stopped and with gentle hand bid Gwynethby to rest.

She watched, silent as ever, as she puttered about, picking out stones and suitable branches. She chipped away at the stones as she once did arrowheads, instead breaking them into the shapes of axehead and crude shovel. With the string she had left, and some small amount of tree sap she had tools. She dug. She gathered branches. And moss. She went down to the beach down the way, and gathered what thatching materials she might find. Before autumn’s end, she had a shelter. It wasn’t much, but it was hers, and it was Gwynethby’s.

Gwynethby died softly with the death of spring. 

She dug her grave in a clearing not too far removed from the hut. She crafted a grave marker. The cliff-animals, now treating her with a wary reverence, watched. She did not spare them a parting look as she took up her bag, but did trust that they’d bring no harm to Gwynethby’s last resting place.

She resumed her wanderings. Winters came and went. She spent them alone. Save for one, in which she foolishly strayed too close to a feudal manor, and a hunting party happened upon her. They demanded she come stay, ‘with the state of her’. One peasant family generously let her sleep in their already cramped home. It was tantalising, and dangerous. But didn’t turn out altogether too bad. She could not risk feeding on a human in such a community, but could sneak out every once in a while to take a sheep in the field. The herding dog yipped and screamed each time, but it was little threat. The peasants noticed, of course, that their sheep were going missing, but attributed it to wolves, and simply put another guard on the nightwatch. She slipped past them with little trouble, even with the herding dog’s screaming.

“What’s its name?” She had rasped, hearing the dog yip and yip, even during the day.

“Cor,” answered the peasant boy, trying to stitch a coat for himself. “Right bugger. He scares the sheep, but is scared of everything else. When he was a pup, wolves got the herd. Not surprised he’s acting up again.”

Ingrid hummed, and returned to her own project.

Very luckily, she appeared dreadfully sick to the town with her pallor and grime, and thus settled into the perfect excuse for why she would not go out during the day, or why she could not stomach food. The priest came to her, just as she’d been brought in, and deemed her ‘a most unfortunate case’, which guaranteed a pathetic picture of herself rather than a suspicious one.

The peasants were very kind nonetheless. They made her promise that she would not leave — not until winter was over, at least — in interest of her health. They kept the windows blocked off at all times. The family dined with her, the children laughing with her, the parents gossiping. The others came around frequently, either just to talk, or to offer some gift, or most mercifully to petition her to help with something she could do within the comfort of the house, likely sensing her desperation to help, or do anything at all. 

She contributed where she could — cooked and butchered and cleaned and sewed and fletched — and the family always offered their kindest thanks. Those that worked inside the house worked alongside her and they chatted as they did so.

Every so often, she would go the field in the night. The dog still screamed, but he did not cower as he used to. He grew bolder and came closer at each visit.

“Do you want to see him?” The peasant boy asked.

She shook her head, a smile upon her lips.

Ingrid felt alive.

And yet, when winter fell away, she packed her things.

That became rather more difficult than it used to be, as the peasants demanded she take all of their gifts and clothes they’d tailored for her.

“The cloak, dear! I can’t have you freezing wearing that ratty old thing.”

“This pot’s one of my best, but everyone already has one. Except you, of course, so its only fair.”

“Me and Marion sewed these dresses up for you, you’ll go home to be best dressed in town, I can assure you that!”

“This was my mother’s comb — I don’t much need it, really. I’ll be glad for you to get some use of it.”

“I got into the manor last year, you know, and I snagged this book. Surprised I never got rumbled for it. You and the priest are the only reading folks I know, and I like you a lot better than him, so you better take it.”

“Speaking of! We’ve kept you a secret,” the shepherd boasted. “We didn’t know what the lord would think — prisses, you know — so we didn’t say a peep. You’ve been our guest all the way, not his!”

“I cannot thank you enough for your hospitality,” she smiled over the peasants’ tittering, disguising a pang of guilt swelling from her position and utter ignorance of the lower castes when her heart still beat.

These people, despite their far more meagre circumstances, had proved far kinder than her previous company, and rather more delightful and interesting companions. Despite it all, despite even her inclination towards solitude, she would miss them.

“Not at all, dear!”

“You better come visit, you hear?”

“Or at least tell your folks all about us.”

“I will,” she said.

Waving them goodbye was a long process. She wanted to give them a proper one, a kind farewell, but it grew swiftly more arduous with the reason she was so determined on leaving.

Even still, she did not leave in entirety. She had convinced them to send her off before the crack of dawn, but this meant she had to swiftly put up her tent a stone’s throw into the trees. At the moon’s rise, she looked back over the village by the manor, smelling each person’s blood on the wind, now very glad she was going, and then went to the field.

The dog yelled and barked as usual. She had not gone over the fence, so it was he that came running towards her, screaming all the while.

She smiled. “Goodbye.” And reached a hand down to pet his head.

And then, finally, she left. The barking followed.

It was several more seasons until she wandered to familiar climes. The forest housed a new generation now, and yet it welcomed her all the same.

Ingrid pressed against the wood of the manor door, Cor darting about her heels, with a certain fondness for her first proper home.

She breathed in as she turned the knob, breathing out into the manor, a smile coming easy to her face as her eyes slipped and close.

Tink. 

A step. Of shoe against floor. Across the room. Her eyes shot open. And beheld a young woman, book in hand, just as wide-eyed as she staring back at her from the doorway to the hall.

“Who are you?” Ingrid bit, harsher than she meant to.

“The resident?”

“Since when?”

The woman opened her mouth, peering at Ingrid. In a single moment, her face shifted, wariness colouring something different. Eyebrows raised, lips stretched. Ingrid got the distinct feeling that she was being hunted. The woman purred. “You’re the previous owner.” Her face split into a wide grin.

And Ingrid almost sprung. Cornered not physically yet significantly all the same. This woman was dangerous to her, in ways she did not quite understand but knew by her instincts to be true, this was the most warranted meal she could ask for. And then she caught sight of her pearly teeth. And then she caught the air. And then she strained her ears. 

“You’re not alive,” it stuck in her throat, the woman caught it nonetheless.

“No. I dare say we may have some shared interests. Why don’t we sit down and talk?”

And Ingrid, despite herself, went. The woman beckoned her to the sitting room. A deep unsettlement struck her. What halls that were once familiar, comforting even just a minute ago, were no longer. There were no bodies in each room, but a similar sort of primal terror held court. Cor had raced back out onto the grounds. She could still hear him screaming.

The woman sat primly upon the opposing chair. One leg tossed over the other in a stunning display of casual elegance. Ingrid’s back was to the door. She stood for a very long minute, only crumpling with the woman’s open-mouthed smile and gesturing nod. She put her mind to command her body not to shiver as the woman assessed her up and down.

“You’re Ingrid Cordelia Weston.” A simple statement. Said with certainty. 

“And why would you think that?” She said, clipped. 

“Well,” she leant forward, lowering her voice into something velvety, taking the same tone the dowagers at the dinner parties did. Only her eyes glinted dangerously and were fixed directly on Ingrid’s. “Being a worldly woman, one hears a lot. The gossip of the nobility is perhaps the most prevalent and the simplest to hear of. The tale of Lady Ingrid, daughter of the Viscount Weston, fallen tragically sick and shipped off to some isolated manor dressed up as a hospice was one of the less interesting pieces. But several items stood out to me, principally the extreme nature of the illness and its symptoms yet the lady’s continued life, so, finding myself in the county of this manor, I looked into it. And what do I hear? That the manor is now mysteriously empty. Now, this was no such solid evidence, until a young woman, pallid and sickly, with the appearance of a wild-woman yet the bearing of an aristocrat, an odd familiarity with this place, and with no blood in her veins came upon its doorstep.”

Ingrid stared. She could have narrowed in on any element of that spiel. If she was of clearer mind she might’ve asked about those rumours about the manor. And yet. “You are the same thing as I.”

“Indeed I am,” the woman smiled almost-kindly.

“And you know what we are.”

“I do,” the smile fell off her face, eyes rolling as she slumped back to lean onto her hand. Ingrid raised an eyebrow at the change in demeanour. “I suppose that means you weren’t told either. I should have thought.”

“Told by who, exactly?”

“Our sire.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Sires, maybe, but I doubt it.”

“Pardon?” She got out.

“Vampyr.” The woman grinned that awful grin once more. “I did some digging — figuratively, of course,” she scoffed, peeking unsubtly at Ingrid’s fingernails, “into local folklore, since he hadn’t the decency to inform either of us what we were.” Her expression softened, and she gentled her tone, “We are vampyr, darling. I am glad to have met another.”

“The blood.” The woman raised her brow. “Must you-“, she paused. And eyed the woman warily. She was immaculate. Hair masterfully done. Skin dangerously pale yet unmarked. The hint of cosmetics on her cheek and lips, even. A choker delicately laid around her neck. Her chest perfectly still. Long silk gloves. Ingrid hardened her composure and sat back, injecting a quiet ire into her composure. 

The woman watched her back, then tilted her head. “Yes. The only sustenance a vampyr may ingest. Including myself. I am not about to report you to the village guards for homicide, Lady Weston.”

Ingrid did not melt. The woman, back on the flippant side of her constant swing of facade, massaged her temple.

“Alright. I understand,” she drawled. “But, I do think that you and I, with our common circumstances, may find a beneficial arrangement. It only makes sense that like alone may assist like. If any human being knew of what we must do to survive, they’d come for our heads at once. Unless? I don’t suppose anyone knows about your nature?” Her gaze cut directly to Ingrid still heart. Regardless, she did not falter, and shook her head. The woman’s easy disinterest returned. “And, well, you seem a rather more… down to earth woman than I, and yet I dare I say I may know plenty more and have plenty more ways of learning than you. I am of the opinion that nothing but good that may come from this.”

Ingrid turned her head, and watched her with narrowed eyes. Then got up, and busied herself with unpacking her bag onto the low table. Cor’s whining had lessened in intensity, but his heart still beat rabbit quick. “I found you in my house.”


“Your house? Well, it was rather abandoned when I came upon it, and I did not expect you to return — especially after seven odd years of living here. And women like us need to find whatever lodgings are open.”

Her heavy tent shucked out and shaken off. “I don’t even know your name.”

She grinned again. Wolfishly, all teeth. “My name is Lady Minerva Appertton, dear.”

The knife, slammed down onto the wood, “I hadn’t heard of you, or your family.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t.”

The clothes the villagers had sewn for her, wrinkled, over the back of her chair. “You don’t look old enough to have lived here for seven years.”

“Why thank you. But yes, it is rather hard for corpses to age. I think you would find that you appear younger than you feel. That is, if you could see yourself.”

The brazen pot, haphazardly thrown onto the table, stilled from its spin with a deft hand. “Am I correct that this sire was the cause of our deaths?”

Minerva’s mouth grew into a thin line. “Yes.”

The book, a delicately inked tale of some old sea hero, flopped into the crease of the chair’s cushion. “Who was it then?”

“That is what I hope you will help me discover. He has left us both to fend for ourselves in a world hostile for us. I intend to hunt him down.”

She nodded thoughtfully, slipping off her cloak and her quiver, emptying its remaining arrows onto the floor, and beating the dirt off the cloak with it. Minerva’s lip curled. “And then what?”

“Talk to him,” she drawled unconvincingly. Ingrid shot her a sideways glance, and she shrugged. 

She kicked her boots off, then turned her bag upside down, shaking it vigorously. Minerva looked on impassively as its remaining contents clattered out. “What else would you have me do, were I to agree?”

“Just a few meals here and there, nothing bad.”

“That rather depends on the meal.”

“Even still, your skillset appears to be better suited for such a thing, from your appearance.”

Ingrid tried very hard not to put her hands on her hips as she turned to face her directly. “I’m not going to kidnap people for you.”

“Alright,” she examined her nails through her gloves.

She levelled her stare at her for several moments longer, but sighed and moved on. “And what would you do for me?”

That hungry smile again. “Many things, darling. You seem to have this whole ‘mountain woman’ thing going on, so I think I could assist you the greatest by telling you what I’ve learned with my ear to the wall of court politics. It helps more than you know to keep track of these things.”

“You’re still in court?”

“Yes, though I suppose I might have to fake my own death one of these days when people start noticing I have been twenty-five for rather a long time.”

“Seems rather temporary, then.”

“No, dear,” Minerva adopted a rather condescending expression, and Ingrid bristled. “I can promise it won’t be. Also, if you wish, I can ingratiate you back into high society. Under a fake name.”

“No, thank you,” she grimaced.

“If you change your mind then.”

“Where will you live now?”

“I was rather hoping you’d let me stay here for a few months, but I doubt I will have any problem arranging for a manor of my own from my family, or the queen, or some wealthy courtier I have something on,” Ingrid looked askance, but Minerva continued on. “Or I could just pinch my own fortune from my family’s estate. Do some investing, run farms like a proper lady.”

“You’re not staying for months.” Minerva made a quiet surprised noise. “But you can stay for a couple weeks. As payment,” Minerva raised an eyebrow. “You may tell me all there is about what we are.”