The Sacrifice

Chapter one

The hours at that time of year got really dark, not just because they got closer and closer to the winter solstice, but because the sacrifice was arriving. The ritual took place every two years. The three western towns were to deliver a young woman to the beast. The villages took turns, following an order to make the sacrifice, so that each one lost a young woman every six years. Although the loss did not seem substantial, it did not make the pain any less. In a century of keeping the bargain with the forest beast, no young woman had ever returned.

That year the sacrifice was in the hands of Oriana's tribe, but her thoughts could not even come close to the implications of the ritual, she could even think that she was in the age range of the candidates. No. All Oriana could think have been that her parents were slowing dying from the plague in the last room of the house. Years before, it had taken her uncles and her only brother, who was barely five years old. She knew it was claiming the life of her parents now, and every hour that passed it was taking a gram of her lives, without Oriana being able to do anything about it.

At that time, all she could do was to wait. Days ago the village healers left her house, admitting that nothing could be done. No one else had approached the house since. Oriana had spent every hour awake, futilely trying to lower their fever, trying not to lose herself in the hours or the pain involved in hearing both of her parents breathe with difficulty. She couldn't move from their side, knowing that time was against them. How do you allow yourself to ever blink when every second could be the last one?

The first to die was his father. Oriana closed his eyes, giving the idea that it was only a dream, the he was only sleeping. But he wasn't. If you looked close, you would find all the marks of the sickness.

Oriana had to prepare the body herself, knowing that, apart from the healers; no one would dare to enter a house that the plague had claimed. It was lucky that one of her neighbors pitied her and helped her get her father out of the house and into the small family cemetery at the end of the property. Two days later, her mother followed her father's footsteps, once her lungs completely collapsed. That night Oriana cried at the graves of her parents, afraid of re-entering the empty house full of death.

She stood there with the hope that the sickness would come for her too.

The next few days were almost as torturous as enduring the agony of her parents. She had to perform the purification rite on her own and kept locked up for the next seven days. It was the time necessary to appease the souls and allow the plague to loosen its grip on that place. Oriana had never felt so alone, so lost in her abyss that had become her own home. It seems that the happiness was only a myth from old memories.

She did not even realize that, when she opened the doors of her house again, was going to face the hour of the collection.

The hour of the collection was the moment when the reapers, as they had been called, went from house to house, observing each of the candidates for sacrifice. They observed her potential, in order to choose the one that would generate the least damage. Needless to say, the girls chosen were generally poor or orphans.

As soon as Oriana opened the doors of her house and met the two tall figures, she paled. She knew immediately that her fate was marked. It was funny how days ago she wanted to die, but when she saw the reapers the idea was immediately discarded. No one wanted to die in the beat's hands.

So, she did her best to talk about her talents, and openly say that she was the rightful owner of that house and those lands, without knowing that she was thus sinking herself even more.

Oriana came from an old, very old family, from the first inhabitants of the West. And although they were not wealthy, they had rights that others did not, such as the land, such as that big house that was passed down from generation to generation. The reapers saw the opportunity to take one of the oldest properties in town; it was not difficult at all when only a seventeen-year-old girl stood in the way.