Girl of Iron and Magic

4.

4.
10 YEARS BEFORE THE WAR

Once, House Mistress had beat Lotte so badly the soft skin of her arm had torn, and blood trickled out. It was golden, with large flecks of luminous red that shone like rubies. When the droplets of Lotte's blood touched the carpet, they signed it, dissolving away the coarse fabric and revealing the rusty metal floor beneath. The air was filled with acrid smoke that smelt of burnt plastic, salt and a hint of iron.

After that, House Mistress took extra care never to break Lotte's skin in her beatings.

The other children weren't so wise. They did not like her silence, or how her eyes flashed crimson in the dark. They didn't like that she was a Lotte, with pointed ears and teeth and that she never cried and screamed.

When the boy named Amun pulled out the chair she was about to sit on and Lotte fell to the floor, they jeered like a swarm of bees. When, in the courtyard, someone pushed stinging nettles down the back of her dress, they laughed at her silent flailing.

When Lotte was seven, a woman came to visit the orphanage. Her dress was sleek satin and her brightly coloured hair was arranged into ringlets. She has straight white teeth and a nose the size of a thimble. She stared at Lotte for a very long time. "Why, aren't you the loveliest little girl I have ever seen," she said.

"Oh no, Mrs. Herbert, this one's a Lotte," said House Mistress.
Mrs. Herbert did not look taken aback. She stared at Lotte all the more intently. "A Lotte? But she's so pale. Are you sure?"

She winked at Lotte when she said this.

"Quite," replied House Mistress tartly. "A Lotte. A night one. Elf-spawn down to the gold blood."

Mrs. Herbert left with no child that day, but the knowledge of her interest in Lotte travelled among the children like wildfire.

That night, that same boy, Amun, who was older, tall and strong, had cornered her in the mess hall. His eyes, dark and far apart, brimmed with malice. "I hear you have gold blood," he said.

She shook her head and tried to edge away. If she could talk she would have told him that her blood could hurt him. His friend, Livev, barred her passage from the left, Simon loomed on her right and behind her was a wall.

She couldn't cry out to alert House Mistress. The dull pain came swiftly. Four puncture wounds in the back of her arm created by a fork.

Then Amun pulled the fork out, and her odd blood came jetting forth. It leapt on a chair, a tablecloth, the floor—and on Amun's hand. It ate away whatever it touched. Cloth, wood, carpet...skin.

He shrieked and shrieked as a single droplet of her blood devoured his flesh down to the bone.

Lotte was helpless. She couldn't do anything. She pressed her own hand to the wound. Her blood was quick to clot. House Mistress crashed forward, a raging hurricane. Amun was rushed to the hospital, but his fingers were gone.

Later, they blamed her for everything. Amun said that she had stabbed herself with a fork, that she had done it all. She was only seven when she learnt that even if she had a voice, no one would listen to it.

House Mistress called the constables to take her away. She had promised Lotte that the constables would lock her away forever, or, even better, execute her.

Then House Mistress, called away on some urgent matter, left Lotte to wait for them alone in her office.

Lotte didn't know what 'execute' meant, but even though House Mistress expected her to obediently wait for her fate, she had no intention to.