The girl with the fire in her veins

Rozdziale Dwoch

Lucja has always loved the woods. She liked the way that only a few rays of sunlight ever made the journey to the forest floor and she always imagined that faeries got their dust from them. She had a wild imagination and would always make up stories and sing songs about them, she lived in a fantasy world and the woods only gave her imagination a head start on what would soon become another story that she would tell her little brother in an attempt to soothe him when the curse caused him pain.

As they walked she would sing another song she made up and Mama would humn with her. Secretly she was glad that she wasn’t sick too, because you see, her brother had a special illness, one that only the jasnowidz could foresee. The locals called it “The Curse” because of what it does to those who bear it.

Almost all who bear it dies when the curse reaches its climax, the heart, and there is no known cure for it. Only a few is said to have lived after it has reached the heart, but no one can say for sure… their existence is lost between myths and rumors.

For a person to bare the curse one has to inherit the gene from both parents. It is thus possible to only carry the gene that causes the curse without showing any signs of it. No one knows if they are a carrier of the curse or not and there is no known way of finding out, it is also very unlikely for two carriers to have offspring since the difference between the percentage of carriers compared to non-carriers are so big, but recent history proved that it indeed is possible.

Unfortunately Lucja’s parents are both carries of it so, logically, all of their offspring should be bearers of it, but while Mama was expecting little Lucja something went wrong and she was born without the curse fully in her DNA.

During the pregnancy Lucja’s mother realized that both she and Lucja’s father must be carriers of the curse when feint red veins started to show on her abdomen where the baby was situated inside of her. The veins glowed brighter as the fetus grew, it was an indication that the curse was making its way into her baby, and she waited for the day when the curse would fully penetrate Lucja and make her mother go into labour two months too early, probably as a result of the initial shock on the baby, just like all the mother's who has expierenced this before her.

But it never happened…

She carried Lucja to full term and had no complications during the birthing process. The little girl’s veins were icy blue instead of fiery red, so it was safe to say that she didn’t bear the curse, but there was no way of telling if she carried it either.

Every day since Lucja’s birth her parents kept a close eye on her to see if the curse would come, but as time went on they eased their worries with the thought that maybe Lucja was lucky… an exception to a very cruel rule.

Her parents used to send her to her grandmother in the mornings. They would usually bake Lucja’s favourite flatbread named kołacz, plant red poppy flowers in Grandma’s flower patch or go for a walk in the woods to pick berries and feed the animals, who made the little field in which the house was situated in, their sanctuary. Lucja especially liked to feed Grandma’s fluffy white rabbits that used to live in the area in front of her old house, she loved the way that their little tongues tickled the palm of her hands as they tried to eat every last bit of the food that she gave them. Unfortunately Grandma passed away a year ago, only leaving the smallest rabbit for Lucja.

She discovered the importance of fantasy at the age of four when her mother gave her a book about faeries which she had illustrated herself. Lucja has since then used magical stories to escape from the real world, well only as much as a girl as young as her can comprehend the context behind "escaping". She just liked that she could be a princess and a mermaid and a faerie all at once.

Sometimes when her parents were too busy to play with her she would sit and make up a whole new world with new friends and she would keep herself busy that way for hours on end, because you see, Lucja didn’t have any real friends to play with since her brother was born, because their Mama’s and Papa’s are scared of the curse and they believe that their children will get it too if they came near Lucja or her brother. 

The people were very superstitious. Stories of wolves being seen and heard around the time when a baby bearing this curse was born was being told over and over again at numerous gatherings. It is said that the wolves would go away once the child has died, it was almost as if they waited around for something to happen, you know, besides death and then leave when it didn’t.

Lucja secretly liked the wolves, they always came to her house on her birthdays and stayed through the night watching her watch them. She never told her parents or anyone else out of fear that they would kill her wolves. Yes, she sees them as hers. They have a special connection... she can feel it. They usually stayed hidden in the woods outside of her bedroom window, their fur as black as the night with just their red, glowing veins pulsing under the starlit canopy, only creeping closer once Lucja's parents are asleep.

She dreams about them too, almost every night, especially about a light brown wolf with piercing green eyes. It isn't one of the wolves who would stand and watch her, no, this one she hasn’t seen before, yet it feels like she has known him all her life.

In her dreams she would play with him, he as a wolf and she as a human, suddenly her veins would start to glow and she’d wake up screaming just as she was about to die… just as the curse was about the reach her heart.

She hasn’t seen any of her wolves since they have started travelling, they had just missed her seventh birthday and she hasn’t dreamt of them since. When her parents were busy talking to a witch or a healer, Lucja would try calling the wolves while she waited outside, but her efforts always went unnoticed.