"I would like for you to be my bride," he said. "Wear my ring and give me your answer when you have it, but I promise you it will be the one I want. I am going to make you fall so deeply in love with me you won't be able to live without my touch."
~...
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Nadine knew she was born to die, but she didn't think it would happen so soon. She lived during a time of war in a tiny village that was suspended over a mirror of a lake. The village gripped its traditions like a hungry man receiving bread, so Nadine knew if she didn't die as a casualty of war, her own customs would kill her. And that's why she thought the drawing had been rigged.
"Are you sure my name wasn't written on all the ballots?" she asked the woman that was applying fragrant oils around her neck with a brush made from a rabbit's tail.
The woman shot her a stare. She was a familiar face, as were all in the village, but hers was especially known. This saggy yet steel-gazed hag was named Abbra, and she was the village incubator. As disgusting as that sounded, the only thing she incubated were unlucky virgins. She shut them in her hut and slathered oils and paint on them before they were thrown into the lake to drown. At least that was how Nadine saw it. If you asked anybody else, they would've told you Abbra anointed the honored chosen sacrifice with oils to please their water god. It was believed in return for a virgin's precious life, protection from the Dios War's fury that has torn the earth for the past decade would be provided.
"You were there with us and saw the same as we did. All the virgin names went in. Yours came out," Abbra said.
Nadine laughed. "How do you know I'm a virgin?"
"Because you ain't married."
"So?"
"So you better be a virgin or else you just damned your village." She lifted Nadine's arms up and slapped the greasy oil on her armpits.
Nadine bit her cheek to prevent from yelping. "Does that mean Vanah we sacrificed last year wasn't? Because I don't see a difference from then till now. Or the year before that or before that or—AH!"
Abbra had pinched one of her nipples, one of the many dangers of being naked in front of the prune of a woman.
Nadine rubbed her violated breast but knew better than to spit the curse words on her tongue. "Abbra, do you really believe our god is going to smell my pits? Can't you just throw me in and be done with it?"
A glare. "This is why you ain't married."
Nadine's exasperated sigh was the only indication of the slight sting Abbra's reoccurring words caused her. An unmarried woman was something considered strange and almost vile at her age. Once a girl bled, it meant she could give birth. It was also the sign for that child, now a woman, to begin the search for a husband. And once she found that husband, it was her duty to provide babies. Lots of them. Theirs was a tiny village with much to do, such as providing sacrifices to water gods that seemed to like smelly and oily virgins. People were born in the village of Marr to get married. Or to possibly die.
As a woman, marriage was a security not because it provided a place to stay or a way to eat and live, but a way to stay alive. If you were married, your name did not go into the yearly drawing to find the next sacrifice. As soon as you bled, you were a candidate, and until married, you could die to the warm spring waters The Sayula River ran through Marr's lake. Though it sounded simple enough, marriage was easier said than done, and Nadine knew that too well.
