Acacia:
The rolling British hills look like nothing bad has happened in their hundreds of thousands of years of existence. Flowers riot as far as the eye can see, blotting out much of the grass, and it's hard to tell that a little over a year ago life sucking shades had ravaged the entire area. As we walk along a road that follows a relatively fast moving river, Bridget's still plump hand tucked into mine, I sing Sexy Can I. Not an appropriate song in the presence of a ten year old but she's deaf and hardly paying any attention to my lips. Instead she tries to mimic the graceful play of my body as I dance and walk. That I keep both as PG and human as possible.
Hard to do as I've just eaten, my heart is beating, and the warm for once sunshine makes me feel loose and limber. My beast prefers the night but given the lack, she'd still approve of the space available to sneak up on prey with her incredible speed and tear them to pieces with ease. She wants nothing to do with the child slowing us down; she's wanted nothing to do with the family we've been tied to since my birth and her creation. It's an unwanted attachment, making us weaker, she insists but I don't bother listening. This child, her sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins were mine to protect and have been for hundreds of years. Their bloodline is a record and the only living link to my history. In rare moments of perfect clarity, like now, they're my family.
Many generations ago, the nomadic family had come into contact with a woman who'd wreaked of wild magic, ravaged and surrounded by fierce beasts, surely the hounds of hell, which had bayed terribly and would lunged at any who'd come near the woman. They'd been fixated on the infant she carried in her arms, though whether to do harm or to protect, the stories didn't say. The bloodied woman had given a sharp command in a language none in the caravan had recognized, momentarily freezing the beasts long enough for her to deposit the child into the current chief's head wife's arms. The stranger admonished the wife to raise the girl child as a male, to be trained in the ways of war, until she was fatally scarred. Murmuring words that filled the air around the gathered people, the blood soaked woman traced a symbol along the throat of both the chief and his wife.
Turning, she'd left, the beasts howling in what seemed like agony to those who had remained brave enough to stay behind while they'd followed the woman away. The small band of travelers could hear the sound of the beasts for hours as they'd traveled as far and fast into the night as they could. No matter the misgivings they felt against the child, none could bring themselves to abandon it or pass the care of it to another. They followed the commands of one who could control a pack of foreboding creatures; I was christened Acacia but called Aca, dressed and treated as a boy. I didn't play with dolls or do chores with the other females but instead followed after the boys.
Years passed and though I stopped cutting my hair short, stopped bathing with the men, received my monthly menses, and became curvy in both chest and hips, I continued to train in war. Or what little of war a band of gypsies know; they learned how to protect their camp and people. I could ride, fight with daggers, and shoot a bow and arrow. During raids against my people, I was a valuable asset and could defend as well as the young men around me. It was only when I'd turned eighteen, when confronted constantly with the sights of girls my age and younger with young men and families began making me unsatisfied with my own lot, that life as I knew it radically changed.
One night we were attacked by a band of real warriors while we made our way towards a monastery and I was killed. A sword pierced my heart through the center of my chest and ripped up towards my throat, ending my life abruptly but at least with purpose; I'm told that while several of our defenders died that night, most of our people escaped. They returned forty-eight hours later to retrieve our bodies only to discover that mine was gone. No sign of it other than the rusted, dried blood colored splotch in the grass where I had fallen.
Some seventy-eight hours after that, I was back in that same spot, surrounded by people who had lovingly raised me, but not in the form of an eighteen year old woman. Instead I was a huge beast, filled with rage and ready to kill anything that moved. I wanted too. So badly. Every man woman and child within reach of my fangs and claws was marked against me, right at the pulse on their throats. I howled in rage, claws raking and gouging soft soil. I dropped my head and instinctively used a row of horns curving from my forehead to uproot a sapling and send it flying. Saliva pooled and fell in large ropes down my jaws, spraying any who got too close when I snapped at them.
It was the man who raised me who finally threw several pieces of cloth in my direction which I promptly tore to shreds. All the while I inhaled scents I didn't recognize; I ignored the new world of red, blacks, greys, and whites my eyes presented and focused on the smells. When I could tell them apart from everything else, I sprung away from those I could not eat and began hunting for those I could, killing any animal regardless of its size that came anywhere near me, leaving a path of death and destruction in my path as I hunted.
My body blended with forest and the night, it moved with an unnatural grace, and it hungered. Though it wasn't hard to move as I was, I breathed heavily. Only my lack of heartbeat felt off; it seemed as if it should be practically pounding out of my chest. Finally, I hear the heavy clod of horses, soft chink of weapons, and scent my prey. When I explode out of the forest, not even the sensitive senses of the animals provide the men with a warning. I kill horses and men alike in the space of a few moments.
The organs though, I feast on them slowly.
I come back to myself slowly, moving like an animal, a rattle reverberating in my chest. Bridget can't hear it but she's doing everything humanly possible to move like me. Shoving the animal back in her cage, I pick a new song. L.I.T.'s My Own Worst Enemy seems appropriate right now so I start to sing that. No need to fall into memories beyond that night. I didn't go back to the gypsies after that for years. After finding my way back to the human body I had left, I'd found a thick scar from my chest to shoulder, a wild beast deep within, and a realization that I was not ready for war. Raiding the clothes, supplies and weapons that I could, I faked being a male and searched for real training. It took thirty years; I lost teachers when they died in battle, when I died and returned to grounds the monastery had expanded to, found out my gender, or felt I learned all I could, but when I returned to my people, drawn by the mark they still bore that had saved them from my beast, I was a real warrior.
They welcomed me back and I kept them safe for it. We'd only lost a few of our band in the last year, the shades feared me, and most of the higher fae stayed far away from me. Not that many of them were around anymore. Things were looking better. I raise my voice higher, not caring I'm not singing in the right key or dancing like a fool. There's nobody but Bridget and myself enjoying the day.