“Estella! Dinner me amor!”
The young woman stood up and observed her work, quite pleased with the looks of her freshly repotted lavender and rosemary. She’s been trying to grow them into larger bushes for a few years, just to see if she could. She’s had to start over three times so far though. Estella picked up her dirt smudged notebook and left her plants behind.
Crossing the yard from the greenhouse to the kitchen Estella passed their expansive garden that resembled more an overgrown miniature jungle. Most of it would go to the local market, tenants, or parishioners Matthieu met at church. Between the four of them, only she ate regularly — the full vampires usually took a glass of wine with her at meals or tea from plants they could grow themselves.
Her family would cook meals for all of them to eat a few days a week. Food for vampires had to be made with ingredients grown in soil nourished by blood. It would be easier for them to hunt in the woods but to her family, food was the heart of the home. She also suspected that they ate more now than they did before her arrival on account of her poor hunting abilities but Jacques would never admit it to her.
“Smells delicious, grandpapa! Merci.” she said, bursting through the kitchen door.
He smiled at her, “Tell me, how did repotting go? Did you enjoy your time in the greenhouse? Take good notes?”
“Yes, Matthieu, I took notes on the plants you instructed me to. Here. Enjoy my mediocre botanical drawings.” The last part came out around a mouthful of bread. On most days the four of them took dinner together at the formal table but Jacques was in Paris for work and Theodora was in Spain providing consultations to some unfortunate creatures who may or may not have violated some obscure rule of the supernatural world.
So Matthieu was home with her, arguing for the importance of informational drawings, particularly of the botanical variety.
Estella was pretty sure her great-grandfather just really liked plants (he was the architect behind their jungle garden every year) but she wasn’t going to say that to him.
Her grandmother Marguerite also loved plants. Whatever Matthieu was saying got lost in that thought. It's been nearly ten years that Estella’s lived in France, watched and fretted over by not only Jacques but Matthieu and Theodora too.
She believes that they would have welcomed her regardless, but the surprise connection to Matthieu certainly escalated their attention to her. And their anxiety for her. From the moment she told Mattieu about her grandmother he never questioned their relation. He smelled her in her blood. He praised, he cried, he cursed, but he did not doubt.
Estella smiled at her grandfather across the table still going over her afternoon notes. This is how it has been for several years. They were too nervous to send her to school and all were perfectly content to continue her education at home.
She remembers that conversation well. Estella sat on the thick rug in the main drawing room upstairs while Theodora paced before the fire, Matthieu and Jacques stood to either side of her.
“Estelle was one of the best trained witches in Europe. Matthieu knows nearly everything she knew.” Theodora pointed a ring clad finger at him, “You could train her in witchcraft. Jacques and I can handle the rest.”
And so it went. Matthieu oversaw her witch education while Theodora and Jacques looked after the rest of her schooling.
She liked when she worked with Jacques, he would take her to Paris with him to do school work in his office in the Witchs’ Quarter. She got to see a lot of people that way.
Witches knew how to fill a room. She never realized this before Jacques took her Parisian cultural and history sites though. In a throng full of humans, the air felt loud and full but that was caused by the amount of people in the room. A single witch could induce the same crowded feeling with their magical presence alone. Or their nervousness could fill the room instead, increasing your nerves too.
Matthieu said that this is caused by a lack of training. The best magic wielders had complete control over how their magic exudes off of them. Those are the people you need to watch out for.
People made her nervous though. You never knew when information could get into the wrong hands and someone you didn’t want is knocking at your door. But as the years went by and nothing terrible happened Estella grew more comfortable with her existence—both as the youngest member of her family of rather important people and in her own skin as a half-breed. The Stranger always haunted her though and the phrase his hissed, blood of the gods.
The vampire traits came slowly and are mostly unnoticeable. She hadn’t broken any bones since her bite despite several falls and one purposeful jump from a very tall tree. Her sense of smell is better than a humans though not as precise as family members’. Her eyes too had changed, though not in the way anyone expected. Instead of the characteristic sheen, her eyes lightened a few shades. Gone was the deep brown of her childhood, replaced by a burnt caramel color. Her teeth never did come in but she didn’t mind that she couldn’t tear through flesh.
She’s rather on the fair side too but Matthieu and Theodora swore that it could be genetics.
All these slow changes came with a price. Each inflicted its own brand of simmering agony but none of it was worse than when it was time for her to take blood. Her stomach felt like it was ripping itself apart. And the time she spent vomiting her own blood and internals so they could be replaced, she was sick thinking about it.
She was sick. For years, these changes kept her inside Saint-Tourre, too unwell to venture farther than the village most days. It was why the times she got to go to Paris were such a blessing. Thankfully those days were over. It’s been a few years since she’s suffered a bout, and her family believes that Estella had finally outgrown the transformations.
“Estella? Mon amie?”
She shook herself out of her reverie, “Sorry, Matthieu, what is it again?”
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He didn’t say anything to her, only shut her notebook and stared at her across the table.
Can she ever have a thought without her family seeking open communication about it?
She squirmed. He was only sharing what he loved with her and she wasn’t listening.
“Sorry, Matthieu.” She said again.
“I do not want your apology, Estella. I want your assurance.”
“My assurance?” Her grandmother Marguerite flitter across her mind during another day she didn’t devote herself to botany.
Matthieu gave her an off look. “That you are well. You have been more quiet than normal these last few days.”
Had she? She hadn’t meant to be but she supposed that she was retreating into herself more. Stuck in her own head, her own memories.
She was the price, you are the payment.
Now is not your time.
Blood of the gods.
What did it mean?
It haunted her that Matthieu and Theodora didn’t know what any of it meant. Between the two of them, they have 2500 years of experience. Theodora knew everyone and everyone didn’t know what any of it meant.
“I can see you worrying your teeth. Are you concerned about more transformations? They should be done now. If more come, we will weather it with you.” She fought a grimace. She must have been prodding her teeth again with her tongue.
Estella reached her hand out to cover Matthieu’s on the table. It was true. When she lost her grandparents her world had been destroyed. Her very foundation cracked and fractured. She didn’t believe she would ever have a home again.
And then Jacques brought her to France.
“There’s a pleasant face. What are you thinking about now?”
“About you all and how kind you and Theodora were to me. Back then.”
“Of course. How could we not be? You were a child.”
She smiled at that. She worked enough in Jacques’s office to know that there are people who would not have been kind.
“And then afterwards, how you accepted…” She tripped up at this part. How does a person sum up being the granddaughter of a long lost youngest daughter shoved through time by her mother to protect her? And that said child is set to become a half-vampire, half-witch and all the historical burdens that came with such an existence? Estella roughly shut her mind to that train of thought, despite lingering there already.
She would rather not live knowing how others sought to use her, how they completely changed the course of her life for their own selfish gain. It made her feel like a tool waiting to be collected.
“It that what has you so contemplative? Let us talk about it then. What holds your mind?” Matthieu had a clipped way of speaking. It was precise, matter of fact, tell me your problems and let us work on a solution.
“I don’t know. It’s nothing, really. All we can do is keep marching forward until we learn something new.”
And really, she didn’t have a lot to complain about. Her family could have kept her under constant surveillance but instead they taught her the skills necessary to protect her freedom instead of barring her behind walls or requiring a chaperone everywhere. She was taught magic by one of the most witchcraft-educated individuals in Europe and a woman who drips history from her pores. She was loved, she was protected.
But she was still afraid.
“Maybe it’s my dreams.”
“Your dreams?”
“Yeah, they’ve all been in the woods lately and you know how I feel about that.” Despite her family trying to give Estella a life without borders, the furthest she would go into the woods was the little wattle and daub house she and Matthieu did their magic lessons in. And even then, she didn’t like to go alone.
“Mhmm.” Was his only response, waiting for more information.
But Estella didn’t want to share it, suddenly afraid of manifesting her fears into her reality.
Instead she made her excuses and left her half eaten dinner on the table. Matthieu watched her leave in silence.
____
“Everyone gather! I have news!” Rang Theodora’s voice through the halls a few days later.
“We’re right here, mámmi. No need to shout.” Jacques greeted Theodora, Estella standing at his side a full head and a half shorter than him.
“Oh, Estella!” Theodora’s hands met her shoulders, ignoring her godson entirely. “I have heard rumors about a sanctuary of priestesses deep in the Greek mountains. Greece! Maybe this is where the Oracle of Delphi went when the Romans ran them off.”
“I…uh—”
“What are you on about Theodora?” Matthieu asked from behind them.
“Oh Matthieu! If anyone can tell us what all Estella’s experiences mean surely it is the Greeks.” Her eyes were large with excitement, her painted lips stretched wide across her face.
“Or any other religions that deal in mystique or prophecy.” Her grandfather countered.
She waved her hand at him, “Well, yes, but we haven’t heard about any long hidden Persian or what have you religious sites. This is what we have, Matthieu. We must try it.”
“Soooo, we’re going to Greece?” Estella hadn’t been to Theodora’s home county yet, though she did spend a stressful three-month stint with some Dracula-esque friends of her grandparents in Romania.
“Ah…” Theodora’s hands curled around the back of Estella’s neck before moving to adjust some fly away hair. “Mon amie, I do not think so. It would not be wise to drag you to an unknown and potentially hazardous location without verification.” Estella knew what was left unsaid. The fear for her health. For her safety. Just because they didn’t want her to feel confined doesn’t mean that they would let her take unnecessary risks. Which meant this time going into the Greek wilderness searching for a maybe, possibly hidden temple of priestesses. “You would be so uncomfortable.”
She hated what the actions of others have done to her. “Ah.”
“Matthieu and I will go. You and Jacques will stay here.”
“Are you sure, Theodora? You just said that it may be dangerous. Wouldn’t it be better to have an extra set of hands?” Jacques asked.
“Danger lurks in every corner Jacques and should something happen I would prefer you and Estella have each other.”
Matthieu stepped forward, “Oui. We will go. You two will stay. Besides, someone needs to be present at Saint-Tourre.”
Estella remained quiet after Theodora’s initial rejection, a pit settling into her stomach. After nearly a decade of unanswered questions, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answers anymore. She thought about the ghoulish priestess she visited after the accident. What if her time has come? And for what?
And what was she supposed to do?