Myrina was dressed in her pink dress. It was a dress she herself had made. In the coven the only acceptable colours were black and white. However the girl loved to experiment and one of her experiments with a floral brew had allowed her to colour her dull cotton dress a faint pink. It was perceptible though and frowned upon by everyone in the coven. She had attempted to put it on a numerous times and was discouraged by all and sundry. This morning however she did not stop to care. If it were her last day alive she had a right to wear what her heart desired. As she finished dressing Reva was waiting to accompany her to the market. Now the elder witches like Sia and Reva rarely if ever left the coven house. Myrina wondered if she even knew where the market was. However she could not deny her birth mother to share the last few hours of her life. Myrina was by nature kind.
Every other time she had been to the market had been with Luca. Everyone in the market knew her to be Luca's daughter. Even though she had grown in the past one year she was recognized and acknowledged. Reva smiled at the chirpy girl Myrina had become outside the coven precinct. Behind them trailed three other witches but they had moved quite ahead.
"You said we were going to get clothes for me to wear at the ceremony. The mercantile is that way," the young girl directed.
"We also need some spices. Do you mind if we make a trip to the spice shop before we head down to the mercantile?" asked Reva. In answer the younger girl shrugged. It was her last day on earth and her mother preferred to buy spices first. She looked around at the other girls her age who were tagging along with their mothers. The humans were weird. The children stayed with mothers instead of fathers. But Myrina envied them. She was looking at one particular plump girl who wanted her mother to buy her a lump of sugar but the mother did not have money for it. Sweets were expensive. Spices even more so. The witches charged hefty fee for their spells from the nearby humans that afforded them all kinds of luxury.
"Myrina," a voice called her out of her thoughts. Reva was looking at her with a furrow in her brows. Her eyes spoke of a sorrow that she refused to acknowledge. Reva bent down to her level as she asked her daughter to confirm her suspicion, "You received your powers on your tenth birthday, did you not?"
Myrina did not want to admit that she did. It was her secret. She had grown up knowing that powers were received on the fifteenth birthday but she felt the first spark of power at ten. That was a year ago, days after she had received news of her father's death. Children in the coven were discriminated amongst on the basis of power. She was alarmed at having been caught in her lie. How did Reva know and what would that mean? Not having to practice powers afforded her time for things that interested her. It allowed her time to play and to study. The moment she would acknowledge the existence of her powers she would be pushed headlong into the war. But she was dying anyways. There was no point in lying either. She nodded softly.
Reva let go of a sigh of relief. "Myrina, you have to help me cast a spell. The others cannot know about it." Reva whispered. Reva looked up to see the other witches approaching and dragged her behind the hut that housed the spice shop.
"What spell do you want to cast?" Myrina asked. One act of defiance against the witches she had done was to study the grimoires she wasn't allowed to. She perhaps knew more about spells than Reva. It is said that magic skips a generation and though Sia and Reva inherited their mother's powers neither received it to the extent that Myrina did.
"I want to cast a memory spell on the entire coven. I want to erase you from their memory," she confided.
Myrina's eyes widened in disbelief. She knew the spell but it required more power than what the two could provide unless a sacrifice was made. "Will you help me?" Reva asked when she received no answer.
"I will help you," she said. They huddled together as they casted the spell. As the spell was cast Reva shriveled. Myrina realized that it was Reva's chosen sacrifice, her eternal youth. Nothing as such happened to Myrina but Reva fainted with fatigue. Her youth was gone and she looked like the three century old creature that she was. But it was not something that would go unnoticed by the others in the coven. Myrina knew what she had to do. She had powers she couldn't explain and used them to revive Reva to her health and vitality. However Reva had made the spell secure enough to erase Myrina from her memory as well.
"Hello girl, who are you?" she asked on opening her eyes.
"I am Mary. You had fainted and I gave you some smelling salts to revive you," she said.
"Thank you girl. That is very kind of you. Now where are my friends?" she said as she walked into the market in search of the other witches. Mary watched from afar as the witches went about their ways as if nothing was amiss in their lives. In front of her she faced the problem of finding shelter and food among people who lived in fear or hatred of their kind.
"It has been three hours and this is our eighth auction. If you can't find a slave that appeals to you here we are returning back without a question," Jesse insisted.
"It's going to be my first slave that I am picking for myself. I want it to be special," Matthew insisted.
"What are you going to do with a slave?" a small voice asked from behind them. The voice stopped the two men on their path. They were dressed as common humans and were speaking in whispers they hoped no human ears could pick up. How a young girl could hear them was beyond them?
"How did you hear us?" Matthew questioned the blonde girl.
"Well I heard you when the wind carried your voice over." she said earnestly.
"Should you be talking to strangers? I am sure your parents must be worried about you." Jesse intervened.
"I don't have any parents. They died in the war. I am an orphan and my relatives wanted to sell me off this morning, so I ran away. You could take me as your slave. No one would come searching for me," she insisted.
Her boldness was refreshing. Matthew had never been spoken to like this before. He couldn't help feel a fondness for this young girl.
"Matthew, I would advise against it. For all you know she could be a part of the enemy's trap," Jesse warned.
Matthew looked at him skeptically and then at the girl. She had the most vibrant blue eyes he had ever seen. She was a child but she appealed to him as no woman had ever before. Matthew liked the rush of blood her mere presence had caused. He wanted to see what this human girl would grow up into.
"What is your name?" he asked approaching her with caution.
"Mary," she answered, the name she had chosen for herself.
"Well Mary, what are your feelings towards the witches," Matthew asked, standing a foot before her.
"I hate the witches. That's whom my relatives were selling me off to. They wanted to buy me to sacrifice me for a ritual because of my innocence. I didn't want to be killed. So I ran away." Mary explained. In a moment Matthew bent down and scooped her up in his arms. As he did so he felt sparks rush towards him as the girl too clung to him.
"You are my now, Mary. No one is ever going to sacrifice you. You belong to the Royal household now." he declared without knowing the fate that awaited them.