by Helen Bright
My mother was a beautiful Viking princess of sorts named Brisafreya and her Viking warrior husband was Brandr. My sister also called Freya was born ten years later.”
“I was groomed from an early age to be like my name suggests a noble fighter with brute strength and bravery but my mother always cautioned me to use my head more and join the rest of the noble families in a sort of council, unlike Brandr and think about other things such as keeping our people warm and fed.
“I had two uncles Gamall and Sebbi. Gamall and my mother were twins and shared an interest and belief in what would later be termed as witchcraft.
In Viking culture it was not frowned upon for women to practice witchcraft but men were ridiculed if they were found doing so. Men were mostly classed as Shaman and used to call upon the gods to send a good harvest or for safe passage when setting out to sea.
Sebbi wasn’t a relative as such but more like a close friend to my mother, being at her side whenever she was worried or ill and comforting her when Brandr would be with one of his mistresses or after yet another one of their fights.
You see Brandr was not good to the women in his life. It had only taken a week or so for my mother to get pregnant with me, and he was away in battle for most of her pregnancy, which spared her his wrath. I remember them arguing a lot when he was home, and he used to make her cry often.
When I was born and he knew his child was a son, he demanded a feast that lasted for a week. I was told many years later that he had taken another mistress during that time, and he apparently kept her for years. She died after having a huge argument with him many years later. He was going to be tried for her death but was somehow let off with it when he was needed in yet another battle.
When Freya was born he didn’t want to know. Brandr didn’t want a girl, just more sons. It used to break Freya’s heart for him to ignore her and he would make my mother take her from the room when he came in. I began to hate him more with every passing day.
Sebbi, whenever he was around and Gamall had both been father figures to Freya but when she was about nine years old they left for England along with Brandr and around forty other men from ours and the surrounding villages, because Sebbi had informed them that England offered a better climate and plentiful foods unlike Norway in the harsh winters.
They were to build up a settlement in which they would create homes for us, then they would come back to get us and bring us to this better place when the weather was mild as this made for safer travel for the women and children.
It was two years before they returned and Brandr wasn’t with them. Sebbi addressed the village councilmen which included myself and said that Brandr had been killed in battle and died like a warrior and everyone but me believed him.”
I took the body wash from the shelf and poured a generous amount in my hands then proceeded to wash every inch of Julia I could reach. “Why did you think he lied?” she questioned.
“It was the look he gave me when he spoke; it was different to what he gave the others. I had seen this look before between him and my mother and I kind of knew right then that Sebbi would play an even bigger part of our lives than he had before.”
“Later than night I went to speak with my mother about it and heard familiar noises. You see I was twenty by then and being strong and handsome I had caught the eye of many of the lonely village women while their men were away and had been having sex with quite a few of them every chance I could get, so I recognised the sounds, but they were ones that I hadn’t expected to hear from my mother and Sebbi together.”
“I didn’t confront them I just ran down to my room as quietly as I could.
A short while later Sebbi came to find me. He said he knew I had found him making love to my mother and he wanted to explain a few things to me. My mother followed him a few moments later looking much happier than I had seen her for many years. Sebbi said that he was both mine and Freya’s father not Brandr as we had been led to believe. He also said he was a born immortal and that Freya and I were this way too. I asked what this meant as I was confused by what he was saying. He began to explain the meaning of vampire, the need to drink blood and the strength and speed that his kind had. He then revealed his fangs and his eyes changed colour and I stood to grab my sword pulling my mother behind me. He spoke calmly saying that he would never hurt me, my mother and Freya and I believed him. He also told me that he was going to take us all back to England, where he came from many years before. He told me that he had readied a place for us and we would sail as soon as the moon was full, which was seven nights from then.”
“Over the next seven nights Sebbi told us all about his kind. How he could change humans by draining them of their blood to the point of death then feeding them his own blood. He said being a born immortal we were more powerful as we could walk in the daylight although direct sunlight did drain our strength. He said I would know when the time was right for me to take my first swallow of human blood and at that time my body would stay as it was and never again age, and as long as we took in blood regularly we would heal quickly from any wounds.
Freya and I being of his blood had never been ill a day in our lives and we had no concept to what it could be like to suffer this way but I had been wounded before and knew of pain, so this part of it appealed to me.”
“I don’t understand something Alex, wasn’t your mother human?” “Yes she was and I know what you are going to say, how was she able to become pregnant to a vampire?” “Yes, I mean I don’t understand how someone who is one of the undead can have living sperm and Alex if you do have living sperm we have had unprotected sex twice already.” “As far as I am aware my lovely Julia a born immortal can only reproduce with a human woman after he blood bonds with them. It’s like a giving and receiving of a small amount of blood from each other at the same time, usually through sex as it heightens the potency of the blood of the vampire male. It kind of changes the body at a cellular level which then enables the human female to become pregnant.” “By blood bonding to a vampire whether born or made you are entering into an unbreakable bond, something that has more meaning and worth to the immortal than a human marriage ever could and as long as the human continues to take the vampires blood he or she will never age and will have the same long life as the immortal one.”
“What happens when you stop loving the one you bond with,” she asked in a soft voice. I turned her head so she met my gaze, “Julia when a vampire falls in love and bonds with a human, both the love and the bond last forever.”
I let the meaning of what I just said wash over her for a moment longer before I smiled and handed her more food. When we finished the plate I stood up and retrieved a couple of towels from the rack and we both stepped out of the bath to get dry.
When I went back into the bedroom I noticed that the time was now 11.15pm and as I didn’t want this night to end here I asked her to stay the night with me.
At first she declined but then asked if I would continue with my story if she stayed, so I agreed and she sent both her mum and dad a text message to say she had too much to drink while celebrating her new job and was staying the night here in my spare room to sleep it off. I then texted Maggie for her to let Nik and Josh know I wouldn’t be back in tonight.
Julia looked at the bed then back to me and said “do you have anything I could sleep in?”
“My arms hopefully,” I said as I winked at her and went to get her a T shirt from my wardrobe. To make her feel more comfortable I put my boxers on and we lay facing each other on top of the bed.
“How long did it take to sail to England,” she asked.
“Two very long weeks,” I replied the memory of that journey still fresh in my mind after all these centuries.
“In our last two days at sea we hit a storm which completely overwhelmed even the strongest of the men who were rowing with us. We tried and tried to gain the upper hand but we were tossed and thrown about like leaves in the wind and inevitably the ship listed over to a
point that we began to take on a vast amount of water.
My father, Gamall and I were all below deck with about forty other rowers each trying gain control of our oars. Some of the women and a few of the men were above deck trying to get rid of the water we were taking on when some were swept overboard. None of us knew what had happened until my father howled out as if in agony. You see through the powerful bond he had with my mother he felt the very moment she went overboard. He leapt out of the confines of his seat like an animal and ran up to the deck of the ship faster than was humanly possible. Despite everything we tried to do we could save none of the fifteen men and women who went overboard that night, my mother included.”
I gave myself a few moments before I carried on with my story, the guilt of not being able to save her still heavy on my soul. Julia placed her hand on mine and said how sorry she was. I linked my fingers with hers and carried on with the story of my life.
“Hours later the storm broke and we were slowly getting back on course for Bretland as England was then known by. My father and Freya were inconsolable and seemed to cling to each other in their pain. It was down to Gamall, Frankke (he was an experienced sailor and a village council member) and I to organise getting ashore so we decided to moor the ship in to a small cove and take the small row boat we carried and transport everyone to shore in that.”
“Some of the strongest men we carried with us went first so that they could make sure it was safe, and then they came back steadily over the next few hours or so to bring everyone else. Frankke, Gamall, my father, Freya and I were the last ones to step ashore that night to what is now known as the pretty fishing village of Staithes in North Yorkshire.”
“So that’s where your surname comes from?” she asked.
“Yes I took the name Alexander because it wasn’t unlike Aðalbrandr my Nordic name and Staithes because it’s where I first stepped foot on English soil.”
“We made our way to the settlement tired, weary and heartsick for those we had lost. There were some who had lost wives, mothers, husbands, sisters and brothers so the mood was low between us all for many months.
Freya was the only thing that kept my father going. The once pleasant Sebbi became moody and quite aggressive in his dealings with everyone else, myself included. Gamall tried different types of witchcraft to help him but nothing seemed to lift his spirits at all. Then one day a cart carrying two men pulled up outside our settlement. It turned out that they were two immortals one of whom was my father’s brother who was named Eadgar and the other was his born immortal son Colton.”
“Eadgar and Colton were a ray of light in our dark grieving world and we all seemed to be able to look towards a future in our new land. Sebbi came around slowly and we eventually became a family again.”
“Colton was about to take a wife so he could start a family when he became a vampire and his children could be born immortals like him. I wasn’t so sure that this life appealed to me as yet. I knew that I had a lot to learn about being this way and hoped that Sebbi would provide more information now that he had started to get back to himself again. Eadgar and Colton did tell us how to make a living on the land we had acquired as the soil here was different than what we had been used to, and they gave us the means to purchase cattle and tools.”
“It was apparent that there was wealth in this family but Sebbi did not seem to want to go back with them to the east of Yorkshire even though they welcomed us all including Gamall. They left us about two months later and made us promise to visit them soon.”
“Freya grew into a beautiful young woman who was very similar to my mother in looks with her grey eyes and pale blonde hair. She had everything she desired as my father spoiled her every chance he could, from the best dolls the woodcarver could make when she was a child to the pretty jewellery they made locally to us. You would have thought this would have made her a spoiled brat, but that couldn’t be further from the truth because she was so kind and thoughtful to everyone and she loved the young children of the village. She would gather them round and make up stories of magical worlds with strange creatures and handsome heroes. Everyone adored her.”
“When she was nineteen she came to speak to me about being a born immortal. She said that she didn’t want to become a vampire because she wanted to be a wife, then a mother and then a grandmother. She said that she had spoken to father of this but he was insistent she took the blood and became a true immortal as soon as she could, like Colton had done. She said she had asked if she didn’t take the blood would she grow old and die like normal humans and he had gone in to a rage saying she wasn’t like other humans and without the blood she would age more slowly than her husband and children and that eventually when she died she would die alone as all her family will have long since gone.”
“I said I would go and seek out Eadgar and Colton and ask what would happen to us if we didn’t take the blood and become vampires so that we would know one way or the other. Father had been trying to persuade me to take the blood but I refused to do this until Freya did so none of us had made him happy about this issue.”
“I asked Freya what had prompted these thoughts and she told me that she had fallen in love with Tobias who was Frankke’s son. Tobias was a strong handsome young man and at twenty two was only three years older than Freya, and he worked as a woodcarver. I remember her taking my hand and placing it on her belly and telling me she was going to have his child.”
“I was angry that she had let him make love to her without the marriage ceremony but she said I had lain with many women without being married so I couldn’t judge her or be angry with Tobias, but this was my sister, the sweet Freya so of course I was angry.”
“Then I thought of my father who had been travelling with Gamall for the last two months and I knew that the situation could get a lot worse. So I arranged for her marriage to take place in two days time whilst praying that father would not return before this.”
“Freya looked beautiful and to be honest they made a wonderful couple. You could see that Tobias thought the world of her and that their love was so pure and real that it made me want similar for myself.”
“Father came back the day after the wedding and was furious. Even more so when he scented the pregnancy on her and at first he wanted nothing to do with Freya, but she was his precious daughter and he couldn’t stay angry with her for too long. When her baby daughter was born Freya named her Brisa after my mother. Sebbi was thrilled and spoiled her even more than he had Freya. She was absolutely adorable and we all fell madly in love with the beautiful little girl who was such a happy child.”
“Father kept on trying to persuade me to take the blood and I just kept ignoring him at every turn. Eadgar and Colton had gone to Ireland for a while so if I wanted to speak to them about it I would need to travel and I didn’t want to leave Freya and her family. So time kept moving on as it always does and I made sure through the various trading we had slowly built up that our village had enough good homes for everyone and we had enough food for winter.”
“Freya had informed my father that she would not take the blood as she wanted to have more children and be a normal mother to them, and Tobias was against her becoming a vampire as he did not want her to be different to them all.”
“This made up my mind for me too and as father knew that I would only take the blood if Freya did he stopped asking me about it.”
“When she was twenty seven Freya became pregnant again. She used to take Brisa and go and spend two evenings a week with my father and Gamall at their home on the edge of the village and more often than not I would go and join them after my work was done, a kind of family tradition that we tried not to miss. It was during one of those evenings that our lives changed forever.”
“On this particular night Freya had arrived alone without Brisa for the first time ever, because she had been tired after playing out all day in the sun.”
“Father went into a panic and kept asking where Brisa was and Frey
a kept assuring him it was alright, and that she was probably sleeping by now. But he left us and ran the mile to Freya’s house, and we all followed in the cart fearful as to what our father’s instinct had told him.”
“When we arrived at Freya’s house it was on fire and our father was laid on the floor outside, his body charred and burned.”
“Freya was running around screaming for Brisa and Tobias but the dread I felt in the pit of my stomach told me they were both gone. Gamall went to my father and gathered him up on the cart whilst I took Freya in my arms and placed her beside me and quickly sped off to my father’s home.”
“The smell of my father’s burned flesh and my sisters wailing despair still haunt my dreams now,” I said with an exhausted sigh as Julia put her arms around me and held me close.
“I don’t know what to say Alex. There are no words really to comfort you when you lose a child like that. Freya must have thought her life had ended that night I know I did when I lost Megan. But she lost Brisa and Tobias in the same night.”
“She lost more than her daughter and husband on that night Julia,” I said as I continued on with the painful story.
“By the time we got back to the house I heard my father speak to Gamall in a gravelly voice, asking where Freya was and thanking him for giving him so much of his blood. Gamall stumbled off the cart but was caught by one of the men they employed to work the land and he was carried inside.”
“Father tried to take Freya from me but I would not let him and I carried her to the nearest bed. When I stood back I could see the blood appearing on the front of her smock dress and I yelled for my father, for anyone to help me. Father came in shirtless his skin already nearly healed from his burns but still black with smoke, and he dropped to the floor at the side of Freya, pierced his fangs through his wrist and told Freya to drink from him. She shook her head keeping her mouth closed but all the while more blood was appearing on her dress and down her legs.”
