"Isaac? What’s the matter? You're all red in the face?” She gasped, “Is it time? Have you come of age sooner than I’d anticipated--”

“Mum, I--the baker he--” He stopped stammering, pulling the bloodroot pouch from his pocket. “I brought back the herbs you--”

“Forget the bloodroot!” She said with a rough tone that made him quiver. She sat him down, pulling a chair in front of her son. “Now tell me everything that happened, and leave nothing out.”

“The baker mum. . .he. . .” He tried to tell her, but he couldn’t quite explain it.

“What did the baker do? So help me if that man laid a finger on you, there will be a full reckoning to come.”

“No mum, he didn’t touch me.” He squirmed in his seat, not sure how to tell his mother the truth. She waited, and with each second, his heart grew heavier before finally coming clean. “Mum, what’s a witch?”

For a moment, she looked surprised, but her expression softened and she smiled. “The men have been talking about witchcraft, eh?” 

Isaac nodded furiously. “They were talking about you mum. They said you were a witch!”

Instead of feeling insulted, she laughed softly at that. “Can’t keep you sheltered forever, can I?” She looked wistfully at her son. “I told you where you came from, didn’t I?”

“Across the great ocean. From the motherland.”

“Ah, not our motherland. Our kind, or more specifically, your kind are more distant.”

“What do you mean? Am I a little goblin, Mum!?”

She couldn’t stifle the laugh that came, and wiped the tears from her eyes. “No! You’re not a little goblin! I don’t even know where you picked that up. No my son, you’re what is known as vampire.”

“A vampire?” He said, the word new in his vocabulary. “Is that like a goblin?”

“Goblins don’t exist,” she corrected, “vampires do. Well, most of them did. But there was a war, a great war long ago. There aren’t many left today, sadly.”

He looked at himself in a glass reflection. Everything from his rough ginger hair to his hazel eyes were identical to his mother's. “But. . .I look like everyone else.”

“That you do. On the outside. On the inside however, you're much more fantastic.”

“But Mum, you aren’t a vampire! Does that mean--” His mother took his face in her hands, looking him deep in the eyes.

“I’m your mother, Isaac. We may not be the same, but you came from me nonetheless.” She released his face and let him think about what she’d said. “And before you ask anymore questions, there’s something I’d like to show you.” With that, she stood up and began leading the way into the back of the little home.

For as long as Isaac could remember, which was roughly all of his natural life thus far, there’d been an odd door, locked and barred like a dungeon cell. Every now and then, he’d see his mother wisp off to wherever those doors lead. For years, he’d relish in the thought of what magical world lay on the other side, or more excitingly, what manner of hideous monster!

She led him to these doors now, and as she removed a key from a pouch on her hip, the lad’s heart pumped faster. He’d finally get to see what awaited on the other side, and he was both scared and incredibly excited. But when the door creaked open, and his mother guided him within, he was surprised and somewhat let down when he saw a simple stairway.

A cellar of some sort, he thought immediately, this is where mum prepares her herbs, isn’t it.

They moved deeper down, the only sound being their footsteps against the creaky old wood. Their shadows danced against the walls, cast by a row of flickering torches that came to life as they passed. Isaac could feel a dull resonation coursing through his bones the deeper he went; as if his body were a set of cymbals and he’d been struck by an invisible mallet. When they reached the bottom, he was sure he could feel the resonation through the soles of his feet. His mother lead forward, deeper into the surprisingly spacious dungeon beneath their seemingly snug home. The earthy scent that lingered around the house on the surface was much more prominent down below, and as they traversed further, it only heightened.

At last, they came upon another door at the end of the long dim hallway, and, pulling a second key from her pouch, she fixed it into the heavy lock and, with some effort, managed to unlock it. The moment she pushed the door inwards, Isaac felt an even stronger resonation, like the earth itself was humming. A twinge of fear lodged itself in his heart, but at his mother's beckoning, he followed her forth.

“Do not have fear. There’s no manner of beasties down here that can hurt you. On the contrary; this is the safest place you’ll ever happen to be.” Isaac observed the circular chamber in awe. Lining the walls were a number of cases and shelves, and within each shelf was a row of mythical tomes, each with a different size and title. In the center was a brass pot; ashes sitting beneath them with small crackling embers. Candles sat on holders lining the upper walls, bathing the room in an orange light. There was other manners of strange and odd things in that room, many of them Isaac didn’t know the titles of.

“I’ve been meaning to show my vast collection - your inheritance - for a long time. But as young as you were, I was afraid you’d go telling all your little friends that your mum's a witch.”

Isaac gasped. “So you are a witch!” He eyed the room again, “Does that mean. . .you use Devil magic?”

“Devil magic?” She asked, almost as if the word didn’t make any sense, “You also heard that from the men, too then?” He nodded. “Sweetheart, let me clear your mind of their drivel right now. Devil magic, devilry, hell, gods, and diseases of astonishment are nothing more than superstition. A falsehood cooked up by the churches to brainwash the daft masses who choose to believe that hokum.”

“But, magic is real, isn’t it? And isn’t magic. . .evil?”

“What you call magic, I call a force of nature. Is rain evil? How about the winds?” She rubbed her chin, “What you call magic is only evil if you use it for evil. But I won’t have you blinded from the darker spectrum. There are witches in the world who’d very much use magic to skin their victims and drain their blood. Do you know who Catherine Monvoisin was?”

“You told me this before I think. Wasn’t she a fortune teller?”

“She was a supposed ‘scryer’, claiming to be able to see into the future. It doesn’t matter who says it, no witch can see into the future. They can make predictions, sure, but fortune telling and the like is plain hogwash. But that’s beside the point. Ten years ago, when she was still alive, she led a cult known as The Affair of The Poisons; a nasty band of humans who acted on the witch’s whims, poisoning and harvesting the blood, bones, and hearts for her evil rituals.”

“Witches aren’t human beings?”

She paused in thought for a moment. “Not like the folk you normally see. We look, sound, and function the same as humans do, but, unlike humans, we witches resonate much closer to the Necropolis, the source of all magic in the world.”

It was a lot to take in, and young Isaac felt like with each new thing he learned, he aged a year and a half. His mother was a witch, and he, a vampire. He knew he looked a little odd, but it hadn’t ever crossed his mind that he was something so vastly different. He was on the verge of information overload before his mother opted to pinch off the lessons for now, taking him to the back room of her miniature archive.

Unlike the larger chamber, this one was a lot smaller, and instead of books, an assortment of different plants hung from every facet. If there were any walls, they were securely hidden behind the blanket of green vines and exotic flowers and leaves. The witch sifted through her herbs, knowing which plants were safe to touch and which weren’t. She hovered over the mushrooms, plucked two out of a pot, then went over to a patch of wildflowers. Isaac watched as she tossed a handful of apparently randomly plucked herbs into a mortar before turning to him.

“Hand me the bloodroot.” She said. Taking the pouch carefully in her hands and making sure that none touched her skin, she added it to the mortar and crushed it all up with a pestle. Halfway through, she added another plant to the mix, and finished it off. “I read in one of my books that the natives of this land used bloodroot in their medicine. Well, I doubt they knew that mixing a bit of witch spittle totally nullifies the destructive side-effects.” As she said this, she plopped a glob of the green pulp into her mouth, chewed it up for a number of seconds, then spat it back out onto her fingers.

“Who’s that for? Is someone sick?”

“It’s for you, open up.” Isaac shuddered, turning from the pre-chewed glob of plants. “You need it, Isaac. Unless you want to start craving blood tomorrow.” He didn’t know what she meant by that, but it was successful in scaring him into taking the medicine. “Good. That’ll stave off the Changing for some time. Make sure not to swallow it, though.” Isaac scrunched up his face once the bitter taste hit his tongue. He spit it back out just as quick as it went in.

“Yuck. That’s the nastiest thing to ever to enter my mouth.”

“Well, medicine isn’t meant to taste good, it’s meant to make you feel good. And come a few days from now you’re going to feel a lot better than you probably would have. Now come, there’s some more things I’d like you to see. It’s about time you got in touch with your witch heritage.”