The Blood Within

It had been the blood of her mother that called her forth. The drops of it screaming one by one with the voices of all the sons and all the daughters that were to come forth from her body but now would never be.

She picked up her father's sword still warm from the spilling of her mother's sword, and heard at the back of her mind, the doors of the temple of Janus open to announce war.

"What are you doing? Get out of here!" yelled his father when he saw she had found his crime, and she turned around, sword in hand.

The house felt cold, in the last lights of the setting sun that colored the white roofs of Athens a soft, pale orange.

The sight of it all offended her. Why was the sun setting in silence? Why were the birds flying to their nests? Why was the world going on when the blood of her mother spilled over the floors of her home?

"You killed her!" she yelled.

Her father stalked at her, reaching out to snatch the sword out of her hand. But the voices from her mother's blood flower up in a cacophony of screams; enraging her, strengthening her.

She lifted the sword in an arc, cutting off that murderous hand.

Her father screamed and stumbled back, holding the bloody stump of his arm.

"You killed her!" she screamed again, feeling as if those three words would throw her over the precipice of madness. She pulled at her hair, wanting to tear it all off in her despair. "You killed! You killed!"

Her father had murdered her own mother, and now in her blood flowed the cries of a victim and the roars of a murderer.

"She dishonored me! She tried to leave me!" yelled her father, and she screamed a wordless scream that echoed in the white stone walls of the house. She screamed to the gods and to the stars and to the heavens.

Her father ran.

She pursued him, and the gods and the heavens and the stars looked down at her, and allowed him no escape from that house of death, and her no exit to turn back.

The house shifted and moved. Doors sliding over the walls, moving into the ceiling and falling down to the floor. Hallways extending and leading into nowhere, while windows opened up into the inside, rooms extended one after the other only to lead into itself.

She kept on pursuing him. Up endless flights of stairs and through hallways collapsing into one another. Getting closer and closer.

She turned a corner, opened a crooked door, and jumped into a hallway that led to a double stairway going up and then splitting into two, leading to the right and to the left.

A god stood there, looking down at her from the point where the staircase split in two.

A god who saw her past and her future.

"Lord Janus," she muttered through gritted teeth, while the iron of the sword grew hotter in her hand as it yearned for more blood.

The faces of the god looked left to the past, and right to the future, and he would not speak to the lady calling to him from the present. He, instead, brought forth the girl she had been in the past, and the old woman that she was to be in the future, so that they may rely his message.

"This is the turning point," said the girl, as small as she had been back then. "Beyond this point, father cannot escape me."

"This is when I change," said the old woman, half of her face covered in blood, and half of her face haggard by grief. "I shall choose between the blood of vengeance or the grief of enduring the pain of my mother's spirit haunting me for the rest of my days."

And for a heartbeat she stopped, and wondered which would weigh heavier on her soul, blood or grief.

But in her body still flowed both bloods of the victim and the victimizer. And she knew that the murderer would kill again. Because if he could kill the love of his heart, he could kill the blood of his blood. He could kill the world.

"Lord Janus, allow me this sin. In the eyes of the heavens and the stars and the gods, let me bear this sin to the grave and let this blood of murder die alone in my own veins!"

The old lady from the future cackled, and her whole face was covered in blood and the grief burned away into rage.

"Then come forth and allow me to be," she laughed, looking at her with her own eyes. "Come and let us bury this sin into our own coffin!"

The god Janus moved away, and she sprinted forward.

Indeed, her father could not escape her beyond that point. And when he went down, he still cried of his honor. But his honor had been washed away by his sin.

And for all the years that followed, she bore that sin and that blood, and travelled through the land, hearing the cries of innocent blood spilled. To deliver justice and to carry into herself the pain of those sins, ensuring they would all be buried with her.