After she witnessed her mother’s death with her own eyes, the man’s daughter never cried, smiled, or talked again. The man expanded his house, built a room deep inside the new compound, and locked his expressionless and mute daughter away. Servants were hired to make meals, clean, and take care of his daughter. They were told his wife had suddenly died from a terrible sickness, which his daughter had inherited and had rendered her mute.
And just as he had before, in the evenings when all the servants had left for the day, he took his son to his daughter’s room. The daughter no longer screamed or even stirred as her brother wounded her and drank her blood. All she did was stare at him with her expressionless, pale face.
The man kept a close eye on his daughter and son. The more blood his son drank, the purer the gold and the greater the quantity he was able to produce. And as his son’s body grew bigger, he consumed more blood. But the man knew that he couldn’t leave his son alone with his daughter, for he might accidentally drink her blood until she died. The man needed the son, and the son needed his sister to stay alive. This was why the man kept his son from going into his daughter’s room alone and whenever they went into his daughter’s room together, he meticulously monitored her condition and the amount of blood the son drank.
The man’s business did extremely well, and his daughter, with her pale face, continued to be quietly locked away in a dark room.
The children grew. The man’s daughter had clear skin and large, dark eyes on her pale face, sparkling if expressionless, her black hair tumbling like a waterfall down her back. She had grown into a beautiful girl, but it was an impassive, cold, and somewhat sickly beauty. His daughter existed in a completely different way than ordinary girls her age, and thus, like a dark forest beneath the moonlight, her lack of emotion and secretive mystery exuded a certain seductive charm.
Avoiding his father’s watchful gaze, the son began to enter his sister’s room on his own.
This time, it wasn’t to drink his sister’s blood.
By then, the man was crossing oceans and trekking mountains to buy and sell his wares, so great a trader he had become. He no longer had to wound his son’s body or bear the sight of him sucking his daughter’s blood. At first his reasons for going to faraway lands was to take care of his business, but when the money beget by the gold allowed him to take in the exotic scenery, indulge in exotic foods and drinks, and partake in the even more exotic women, he spent less and less time at home as his business prospered. And there were more nights than not when in the man’s large and dark house, his son and daughter were left all alone.
When the man came back one day, his daughter was pregnant.
The sight of his daughter heavy with child felt like a blow to the head, which soon turned into an all-consuming anger. The screaming and flailing of her father elicited no response from his daughter, who only gazed at him without expression. His daughter’s apathy enraged the man even more. Just as he raised his hand to strike her, his son, standing next to him, grabbed the man’s wrist.
Seeing his pale and passive daughter together with his son, who now stood between them, sparked a suspicion in his mind that he immediately refused to acknowledge consciously. Instead, he stormed out of his daughter’s room.
Sitting in his study, the man calmed himself and tried to think as dispassionately as possible. It was too late to abort the child. If there was one false move and something happened to his daughter, it would be catastrophic. In this way, he was still thinking of his daughter as no more than food for his son, who in turn was just gold for his purse.
If there was one source of comfort in all of this, it was the fact that his daughter had never been outside the house. She lived a life deep inside a large compound in a small, dark room where no one knew about her. She spoke to no one, and it wasn’t clear if she understood language or the world at all as she survived from day to day.
Even if she had the child, it was impossible to imagine her as a proper mother. The best thing to do would be to send the child away to someplace distant where they would never hear from it again, to people who would take better care of it than his daughter would. That would be the best thing for the child, the man decided on his own.
But the son … What to do with the son?
He had to separate him from his daughter.
The man needed his son. Business was going well now, but who knew what the future would bring? There might come a day when he needed money, and as anyone in business knows, there would never be such a thing as too much money …