ALASKA

EPISODE TWO

" I will never marry that man, father. You would do yourself good to call on him immediately and cancel the supposed promise you gave him because I would rather die than marry him" Alaska breathed heavily

"You don't understand me Alaska, you know I would never put you in harm's way and this is the only thing I can think of, you are twenty three and if the prophesy is anything correct you will die by the age of twenty four if you are yet to find your true love."

"Then shouldn't we be frantically searching for my true love, father. Instead of marrying me off to a man I barely know and have no feelings for, he is also old if I should so graciously point out."

"You will be marrying his son and not him" Alaska's father pointed out

"Oh great, a younger man I do not love. Don't you think the whole point of the curse was so I can find true love, I mean desperately search for it."

"You are going to marry Edmund's son and that is final. Is that understood, Alaska?"

"Very much so, father "

Alaska watched her father walk out into the gardens and felt sorry for him, she could understand that the curse that was placed on her as a baby was as a result of his refusal to adhere to the demands of the witches of her bloodline and that had cursed the woman to place a curse on her, he had never told her who indeed placed the curse. All she knew was that her mother had died when she was but a baby and she had been raised by a distant cousin of his who left when she was of age to take care of herself. Marriage has been something her father and her had discussed fleetingly over time but he was coming on her stronger now that the fulfillment of her curse was near. She had tried to tell him that there was nothing wrong if she died but her father would not hear of it, she was his only child and he had never let her out of his sight from the day she was born. Alaska had always wanted to see the country and other places apart from her own home but her father had never let her step a foot outside, according to him she was in danger and needed to be protected always.

Alaska could hardly see the danger she was in that she needed protection for but she always took her father's word for it until now maybe, she knew she was near death because she could feel it in her bones and maybe because she had always grown up with the fear of dying one day but she had the strongest urge to want to explore the world because the curse finally took her. She did not want her only memories of the place she was born to be of her own house and her father, she wanted to go out there and feel and do all sort of things because love was out of the equation for her but she knew her father would never hear of it and so she only thought about these things but never told him.

The idea that began brewing in Alaska's mind was one that came days after the confrontation with her father about who she was to marry, she suddenly began to think about running away from everything and making her way into the kingdom she had heard about in stories that no witch was supposed to cross over to for fear of death. Alaska was intrigued by the mere fact that the rulers in the kingdom were so scared of witches that they made that one rule that cannot be crossed. She had tried asking her father why the rule was made and who lived in the kingdom, who ruled it and what business did they have with witches but just as her father did not grace her enquires about her mother and what she looked like, he did not also grace this question with a response.

"Tell me father and I would never ask again, what rules the kingdom beyond us and what is their problem with witches." Alaska asked again

"Alaska, the quarrel between witches and the rulers of that kingdom is as old as the scriptures. Those people are vampyres, oldest and strongest of their line. The one true ones turned by the tree of life itself."

"The tree of life? I have read about it in the scriptures father, tell me more."

"When the gods deemed it fit to create the Vampyres, a group of young men from a particular village were gathered together and made to eat from the tree of life, granting them strength and immortality and the task bestowed upon them was the protection of the village from wild animals that sometimes came into it to kill. Soon they became the wild animals, always thirsty for blood and before the villagers knew what was happening, they had been killed and some even infested with the disease that had taken over them."

"A very sad tale indeed, why do you think they became blood thirsty?"

"I have no idea, Alaska but a particular elder of the village who had hidden away with his two daughters after his wife had been turned ventured out alone to where the tree of life was situated and cried unto the gods for mercy, they heard him and bestowed upon him power and knowledge to slay the vampyres. His two daughters were also bestowed such power and together they drove the vampyres back, it was said that the gods continued to bless the lineage of the man and his daughters with witches strong enough to beat even the strongest vampyres and even though they killed as many as they could, the deal the young men had with the gods was that from their lineage, protectors such as themselves will also rise up. The gods had made that promise to them and could not go back on it."

"And that is what brought about witches and Vampyres and why they hate each other, they have been destined to be enemies from the beginning of time?"

"Yes Alaska, that is why. Now would you not bug me with any more questions?"

"Just one more father, who cursed me?"

"I told you before, a woman did"

"And who was this woman to you?"

"Nobody Alaska, she was nobody" And with that Alaska's father excused himself from her presence.

...….

The morning Alaska had planned to run away she had made sure her father was not going to be around to even see nor stop her, she sat by her dressing table to pen a note asking him not to look for her and that she was gone to explore the world and what it had to offer her before finally succumbing to the cold hands of death. She implored him to leave her be to her own fate and that he had done enough for her but she needed to do things her own way. Alaska apologized to her father about the marriage he had planned for her, she could never go through with it and she told him so.

That morning when the clouds were still high up in the sky and rain was threatening to fall, Alaska slipped out of her father's house, scared but resolved in her decision.