Forever Young The Beginning (70 page)

She drew in her breath in a sharp
‘oooh’ and tears came to her eyes. “Thank you, Madame Eschmann!
Thank you Monsieur Eschmann!” She curtsied as Anna came to her
then. She took her into her arms and said “I love you, Liri. Don’t
be a stranger. You’ll always have a home with us, both you and
Andre. Never forget that. Since the two of you are leaving though,
you couldn’t have made a better choice than to go with the
Lafayettes.”

Crying a little now, Liri said “I’ll
never forget, Madame.”

“
I’m not Madame, Liri. We
are Anna and Lukas to you.” Liri got down on her knees and the two
little girls came to her with tears in their eyes to say goodbye
too. After a bit, she got up and came to both Anna and Lukas and
hugged them both saying a final goodbye.

Ian and Andre had parted
company with the others at the hotel after he had cautioned Andre
against telling his sister what had happened regarding Aimee. The
others headed for the old house near
Angel’s Care
for Aimee’s imprinting.
Ian and Andre came to Henri and Marie’s suite and unlocked the
door. The five came running when they entered. Ian kissed Alandra
and held her wordlessly. She finally pushed herself back so as to
look him in the eyes and said “Ian, what’s the matter?” He said
“Oh, it was a really long night and I guess I’m just feeling it
now. Everyone is fine though. It went well.” He said as he reached
out one arm to include Celeste and Louis, and the other to include
Mustafa.

Andre then left with Liridona to give
Ian a chance to talk to the others. Ian turned to them and related
a condensed version what had transpired. When he told them about
Aimee, their eyes widened in disbelief. Alandra said “What can be
done then?”

“
We’ll try to make her a
responsible member of our family. She deserves that at least.” He
then sat and put his head in his hands. “How could anyone do that
to a child? What chance has she at all but for us?” As the harsh
reality of it washed over him again, the two women saw him hang his
head in sorrow, a look of complete defeat in his eyes. Louis and
Mustafa were stunned, but sympathetic at the emotion which had
overcome Ian. Within the hour though, they were all in a carriage
heading toward the same old house where Andre had gone through his
imprinting.

***

Marie had bought a new copper tub and
had brought it to the old house and set it up out in the back yard
in the shade. A fire was built under it and the water heated to
just the right temperature. It was child’s play for two vampires to
then lift the tub off of the fire and set it upon four stones.
Marie, Sophia, Celeste, and Alandra bathed Aimee and burnt her
grimy clothing. They dressed her then, selecting a dress from
several that Marie had bought, and brought her around to the front
porch where the men were gathered. They proudly presented her to
the group as a flaxen-haired beauty with deep blue eyes and a rosy
complexion. She was wearing a brand new navy blue dress, trimmed
with a white collar and broad white sash. With it were white shoes,
white hose, and long white gloves, with a broad-brimmed white hat
that had a long white ribbon hanging down from its back.

The men all stood there, mouths agape
at the sight of her. Ian gave a big smile and came to her and said
“Aimee, you’re a vision of beauty. Look Henri! Look everyone! Look
at our pretty Aimee!” Little Aimee smiled radiantly and turned
about so that everyone there could see her new clothing. Then she
ran to Ian and leaped up into his arms, kissing him.

Her imprinting was relentless. No
adult vampire ever got such intensive training. She never got an
unsupervised moment or a break in her training. It soon became
apparent that she would imprint as one who needed sleep. That took
every one of them by surprise. The imprinting process seemed to be
incorporating sleep as a part of her new makeup since she was at an
age where she needed a lot of sleep. The group discussed that while
she was sleeping and decided that while unheard of in vampires, it
was a good thing for her not to be awake at all hours of the night,
thinking about the realities of being a child forever. In fact as
Marie pointed out, it would help keep their home routine more like
normal. She was right. Aimee’s regular sleep patterns came to be
counted as a blessing. She was allowed to sleep whenever she felt
like it. Marie and the others kept after her to control the glow of
her eyes. When speaking to Aimee about that facet of her training,
Marie began to refer to that universal vampire trait as her
eye-lights.

When she grew faint and hurt from the
changes happening within her body, she sometimes would cry from the
pain. There was always someone there to hold her, soothe her, and
give her nourishment. If Ian was there, he’d do it. If not, any one
of the other vampires would hold her and rock her until it passed.
The humans were not allowed to do it for fear of her making a
violent move in response to the pain and hurting one of them. Aimee
was encouraged by the others as to how brave she was and all of
them telling her how hard it had been when they had imprinted. She
had constant moral support and they were all a bit surprised at how
resilient she was. Never did she grow angry or discouraged but
likely that was only because of all of the love, support, and
encouragement there at all times of the day or night.

They drilled her endlessly using the
exercise of tossing eggs back and forth until she could catch and
toss them with perfect control. When she mastered that she would
giggle as they would do it faster and faster. She developed a
perfectly controlled sense of touch. Mentored constantly she was
admonished to never ever give in to the least impulse when in the
company of humans and especially when she would get to accompany
the others out in public.

Given a toothbrush on the first day
she was exhaustively drilled on the proper technique of brushing
one’s teeth. Like many she had never even seen one before. Marie
and Sophia were relentless in making her repeatedly brush her teeth
with salt and water. When the two women finally pronounced her to
have a clean mouth, she was given lilac blossoms to eat. There were
lots of the bushes around the old house and they were blooming. She
had to consume two or three handfuls of them daily and the bushes
were stripped after her imprinting was done to preserve dried
blossoms for her to use all year long.

Loving everyone there, she dreaded the
thought of even disappointing one of them for the least infraction.
Recalling only too well how she had lived before, she’d taken it to
heart when they had told her on more than one occasion that her
perfection was the key to her staying with them forever. It was
unfair, but the consequence of a single careless act in public
could be catastrophic, so it had to be done for her sake as well as
for the sake of all of them.

It was revealed to her that she would
be killed if certain of their kind knew that she existed. She had
done so well on her blood fast, that she got to where she could do
five days without blood and no one but Ian could do
that.

Finally she was told that she would
never grow bigger but would always be their special little girl.
Ian was the one who was picked to tell her that. She sat in silence
after hearing that and it broke Ian’s’ heart to see her reaction.
He hid his feelings with a great effort even as the others came to
her and began to tell her how glad they were to have such a special
little girl as her because they could never have children of their
own. They all told her that they were so very thankful that she had
come to live with them and to fill the emptiness in their lives. In
large part, this was very true. She began to feel like a valued and
special member of this family and was assured that her status would
never change, and that she was unique in the world because none of
them had ever even seen a child who was a vampire.

After she was reassured, Ian then took
her and sat her in the midst of them all and knelt in front of her,
taking her beautiful face between his hands. “Aimee, I want to show
you something that you can do that is very special. It is one of
the things that humans can’t do. It will hurt a little bit, and
then the hurt will go away really fast, like it was never there. He
then showed her his dagger and said “Aimee, do you trust me? Do you
trust us?”

“
Yes Ian. Show me.” He took
the tip of the dagger and asked for her hand. He turned it to where
the inner part of her forearm was exposed and delicately made a
small cut about an inch long. She squinted and distorted her
features somewhat, but didn’t make a sound.

“
That was very brave, Aimee.
Now watch what happens.”

He took a towel handed to him by Marie
and wiped the blood away and the wound closed up right before their
eyes. Aimee’s eyes widened and she broke out in a radiant smile.
Her beautiful eyes swung up to lock with his. “Oh, it’s gone, Ian!
Look, it’s gone!”

“
That’s how we heal if
wounded. Humans take days to heal from a thing like that, and it
leaves a scar forever. See how special you are? Now let Marie show
you something else that doesn’t hurt. It is special
too.”

Marie took her to a window on the back
porch and told her to look at her reflection. Her wavy flaxen hair
cascaded alongside her angelic face, framing it beautifully. Marie
stepped close to her and took a length of it on one side of her
face, cutting off enough so that it was noticeable. Aimee turned to
her with a question on her face.

Handing Aimee a flask she said “Drink
now and watch what happens to your hair.”

Aimee drank and turned to face her
reflection in the window. Her scalp tingled in the area where her
hair had been cut and she sucked in her breath in surprise as she
saw that particular place where her hair had been cut growing back
to its’ former length before her very eyes.

In minutes she turned to everyone and
said “Why, it’s grown back already!” She held her hair out from her
head and said “Look everyone, it grew back!”

“
Yes, Aimee, our hair will
always grow back to the length it was when we
imprinted
. We could shave it all off
and you could regrow it in minutes.”

She put both hands to her cheeks and
her eyes widened as she suddenly smiled. “Oohhh! That is sooo
special!”

She had developed a tolerance to
sunlight for short periods, not exceeding an hour at best. It was
concluded that it may have been because her imprinting time was
five weeks instead of three. Being taken on runs in the woods she
was told that after they got to places where no humans were around,
she could exercise her vampire powers. Loving it when she could
ride on Ian’s back in Alandra’s sling, she would shriek or giggle
uncontrollably when he would leap into or out of a tree. She
absolutely loved the time spent that way and was perfectly content
to be a perfect little lady at all other times.

Being allowed to be the child she
truly was worked like a safety valve of sorts, allowing any built
up anxieties or frustrations to be released. Publicly she moved
about as a tiny adult, never skipping or jumping out of a chair or
anything that children normally do. After her imprinting was done,
Alandra, Marie, Sophia, and Celeste took her to Paris in her new
navy blue dress to visit Caryn. Marie said “Now Aimee, we shall see
if you can pass this test, and remember now, always control your
eye lights.”

They were shown into Caryn’s busy
office. She greeted them all by name and when she was told that she
was to meet a new family member, Aimee was brought out from behind
Alandra, and was introduced. Caryn stood mouth agape, staring at
the angelic vision standing before her. “Oh my, Aimee! Did anyone
ever tell you how pretty you are?”

She curtsied and smiling sweetly she
said “Thank you, Madame Rochelle. You are too kind.”

Caryn turned to the others and put her
hands on her cheeks and exclaimed with a broad smile “What an
enchanting and lovely child! And such a well-bred little lady too!
I must beg you Marie; may I have her do some modeling for me? Oh,
please do say yes!”

Marie looked at the others who all
smiled broadly, nodding. “Yes, you may.” Then looking directly into
Aimee’s eyes she said “But only if one of us is with her.” Then
when no one was looking at Marie, she pointed two fingers to her
eyes, warning Aimee not to let her eyes glow.

“
Splendid! Magnificent! Oh
I’m showing some children’s clothing tomorrow. It is a private
showing. May I get measurements for clothing for her
now?”

“
Yes.”

“
Oh, wonderful! Just
wonderful! Thank you so much Marie!” Walking out to the work floor,
she picked up a servants summoning bell and rang it repeatedly.
Soon the entire shop was busy making seven different outfits which
would be finished before the next day. Caryn begged Aimee to let
her have her sun glasses for the afternoon. She dispatched a
seamstress to a nearby jeweler to have a gold chain fitted to the
ends of the ear pieces so that they could hang fashionably from her
neck or be worn when she modeled.

The next day, four wealthy clients
came to view children’s clothing. There were sounds of ‘Oooh’ and
‘Aaah’ when Aimee would come out with her sun glasses on and then
take them off and let them just hang around her neck. She did that
while modeling four of the seven outfits. She would always smile
sweetly and curtsy to the small group after each showing and would
then walk back to the curtain and turn and wave prettily with
another smile before going back behind it to change into another
outfit.