august 1572

HER FEET HIT the ground with a thud as Monsieur Dubois practically dumped her off of his shoulder like a bale of hay. The impact sent a shock up through her ankles, fizzling out before it reached her hips. She whirled her head up, daring to stare right into the stranger's eyes and shoot him a deadly glare.

"Ah, je regrette," he sneered, malice rolling off the words like a sleigh down a snowy hill. The twelve-year-old huffed. He does not seem sorry at all, she growled inwardly. How rude.

The kidnapped kids were shoved towards a door and the woman who had escorted them flashed her teeth in the firelight. "Bonne chance," she wished them luck. The torch she held cast unsettling shadows across her wrinkled face, making her eyes look darker, her features sharper, her teeth longer—

But then the door swung open and the kids were corraled into the next room that was littered with torches leaning against the walls, looking as if they were floating. It was a much larger space than they'd previously been in, and Jacqueline wondered how it was possible for such a large place to exist underground without caving in. She tore her eyes away from the light to investigate the ceiling, trying to see if she could figure out just how they managed to excavate this much airspace.

The young girl, leading the pack of scared and sleep-deprived Protestant children, took a step forward in wonder as if to get a better view of this incredible anomaly when she bumped into something that let out a small yelp of protest.

No, not a thing, it was someone.

The person she bumped into turned around, revealing a haggard-looking boy whose cheeks were gaunt and eyes tired. "They're going to kill us," he spoke in accented English.

She didn't understand the strange syllables. "Comment?" She asked in her native language.

But he refused to say it again, his eyes widening when he looked past her shoulder at the number of guards surrounding the group. Without another word, he ducked his head and turned around. Even when she tapped him on the shoulder, it was like he didn't feel it.

"Fall into line," the woman barked, her voice surprisingly threatening at such an old age. "Everyone, now."

Jacqueline remained behind the boy, realizing he was at the end of a line that, when she peered around him, extended the length of the room, leading up to a desk with a man who asked to see the wrists of each child. She swung her gaze from side to side, seeing about ten more lines identical to hers, just as long, if not longer...

Oh, mon Dieu, she gasped inwardly, there are hundreds of them.

She'd never seen this many kids in one place, never in her whole life. Living in the rural villages of France meant that she wasn't accustomed to seeing people her own age. It was almost like she didn't know what to say to them.

Turning around to ask a question, she stopped as soon as she heard Dubois say something in a hushed tone, just loud enough for her to catch it.

"The boss told us about the Catholics' plans for tonight, he said it would be like a gold mine with all these kids," Dubois muttered to the woman who was nodding, a sickly satisfied smile curling her lips in a venomous expression.

Another guard huffed and crossed his arms. "You sound like you're surprised, Jacques," he grunted. "The boss is always right."

Jacqueline's mind was swimming with those words as she slowly turned around, trying to draw attention to herself. She shivered despite the heat coming from the torches along the walls. This was more than a mere abduction, more than just a stray case of a few kids being taken from their homes.

This was murder. Her parents were dead.

My parents are dead. I have no one, she thought, the realization hitting her like a ton of bricks, forcing her to take a step back. Holding a hand to her stomach, she waited for her knees to give out and her gag reflex to kick in, emptying her stomach on the floor, but it never came. She was forced to inch forward in the line, stepping closer and closer to her fate, whatever it would reveal itself to be.

Time passed slower than it ever had before during that time. Hundreds of kids shuffled forward, their eyes dark and their heads hanging low. Sometimes, one or two of them would try to make a run for the doors, but they were always met with a harsh club to the face, rendering them unconscious, or dead, but no one could tell. They were...disposed of, either way, carried out of the room.

Her mouth was dry, her thirst nearly making her want to scream with frustration. But she knew what would happen if she spoke up. She had an inkling that she'd gotten away with more than enough already. There was no use in testing the waters. So she kept her mouth shut, unsure of when she would use her voice again. She supposed it didn't matter now, though. She would do what she had to in order to survive.

The boy in front of her whimpered as the distance between him and the table at the front of the line decreased. She thought she heard sniffling, but it could have been anyone. Jacqueline, taught to be kind and nurturing to all people, almost reached out to comfort the boy, but when she caught Dubois staring at her with a hard glare, she retracted her hand.

Before long, there was no one standing between Jacqueline and the man at the table. "Hold out your wrist," he ordered, voice hard as nails. When she stood there and didn't move, staring at the sharp tools on the space in front of her, she felt her arm being forced forward, clasped tightly in the man's grip. She gasped as he dragged her forward, reaching down to grab a tool that looked like...a mix between a pen and a scalpel.

She closed her eyes as soon as she saw him begin to move it closer and closer to her forearm. It was only a matter of seconds before she would feel the tool cutting into her skin and drawing blood.

When it came, the pain was searing, cutting deep into her forearm, carving out symbols. She didn't want to look at it; didn't want to accept the fact that this man, this doctor or whatever he wanted to call himself, had mutilated her forever.

She was escorted from the room into another corridor that was lined with dirt and looked as though it would collapse with any minor movements of the earth above. This time, a woman was beside her. Younger than the scary-looking one from before, and with kinder eyes. Jacqueline felt her hope flicker back to life, but she kept it from growing too large. She couldn't afford to be disappointed again.

"Fifty-three," she spoke, "your first lessons will be in language. You will spend three hours every day studying the languages that your superiors deem necessary, and then you will take your dose of the elixir and—"

"Comment?" Jacqueline interrupted, trailing behind her slightly. "My name is—"

The woman looked sharply down at her and shook her head. "Fifty-three," she said again, pointing in the direction of her forearm. "You have no name here. It only complicates things. You will be addressed by your identification number."

Identification number? She looked down at her arm and her heart dropped into her stomach as she read the horrific artwork the man had carved into her arm. 53 was shown in bloody numbers on her skin, disrupting the clean, pale color that had previously been there. She shuddered, counting the pulses that pounded through her arm as if it had its own heartbeat.

Her companion nodded. "See?" She said. "You are fifty-three, and the ones after you are fifty-four, fifty-five, all the way up until we run out of arms to tattoo."

Jacqueline ducked her head, shuffling to wherever the woman would lead her. "Why is this happening to me?" She dared to ask. "And who are you?"

The woman stopped in the middle of the hallway and rested her hands on Jacqueline's shoulders. "My name is Cécile Boucher. I am your...supervisor. Do not stray from your orders and you will survive here. Do you understand?"

She paused for a moment before finally nodding. "Why..."

But Cécile shook her head again. "I don't have the authority to disclose that information, 53. Follow me to your chambers, and you will receive your first dose of the elixir." She turned on her heel and began walking away into the darkness, leaving the twelve-year-old no choice but to follow.

The room she came to was small and dank, dark except for a small oil lamp that burned quietly in the corner. There was a small pile of threadbare blankets on the dirt floor that she assumed was supposed to be her bed. She turned around and saw Cécile reach into her pocket, taking out a small vial of colorless liquid.

She pointed. "That's the...elixir?" Her words were shaky. She'd heard the word before, but only in fairy tales that her mother would tell her before bed.

Cécile nodded. "From Catherine de Medici's chambers herself. Drink all of it," she instructed, holding out the vial for her to take. "Then...I would suggest laying down right after. The effects can be quite...drastic." She tugged her lips up in a seemingly kind smile, and held it there until Jacqueline took the vial from her hands, popping the cork off the top.

The girl took a deep breath and tipped the vial into her mouth, an unbelievably bitter liquid hitting her senses and making her gag. She could hardly cough it down. She frowned and choked out, "It doesn't taste good, it's...revoltant."

Her strange new acquaintance shrugged. "Well, that's to be expected. Immortality isn't supposed to be delicieux, otherwise everyone would be doing it." She took the empty vial back from her and ushered her towards the meager pile of blankets on the floor. "The elixir of life is only meant for the strongest of us. You may be one of them."

"Immortality?" Jacqueline asked, but her mouth could form the word correctly. It sounded like slurred, meaningless syllables when she heard it.

Cécile flashed another kind smile. "You'd better lay down, now. Someone will be here when you wake up."

The dirt dug into her back as her eyelids blinked shut and the world disappeared from view.

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ahh thanks for reading! the elixir of life is how they kept everyone alive for so long, yeah? mmmhm, i'm kind of proud of those ideas that i've been coming up with.

anyway, that's it for this chapter, thanks for sticking around! see you on friday for chapter five!

xoxo lola

published on: february 15, 2019