Little Vampire Women. Lynn Messina

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      “Where’s the use of looking nice, when no one sees me but those cross midgets, and no one cares whether I’m pretty or not?” she muttered, shutting her drawer with a jerk as she thought of Mrs King and her family. “I shall have to toil and moil all my days, with only little bits of fun now and then because I’m poor and can’t enjoy my life as other girls do. It’s a shame!”

“Well, that’s just the way it is, so don’t let us grumble but shoulder our bundles and trudge along as cheerfully as Marmee does. I’m sure Aunt March is a regular Old Man of the Sea¹⁰ to me, but I suppose when I’ve learned to carry her without complaining, she will tumble off, or get so light that I shan’t mind her,” said Jo, whose resolute speech didn’t match her dejected attitude. She had been so despondent that she didn’t try to marshal the girls into their usual sunset training session of karate, calisthenics and boxing, with which they complied with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

      Jo happened to suit Aunt March, who was lame and needed an active person to protect her. The childless old lady had offered to adopt one of the girls when the troubles came, and was much offended because her offer was declined. Other friends told the Marches that they had lost all chance of being remembered in the rich old vampire’s will, but the unworldly Marches only said…

      “We can’t give up our girls for a dozen fortunes. Rich or poor, we will keep together and be happy in one another.”

      As well, they knew Aunt March was a tough old bird who had been around for more than four hundred years and would likely be around for another four hundred. Their chances for inheritance were already decidedly slim.

      The Marches, in their fondness for family over fortune, were not that unusual amongst their contemporaries. Vampire affection, though not as heartwarmingly sentimental as human affection, was deep and sincere. Parents sired their children and kept them close until they reached their majority at fifty chronological years, at which point they could sire a lifemate and settle down. Freshly sired children usually followed.

      Mr and Mrs March had themselves followed that path, with Mr March siring Mrs March and then a century later siring the four sisters, whom he found in an orphanage about to be separated by an unfeeling proprietress. Marmee’s kind heart went out to the benighted foursome and she knew upon seeing them that they were meant to be hers. Her husband complied with her request, feeling too that these unfortunate children needed a strong hand and a stronger soul to lead them, and twenty-four hours later, the giddy new mother stood over the four little graves from which her newborn daughters would emerge. It was the happiest day of her life.

      Since then, the Marches had come down in the world, for Mr March had lost his property in trying to help an unfortunate friend. The friend turned out to be a slayer who stole Mr March’s money through an elaborate counterfeit stock scheme.

      That Mr March allowed himself to be swindled out of ownership of his ancestral home disgusted Aunt March, who urged him to hunt down the cowardly slayer and consume him in a fiery fit of rage. Her nephew resisted her counsel, for he believed strongly in his humanitarian principles and was happier to let the villain live than to compromise himself.

His stubbornness made his aunt so angry she refused to speak to them for a time, but when her husband was beheaded by one of his own servants, she was forced to re-evaluate her connections and decided the only associates she could trust were family. It was beyond shocking that Uncle March, the premier vampire defender in New England, was slain in his very own home. Well schooled in stealth and an experienced practitioner of the scientifical method, he should never have fallen for the cartoonish pratfalls of the Buffoonish Butler Hoax,¹¹ a well-known ruse in which a deadly opponent infiltrates a household by pretending to be a harmless servant who is for ever tripping over the silver and spilling the china.

      Terrified, Aunt March immediately dismissed the entire staff (after, of course, they removed her husband’s gooey remains) and recruited her niece Jo, who hoped one day to be a defender, to look after her. The Concord police enquiry into the unfortunate affair concluded that the slayer had worked alone. But Jo’s aunt did not accept the findings because she assumed that the team of human investigators was part of the conspiracy. She therefore remained convinced that a worldwide cabal watched her daily, waiting for its moment to attack.

      Being her aunt’s protectress wasn’t all Jo had hoped it would be, for the job provided little opportunity for her to use, let alone hone, her defender skills, but she accepted the place since nothing better appeared. The work was tedious and dull, but it gave her full access to the large training study, which had been left to dust and spiders since Uncle March’s decapitation. Jo remembered the fierce old gentleman who used to let her play with his dart gun and told her thrilling stories of do-or-die hunts. He nurtured her love of adventure but stopped short of teaching her the mechanisms and techniques of modern-day slayer hunting, for he thought it a most unsuitable profession for any woman, especially his niece. The dim, dusty room, with its potions cabinet, investigative instruments, strategical maps and, best of all, the wilderness of books in which she could now wander where she liked, made the study a region of bliss to her.

      The moment Aunt March took her nap, Jo hurried to this well-equipped place, and curling herself up in the easy chair, studied the many tactical guides and first-person accounts of successful apprehensions of vicious slayers. But, like all happiness, it did not last long, for as sure as she had just reached the heart of the story, the pivotal part of a stratagem, or the most perilous adventure of her defender, a shrill voice called, “Josy-phine! Josy-phine!” and she had to leave her paradise to secure the perimeter, check the points of entry, or wind yarn.

      Jo’s ambition was to do something very splendid. What it was, she had no idea as yet, but left it for time to tell her, and meanwhile, found her greatest affliction in the fact that she couldn’t read, run and ride as much as she liked. A quick temper, sharp tongue and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic. But the training she received at Aunt March’s was just what she needed, and the thought that she was doing something to support herself made her happy in spite of the perpetual “Josy-phine!”

¹⁰ A reference to the old man from the story “Sinbad the Sailor” in The Thousand and One Nights, which some critics argue is coded text about systemic vampire oppression by citing the fact that the Persian king killed his bride every morning as proof that the virgins were vampires. In referencing it here, Jo could be referencing her own systemic oppression.

¹¹ Also known as the Silly Servant Stratagem and the Volatile Valet Ploy.

       Chapter Five

       BEING NEIGHBOURLY

      “What in the world are you going to do now, Jo?” asked Meg one snowy evening, as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other.

      “Going to hunt vampire slayers,” answered Jo.

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