Mother of a Monster Pt. 1

Perhaps if I had grown up with a mother, things would have turned out different.  Perhaps my daughter would have never existed…or maybe never turned into what she did.  Perhaps I wouldn't have died by her unwilling hands. I won't ever know now.  My mother died giving birth to me leaving my father to raise me on his own.  To his credit, he never resented me; never blamed me for killing his beloved Arianna.  Father was a fur trapper.  His livelihood was made in the extensive woods behind our small house.  In the local village he was regarded with both admiration for his bravery as well as trepidation for the possible insanity.  He ventured into the dark recesses of the unknown forest and into the larger world beyond their boundaries.  He was different than the rest of them.   I lived for the tales he used to tell me of his travels.

Had he not fallen for my mother he probably would have continued his wanderings.  Instead he married her and settled down to start a family.  Two miscarriages almost destroyed that dream.   Father used to tell me that Mother was so excited when she first felt her baby move inside her and then even more so when she first felt the labor pains.  Unfortunately the birth was long and hard and she died just before they pulled me free of her body.   Something had torn during the process and she bled to death.  

Father, having only brothers, didn't know how to deal with a daughter.  So he treated me like the only thing he knew; a boy, a half wild one at that.  He took me hunting with him once I was old enough to follow and keep up with his pace.  He was so proud when I surpassed him with accuracy with both rifle and pistol.  For my eighth birthday he gave me a pistol of my very own.  I treasured that gun.  

When I turned nine, I was sent to the small girl's school in the village taught by a few of the more prominent wives of the community.  I was to learn the "womanly arts."  I already knew how to cook and sew as those were practical, but I found no joy or patience in the needlework or submissive behavior we were expected to achieve.  I wanted to be outside; I wanted to be out in the woods or on the road.  I wanted to learn what the boys usually did.  

My female education was cut short when my father was thrown from his horse and broke his leg…badly.  He never did walk quite right after that.   At eleven I took sole responsibility of the hunting, skinning and tanning.  Father could no longer traverse the uneven ground of the forest but I could and I was just as good as he was.   

It was only a couple years beyond that when certain changes that happen in any child's lifetime would take place.   Father knew enough that he explained things to me fairly clearly so that I would understand.  He would also request that I spend more time with the other girls.  It wasn't natural for me to be on my own like I had been.  As I had before in my unwilling tutelage, this "girl time" was very boring.  Most of them spoke of nothing other than the boys and/or men that they found attractive.  

I don't know what was different about me, but none of the boys or men in our village caught my eye and none of them paid any attention to me.  Most resented my superior skills in what they were supposed to excel at.  The few I had encountered outside my community didn't strike my fancy either even as I grew older.   Nor did any of the girls garner my attraction.  I was...unusual; an outsider.  I yearned for a world beyond that which I lived in.