"Hello Eight." That was when I realised it was a dream.
I sat up slowly in my bed, moving carefully so as to not hit my head on the low-hanging ledge above my bed. This room is barely large enough for me to stand in, and by next year, I'll have grown out of it entirely. It was easy enough to shove me in this cupboard when I was a baby, but now I'm fourteen, even my parents won't be able to ignore it. Or maybe they will. I wouldn't be all that surprised.
For the first few years, I managed to stretch the room out a bit as I grew, pushing the walls outward and extending the ceiling. But even as the very dimensions of the house shifted, my parents looked away, or attributed the happenings to my older brother. They have always had a doting love of Siete.
I guess I'm lucky that I'm alive at all. Barbaric as it sounds, in Eatra, seventh sons and their families are permitted to kill their first six children, in order to rear a Witch-Blood without the burden of a house full of mouths to feed. So that's what happened to my first six brothers- Uno, Deux, Trey, Quasi and Quin, and Hex. Uno was drowned in a bathtub at age one. Deux, poison in his food at nine months. Trey was probably awarded the most humane death, simply delivered to a government hospital where they administered a lethal injection.
Twins are considered sacred in our society, but they are also the subject of intense scientific research, and their sacred status isn't enough to stop the constant experiments- which require a supply of bodies. As far as I know, Quasi and Quin are still being preserved in a cryogenic chamber in Middle City, the scientific and technological hub of the nation. They could still be alive. Then again, they might be in pieces in a jar of formaldehyde.
I don't know what happened to Hex. Siete told me everything about my other siblings, but even he doesn't know what happened to Hex. My parents won't talk about any of them, on the rare occasions they acknowledge my existence, so I still have no idea what happened to my second last brother. I like to entertain the idea that he's out there somewhere, but most of the time, I just accept the fact that all I have is Siete, who hits me when I disturb him and uses his magic to cause a thousand tiny inconveniences. If only he knew.
I pull my rough woollen sweater over my school uniform, tug a brush through the knots in my messy dark hair, and open the window. My parents won't notice that I've gone, and Siete couldn't care less- I do this every day. Glancing around to make sure nobody can see, I take a step out of the third story window and into the air. Instead of plummeting to the concrete below me, I drift, until I hit the ground and start running. If my parents saw, they'll forget by the time I get home. I just need to get away for now.
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