Her sisters laughed at the makeshift hospital ward she assembled.
“Glad to find you so merry, my girls,” said a cheery voice at the door, and the girls turned to welcome a tall, motherly lady with a “Can I help you” look about her, which was truly delightful. She was not elegantly dressed, but a noble-looking woman of forty biological years, and the girls thought the grey cloak and unfashionable bonnet covered the most splendid mother in the world.
“Well, dearies, how have you got on tonight? There was so much to do that I didn’t come home to dinner. Has anyone called, Beth? How is your cold, Meg? Jo, you look tired to death. Come and kiss me, baby.”
While making these maternal enquiries, Mrs March took off her artificial teeth to reveal her well-appointed fangs. Some vampire ladies in the community thought it was just the thing to walk around with their teeth hanging out, but Marmee thought naked fangs were an indecency on a par with naked ankles.
As they gathered about the table, Mrs March said, with a particularly happy face, her fangs gleaming white in the firelight, “I’ve got a treat for you.”
A quick, bright smile went round like a streak of moonshine. Beth clapped her hands, and Jo cried, “A letter! A letter! Three cheers for Father!”
“Yes, a nice long letter. He is well, and thinks he shall get through the cold season better than we feared. He sends all sorts of loving wishes for Christmas, and an especial message to you girls,” said Mrs March.
“I think it was so splendid of Father to go at all when the war has nothing to do with vampires,” said Meg warmly.
The War Between the States was over the moral issue of slavery, which was indeed of little interest to vampires. However, slave quarters were verdant feeding grounds for vampires south of the Mason-Dixon Line, for their inhabitants were often too tired from days of backbreaking, abusive labour to put up a fight, and the slaves who disappeared were often mistakenly assumed to have fled north with the help of abolitionists. Being an ethical vampire with implacable morals, Mr March felt he should do his part to help win the war his kind had unintentionally started by making it seem as though the North was interfering extensively in private Southern business.
“Don’t I wish I could go as a drummer, a vivan—what’s its name? Or a nurse, so I could be near him and help him,” exclaimed Jo, who would rather do anything than work for her awful aunt March.
“When will he come home, Marmee?” asked Beth, with a little quiver in her voice.
“Not for many months, dear. He will stay and do his work faithfully as long as he can, and we won’t ask for him back a minute sooner than he can be spared. Now come and hear the letter.”
They all drew to the fire, Mother in the big chair with Beth at her feet, Meg and Amy perched on either arm of the chair, and Jo leaning on the back, where no one would see any sign of emotion if the letter should happen to be touching.
Very few human letters were written in those hard times that were not touching, especially those which fathers sent home, and this vampire letter was no different. In it little was said of the hardships endured, the dangers faced, or the homesickness conquered. It was a cheerful, hopeful letter, full of the comical lengths Mr March often had to go to in order to avoid sunshine. He’d joined the army as a chaplain and tried very hard to stay inside his tent during daylight hours, but this was not always practical, as war followed no schedule. Only at the end did the writer’s heart overflow with fatherly love and longing for the little vampire girls at home.
“Give them all of my dear love and a kiss. Tell them I think of them by night, pray for them by day, and find my best comfort in their affection at all times. A year seems very long to wait before I see them, but remind them that while we wait we may all work, so that these hard days need not be wasted. I know they will remember all I said to them, that they will be loving children to you, will do their duty faithfully and fight their bosom enemy bravely,” he said, referring to the demon beast that lived inside them all. It was a daily challenge to overcome their vampire natures, but Mr March knew his girls could do it and from afar he urged them to “conquer themselves so beautifully that when I come back to them I may be fonder and prouder than ever of my little vampire women”. Everybody sniffed when they came to that part. Jo wasn’t ashamed of the great bloody tear3 that dropped off the end of her nose and landed in a bright red splatter on her otherwise pristine dress, and Amy never minded the rumpling of her curls as she hid her face on her mother’s shoulder and sobbed out, “I am a selfish girl! But I’ll truly try to be better, so he mayn’t be disappointed in me by-and-by.”
“We all will,” cried Meg. “I think too much of drinking cow and deer blood and wearing beautiful silk gloves, but I won’t any more, if I can help it.”
“I’ll try and be what he loves to call me, ‘a little vampire woman’, and not be rough and wild, but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else,” said Jo, thinking that keeping her temper at home was a much harder task than facing a rebel or two down South.
Beth said nothing, but wiped away tears with the blue army sock and began to knit with all her might, losing no time in doing the duty that lay nearest her, while she resolved in her quiet little soul to be all that Father hoped to find her when the year brought round the happy coming home.
Mrs March broke the silence that followed Jo’s words, by saying in her cheery voice, “Do you remember how you used to play Vilgrim’s Progress 4 when you were young things? Nothing delighted you more than to have me tie my piece bags on your backs for burdens, give you hats and sticks and rolls of paper, and let you travel through the house from the cellar, which was the City of Destruction, up, up, to the housetop, where you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a Celestial City.”
“What fun it was, especially going by the lions, fighting Apollyon, and passing through the valley where the hobgoblins were,” said Jo, for all the challenges that poor Vilgrim, the vampire pilgrim, had to overcome in his quest for heaven greatly resembled a course for the training of vampire defenders.
“I liked the place where the bundles fell off and tumbled downstairs,” said Meg.
“I don’t remember much about it, except that I was afraid of the sunlight that poured into the attic. If I wasn’t too old for such things, I’d rather like to play it over again,” said Amy, who really was too old for childish games despite her persistently youthful appearance.
“We never are too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are playing all the time in one way or another. Our burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness is the guide that leads us through many troubles, mistakes and uncontrollable feeding frenzies to inner peace, which is the true Celestial City. Now, my little vilgrims, suppose you begin again, not in play, but in earnest, and see how far on you can get before Father comes home,” Marmee suggested, concerned now, as always, with the preservation of her daughters’ souls, for it had not been that many years past since vampires were thought to have no soul at all. For centuries, they were considered minions of the devil and were forced to hide in shadow, fearful that any seemingly harmless gathering of people would quickly become an angry, stake-bearing mob. But thanks to the Camp Moldoveneascâ Accords5 that was all in the past.
“Really, Mother? Where are our bundles?” asked Amy, who was a very literal vampire.
“Each
