Life Eternal

  Anya and I turned down a curved street lined with buildings that looked like tenement houses. The people who passed us on the sidewalk all seemed to be speaking Russian. “It’s across from my hairdresser,” Anya said. “See, there.” She pointed to a weathered brick building streaked with water stains. Over the entrance was a sign in huge Russian print. Anya held the door for me, and I stepped inside. It was a spice shop. The trail of cloves and nutmeg and paprika tickled my nose. Anya said something in Russian to the man behind the counter, who seemed to know her. He smiled as he responded, giving us each a honey stick before letting us through a back door that led to the rest of the building.

  We walked up four flights of stairs until we reached an apartment with an etching of an eye on the door. “This is it,” Anya said, and rang the buzzer. No one answered. Anya rang it again, and tried to peer through the peephole.

  “Maybe she’s out,” I said, cringing as Anya knocked and then held down the buzzer.

  “No, they’re here. They’re always here.”

  Moments later, we heard heavy footsteps in the hall, followed by the clicking sound of dead bolts unlatching. When it swung open, a hairy, middle-aged man wearing an undershirt stood there, appraising us. Anya said something to him in Russian. He looked at me, back at her, and then promptly shut the door.

  “Zinyechka!” I heard him bellow within.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  “We have to wait here for her to come meet us. If she decides to see us, she’ll let us in. If not, we have to go.”

  While we waited, I peered out the tiny window in the staircase. A tall boy my age was wandering down the sidewalk below us, his broad shoulders moving beneath his collared shirt as he stepped into the street. “Dante?” I breathed, and stepped down a stair.

  “What are you looking at?” Anya said.

  I barely heard her as I watched the boy hail a taxi. Just before he ducked inside, he looked up. I pressed myself to the wall. It definitely wasn’t Dante.

  Before Anya could ask me anything, the apartment door opened, and a woman appeared in the entryway. She was thick-boned, with thinning hair and heavy bosom. “Yes?” she said, her voice deep. Her hands were stained a blotchy red. She wiped them on her apron.

  Anya spoke to her in Russian. After she was finished, the woman looked me up and down. “Why have you come to see me?” she said with a thick accent.

  “I’ve been having dreams that I think might be premonitions,” I said softly.

  The woman squinted at me. “Give me your hands.”

  After hesitating, I placed them in hers. She squeezed them as if giving me a massage, her fingers moist and strong. Letting my hands drop, the woman said something to Anya in Russian, and disappeared inside.

  “She said okay,” Anya translated, and together we followed the woman into the apartment.

  The foyer was dark and carpeted, with smudged windows that looked out on a fire escape and a brick wall. It stank of meat. We walked to the back of the apartment, through a maze of little rooms—one with a boy watching television, another with a sewing machine and two mannequins stuck with pins—until we made it to the dining room.

  Zinya supported her weight on the back of a chair. “Will cost forty dollars. Okay?”

  Anya dropped her bag on the floor, and with wild gesticulations she spouted a torrent of Russian words, which came out so quickly, I was surprised even Zinya could understand them. After haggling, Zinya finally turned to me and said “Twenty.”

  I nodded.

  A fly buzzed around the windows. Without warning, Zinya picked up a swatter and killed it. “Only one at a time,” she continued, as it slid down the glass, leaving a brown streak.

  “You go,” Anya said, examining a set of porcelain figurines with distaste. When I hesitated, she repeated, “Go on.”

  I followed Zinya into the kitchen, which had a dingy linoleum floor and a ceiling fan. “Wash your hands,” she said, sitting at a round table.

  By the sink were a tub of beets soaking in water, and a coagulated bar of soap. I turned on the faucet. Above it hung a black-and-white photograph of a rigid old couple.

  “I tell you three things,” Zinya said from behind me. “One about past. One about present. One about future. But nothing more. Past, present, and future, they are always connected.” She waved a hand. “Always. You understand?”

  I didn’t actually understand, but nodded anyway. What else was I supposed to do?

  “Now choose a beet,” she said, motioning to the tub.

  Fruit flies circled around it. I waved them away, and after some hesitation, plunged my hand into the tepid water and selected a small, irregular bulb. It was warm, as if it had just been boiled. I brought it to the table, where there was a box of parchment paper and a bowl. Zinya pushed the bowl toward me. “Now peel.”

  I stared at the dirty beet in my hand, confused. I didn’t even have a knife. “I’m supposed to peel this?”

  She nodded as if it were completely natural.

  “Right.” I turned the beet in my palm, trying to find a good place to start.

  It was a messy ordeal, the juice dripping down my arms as I inexpertly took off huge hunks of beet skin and tossed them into a bowl until I was left with the slippery, round interior.

  “Good,” Zinya said. “Good.”

  When I was finished, she laid out a piece of paper on the table beneath me. “Squeeze beet over sheet.”

  I did as she said. Dark pink syrup ran down the sides of my palms and dripped onto the paper.

  Pushing my hands away, Zinya picked up the paper and folded it in half, pressing it down with her thick fingers as if she were kneading dough.

  Setting it aside, she had me squeeze the beet over two other pieces of paper. I watched as she worked each sheet, folding them over and over, compressing them with her palm until there were three tight squares on the table in front of me.

  “Past.” She unfolded the first paper. It was colored with a swirled pattern that almost looked like waves. She spread out the creases and turned it around, then grunted and turned it around again, tracing a smeared mark near the bottom of the page.

  Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, she looked up. Her expression was different as she scrutinized me, as if she had seen something in my face that she hadn’t expected. “Past is very dark.”

  I sat back in my chair, unimpressed. It was so vague that it could have applied to anyone.

  She traced a shape in the middle of the stain. “There is woman in boat. You chase her.” Zinya looked to me for confirmation.

  I became alert. “Yes.”

  “You take her weapon, drop it in water. Could not protect herself. She die.”

  I felt so stunned that I couldn’t move. Even in her broken English, Zinya’s words had thrust me back into that hazy night, which was still so crisp in my memory that it could have been real. I felt the water, cool and still against my lips; I saw the fog part as Miss LaBarge swung the shovel down over my head; I felt the splintered wood of its handle as I pulled it from her grasp and dropped it, watching it sink into the black water of the lake. Could Zinya be right? Did Miss LaBarge die because her weapon was taken away? Could I have saved her? Leaning over, I looked at the marks on the paper, trying to see what she saw, but it was nothing but pink swirls to me.

  Zinya rested her fleshy elbows on the table. When she looked up at me, her eyes were wet and somehow understanding. “We can stop if you like.”

  Sitting on my hands, I shook my head. She unfolded the second paper. “Present.”

  It revealed a series of concentric ovals, wobbly and smeared from the folds. She squinted at the page. “Your dreams. They are not future. They are now. Present.”

  A fly buzzed around the bowl on the table. Zinya shooed it away as I processed what she’d said. In my dreams, I wasn’t seeing the future, I was seeing the present. But why? That meant that I never could have saved Miss LaBarge. That regardless of what I saw in my visions,
I was helpless; I couldn’t change them. What was the point?

  Zinya unfolded the third square of paper and flattened it on the table. “Future.”

  The pattern was divided in half by a winding line. One side was completely white; the other was a mess of red dots that were smeared and splattered like blood. When Zinya saw it, her face grew pinched. She didn’t say anything for a long time.

  Finally, I cut in. “What is it?” I said, my voice frantic. “What does it say?”

  “In your dreams, you are searching for something,” she said, following the line traveling down the middle of the page. “If you follow, will end in death.” She covered the clean half of the paper. “And life,” she said, removing her hand.

  My eyes darted across the two halves of the paper. “Death and life? It can’t be both. Which one is it? Which one will it end in?”

  She pointed to the bottom of the page, where the trail forked off to either side. “This is what is written.”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” I said, my chair scraping the floor as I collapsed back, frustrated. “Should I follow the visions or not?”

  “Depends if you want to find what they lead to.”

  “What do you mean? What do they lead to?”

  “Wiping her hands on her apron, she hoisted herself up. “The answer to your soul.”

  I must have looked spooked when we left, because after Anya came out from her reading with Zinya, she stared at me for a long time before leading me outside in silence. “What did she say to you?” she said finally. We were walking back to school, down a brick street lined with tiny storefronts.

  “She knew things that no one could have known,” I said, speaking to myself more than to Anya. “She knew about Miss LaBarge.”

  “I told you she was the real thing.”

  “She knew about my vision,” I murmured to myself. “About the shovel.”

  Anya gave me a puzzled look. “What shovel?”

  I barely even registered her question. “She said my visions were in the present. Which means I’m not seeing the future.”

  “I knew it. Didn’t I tell you that?”

  “She said that if I follow them, I’ll find life and death.”

  Anya froze. “You might die?” she said, so loud that a couple walking in front of us turned around.

  “Shh!” I said, though I wasn’t sure who I was worried would hear me. Down the street was a quiet café. “Come on,” I said, and pulled her behind me.

  Inside it was warm and comfortably vacant, save for a few crouched men reading newspapers to the sound of grinding coffee. At the counter, I ordered a large tea and sat at a table in the back corner while Anya picked out a plate of biscotti.

  “So you might die?” Anya repeated, after sitting down across from me.

  “Zinya said I would meet both life and death. But that the visions will lead to the answer to my soul.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Dante, I thought, my heart skipping as it came to life. She must have meant that the visions will lead to an answer for me and Dante to be together. But did she mean that one of us would meet life and the other, death? “I don’t know. Do you think she meant the life and death part literally? That I would die and live?”

  “She’s a peasant. Everything is literal with her.”

  I traced the rim of my saucer, thinking about the visions. Something within me screamed, Follow them! It was the only thing that made sense: to see where they led me. Otherwise, I would never know. But what if Dante was right? What if they were dangerous?

  “Who’s Dante?” Anya asked, disrupting my thoughts.

  “What?”

  She broke a piece of biscotti in half, the crumbs sticking to the side of her mouth as she nibbled on an end. “You just said, ‘What if Dante was right?’”

  I frowned. I hadn’t realized I was speaking out loud.

  Anya licked the tips of her fingers. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “I—um—no, just friends,” I said, worried that if word got back to my grandfather or any of the Monitors that Dante and I were still together, they would bury him.

  “I like that name,” she said.

  “What do you know about the Royal Victoria Hospital?” I asked, trying to direct the conversation back to Zinya.

  “Dante,” Anya said, letting his name roll off her tongue. “Where do I know that name from?”

  I coughed, choking on my tea, when I realized that she probably knew his name from hearing rumors about what happened last spring at Gottfried.

  Anya stopped chewing. “Oh my god. That’s who you’re dating?”

  I wiped my mouth with a napkin. “I—um—no.”

  “It’s true,” she said in awe. “You still see him. But how? It’s so dangerous here.” When I didn’t say anything, Anya moved her chair closer. “Are the rumors true? Did he really plot to kill the headmistress?”

  Worried my expression would betray my thoughts, I looked down at my biscotti, which I had broken up into crumbs. I hadn’t told anyone what had really happened that night last spring. I’d always liked having secrets, the kind I told my best friends under the covers with a flashlight. It was like I was spilling a part of myself into them, and forever after we were connected. I now understood that real secrets were lonely. They planted themselves inside of you and expanded, until you felt like that was all you were—a lonely little secret, isolated in your experiences. “He didn’t kill the headmistress, but other than that, I can’t talk about it,” I said. “I wish I could.”

  Anya studied me as if reading the true answer on my face, and then sank back in her chair. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Thanks,” I said softly, watching the steam rise from my mug.

  Anya paused for a moment and then clasped her hands on the table. “So what about your visions, then? Should we figure out a way to follow them?”

  “I have to think about it,” I said. Dante’s voice echoed in my head, asking me to promise not to endanger myself. “What if it’s exactly the opposite, and the dreams are actually a warning? What if I’m seeing them to tell me what I should be avoiding?”

  Anya rolled her eyes as she put on her coat. “You dreamed of a bed in the Royal Victoria Hospital. What could be a safer place than that?”

  She had a point. As we stepped out into the street, I turned to her. “Wait. I never even asked what Zinya told you.”

  Anya hesitated, and then began fidgeting with a tassel on her purse. “It’s bad luck to tell someone else your fortune.”

  “But you didn’t say anything about that when I told you mine—” I started to say, but Anya cut me off.

  “I’m not telling you, Renée. It’s bad luck.” She pushed a red wisp of hair away from her face. “Maybe later I’ll change my mind.”

  • • •

  We didn’t make it to the hospital for another week. As classes picked up, Anya and I were too busy with schoolwork to plan anything, and we decided to postpone our trip till the weekend. In the meantime, I waited, keeping my window open each evening, but the days and nights passed without a sign of Dante.

  Before class on Monday I traced my finger around the perimeter of the mark on my back, twisting in front of the mirror to study the way its edges grew pink after a hot shower. I liked to know it was still there, to be reminded that a part of Dante was within me. After getting dressed, I walked two blocks away from campus to the dépanneur, a convenience store, where I picked up a copy of the daily newspaper and scoured the pages, searching for deaths, disappearances, mysterious sightings—anything that might have to do with the Undead. And even though I knew that if Dante had been discovered and buried by the Monitors, it wouldn’t be in any newspaper, it made me feel better just to look.

  A boy held the door for me when I got to Latin. “Thanks,” I murmured, barely looking at him as I took a seat at the far end of the table. Just as I shoved the paper beneath the table, leaving it open to the obituar
ies so I could read when the professor wasn’t looking, I heard a voice behind me.

  “Any news from the outside?”

  Brett pulled out the chair next to me and slung his blazer over the back. From his expression, I knew he was talking about Dante.

  “No,” I said, giving him a sad smile.

  “I haven’t talked to you in a while,” he said, lowering his voice. “How is everything going?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been better.”

  “Yeah. I hear the girls gossiping at dinner. I wouldn’t listen to them, though. People here, they don’t know what it’s like. Most of them have never even met an Undead. Just keep your head down and do what you have to do. Everything else will take care of itself.”

  “Thanks,” I said, appreciating his words more than he knew.

  Monsieur Orneaux, our Latin professor, was already seated at the head of the table, his back upright, his eyes dark and heavy. He was a gaunt man with hollowed cheeks and a rigid expression that rarely changed, regardless of what mood he was in. He seemed to dislike everyone, but held a particularly vehement disdain for women.

  “Latin is a calculated language. A language of strategy, of ancient wars, of pagan gods and sacrifice, and later, of the clergy. It is a language that has always belonged to the afterlife.” He had a way of drawing out each syllable, as if the words had turned sour in his mouth. “And as the language, so its people. The Undead are a miserable lot.”

  I didn’t think I had to pay attention because, unlike last year, I was now practically fluent in Latin. I found myself knowing vocabulary words I had never learned before; conjugating verbs without even having to think. So instead, I glanced down at the newspaper on top of my bag and skimmed an article on the deaths of two tourists in British Columbia.

  The professor interrupted my thoughts. “What do the Undead fear most?”

  As the class fell silent, a shudder crept through my body. All at once I felt cold and sweaty, my heart palpitating against my ribs, its beat quick and irregular. Fear—it was in me, overwhelming me, as if I knew what the professor was talking about.…