Imperiata and Other Stories

  I used to wonder if I have a set number of chances, and if one of these leaps will be my last. I no longer worry. I have died innumerable times, with no lasting harm, and I will not know when is my last in any case. There is little point worrying.

  In this life, I find my companion again, a few months after I arrive, awaiting me in a desert. This time, before I can attack her, she says, “Don’t be a fool, let me talk a moment.”

  We stand in a dry eroded gully, strewn with rocks, marked by the scouring of long-gone floods. We are alone. I can hear the bleating of sheep in the distance.

  I bend and pick up a sharp-edged rock, and hurl it at her. It strikes her face hard enough that she falls to her knees and blood wells through broken skin. I pick up another rock, and walk towards her.

  “Wait,” she says.

  I smash the rock into the side of her head, and try to crush her skull. She is harder to kill than a normal woman. I know this from past experience. Her bones are thicker, harder to crush. She is stronger, too. I batter her face, trying to stave it in. She bleeds from her nose and ears. The skin of her face is bloody mush. She still speaks through torn lips.

  “Wait,” she says. “I beg you.”

  I hit her again and again. Whatever she’s trying to tell me isn’t worth the danger of hearing. Not when she has hunted me like this, for as long as I can remember.

  In time she is still.

  I leave her there, and live my life. Sometimes I wonder what it is she wanted to say.

  *

  In another place, in another time, she finds me again, almost as soon as I arrive. I have the impression of mud bricks and white sunlight and the noise of a crowd nearby. Then she comes around a corner holding a bow, and says, “Listen to me.”

  I take a step towards her.

  “Don’t,” she says.

  “Stop following me,” I say.

  “I am sorry,” she says. “I must.”

  I take another step.

  “Stop,” she says. “I will not let you get close enough to harm me.”

  I believe her, but take a step, hoping she will misjudge the distance between us.

  “At least listen while you do that,” she says. “I am trying to tell you something important. I have been trying to tell you for centuries.”

  I am a little curious at that, and stop. It is a trick. It has to be a trick.

  “So talk,” I say, and leap forward.

  She shoots me twice, because she is a warrior and not a fool. Both arrows hit something vital, my chest becomes tight and full. There is silence in my ears. My heart has stopped.

  She looked regretful as she shot me, but she did it anyway. It is what I had expected.

  I live long enough on the ground to see her come over, and kneel, and touch my face and say, “You stubborn fool, why will you not listen?”

  Whatever else she says is lost. I move to my next life.

  *

  She puts more thought into the next trap. I am somewhere medieval, there are men who speak Greek, with linked-metal amour and long hair. She has a group of them, and they all have lances and bows. I am in a wide open grassland. In the far distance are trees and what might be farmland. Here there is nothing, an open plain, nowhere to run.

  It worries me that now, apparently, she can determine where I am to arrive and wait for me there. It worries me more that perhaps she brought me to this place, in some way.

  Her horsemen spread out and watch me. One rides a little forward, and carefully aims his bow. I watch. I am hungry, and tired and weak. There is very little I can do.

  The horseman shoots me in the leg.

  It hurts. I fall, and roll to the side, but nothing more happens. I sit up and they still do not attack. It seems they wish only to slow me down.

  I look at the wound, and decide to leave it alone. The arrow shaft is through the meat of my thigh. It hurts, but will probably not kill me. I look at the horseman and wonder what he thinks. If he just saw a man fall from the sky, or rise from the ground, or whatever it is we do when we appear. I wonder if he thinks he is in the presence of holiness or witchcraft, or simply that it is a mistake of his eyes.

  My companion comes forward a little. Far enough we can talk easily, still too far for me to run to attack with an arrow in my leg. She holds a bow across her lap, an arrow ready, in a comfortable, worrying way.

  “Will you listen yet?” she calls.

  “All right,” I say, resigned, “Go on.”

  “Use neither Greek, Turkish, nor Arabic,” she says. “There is no need for these men to know of what we speak.”

  I cannot recall which language I spoke in, but she is using English. I do too.

  She reaches back, takes a cloth bag from the back of her saddle, and throws it halfway to me.

  “Get it, then back to where you are.”

  I look at her a moment.

  “Food,” she says. “A blanket.”

  I hobble over, retrieve the bag, and hobble back. A roll of flatbread, a hunk of yellow-white cheese, water in a leather skin, a striped woolen blanket. The wind is cold. I pull the blanket around myself and eat.

  I wonder at this too. She seems to know my weaknesses, to have prepared. I wonder if she shares the problem of hunger, or if she simply knows of mine.

  I chew slowly. The sun is halfway up the sky. She seems in no hurry, and simply watches.

  In time, I drink the water, and then say, “Thank you.”

  She nods.

  “Now you have me,” I say. “Talk. What do you want?”

  “We are at war,” she says.

  “I am not. You simply attack me at all turns.”

  “Because we are at war.”

  “I do not remember.”

  “I know you do not, so accept my words. We are at war, and until now there were but two sides. Your side and mine, yes?”

  I nod.

  “Now,” she says, “Now there are three. At least three.”

  “The third?”

  “The Dragon. The Beast. The Eater of Worlds. The End of All.”

  I look at her and want to laugh. I have lived a lot of my life among people who would tremble on hearing such a thing, but surely she, knowing what I am, does not expect me to be one.

  “A dragon,” I say.

  “Indeed.”

  “Who eats worlds.”

  She nods.

  “Forgive me if I do not believe you,” I say.

  “You have an imperfect memory,” she says. “Think on that.”

  I hesitate and do.

  “You are not sure who I am,” she says. “Or what goes on. Why not consider the notion I speak the truth?”

  “A dragon who eats the world?”

  “I swear it is true.”

  I think on the efforts she has taken to keep me here. I am undecided, but willing to listen. “Go on,” I say.

  “If we do not stop this happening,” she says, “We face an eternity in an empty world of ashes and dust, devoid of life. Arriving over and over, each time slowly freezing and weakening and dying of thirst or hunger, and then it happening again. Over and over again.”

  “If I believe you,” I say.

  “Please do.”

  I think, and rub my leg. I try to move the arrow-shaft so it aches a little less.

  “I am sorry for that,” she says. “The arrow. It had to be done. To make you stay still and listen.”

  I nod.

  “You remember nothing,” she says. “Do you?

  “I remember a lot. What do you expect me to remember?”

  “Me. Us.”

  “I know you. I remember some things. I sometimes have the thought that we were lovers for a time.”

  “For centuries, yes.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No.”

  She seems a little sad. “Once we were the greatest lovers in history. In all of creation. We were prepared to defy heaven and hell to be together.”

&
nbsp; “What happened?”

  “We defied heaven and hell. And they were displeased.”

  I look at her and wonder.

  “We were punished,” she says. “I may tell you one day.”

  “Tell me now.”

  “Your masters do not wish you to know.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not? I have no idea, but since you do not know, I assume they wish it that way, and right now I am attempting a rapprochement and will respect their wishes.”

  “I understand none of this,” I say.

  She looks at me for a while, and then grins. “Ignorance comes with working for the wrong side, I imagine.”

  “Wrong side?”

  She looks at me, as if truly puzzled, “Hell,” she says. “Of course.”

  “Hell?”

  “Evil. Darkness. Those opposed to rightness. That is your side. Mine is goodness and right. Since you are of hell, and your masters too, it is no wonder they use you as a thing, and tamper with you as they wish.”

  I look at her and know not what to say.

  “That is all I meant,” she says. “Be not concerned.”

  I nod, still thinking.

  “You do not believe me?”

  “It is a little to take in.”

  “That you are on the wrong side? Or that the world will end?”

  “That any of this is true. That it is hell, it seems, and not men of the future, who guide me.”

  “Of course it isn’t men in the future,” she says. “Idiot. What men could build what we need to do what we do?”

  I am beginning to find her manner irritating. “I do not know what that is, so how would I know?”

  “Notwithstanding that moving from point to point within this universe would require the application of infinite energy at several places in the equations, what would be the point? You cannot manipulate time from within a time-based universe, that ought to be obvious.”

  “I know nothing of that.”

  “Oh,” she says, and considers. “Of course. I had not realized.”

  “As I said, I remember nothing.”

  She thinks for a moment. “You cannot turn a glove for one hand into a glove for the other by spinning it around on a table. It spins a full circle and is still a left-handed glove. Do you understand?”

  “Not at all.”

  “To wear a left-hand glove on your right hand, you must lift it up and over. You must move it through the air, not simply spin it around in place. You understand?”

  I shake my head.

  “Never mind,” she says. “None of this really matters. It is magic. Accept that.”

  I nod, willing. I am reborn. However it is done, it appears to work. That is enough.

  “Are you like me?” I say. I have wanted to ask her that for lifetimes.

  “Two types of wagon. Same result, different ways to make it.”

  “How?”

  She shrugs. “Without the words you need…”

  I accept that. “Very well. Was that all you had to say? To tell me of this dragon?”

  “There is a war. We have squabbled among ourselves. Now a greater enemy emerges and we must unite.”

  “It occurs to me,” I say, considering. “That evil comes cloaked in lies. That if I was of that side of evil I too would claim to be good.”

  “Good-ish.” She says. “Evil-ish. It is never so clear, so cut and dried.”

  “Are you allowed to say that?”

  “Of course.” She seems smug. “It is not mine who are tyrants.”

  I look at her and have no idea of what to say.

  She sighs. “I had forgot your nature is to believe our myths, not to see through to the truth of it. I had a terrible time explaining this all to you the first time. What you have been told is a lie. There is no plan, no certainty. We are as blind as all about us.”

  “I haven’t been told…”

  “You have been to a church, have you not? A temple? Listened to a wise elder? They all tell the same story. All of them are wrong. Much as we all would like to believe, their kind and ours, there is no order, no design. Just confusion and disarray until the world ends.”

  “Our kind.”

  She sighs. “Angels. Demons. The Fey. Sylphs and nymphs and dryads and demigods. Call us what you will.”

  “We’re not human?”

  “Of course we’re human. Somewhere and somewhen. It is easier to use their words than make up some of our own, that is all.”

  “All right,” I say. “Even if I accept all this, what are we to do?”

  “Meet me in Eden,” she says. “That is all, I swear. We will all talk.”

  “Where?” I start to say, but she has already drawn back the bow and launched an arrow. Carelessly, without careful aim. It strikes me in the eye, I assume, for I see the point straight on, looming large, then know nothing more.

  I am to meet her in Eden, but unfortunately I have no idea what she is talking about.

  *

  Now I am near fields in a forest. It may be ancient Britain, but an era I do not know. There are rulers and priests and trade along roads, but the words are wrong for those I learned when I was last here.

  I drink from a brook and find some fruit and walk to a hamlet of farmers just able to support themselves. I stumble up to them, with my hands modestly in front of myself and they take me in. I work, and they feed me. I learn enough of their language to tell a story of merchant travels and being robbed, and that seems to be accepted.

  In time I marry a local woman. There are no children. There never are.

  My companion never appears. I live out my life, and drown in a river, and go on to another life. In this life I am impressed into the Assyrian army, and it is almost like coming home. I have been an Assyrian before. I survive the wars, most of twenty years, but die, carelessly, of an inattentive axe blow when cutting firewood and a consequent infected leg wound. Still my companion does not find me.

  The next life is somewhere in the vastness of central Eurasia. I am often here, and it often turns out well. These people are surprisingly accepting of naked hungry men who appear from nowhere, lacking both name and clan, and who speak no sensible language. So long as that stranger can prove himself in war, they are happy. For a time, I live in a mountainous place of snow and gravel and windswept cold, a place that values honor and pride and war-making, where they use tools made of bronze. I cannot work out where or when it is, and they have no name for themselves or their country. Their gods are like those of the Greeks and Persians, but seem much older. I am not sure how ancient.

  I die in battle in the end. I often do. I am reborn.

  Finally my companion finds me, but it is not her. Not the her I wish to see. This her looks at me, and takes up a spear, and drives it into my chest. For this her we must not yet have talked.

  Another life in which I do not see her, among horses on a warm grassy plain. I fall, still a young man, and move on, and at last she finds me again, in a village that uses Greek coins but a different language and that is, as best I can guess, somewhere north of the Black Sea.

  She rides up, with a shield and a spear, and watches me carefully for a time. When I do not attack her, she calls, “Have we spoken yet?”

  “Many times.”

  “Of grave matters, not many lifetimes ago.”

  “We have.”

  She seems to relax a little. “I take it then,” she says. “That you do not know where Eden is?”

  “No.”

  “You cannot feel it?”

  I shrug.

  “That is a problem.”

  “Can’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know either. I just…”

  “Feel it?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Can you take me with you?”

  “I can try, but… It’s complicated. And since you have to die to travel…”

  I do not understand, but I shrug.

  “Go as close as you can and I will find you,”
she says, and then stops. “Can you control where you go?”

  I shrug again. I have never thought to try.

  “A place? A time? Even roughly?”

  “I do not think so.”

  “Think forward,” she says. “Go forward as far as you can. I am growing close to you. I will find you.”

  Then she hefts her spear and throws it into my chest.

  I am momentarily startled, and angry too, but she rides over and looks at me and says, “Forward, my beloved companion. Remember to go forward.”

  Whatever she hoped would happen, it does not. I arrive in another wind-blown steppe and spend a lifetime there before I move on. Then I am among Polynesian explorers in the Pacific, and then are two lives in a row as a subsistence farmer, mostly spent starving.

  Eventually she finds me. She approaches cautiously, and it seems we each know the other approximately as we expect.

  “You truly cannot find Eden?” she says.

  “I do not know where it is.”

  She sighs. “Come,” she says, and takes my hand. “We will do this the difficult way.”

  She tries to show me. She tries to take me there. We cut our throats as we hold hands, lying side by side, both thinking of a single place together. It does not work. She does not stay with me when I am reborn.

  We try several times. I never find her waiting. Once there is another her, an earlier her, looking horrified and startled, who throws hot oil in my face when I speak to her as a friend. I suspect I have done the same to her, thinking back. In my own past, I recall occasions when she was overly friendly, and I attacked her anyway.

  I am ready to give up, but she keeps appearing, and insisting. I spend months or years in a place, waiting, and then she comes and I let her try. It becomes tiring.

  While I wait, I begin to notice scuttling shadows in the corners of my eyes. Because I am tired, and still suspicious, I do not think to mention the shadows to my companion at first. They are perhaps the size of large dogs, and stay in the corner of my eye, a dim blur. When I move, they follow, and when I rest or sleep, they sit where they were, motionless. At first it is only occasional glimpses, but soon I am seeing them in every lifetime. They do nothing, are simply there. I cannot even be sure they are watching me, rather than just nearby. I do not like it, though. It is different, and I suspect relates in some way of all my recent dying, as before this she, my companion, has been the only constant from one lifetime to the next.

  I watch the shadows, but when nothing happens, I become accustomed to them, and mostly disregard them. Soon they are always around, every minute, and I do not especially notice their increase until I stop and think on it particularly.