Immortal Beloved

  I was flailing at him, shrieking and swearing at him in Old Icelandic, trying to claw him, punch him, smack his head. After a few moments of trying to catch his breath, Reyn easily clamped his hands around my wrists like iron vises, and then he flipped us both over, his weight pinning me to the ground.

  He was murmuring things in Icelandic, the words reaching my ears being “Sefa, calm down, stop, don’t hurt yourself, shah,” words you would use on a horse or a child. I was kicking, trying to knee him, bucking with all my might, and of course he was like a rock, unmoving, holding me like a straitjacket.

  “Reyn!” Solis’s voice was loud and very close.

  “Nastasya!” River said, bending down to be within my eyesight.

  Reyn and I both went still. I stared up into his face and saw an immortal’s lifetime of pain and guilt and regret and anger. I imagine he saw the same in mine.

  “Both of you, stop!” said Solis. “Reyn, get up.” He put a hand on Reyn’s shoulder.

  Cautiously Reyn got to his feet, letting go of my hands at the last minute and quickly stepping out of kicking distance.

  River was looking at me. It occurred to me that her world had probably been pretty orderly before I got here.

  She knelt down as I sat up, brushing hay off me. My emotions were too big to process, too unbelievable to face. Four hundred forty-nine years of avoidance had just exploded inside my head.

  “I know who she is,” said Reyn. His chest was heaving, the burn covered up.

  “I know who he is!” I said, scrambling to my feet.

  “So,” said River, looking back and forth at us. “Now you know.”

  My head spun and I looked at her calm face. “Do you know who he is?” I pointed an accusing finger.

  “Yes,” said River. “And we know who you are, too.”

  I couldn’t even fathom that.

  “We knew it was just a matter of time before the two of you figured it out,” said Solis, not looking worried.

  “He has to leave!” I knew this was stupid as soon as I said it. I was the last one to come; I would be the first to go.

  “No,” said River, picking bits of hay out of my hair.

  My heart broke. “Fine. Then I’ll leave! Right now.” I started crying inside. I so didn’t want to leave. I would be lost if I left here.

  “No,” River said more gently, brushing off my sweater. “You would be lost if you left here.”

  “My face is not that expressive,” I said automatically.

  “You should both stay,” said River. “There’s no point in leaving. You’ll have to deal with this sooner or later. Stay and deal with it now, with our help.”

  I gaped at her. “He’s killed thousands of people!”

  “Not thousands! And not in hundreds of years!” Reyn said. “I’ve left all that behind.”

  I shook my head. How did one “leave all that behind”? It was who he was. What he was.

  And you kissed him, said my hateful subconscious. And you loved it.

  “That was then,” said River intently, holding her hand out to the side. “This is now.” She held her other hand out wide. “He is no longer in that time. You are no longer in that time. You are here, now. This is who you are now.” She placed a gentle hand on my chest. I felt her warmth through my sweater.

  She gestured to Reyn. “This is who he is now.”

  “An asshole!” I spat.

  “But not a winter raider,” River said solemnly. “Not the Butcher of Winter.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I looked at the three of them, and with shock I realized that they felt more familiar, more whole to me than any of my other friends, back home. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I shook my head again, suddenly exhausted, the adrenaline seeping out of my veins, leaving me shaky and empty.

  “I can’t deal with this. It’s too much. He should be dead. I can’t stay. I’m going to bed,” I said dully, and walked past them to the barn door. “I will never forgive you.” This I threw over my shoulder at the winter raider.

  He said nothing; none of them did. I crunched through the icy grass, through the darkness to the house by myself. Inside I left my boots at the door and plodded upstairs. I went into my room and spelled my door twice to keep anyone out. Then I climbed into bed in all my clothes and lay there dry-eyed.

  “Nastasya? Time to get up.”

  Blearily I blinked. Someone was knocking on my door.

  “Nastasya?” It was Asher.

  “Yeah?” I said. My clock said 6:15. It was pitch-dark outside.

  “Time to get up,” Asher repeated. “If you hurry, you’ll have time for breakfast, after milking and before you go to work.”

  He could not be serious. My mouth dropped open. I realized he couldn’t see it, so I got up, padded to the door, and opened it. Asher stood outside, looking fresh as a daisy. I let my mouth drop open again.

  He smiled, then patted my shoulder. “I hear you had a rough night. Well, the cows are waiting. I think Anne’s making cinnamon rolls for breakfast.”

  I just stared at him. My entire universe had been blown apart last night. Hundreds of years of pain and death had gotten laid at Reyn’s feet. And I had to go milk cows?

  Asher waited, his eyes calm. I remembered what I’d heard about him, that his family had been from Poland. They’d been there during World War II.

  “If I see Reyn, I will kill him,” I said.

  “I think Reyn got up early. He’s plowing the cabbage field.” Asher scratched his beard.

  I blinked. My world was surreal. But this was reality. However painful, however awful, this was reality. I put on my shoes.

  Amazingly, I drove myself to work that day—the big Fish-Fest was over. I headed into MacIntyre’s, actually glad to have a place to go, something to do. Old Mac and I grunted at each other and then started our days. I focused on the now. Stocking shelves in MacIntyre’s Drugs wasn’t exactly like working in a ballistics factory, where I was leaping forward and power-drilling screws into place every twelve seconds. I forced myself to pay attention, to notice what I was doing, to keep my mind firmly on every second that passed here as I emptied cartons of Ace bandages and ice packs. Now that I knew where everything was (and the shelves were now arranged logically), it took much less time to stock stuff.

  I started looking around the store, grimly hanging on to what I was experiencing right now. It was definitely better—cleaner, brighter, and like I said, arranged better. But let’s face it, it still looked like crap. The walls were water-stained and full of old nail holes, the light fixtures were ancient, and the linoleum floor was so old that each aisle had a worn stripe in the middle.

  “What are you doing?” Old Mac roared at me, making me jump. “I don’t pay you to stand around and daydream!” He stood ten feet away, bushy black eyebrows in an angry V over his hostile eyes.

  “You need to order some homeopathic stuff,” I retorted. After last night, Old Mac would need to up his game considerably if he wanted to faze me. “And, like, some mittens or something. A little stand of assorted mittens. Plus, you’ve got room over in that corner for some bags of salt, the stuff people put on sidewalks so they don’t kill themselves.”

  He stared at me as if I were speaking in tongues.

  I picked up one of the thousands of drugstore-supply catalogs that came every week. “Look at all this stuff! This is what people are buying nowadays, even people in this backwater hellhole. I had three people ask for homeopathic cold medicine this morning. And it’s going to be totally snowy any day now. People need to run in to buy, like, ChapStick, and see the bags of salt right there, and think, Excellent! Gotta put one in my car.”

  His mouth was slightly open, as if he didn’t know how to talk to someone who wasn’t cowering. “What do you care?” he growled, finally. “You’re just passing through! This isn’t your store! My great-grandfather started this store! My grandfather ran it, then my father, now me! And my son—” Suddenly his face looked devas
tated, horrified. Like he’d just remembered he had only a daughter. He swallowed and said, “If I had a son, he’d run it after me.” But his fire was gone, and he looked haunted and suddenly old.

  I finally got it. “Did you used to have a son?”

  Old Mac nodded, looking gray.

  “And he died with your wife?”

  A haunted look came over his face, and he nodded again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s hard to lose someone.” I’d lost so many people. I paused, wondering if I should go on. Yes. He had to leave the past behind and live in the now. I made my voice firm. “But listen, old man, you’ve still got Meriwether.”

  Old Mac’s head snapped up and the usual fire entered his eyes.

  “And despite the fact that you treat her like yesterday’s crap, she’s smart! She cares about this place, God knows why. And after you kick the bucket, she’s going to make it what it should be, and make a ton of money, and laugh on your grave!”

  Okay, maybe that was going a little far. Old Mac looked astounded, and I pretended to study the ingredient list of some pediatric Triaminic.

  “She hates this place.” His voice was gruff and sour.

  “She hates being treated like pond scum,” I retorted. “She remembers when this place was hopping. It was her idea to start fixing it up.”

  “It’ll never be hopping again.” Old Mac tossed the catalog back down on the counter.

  “Yeah, yeah, the mill closed, wah, wah, wah,” I said in my usual caring, sensitive way. “There are still people here, and they still need the crap you sell. I mean, the nearest Walgreens is way out on the highway. Or, people could come here, support the local economy, and save gas!” It was such a brilliant new marketing angle that I couldn’t believe it.

  Excited, I turned to Old Mac, ready to brainstorm.

  He narrowed his eyes at me. “Forget it! Get back to work! I should dock you for the last ten minutes!”

  “You know I’m riiiighhht,” I said under my breath in a singsong voice.

  He grunted.

  Our relationship was really blossoming. And my life was going on, despite everything. I was still here, I was still living my life, after everything that I had realized last night.

  For some reason, Meriwether didn’t show up at four, but Old Mac didn’t seem surprised or worried. I clocked out as usual, already dreading driving back and possibly running into Reyn at home. As I headed to my car, I saw Dray loitering across the street, in front of an empty building that had once housed a Dunkin’ Donuts. She saw me but didn’t react. I got into my battered piece-of-crap car, started it, then swung a big U-ie and pulled up beside her. I rolled down the passenger side window.

  “You want to get some coffee? My day has sucked,” I said, not even looking at her. “Actually, the last several days have sucked.”

  Dray hesitated, then came and opened the passenger door. I tried not to look triumphant. She got in and slammed the door, and I headed to a nearby diner called Auntie Lou’s. I’d never been in there—had barely gotten over my Sylvia’s experience—and when I walked in, it was like I’d stepped back about fifty years. Like MacIntyre’s, it seemed frozen in time, though it was clean and nothing was obviously broken.

  I looked at Dray. “What is this place? The quaint town that time forgot? You guys ever hear of the wonders of modernization?”

  Her darkly painted mouth quirked on one side, and we slid into a booth, the vinyl seat slick beneath my corduroys.

  “Pretty much,” she said. “But without the quaint part.”

  The waitress came over, a well-scrubbed blonde who looked about Dray’s age and, in fact, seemed to recognize her. Dray gave her an appraising glance, which seemed to fluster the girl.

  “Chocolate milkshake,” said Dray.

  “How’s the coffee here?” I asked. “On a scale from one to ten. Be honest.”

  The waitress looked surprised, then blushed. She glanced back at the cook, waiting in the kitchen, and lowered her voice. “Don’t order it,” she advised. “I messed up and put in too many scoops of coffee. It’s like sludge. Three people have sent it back.”

  “Ooh—sounds like my idea of good coffee,” I said. “Bring it on.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I desperately, desperately need some caffeine.”

  The waitress—whose nametag said Kimmie (I am not making that up)—gave a brief smile and looked really pretty for a moment. “Be right back.”

  “You just spread sunshine wherever you go,” Dray said.

  “That’s me,” I agreed bleakly. “I am a freaking Christmas elf.”

  Dray sat sideways in the booth, her back against the wall, her feet up on the bench. She seemed even more distant than usual, looking pale and unhealthy beneath her heavy makeup.

  “How come you’re still in this town?” she asked.

  I sighed. What a good question. Focus on the now. “I’m trying to… get through a program.” Or at least I was. Now I was just shell-shocked and didn’t know where else to go.

  “Like a twelve-step?”

  “Yes. Only worse. My job is part of it.”

  “Oh. I thought you just had a burning desire to answer people’s pharmaceutical needs,” said Dray. Kimmie put down Dray’s milkshake, which looked fabulous, and my cup of coffee, which also looked fabulous, in a thick, tarry sort of way.

  “You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to,” Kimmie whispered.

  “Okay,” I whispered back. After she left, I asked, “Does she go to your school?”

  “There’s only the one high school,” said Dray, taking a deep slurp of her milkshake. “I don’t go to it anymore.”

  “So what do you do?” When everything in me was crying out to just curl up in a shell and pull a blanket over me, I was making myself be here, making myself interact with her. And it seemed… good. I was glad I was here.

  Dray shrugged, her face closing. She sat up, holding her glass in both hands like a little kid.

  “Do you work?” I asked.

  She shrugged again, looking bored.

  I thought, What Would River Do?

  In the silence, the now retreated and Reyn burst into my mind. I’d kissed him. He’d kissed me. We’d made out like crazy up in the hayloft. I would have gone much farther. Except for the whole Butcher of Winter thing.

  My parents. Oh, God.

  “Why’d you bleach your hair?” Dray interrupted my thoughts.

  It took me a moment to come back. “I didn’t. This is my natural color. I’m thinking about going red next.”

  “You shouldn’t,” she said, her eyes on my ragged, shoulder-length hair. “It’s a cool color. I don’t even remember what color my hair is.”

  “I know what that’s like,” I said.

  We were silent for several more minutes. I needed to get going soon. Usually I came straight home from work, but usually someone else drove me. I loved having the freedom and independence of driving my own gas-wasting self.

  “Anyway,” Dray said, breaking the silence. “There aren’t any jobs around here. This place is dead.”

  I snorted. “You got that right.” I took a sip of my thick coffee, then stirred in two more sugars.

  A flicker of surprise lit her eyes, as if she’d expected me to defend her hometown.

  “People here—don’t like me,” she said. “They just think I’m gonna screw up like my… relatives.”

  “People here don’t like you?”

  Dray nodded defiantly.

  I stared at her. “You give a crap about what some yokels from a nowhere town think about you?”

  She blinked.

  “Dray. This is just one little town. It’s not the only place to live in the world, or even in America. Or even in Massachusetts. The people here are just a few people, here on earth for just a blip on the screen. They’re nobodies. What do you care what they think?”

  “It’s everybody,” Dray said. “Everyone at school. Everyone in town.”


  “Everyone in this one town,” I pointed out. “Not everyone everywhere. Go to California, or Mississippi, or France. No one there’s ever heard of you, and more important, no one there’s ever heard of the losers running the place here.”

  Her mouth actually dropped open. Had this truly never occurred to her? Had she thought she was stuck here forever?

  “Just go… somewhere else?” I could practically hear her brain whirring into action.

  “Go anywhere else,” I said.

  Her face closed. “How? It takes money.”

  I thought. “Two ways. Either take whatever job you can find—go work at Home Depot. Mop floors. Go work in a funeral home—anything. And save enough for a one-way bus ticket somewhere, enough for a week’s worth of food. Then get on the bus. Or—”

  She waited.

  “You can go be all you can be,” I said. “Go be anyone you want to be. If you can hack the military, you get money, education, travel, and some useful skills with a rifle.”

  Dray snorted a laugh. “I only turned seventeen last month.”

  “So you either have a year to work and save money, or you can get your folks to sign their permission for you to join the army,” I said, then glanced at the sky outside. “You have options, Dray. You always have options. It’s never so bad that you can’t just leave town. Think about it. And now I gotta bounce. That pillow body in my bed will only fool them so long.”

  Dray finished up her shake. She still looked thoughtful as I put on my Michelin Man down jacket.

  “Can I drop you anywhere?” I offered.

  “Nah.” She shook her head. “I can walk. Thanks for the shake.”

  “No prob. See you around.”

  Dray headed off down the street, looking somewhat less forlorn than she had. I got into my car, and then she turned.

  “How’d you get so smart and all?” she asked, her tone making it a possible joke, if needed.

  Because I’ve made many thousands of stupider mistakes than you have, I thought. I’ve been through much worse.

  I shrugged. “I’ve been around the block a few times.”

  She nodded, then turned and hunched her shoulders up into her jacket.