Immortal Beloved

  “Hello, Nastasya,” River said with a smile. She unfolded a cloth napkin and put it in her lap. “I’m glad you didn’t sleep through dinner! You must be hungry. Here, take a seat next to Nell, right there.” She pointed to a gap between two people on a, yes, wooden bench.

  Feeling like a clumsy schoolchild in the eighteen hundreds, I clambered over the bench, trying not to whack anyone with a motorcycle boot.

  “Everyone, this is Nastasya,” said River, reaching for a white tureen filled with something steaming. “She’s going to be with us for a while.” Her eyes met mine. “As long as she wants.”

  “Hi, Nastasya,” a girl said, across the table. She looked dark and serious, with wire-rimmed glasses, a no-nonsense pageboy, and olive skin. “I’m Rachel. Where are you from?”

  Did she mean originally? I glanced at River for guidance as someone passed me a large bowl of… looked like sautéed greens. Oh, joy. I scooped some onto my plate and passed the bowl to Nell, on my right.

  “Either most recently,” River clarified, “or originally. Up to you.”

  I wouldn’t be here long. I didn’t need to spill my guts. “The north. Originally. England, most recently.”

  “I’m from Mexico,” said Rachel. “Originally.”

  “Cool,” I said, taking the next bowl, which held orange chunks. Yams.

  “Let’s all introduce ourselves,” River suggested. “By the way, Nastasya, what we’re eating was all grown right here, on our farm. We’re very proud of our gardens. You’ll see them tomorrow. Everything is organic, and balanced in terms of energy.”

  Whatever the eff that meant.

  I nodded and looked down at the small mounds of food on my plate. There was a bean/some kind of grain mixture (possibly quinoa?), the orange yams, and the limp, dark greens that made me feel like I’d be chewing my cud later.

  What I really felt like was some sushi. With a nice bottle of hot sake. I glanced around hopefully for some wine bottles but didn’t see any. Please, please let there be wine somewhere.

  “I’m Solis,” said a lifeguardish-looking man sitting next to River. I almost snorted, thinking that naming oneself Solace was a bit much, but later I found out that it was a family name and not spelled the same way. He was tan, with short, dark blond hair and a full beard that was almost reddish. Oddly pretty hazel eyes were framed by long lashes.

  As River had told me, there were four teachers: River, Solis, Asher (who was River’s partner), and Anne. Then there were the students. It wasn’t like most school setups, where you can easily tell the teachers from the students, mostly by age. River looked the oldest of the teachers, but one of the students, Jess, actually looked older than her. He was a withered, wasted old man who looked as though he’d packed more hard living into his life, however long, than I’d done in four centuries.

  The teacher Anne looked about twenty, with fair skin, fine, straight dark hair, a round face, and blue eyes that examined me with friendly curiosity.

  Most names went over my head as I tried to choke down the greens. Would it have killed them to throw some cream and butter in there? Ha ha ha. No.

  The Viking lord nodded stiffly at me and said, “Reyn.”

  “Like, rain-Rain?” I asked, my mouth full of yam.

  The girl next to me gave a charming smile. She was a portrait of an English maid, with glowing, healthy skin, shining blue eyes, and softly curling pale brown hair that hung halfway down her back. With a little laugh, she said, “Reyn’s a German name.” She spelled it.

  “Ah, German,” I said, making it sound as if I held him responsible for World War II. His jaw set—he was such a stuffed shirt, it was impossible not to bait him. Now, looking at him, I was actually pretty sure I’d never met him. Maybe he was reminiscent of someone I’d once caught a glimpse of, or something.

  “I’m Dutch,” he said tersely. “Originally.”

  “Umm,” I said, trying to get the bean/grain mixture down. I took a couple of big gulps of water. Plain water. Some Dr Pepper would have gone a long way just then.

  “And I’m Nell,” said the British lass next to me. “Welcome, Nastasya. I hope you’ll be happy here. Do let me know if I can help you settle in.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Uh, thanks.” I felt unclean, uncouth, uncultured, and a bunch of other uns. As soon as it was light in the morning, I was hitting the road. I could deal with my problems on my own, I thought, even as my brain whispered, Cannot. But what did it know?

  The names washed over me; the faces, male and female, white and Asian and black and Hispanic, sort of melded together. I didn’t try to keep them straight; I wouldn’t be here long enough for it to matter. I did fleetingly wonder what had brought them here—had their lives been miserable? Or were they just here to learn whatever River was teaching? What was she teaching, anyway? Magick? How to be immortal without losing your mind? Or just… organic farming? River had called this a home for wayward immortals. Wayward suggested people who had gone astray. But looking around, really, only Jess seemed like he was either now or had formerly been astray. The others looked pretty healthy, happy, not tortured. How did I look to them?

  Let’s sum up: Here I was, in a chilly, sparsely furnished dining hall, eating bland food with a bunch of immortals who were trying to be extra good. I so did not belong. And I didn’t belong back in London anymore, either, with Boz and Incy and the rest of them—the thought of it made me feel ill, like I was choking. If anything, I belonged back in the beautiful, colorful sixties, when everyone loved me and I looked fabulous. I gazed at my plate glumly, no longer even hoping for dessert, absolutely certain that the chance of this food being laced with any kind of fun drugs was completely nil.

  Why had I done this to myself? Such a good question. One I’d asked myself a thousand times over the years, in various situations. It seemed to be a constant theme in my life.

  CHAPTER 5

  At last dinner was over. I was about to sprint up to “my” room so I could huddle in a fetal position on my bed and feel sorry for myself, but one of the students asked if I was going on the evening walk.

  My face must have shown my lack of enthusiasm, because she laughed as she pulled on a down vest and wrapped a fleece scarf around her neck.

  “We go on a walk almost every evening after dinner,” River told me in her beautifully modulated voice. She tugged a red beret over her silver hair and smiled at me. “It’s part of paying attention to the world—we look at the stars, the moon, the shadows of the trees.”

  “There are different birds out at night,” said one of the guy students, the handsome Italian-looking guy—Lorenz? “We learn their different calls and habits.”

  I nodded gravely, thinking, You must be kidding.

  “This time of year, trees have mostly finished losing their leaves,” Nell said, looking beautiful and outdoorsy in a Burberry trench coat. “You’ll learn the patterns of which one loses its leaves first, and whether it’s fast or slow.”

  Over my dead body, I thought. Yes, even immortals use that phrase. It has extra oomph for us.

  “When there’s a full moon, the outside is lit up like daytime,” said Solis. His hazel eyes seemed to watch me intently, as if he was trying to figure out why I was really here. “Tonight there’s a gibbous moon, which has its own beauty.”

  I’ll take your word for it.

  “Would you like to grab a jacket and come with us?” River asked. Her eyes were sparkling with humor. Was this a test? If so, I would happily fail.

  “No, thank you,” I said politely.

  “Oh, lovely,” River said, sounding relieved. “People who are staying home help with the cleanup. The kitchen is right through there.” She pointed.

  I looked at her.

  She was practically chuckling as they went out through the wide green-painted front door.

  Score? River 1, Nasty 0.

  Given my advanced age, it’s only natural that I quit trying to please people about 440 years ago. It would have been no sk
in off my nose to merely stalk upstairs, assume the fetal position on my bed as planned, and let whatever happened, happen.

  And yet.

  It really did feel like she had scored one off me. I bet she’d been certain that I wouldn’t go for a nighttime stroll with her and the rest of the campers. She’d known I’d weasel out, and known that scullery duty awaited me when I did. How annoying. Now she was, no doubt, expecting me to merely stalk upstairs and assume a fetal position on my bed—as if she knew me way down deep. It was totally galling.

  I clenched my teeth and stalked to the kitchen instead. I’m here by choice, I reminded myself. I’m here because I can’t bear to be not-here anymore. I’m here because I can’t tell right from wrong, light from dark. I’m here because I can’t stand being me. I’m here because I don’t want anyone to know where I am.

  The kitchen was large and poorly lit. It had been the height of efficient convenience back in 1935 or so. There was no restaurant dishwasher whipping through loads every two minutes, no granite countertops or etched-glass doors on the cupboards. There were tall, open wooden shelves, stacked with the heavy white stoneware we’d used at dinner. Glass jars of pasta, rice, grains, beans, and cereal lined another shelf. Large windows showed blackness outside and reflected the inadequate ceiling light.

  And the best part? My buddy Reyn, standing at the soapstone farm sink, looking at me. He literally sighed and looked at the ceiling, then held out a soapy plate.

  “You can rinse,” he said, pointing to the other sink full of clean water.

  Proving that maturity doesn’t necessarily come with age, I saluted and goose-stepped to the sink. “Yes, Herr Kommandant!” I flipped my scarf over my shoulder, shoved my sleeves up, swished the plate in the clean water, then put it on the drainboard.

  He handed me another one. Rinse, swish, stack.

  I was doing my best to look nonchalant, way too cool for him and completely unaware of him as a person. As if he were a tall, forbidding machine handing me soapy plates. The humiliating truth of the situation was that this guy was truly a knockout, and I was, uncharacteristically, about to hyperventilate, being close to him.

  I don’t really have a type of guy that I find attractive—they don’t have to be tall or short or muscular or thin or bulky; color of hair or skin doesn’t matter. I don’t actually get interested in guys that often. For me, hooking up with someone is like a convenience, a time killer, like Warehouse Jase, scratching an infrequent itch. The last time I’d been in love, he ended up dying in India when the British finally succeeded in annexing the Maratha territory. Um, 1818, I believe. Which was the beginning of the British rule of an enormous, non-English country and the end of my allowing myself to fall for humans. I hadn’t truly been in love since, even with immortals. Falling for an immortal had an awful ring of permanence that I just couldn’t deal with. Think about breaking up with someone and then having to risk seeing him, maybe happy with someone else, for hundreds of years. I mean, no thanks.

  But standing here next to Reyn, I felt the heat of his body, smelled the clean-laundry scent of his clothes, and he seemed—unique, and like he could handle anything, you know? Something in me wanted to wrap my arms around his waist and lean my cheek against his chest, right over his heart. My face flamed at the thought. But overwhelmingly I felt that anything could happen right then—meteor, government collapse, stampede—and Reyn would just step up and handle it and protect… whomever he was with. For all of his standoffishness, even dislike, he still felt like… safety. Like he would always make the right choice, do the right thing, even if he didn’t want to.

  He seemed to be the opposite of Incy, whose skills lay purely in getting what he wanted, charming people, skirting around rules, laws, and social mores.

  Reyn, whom I didn’t know a single thing about, gave off an impression of solidity, of strength and resolve, and it struck me that I didn’t know anyone else who did. Not in my life.

  Of course, he also gave off an impression of being a snob, stuck-up and full of lip-curling disdain, so I guess it’s true what they say: No one’s perfect! Just swish and rinse, I told myself. Face it, he’s an irresistible jerk who doesn’t care whether he’s hot or not, and doesn’t care whether you’re hot or not, and has zero interest in pursuing you because his mind’s on loftier, more important things.

  I hate guys like that. There was a stunning priest back in Malta in the thirties—but that’s another story.

  Now my cheeks were burning, and I had to slow down my breathing. Rinse, swish, stack. When I had a nice pile, Mr. Personality handed me a clean dishcloth. I started drying, making another stack. I was feeling anxious again, a twitchy nervousness that was unfamiliar and unwelcome. My crowd was used to me; they accepted me as is, without comment or question. Among my group, I was fine. Here, I stuck out so much; I was realizing that I had drifted so far away from regular societal norms that I seemed almost freakish next to these people. It was weird and unbalancing and underscored my desire to flee. And of course my nervousness increased my obnoxiousness quotient.

  “I guess this is really Zen and stuff,” I said, my tone insinuating that I wanted to be Zen about as much as I wanted to be a plague victim.

  Reyn glanced down at me for a second and didn’t respond.

  I’m five-three, which had been really tall for a woman back in my time. I had been an Amazon compared to other women, even in Iceland, with our hardy, northern marauder stock. As recently as a hundred years ago, I was a good height for a female in virtually any country except the Netherlands, where they grow them unusually tall. Now, given improved nutrition and better prenatal care, everyone is shooting up all around me, and I’m not even average anymore. It’s so incredibly unfair, because clearly I’m done growing. I’ve been done growing.

  So it was infuriating that Reyn got to be tall. It was infuriating that he got to be tall and golden and the most gorgeous person I’d ever seen, male or female, and that I should even be aware of him at all, much less so intensely, unexpectedly, unwelcomely aware of him.

  “Here.”

  I blinked in the middle of my internal rant to see Reyn holding a plate in front of me, as he had apparently been doing for some moments without my noticing.

  I took it and swished it sourly, wishing I were a countess and he were a peasant coachman, and I could just have my way with him with no repercussions. Ah, the good old days.

  Not that I’d ever been a countess.

  “The weather tomorrow is supposed to be cold and clear,” Reyn startled me by saying. Now that I listened for it, there was a faint, faint crispness to his consonants that bespoke his Dutch heritage. It was, of course, intensely attractive. One more thing to hold against him.

  “Thank you for sharing that,” I said. I dried another plate, put it on the stack, and then carried the stack over to an open wooden shelf where all of its little plate friends were waiting.

  “So you won’t have any trouble with the roads, when you leave,” he went on, and the light clicked in my head. Oh.

  “It’s clear that you don’t belong here,” he said with Teutonic stolidness, and handed me another plate. “I know you’ve come to the same conclusion. Obviously, you’re horrified by our life here.” He shrugged. “It’s not for everyone. Most people, in fact, wouldn’t be able to hack it. It doesn’t mean you’re—weak, or anything.” He handed me another plate with a bit more force, while I seethed.

  “Let me guess,” I said, rinsing the plate. “You’re using reverse psychology on me, trying to piss me off and make me feel unwelcome so I’ll be determined to stay and prove you wrong. Right?”

  “Oh, no.” His golden eyes, bewitchingly slanted a bit at the ends, looked down at me. “No, I’m really not,” he said with an insulting definitiveness. “I really do think you should leave. We’ve got a good life here, with our lessons and work, and we don’t need some screwed-up tornado whipping through here, tearing it to pieces.”

  My jaw clenched, and the fact th
at he was pretty much right on the money about everything only made me angrier.

  “Everyone will understand.” He handed me the last plate and dunked his hands in the clean water. “River will understand. You’re not the first lost soul hoping for a cheap and easy fix—River collects them like stray dogs.” He rolled his shirtsleeves down powerful forearms dusted with dark blond hair. “New York or Rome or Paris is a better place for you. Bright lights, big city.” He gave a brief, sardonic smile. “Not the wilds of Massachusetts, with nothing to do except work, and breathe, and pay attention to the night stars and the gibbous moon and the way leaves fall off trees. Just forget we even exist.” He looked at me intently, as if he was literally willing me to forget they existed. As if he was using magick, maybe. Maybe these people used magick all the time. There was a small potted herb plant on the windowsill above the sink, and I shot a glance at it to see if it was withering, crumpling in death as he took power from it. But it stayed perky and green, and when I looked over at Reyn, he raised his eyebrows slightly.

  It was a mark of personal growth for me that I didn’t slam a heavy stoneware plate down on his head to wipe that supercilious smile right off his face.

  I was furious, and it was strange, because usually I can’t muster up more than annoyance or boredom. I’d long ago given up on more extreme emotions as taking too much energy. But Reyn had pierced my thick hide with his beauty and open disdain, and in my head I was shrieking hysterically. At least, I really hoped it was in my head.

  I breathed tightly in and out, searching for just the right scathing comment to leave him deflated and defeated in this asinine kitchen. And…

  “You’re—you’re really not that good-looking,” I finally snapped. His eyes opened slightly—he had probably expected a comeback of somewhat higher quality. “Your nose is too pointy.” I was mortified to see my chest heave as I sucked in breath. “Your lips are too thin, you’re too tall, and your hair is really more brownish, not gold. Your eyes are small and squinty!”