Immortal Beloved

I thought about Kim’s little birds, and my throat ached. “Hmm,” I said. “So… you guys don’t make magick?” I could easily give it up without regret. I didn’t use spells that often, didn’t want to make my magick stronger. Yes, there were a few times that I’d felt that rush of excitement, that burst of beauty, but the aftereffects were so bad. I didn’t think I would miss it.

  “Oh, no,” Solis said with a hint of a smile. “We make magick all the time. It’s our lifeblood. Living without magick would be like… like being mortal.”

  Back in my little nun cell, eons later, I tried to get the dirt out from under my fingernails. At least we had sinks in our rooms, even though we still had to go down the hall for everything else. I was tired, my shoulders aching. My face felt windburned, possibly sunburned. Every fingernail I’d had was shredded, and I’d cut them all very short.

  A knock on my door made my heart start. Maybe… Reyn? I allowed myself the fantasy of thinking he’d secretly—way secretly—be glad to see me back.

  “It’s open,” I called. “Of course.”

  River opened the door and came to stand behind me at the sink. She put her hands on my shoulders, smiling at me in the mirror. “Welcome back,” she said lightly. “I dig your car.”

  Her antiquated word was supposed to make me smile. I held up my ruined hands. “I dig your garden,” I retaliated, and she laughed. I tried not to enjoy it.

  “So Solis says. You picked your weight in turnips, beets, and kale, I hear. I know you’ll be excited to see them at dinner.”

  My eyelids fluttered, and I couldn’t help a moan of dismay. River laughed again. “I know. I’ve been through my share of famines, of course. Once, in southern England, all the cows were ripe and overflowing with milk, but most of the food crops failed. We drank milk, made cheese, ate cheese, fed cheese to the animals—the stink! It was enough to put me off dairy for about sixty years.”

  I flipped my scarf around my neck again and sat down on the bed. Outside, it had suddenly gotten dark. I prayed that people had started to whip up some dinner, then remembered it would be turnips and beets and kale. Despite everything, being depressed here still felt better than being not-here. Being in the outside world. Getting lost in my memories. Again I wondered what my friends had thought of my disappearance. Were they looking for me? Was I truly hidden here?

  “I don’t understand why I have to work in the gardens,” I said. “I just—want to be, I don’t know. Like, saved or something. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. But I don’t see what gardening has to do with it.” I scrubbed my clean hands against my pants, the itchy feeling of dry dirt impossible to get rid of.

  River thought for several moments, her elegant profile outlined against the darkness outside. I got up and pulled the heavy winter curtains closed, cold emanating from the window’s glass.

  “For immortals, time passes by very quickly,” she said at last. “Do you remember how, when you were a child, every day took forever to get through, and each year until your birthday seemed to take a lifetime? Then, once you were older, time seemed to pass more quickly. Do you remember that?”

  I avoid thinking about my childhood as much as possible. “No.”

  “Well, it’s an almost universal feeling,” River said, undeterred. “That’s because, when you’re a ten-year-old child, one year is a whopping ten percent of your entire existence in the world. And if you don’t remember the first two or three years, then one year is an even bigger percentage. Do you see that?”

  “I guess. But the garden—”

  “When you’re forty, one year is only one-fortieth of your entire existence. So each individual year seems to pass more quickly, to not carry as much weight. Is this making sense?”

  “Um, well, okay,” I said.

  River was patient, as a 1,300-year-old person must be. Her eyes were clear and warm, looking intently into mine. “When you’re aefrelyffen, immortal, it feels like you’re looking ahead into—oblivion. Or worse, you realize you’ll probably be alive in the year 2250 or something, and it’s terrifying because you have no idea what it will be like. When you’re immortal, years themselves quickly lose all meaning. Years, decades, and eventually centuries seem to whiz by in the blink of an eye, until, say, the seventeen hundreds feel only like a bad party you went to once.”

  I fiddled with the ends of my scarf and didn’t say anything.

  “Because of the relative lengths of our lives, so many things lose importance or become lost themselves, against such a huge backdrop,” River continued. “How many lovers have you had? How many children? How many friends have you loved who are dead now? For regular people, these events are tremendous and shape or change their entire lives. For us, it’s just a wink in time. But they do affect us. Little by little, bit by bit, loss by loss, we ourselves become diminished. We’ve lost so much for so long that most things, most people, most experiences lose their value for us, their weight. We forget how to value things, how to feel things. We forget how to love.”

  Well, okay, food for thought. Some of this was sounding uncomfortably familiar.

  “What we start off doing here,” River said, “is to give you a crash course in relearning the significance of moments, of minutes. You’ll learn the skill of being fully aware, fully present, in the now. You’ll relearn how to feel things, how to value things. And you will feel happier and more complete afterward.”

  I bit my lip, fearing that she was speaking the truth, and hating it.

  “Working in the garden, preparing a meal, cleaning up—these tasks are repetitive and boring. For an immortal, they’re almost unbearable. We’re generally in search of the next huge emotion, huge event, huge physical sensation, because after a while that’s all we can feel.”

  Oh. Hello. Ouch.

  “Our gift to you, and to all immortals who come here, is to teach you how to value and feel every moment that your hands are immersed in suds. To really see and smell every weed you pull. To feel the hard smoothness of a turnip, to really taste the earthy greenness of its leaves. To be within your own skin without wanting to run around screaming. To enjoy yourself, value yourself, know yourself. And once you do that”—she stopped and smiled again—“then you’ll be able to love, to really love, someone else.”

  I didn’t say anything. My throat felt tight again, and my eyes were hot. Running around screaming felt like all I could bear to do right now. Oh, God, she might actually know what she’s talking about. It was a horrible realization. She might actually know me, how I feel. And how wretched and mortifying would that be? My insides were so ugly, so miserable, so drenched in pain and horror that the thought of someone truly knowing them was terrifying and torturous. I felt like a caged rat, and my cage was slowly being lowered into boiling oil. I felt the level creeping up, felt it searing my skin—

  “And of course,” she said calmly, ignoring the growing panic in my eyes, “you’ll also be able to make magick without killing anything. You’ll be Tähti.”

  I almost gasped, hearing the word spoken aloud. As much as people only rarely talked about Terävä, no one ever talked about Tähti. None of my friends had ever met one, and some people insisted they were just a myth. I’d come here hoping they weren’t.

  “You’re born one way or the other,” I said faintly. “You can’t change.”

  “One can. One does.” River seemed quite sure and calm. “I’m Tähti—now. We make magick without darkness, without destruction. You can learn how to.”

  It was as if she were telling me I could learn how not to be human, to be an alien instead, or a tiger. Just incomprehensible.

  “What do you mean, now?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t always sweetness and light,” River said, standing up. “There was a time when I was… very dark indeed.” She looked away, as if wondering if she’d said too much. “And now the turnips are calling our names.” She gave a little smile and gestured toward the door.

  I looked at her, unable to process everything she had just
told me. In the last ten minutes, she had unraveled my very persona, split my chest open and laid bare the rotting corpse inside me. I was completely freaking out.

  Freaking out and, uh, also hungry. Working for hours in the cold, the sun, and the wind had sharpened my appetite, and I was starving.

  “Come on,” River said, holding out her hand. “You can freak out while you eat. I hear there’s apple pie for dessert. For those of us who finish our turnips.”

  Oh, God, oh, God, she knew me. She knew me.

  CHAPTER 10

  Oh, Nastasya, help!”

  I whirled at the sound of River’s voice and saw her coming from behind the battered red farm truck. It was early morning, and I’d been virtuously bringing kindling to the house for the big fireplaces in the main sitting room and the dining room. I didn’t know how this was going to save my soul, but it was better than pulling up beets. Now I set down the handle of the firewood cart and headed toward her—she was bent over, holding one of the farm dogs by the collar.

  “Nastasya—you have to take Jasper,” said River. Her fine silver hair was escaping its braid, framing her face in wisps.

  “Uh, okay,” I said, reaching for him. “Oh. Ew. Is that skunk?”

  “Yes. I’m sorry, but I have to get these cabbages to the farmers’ market before eight. Jasper usually goes with me, but he obviously had a run-in with the local wildlife. Can you please take him and give him a bath?”

  I looked at her. Jasper panted happily by my feet, reeking to the sky.

  “With tomato juice,” River said. “Put him in the big stable sink and dump tomato juice all over him. I’ve already asked Reyn to bring it out to you and to help you.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  River started to see the humor in giving me this heinous job and tried to suppress a giggle. “I’m sorry, Nastasya. You’re my last hope. A bunch of tomato juice and then a good shampoo, and he should be fine. Right, Jasper, sweetie?”

  Jasper looked cheerful and pleased with himself.

  “Sorry—have to run. Thanks so much!” She patted my shoulder briefly, then hurried back to the truck. I watched her back up and then head down the long unpaved drive that led to the main road.

  I looked down at Jasper. He smiled up at me. He smelled so, so awful. If any of my friends could see me now… they would find me just as inexplicable and wretched as I found them.

  “Okay, come on, then, you,” I said, leading Jasper to the horse stable.

  There was the big barn, where classes were held, and then a couple of other outbuildings. River kept six horses, though this stable had stalls for ten. In one corner was the tack room, and opposite that was the big tin sink. Reyn stood next to it, already punching holes in several huge cans of tomato juice. He glanced at me with a lack of enthusiasm.

  “We’re supposed to give him a bath,” I said unnecessarily.

  “Yes.” Reyn put the stopper in, then bent down and lifted Jasper easily into the sink. I tried not to appreciate how strong he was, how capable and unruffled he was. Jasper scrabbled uncertainly, then stood still.

  “Good boy,” I said, trying not to breathe in. “Oh, jeez. Let’s hope this juice thing works.”

  “Hold him,” said Reyn, and tipped a can of tomato juice over Jasper’s back. It was probably cold, and Jasper quit smiling, looking affronted.

  “Get that cup and dump more over him,” said Reyn.

  I did. I became aware that Reyn and I were alone in this warm, hay-smelling stable. The morning was still new; slanted beams of early light streaked through the few windows. Around us horses huffed quietly, their velvety noses twitching as they caught scent of our boy Jasper.

  I was uncomfortable. I hated being in stables, being around horses. I’d had horses that I had loved terribly, and losing them had hurt so much. Now I tried hard to avoid being near them.

  Reyn’s strong arms tipped can after can of tomato juice over Jasper, who was now distinctly unhappy, his head hanging down. Jasper was a corgi, with short legs and big bat ears, and he was up to his elbows in tomato juice. I scooped up cup after cup and continued to pour it on him, working it into his fur with my free hand.

  “Let’s talk about choices, Jasper,” I said. “Let’s talk about making the right decisions.”

  Next to me, Reyn was so solid, like he could stand up to a tidal wave. He smelled like crisp autumn air tinged with wood smoke, unbearably good. His plaid flannel work shirt was open at the throat, and I wanted to press my face against the smooth skin of his chest and breathe him in. Then he could put his arms around me, and I would be so warm and safe.… Despite his seemingly one-speed emotional range, I could imagine him laughing hard, really guffawing. I could picture him drunk, though not an atom of his person seemed like he would ever indulge. I could see him furious, raging.… I faltered, my hand still in Jasper’s thick fur.

  I looked up at Reyn, examining his face.

  He looked down at me, then poured more juice.

  Reyn furious, raging…

  I shook my head, blinking, the image slipping away from my brain like fog. What was it? It had been… I didn’t know. It was gone. I decided to grab the bull by the horns. “You don’t like me. Are you sure we’ve never met?”

  Reyn’s eyes flickered. He dumped the last big can of juice over Jasper, and I rubbed it in, trying to cover every inch of whiffy dog. “I don’t… have any feelings about you one way or another,” he said, his voice as distant as his manner. “Let the juice sit a minute.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the vee of skin in the neck of his shirt, his chin showing the slightest bit of beard. “How long have you been here?”

  He slanted a glance at me, then said, “Rinse him off and then you can shampoo him. I’ve got work to do.”

  “Can you help me? He might jump out.” I didn’t think Jasper was going anywhere—he was totally demoralized now, just awaiting his fate. He’d even sat down in the tomato juice. A tiny muscle twitched in Reyn’s jaw, but he stayed. I rinsed Jasper off and pulled the stopper up, then went at him with some horse shampoo.

  “Oh, Reyn, there you are!” Nell’s voice made me turn, and I saw her walking up the aisle, looking fresh-faced and suitably outdoorsy in a hand-knit woolen sweater and corduroys tucked into proper Wellies. I looked like I’d been out clubbing all night and then washed a skunked dog. Not in a good way.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” she told Reyn. He didn’t have a big response to this, and Nell turned and looked me up and down, cheerful and friendly as always. I tried not to care that my black sweatshirt had a skull picked out in rhinestones, or that my high-waisted purple harem pants would have looked at home at Cirque du Soleil. I mean, whatever.

  “Nastasya, maybe you’ve found a new calling!” She smiled at me, and my back stiffened.

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “As a dog groomer!” She gave a little laugh. “You look like a professional.”

  I decided not to spray her down with the sink’s hose, but sighed to myself.

  “Reyn, I was wondering if you could come help me.” Nell gave him one of her English-maid smiles, practically coiling a curl around one finger. “I’ve got to sow some early spinach.” I’d noticed her doing this before—trying to be with him, near him, getting him to help her do whatever. He seemed clueless.

  I expected Reyn to leap at this reprieve, but he shook his head. “I’m going to finish this up, and then Solis asked me to look at Titus’s shoe.”

  “Is Titus one of the horses?” I asked, without any real interest. Nell gave me a condescending smile.

  “Yes. Reyn is our resident horse master. He has an excellent seat.”

  I grinned. “I’ve noticed.”

  Reyn’s face tightened and Nell flushed, looking embarrassed. “It’s an equestrian term.”

  “Really? I thought you were talking about his ass.” Now they both seemed discomfited, and I gave myself extra points. They were two of the most irritating people I’d ever met
. They deserved each other, though the thought of them together made bile rise in my throat as I rinsed Jasper off again. I leaned over and sniffed the dog’s back experimentally. Just the slightest touch of eau de skunk. Acceptable.

  “Okay, boy, do not do that again,” I said, hefting him out of the sink. Despite his solid bulk, he probably weighed only about thirty pounds. I set him on the ground, and waited.…

  “Oh!” Nell jumped back as Jasper shook mightily, spraying us all with water.

  I dried my hands on the rough towel and grinned at Reyn as Nell turned and almost stomped down the aisle.

  “Thanks for your help,” I cooed at him.

  He looked at me for a second, then headed out past me in the opposite direction of Nell.

  They both gave me a royal pain.

  River and Solis apparently decided I was light-years away from being able to handle formal classes of any kind, and so instead he simply put me to work. My name was written into the job chart, and for the past several days, I’d struggled against the omnipresent weights of both mind-numbing boredom and white-knuckled, fingernail-screeching des peration. I mean, I had avoided, on purpose, every single thing I was doing. For decades, if not centuries.

  At last, however, I’d found a job I liked: whacking the hell out of things with a hammer. Today Brynne, Jess, and I were repairing some of the weatherboard siding on the big barn where classes were held. I thought about how different this activity was from whatever I’d be doing with Incy and Boz, back in London. Would we be planning a fabulous vacation? Going to the inevitable parties? Recovering from a wild night out? Crippling cabbies? It all seemed so pointless. Whereas, looka here, I was fixin’ up a barn! Useful, eh?

  “So tell me about yourself, Brynne,” I said, wiping my nose on the sleeve of my shirt. “What brings you here?”

  Brynne held up a board so Jess could pin it in place with a few quickly placed nails. Then we would nail it in more completely.

  “I come here every decade or so, stay a year or so,” said Brynne. Today the tight rolls of her hair were covered by a brightly colored cloth. She was elegantly beautiful, like a teenage model, like a cheetah. A cheetah wearing overalls and a raggedy green sweater. She grinned at me, lighting the dull gray afternoon sky. “Usually after a horrible breakup. River takes me in, cheers me up, I brush up on some skills, and then when I feel okay again, I’m off.”