Life Eternal

by Yvonne Woon

  “But isn’t that still—”

  Anya cut me off. “Do you really think I look ridiculous?” Curling a lock of red hair around her finger, she studied me.

  I considered how to answer. “No,” I said, lying.

  She gave me a skeptical look. “Why did you say it, then?”

  “I was angry.”

  She wiped her cheek, smearing the mascara even more. “So you’re apologizing?”

  Her words caught me off guard. “No,” I said. “Not until you apologize to me.”

  “But you insulted me first,” she insisted, as if it were the truth.

  I shook my head in disbelief. “That’s not how I remember it.”

  “Fine. I’m sorry,” she said, so quickly I could barely catch it. “Now you have to come inside.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because I apologized first, so now you have to make it up to me.”

  “I don’t have to make anything up to you,” I said, confused.

  “You don’t have to be rude about it,” Anya said. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just need some help.”

  I hesitated, listening to Clementine’s melodic voice down the hall. “Help doing what?”

  She waved her hand. “Oh, just something really small.”

  Anya’s room was dingy and cluttered with charms and feathers and an odd collection of talismans. A few posters dotted the walls, but they all seemed a little off, either too small or poorly placed. One of the overhead lightbulbs had gone out. To make up for it, Anya had lit a tall red candle encased in glass with a stencil of the Virgin Mary. A single cross hung over her bed. It was draped in neon beads.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. “What exactly do you want me to do?” I said, fingering a string of charms hanging from her bedpost.

  “Hold on,” Anya said, sifting through her desk drawer until she found a pocket sewing kit. “Why did you collapse this morning?” she asked as she removed a needle from the kit and held it in the flame of the candle.

  “I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to divulge that I had hallucinated.

  “Come on. I’m not stupid, she said, handing me the needle. “Hold this for a minute.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, taking the needle from her.

  She opened her closet door and rummaged through her shoes until she found a chunky platform. “I already think you’re weird, so it’s not like anything you tell me will make me think worse of you. And don’t even try to trick me with that cheating death story. I don’t believe any of it.”

  After wiping the bottom with rubbing alcohol, she placed the platform shoe just behind her ear. “Hold this right here,” she said, and I put my hands where hers had been. I was surprised at how relieved I felt, hearing those words. I don’t believe any of it.

  “Did it look that bad?” I asked.

  “You fell off your chair, and then you started blinking. You were just blinking really fast for a long time.”

  I winced.

  Anya bent down and took an ice cube from a miniature refrigerator on the floor. She rubbed it against her ear. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ve seen worse, but everyone else basically thinks you’re possessed.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  Tossing the ice on the floor, Anya took the needle from me and shook her head. “I don’t think so. Have you ever seen a possessed person?” she asked, as if she had. “You’re too normal.”

  Looking in the mirror, Anya held the needle up to her ear, where there were already four piercings. “Okay,” she said. “Hold the shoe steady.”

  “Wait, what are you doing?”

  “Piercing my ear,” she said.

  I backed away. “No. I’m not doing that.”

  “How do you expect to bury an Undead when you can’t even watch me use a needle?” she said, and put my hand back into place. “You’re not doing anything—I’m doing it. It’ll be over in a minute. Just hold your hand steady.”

  “Are you sure this is safe?” I said as I tightened my grip on the shoe.

  “Of course it is.”

  I braced myself, trying to stop my hand from trembling as I watched her in the mirror, her eyes red and fierce. She took a deep breath and began counting in Russian. “Raz, dvah…” Just before she said “trie,” I pressed my eyes closed. The needle plunged into the sole of the shoe, and the entire room rang as Anya let out a deafening, high-pitched scream.

  After the bleeding stopped and the silver cuff was in place, Anya opened a tin of almond cookies her father had sent her, and we sat on her shag carpet eating them until we were giddy on sugar. She tried to explain why she had been so upset earlier, speaking quickly, in jarring bursts, and by the time she was finished, I still wasn’t exactly sure what had transpired. Something to do with a boyfriend, or maybe an ex-boyfriend, and two other boys. One named Vlad, two named Dmitri. Or was it one named Dmitri, two named Vlad? They were Plebeians, which meant that Anya couldn’t tell them she was a Monitor. When she left for school, it made things a little complicated.

  “I have a piercing for every breakup,” she said, pointing to the line of studs in her ears.

  I told her I understood, because I did. It wasn’t easy dating someone when you were a Monitor.

  “But how can you understand?” she said, fingering the new silver cuff that clung to her ear, which was now bright red and swollen. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  I hesitated. “No,” I said slowly, taking another cookie.

  She rolled her eyes. “Is he a Monitor?”

  I paused again. “I can’t really talk about it.”

  When she kept pressing me, I changed the subject to my blackout, and the dream I’d had of the Royal Victoria Hospital. Or the vision, as she called it.

  “What was under the bed?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t see it.”

  Anya looked disappointed.

  “What if I’m seeing the future?”

  She gave me a questioning look, and when she saw that I was serious, she burst out laughing. “I know people who can read the future, and you definitely can’t.”

  “How do you know?” I said, taking offense.

  “What’s going to happen to me tomorrow?” she asked, her lips in a pout.

  “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Oh?” she said, smug. “How does it work, then?”

  “I think it was triggered by the photograph of the hospital.”

  “So you just have to see a picture of the future before it comes to you,” she said sarcastically.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “If you want to see your future, I know a woman who can do that. She’ll tell you what the visions are.”

  I leaned back against the wall. “I don’t believe in that kind of stuff,” I said, dismissing her.

  Anya laughed. “How can you say you don’t believe when you just thought you were seeing the future?”

  “That’s different,” I said. I had been reborn, and I now had a little bit of Undead within me. I didn’t know how that future was going to affect me, but maybe this was it. The Undead reanimate as the best versions of themselves. Wasn’t I prettier now, my features more mature? Wasn’t I a better Monitor? Maybe I could see the future, too. “That’s believing in myself.”

  It was nearly two in the morning when I returned to my room. I still couldn’t get used to the fact that there was no curfew at St. Clément. Madame Goût was the girls’ dorm parent, but her primary rule was that we didn’t bother her. Otherwise, we could do whatever we wanted. While I brushed my teeth, I took off my shirt and examined the mark on my back in the bathroom mirror. If I raised my shoulders in just the right way, it almost looked like Dante’s silhouette.

  Before I knew what was happening, the door leading into the adjacent room burst open, and Clementine barged inside, unaware that the bathroom was occupied. Letting the toothbrush fall to the floor, I grabbed my shirt and jumped back, trying to cover myself with my arms.


  “Oh,” she said, letting out a laugh as she looked at me. She was wearing a tight camisole, her face delicate now that it was stripped of makeup. “What were you doing?”

  “Get out!” I cried.

  “Smart enough to rank number one, but not smart enough to lock the door,” she said, backing away.

  I caught a glimpse of her room: dimly lit and velvety like a boudoir. A group of girls were splayed across her canopied bed, giggling. With force, I slammed the door shut.

  SOUL SHARING DOES NOT EXIST. A SOUL MAY ONLY INHABIT one body at a time.

  After days of searching through the narrow stacks of the St. Clément library for anything that might save Dante, it was the only answer I could find. Shutting that book, I pulled a thicker one off the shelf, entitled The Art of Dying, which the cover described as The most comprehensive study of death and its aftermath in current publication. Checking the index, I flipped to the section on Souls and skimmed the page until I found the entry I was looking for.

  Soul splitting does not exist. To split one’s soul is to kill one’s self.

  Frustrated, I shut the book and shoved it back on the shelf. We were never going to find a solution. Sliding to the floor, I rubbed my face with my hands. The reality was this: I was searching for an antidote to death. I laughed at the irony that everyone thought I was immortal, when here I was, sitting on the floor of the library, trying to find the answer to immortality in a book. As if it were that easy.

  I spread my fingers on the floor, imagining the wood was Dante’s back. That was how long he had left to live. Across the room, I heard a chair scrape the wood as someone sat down. I looked up to see Clementine unpacking her books from her bag. She was alone and hadn’t seen me. Quietly, I put the books back on the shelf and crept toward the exit.

  It wasn’t until the end of the week that I woke with the sickening suspicion that I had forgotten something. Sitting up in bed, I looked at the clock. It was eight in the morning. I wasn’t late for class and I hadn’t missed any assignments. I didn’t have any plans or any friends, I thought miserably, except for Anya, who wasn’t really a friend at all; and I wasn’t supposed to see Dante for another week. The only other person I knew here was Dr. Newhaus.…That’s when I remembered.

  Kicking back the covers, I jumped out of bed and threw on whatever clothes were lying around my room. And without looking in the mirror, I ran across campus.

  The headmaster’s office was in the main building, above the school archway. I walked down the hallway, my feet sinking into the plush carpet as I studied the old sketches of Montreal that hung on the walls. Dozens of boats and barges speckled the river and canals.

  Between two sketches stood a lacquered wooden door with a nameplate that said: HEADMASTER JOHN LAGUERRE. I knocked, and when no one answered, I sat on a wooden bench in the hall.

  Just then Headmaster LaGuerre opened the door. “Renée?” he said, looking at me.

  I stood up and he smiled, baring impressively white teeth. “And here I was thinking you’d forgotten about me.”

  “Headmaster LaGuerre, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I know it’s early, but I only just remembered that you had asked me to come to your office, and I thought I should come immediately. I’m sorry I didn’t make it sooner.”

  “That’s quite all right,” he said, and held out his hand. “Call me John. Please, come in.”

  He motioned to a green leather chair. “Have a seat.” Up close, he was soft-spoken, his accent gentle and less pronounced. “I heard you fell ill?”

  “I’m fine now,” I said, trying to smooth out the wrinkles in my skirt.

  “Good,” he said, unbuttoning his suit jacket as he sat down. “Good. So how are you liking St. Clément?”

  I sat on my hands. “It’s okay.”

  “My daughter, Clementine, told me you’d met.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised she had mentioned me. “I guess we did.”

  Clasping his hands in front of his mouth, he studied me, and then laughed. “Why so timid?”

  “You don’t have any cats, do you?” I asked, glancing around his office, which, admittedly, looked nothing like Headmistress Von Laark’s. It was a sunny alcove, finished with blond wood and floorboards worn smooth with time.

  The windowsills held overgrown leafy plants, which, if I stretched my imagination, almost seemed to give off the faint smell of mint.

  He gave me an amused look. “No. Why do you ask?”

  “Because…” I said, glancing across his desk until I spotted a school folder, which had the crest of a cat. “Because it’s the St. Clément mascot.”

  He shook his head. “To be honest, I’m actually very allergic. But that’s between you and me. If the administration finds out, they might give me the boot.” He winked and leaned forward, sifting through his documents until he found a piece of paper.

  “The other day, when everyone was taking the placement exam, I stepped in to take a look. You were the only one in the gymnasium other than Madam Goût and Mr. Pollet. I observed you. You were standing in the middle of the gymnasium, writing.”

  He pushed the sheet of paper across the desk. It was the map I had marked up, identifying eight out of the nine animals.

  “This is incredible,” he said.

  I felt my face turn red. Was it?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m making you uncomfortable. Let me explain. I called you in here to congratulate you because of your class rank. Though, to be honest, after watching you, and studying your results, the title of top rank doesn’t even do you justice. The ability to locate death without moving, without taking a single step.” He placed his finger at the center of my map. “That is an ability that many of us strive for, but few ever achieve, even after years of training. How did you do it?”

  How had I done it? I thought it might have had something to do with my being a little Undead, with my being a better version of myself, but that still didn’t explain how I did it. At Gottfried, I had been at the top of my horticulture class, but I never used to feel the air parting into a path, nor could I map the exact location of a dead thing without actually seeing it. I would just wander stupidly in one direction, where I would stumble across a dead animal and embarrass myself by screaming. Now it was different. It was as if the dead animals were items I had lost, and all I had to do was mentally retrace my steps to remember where I had put them. Only, I’d never known where they were in the first place. “I—I—”

  The headmaster laughed. “Don’t look so scared. I’m not expecting an answer. I just wanted to meet the girl who could map death.”

  I gave him an embarrassed smile. “I hope I haven’t disappointed you.”

  A wrinkle formed between the headmaster’s eyebrows. “Of course not,” he said, and stood up. “Well, thank you for taking the time to meet with me.”

  I picked up my bag and made for the door, but then stopped. “May I ask you a question?”

  “By all means.”

  “What was the last animal on the test?”

  Headmaster LaGuerre crossed his hands. “A canary.”

  I must have looked confused, because he asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t understand. How did I rank first if I couldn’t even identify all of the animals?”

  “Because that would have been impossible,” he said. “A canary has the lightest soul of all animals. Its soul is fragile, hollow, like its bones. It dies so quickly and so suddenly that it seems to barely have any life at all. It’s as if it isn’t even present in this world. No Monitor has ever been known to identify one correctly. The fact that you could detect its location was extremely impressive.”

  I broke his gaze, not sure how to respond to his compliment. I didn’t feel very impressive, just confused.

  A breeze blew in through the window, rustling the papers on the headmaster’s desk. “You were the only one who made it past the fifth animal,” he said, studying me as if he were trying to figure me out. “Mos
t students only identified three before the time was up. Does that answer your question?”

  A canary? I repeated in my head, remembering how I had blurted out that word on the airplane without knowing why. Was it a coincidence that the canary was the last animal on the test? No, I thought. Impossible.

  “Is there something else?” The headmaster probed.

  I shook my head. “Yes. I mean no,” I said, and forced a smile. “Thank you.”

  • • •

  When I got back to my room, Anya was waiting outside my door, looking annoyed. She was dressed in a tight little ensemble that was more nightclub than dress code. Her red hair was pulled into two loose braids, her dull roots showing along her part.

  “Why aren’t you ready?” she asked, taking in my haphazard outfit.

  I fumbled with my keys. “Ready for what?”

  “Seeing your future,” she said, adjusting her purse, which was covered in tassels.

  “Today? But I have to go to class.”

  “Yes, today,” she said in disbelief. “And we don’t have class. It’s Saturday.”

  I glanced at my watch. So it was.

  “So? Are we going?”

  I was pretty sure we had never made plans, but no matter. It’s not like I had anything better to do. “Okay.”

  The woman Anya knew lived in Mile End, the neighborhood where Anya grew up. We traveled there by foot, winding through the city streets until we passed Mont Royal, the mountain looming at the center of Montreal, swallowing the west side of the city in its shadow.

  It was a hazy morning, the sky a thick orange as Anya led the way. We chatted as we walked. She was born in Russia but had been living in Montreal since age ten. Her father ran a drugstore, and she used to help out on the weekends, stocking the shelves. That was where she first learned how to put on makeup and dye her hair, by “borrowing” items from her father’s shelves.

  Even though she had been at St. Clément for two years now, she had few friends there. “I have my own people. Russian people,” she explained. But the way she talked about them was the same way I talked about everyone I’d once known in California: as if they didn’t exist anymore. They were in a different world, a world that didn’t include Monitors and the Undead, and I couldn’t tell them who I was or what I was doing.