by Alma Katsu
I don’t know what to say, what to do, if I should take his hand or drop to my knees in worship. Instinct kicks in and I start to ask if he’d like something to drink before I realize I have nothing to offer, and have no idea what kind of refreshment to offer God, anyway. I become completely self-conscious, remembering that he most likely knows all the terrible, stupid things I’ve done, which causes me to flush with embarrassment and regret. I’m literally meeting my maker and it is every bit as awful as you might think it would be.
“He’s told me so much about you,” the old man says as he gestures to Adair, then settles onto the couch, arranging his robes around him.
I want to say something witty back—believe me, when you’re in the presence of God, you want to impress him—but I can think of nothing to say. Nothing. My mind goes blank, as though someone has pulled a plug at the back of my skull and let all of my intelligence drain away. My mouth struggles to form a word: nothing. Adair, patient, takes my hand to steady me.
Finally, I blurt out, “He’s told me nothing about you.” Well, it’s true.
Nonplussed, he just nods his head. I suppose he’s used to people saying stupid things when they first meet him. He pats the spot on the couch next to him, indicating that I should join him.
God works hard to put me at ease. He tells me about the origin of things: how he got the idea for cellular structure and waveforms and black holes, then goes on to explain why the giraffe has its long neck and the dodo went extinct. “It’s all connected, you see. It all comes out of one calculation, like one gigantic formula,” he says of his greatest creation, the universe. “That’s the beauty of it. Once you set it in motion, there’s no stopping it. Each step is inevitable; it all must play itself out,” he finishes, and looks expectantly at me, as though he thinks that I understand his grand plan. As if—just like that—I am able to absorb the secret of creation and life, mysteries that have eluded the greatest minds since the dawn of civilization. God has just told me the thread on which all of life hangs—and I’ve forgotten it. In my panic, I’ve lost it.
Both Adair and God know that this is all beyond me. I’m blowing it, this audience with God, and the truly frightening part is that Adair’s and my future happiness might depend on it. What if God is judging right now whether to grant Adair his freedom based on my reactions? What if God condemns Adair to the underworld for eternity because I am not good enough or smart enough for him, because I don’t know how to behave or what to say?
They are staring at me, waiting for me to say something. I take a deep breath to steady my nerves and press my palms against my legs. Exhale. Try not to think of him as God, I tell myself. Think of him as Adair’s father. A smile comes naturally to my lips and I turn to him. “Tell me what Adair was like as a little boy,” I say. “If he ever was a little boy. I want to know everything about him.”
There is a hint of delight in God’s smile, as though he has been waiting a long time for someone to ask him this very question.
By the time God rises from the couch to bid us farewell, we have drunk our way through a tray of tea that magically appeared, and I’ve heard a half dozen stories of things Adair did in an earlier time, and it is quite apparent that God is very fond of Adair. As a matter of fact, Adair might be one of God’s favorites. “A pleasure,” God says to me as we part at the door. Adair gestures for me to wait a minute and then slips out the door behind him.
Adair spent the entire audience watching Lanore proudly. She would make a good queen—fair, kind, empathetic—but not, perhaps, of the underworld. He remembers some of the things he was forced to do as the king of the dead, judgments handed down, punishments meted out to obstinate souls who swore on their innocence even as they were sucked into the cold black maw of the cosmos or consigned to roast in eternal fire, or were sent to another, equally heartless fate. As one who is guilty of bending or breaking rules in order to survive on earth, Lanore is too forgiving to be queen. As one who has committed thousands of heartless acts during his time on earth, Adair flinches at the thought of returning to his throne and passing judgments on others. He’s not hypocritical enough to think he has any right to condemn his fellow sinners. Perhaps there’s a good reason why only a god sits on the throne here. You can’t have been mortal and do this job.
In fact, Adair cannot even see Lanore choosing to remain in the underworld, let alone be queen. He remembers Persephone, the last queen: she may have reconciled herself to living in the underworld, but she was never happy. A strange deal had been worked out with the old man, where Persephone was allowed to leave her husband and return to the world for six months of every year. If she didn’t have those months to look forward to, she probably would’ve willed herself to die, Adair thinks. It just goes to show that the old man isn’t heartless. There might still be a way. He wouldn’t want Adair, his favorite, to die of unhappiness.
Which happens. Even gods don’t live forever, and they know it. The most determined ones will last a long time, for as long as a giant red sun, even longer. But the sad ones and the unhappy ones, they find a way to short-circuit their lives. Or disappear from the ranks suddenly, no explanations given, a replacement dug up from somewhere, a hasty appointment made.
Out in the hall, once the visit is over, the old man throws his arm around Adair’s shoulders affectionately. “You’re right—she’s a lovely woman. I can see why you want to keep her.”
Adair tugs on his thin beard. “I want more than to keep her,” he says shyly. “I want to have children with her. . . . I will die without her.”
“How human you have become,” the old man says—and he doesn’t mean it in a good way. The gods think themselves above men. To be human is to be weak and concerned only about one’s self.
“I served you well in this position for a time, and you know it,” Adair reminds him. He has to be careful; he can’t risk making the old man mad at him. He needs the power above them all to release both him and Lanore from the underworld, as he’s the only one who can. Adair knows they would not make the journey through the abyss.
He needs the old man, but at the same time, his famously short temper is burning up like a lit fuse. “You’ve always said that this is the hardest job in all the heavens. I’ve done my share: now is your chance to prove your generosity by granting my release.”
“And what about your sister?” the old man counters wearily. “One could argue that she’s served me more faithfully than you. She never ran away. She held down the fort while you shirked your responsibilities. Why shouldn’t she be the one to get what she wants?”
“You’re right; I left my post, but I did so out of principle. I could not wed my sister. And now I have fallen in love. Haven’t you always said that love is your most perfect creation? That of all the things you made for man, love was your crowning gift? Why should only men be allowed to fall in love? Why should your greatest gift be reserved for men and not shared with the gods? You cannot fault me for falling in love. My sister is good and acting out of duty, but she isn’t in love with me. Give her the chance to fall in love, too.”
Exasperated, the old man throws up his hands. “I should have made you the god of oratory and not the underworld. Tell me, what would you have me do?”
“Let us go,” Adair implores. “Send us back. We’ll live out our lives quietly among the mortals. You’ll never hear from us again.”
“And your sister?” he asks gruffly. “What about her? Is that really fair to her?”
Adair hangs his head. For that, he has no answer except that unfairness comes to all of us. For a god, she is young and her story isn’t finished being told.
Changing his tactics, Adair asks, “Do you know what the difference is between man and god?” The old man shakes his head. Adair continues, “If it is within their power, most men will make the most humane choice every time. Not the ideal choice, perhaps, but the one that results in the greatest kindness. Whereas a god will not be swayed by humanity. An entire village will be w
iped out by a tsunami, an entire race eradicated by disease or pestilence, if that is what fate demands. The gods are bound to uphold fate. We are slaves to fate.” He knows the old man has made plenty of decisions like these, and even though he is a god, such inhumanity takes its toll. “For once in your life,” he begs, “make the humane choice. Show compassion.”
The old man shakes his head at Adair, dismayed. “You never would’ve shown compassion, in the past. You were the epitome of a god, my boy. Unswayable.”
“And I was wrong.”
The old man scratches the back of his head, shoulders rounded in a shrug. “You’re putting me in a very bad spot.”
Adair embraces him one last time, their whiskery cheeks brushing. “I put our fate in your hands. I trust you will do the right thing.” After all, what are gods for if not miracles?
“Is that it?” I ask Adair when he returns to the magically suspended room a few minutes later. “How will we know what he’s decided? When will we know that he’s made his decision?”
He is much calmer than I imagine possible and I want to interpret this as good news. Adair wraps an arm around my shoulders and squeezes me tight to him. “I have to believe that he’s already made his decision, or otherwise—take it from me—things would’ve gone much more badly.”
TWENTY-FOUR
I woke up in the fortress, back on the island, lying on a low bed made of cushions on the floor of Adair’s study. Gulls called from out over the sea. It was daylight outside, and the bright white ocean light bouncing through the window lit up the entire room.
I sat bolt upright. My head sloshed as though I had a hangover. For no reason I could think of, I had the taste of seawater in my mouth.
Adair was lying on the floor next to me. He was very still. Dear God—I grabbed his arm: he felt cold and heavy. I shook him, jostling harder and harder when there was no response. Wake up. You must wake up.
His eyes popped open. I burst into tears.
He was up, comforting me in an instant. “Why are you crying?” he said, trying to soothe me. “There is no reason to be sad. We’ve been returned. It’s a miracle. We are the luckiest people in the history of the world.”
He was right, of course. We were lucky. I threw my arms around his neck and blotted my tears on his collar. “I can’t believe we’re back, that’s why I’m crying. He listened to you. He gave you what you asked for,” I said.
“He isn’t without a heart. I was just able to move him to use it.”
“I don’t understand. . . . These memories . . . how are we able to remember what happened in the underworld?”
“A gift, I imagine. I’m sure he wants for us to know exactly how generous he has been to us.”
“And the queen—I suppose this means she’ll rule alone?” I asked.
Adair gave me a sheepish look. “Not alone, not exactly. She has Jonathan with her, remember. I may have persuaded the old man to see Jonathan in a new light. You see, gods are made when a lucky confluence of conditions come together at the moment of creation. I think you could say that Jonathan was the product of one such lucky confluence: take his extraordinary beauty. I think that, under other circumstances, he might’ve been intended to be a god, perhaps even Eros, the god of desire. But waste not, want not; he was there in the underworld already—why not give him a try?”
“You persuaded the old man to make Jonathan your replacement? To be king of the underworld?” I said doubtfully. Adair had always teasingly called Jonathan “the Sun God.” Maybe he’d had a sixth sense about it.
“You have to admit, there is a poetic justice to it,” Adair said with a little smile. “He’s been given tremendous privileges throughout his life, but for the first time, he will have to work hard for it.”
We lay back on the bower of cushions and the cashmere blanket, shoulder to shoulder, in a square of strong white sunlight. It was a delicious moment of respite, a curiously normal moment of calm, and I think Adair and I came to the same conclusion at the same time: we were back on earth in the house where everything had started, but how did we know that anything had changed? We’d been returned to the land of the living, but beyond that, how did we know that we weren’t exactly the same as we’d been before the journey?
“I want to see for myself,” Adair said, determined. He sat up and reached to his desk and began searching with his fingertips for something on the desktop. After a moment of groping and cursing under his breath, he found it: a penknife. The tiny blade, with its ivory handle, seemed an anachronism, a device from another time.
He pressed the blade to the tip of an index finger until it pierced the skin. A corona of red welled to the spot. We held our breath and waited. A minute passed and the wound hadn’t healed over yet. After another minute, a drop of blood rolled down his finger. The wound remained doggedly open.
“My God,” he said, raising it to his mouth to suck on the wound. With a burst of alarm, I realized that Adair could be made to hurt now, to suffer, to feel the burr of pain from a headache, a broken bone, or a tumor. Now wasn’t the time to turn my thoughts to the fragility of life, not when anything could press down and rupture our delicate human bodies, crush us like eggs, but I saw that I could lose Adair still. He could be taken away from me as swiftly as Luke had been.
I stared into his face and I knew that it had changed, almost unperceivably, but it had changed. I knew that soon time would be etched there, recorded in small lines near his eyes and mouth. It would come to me, too. We would see proof of time’s progress on each other and would be forever reminded of the bargain we struck today.
He’d given up so much for me that it was nearly incomprehensible to grasp the scope of it. Who would give up everything for love? Give up infinite power, all of time? And in exchange for the precariousness of the human condition, illness and decay, never knowing which day would be your last. Still, he’d agreed to this because of me. Me. It was humbling. I felt grateful that Adair could love me so much.
Then it struck me, the tremendous responsibility that came with love. He’d traded the entirety of the cosmos for this world, the infinitely small and yet complete world that contained just him and me. Together, we would experience everything that world had to offer. We would have children and raise them together; we would grow old together, and one day we would die. We would experience a common, everyday life, and that was the true miracle of love, I saw. That two people could be the world to each other. We had only the days of one lifetime to dedicate to the task, and suddenly—after two centuries of living as though life would never end—that timeline felt ridiculously short, as though we’d been cheated. Would the days of one lifetime be enough? They would have to be.
Again, Adair seemed to read my mind. He took my hands and looked into my eyes. “We have a set number of days together now—and who knows how many—so we must always remember that our forever is the rest of our two lives, our two lives together. Are you ready to do this, to spend the rest of our lives together, Lanny my love?”
My love. Those words had never sounded better. I leaned into him. “Yes,” I said, holding tightly to his arm as we lay back together on the cushions, bonded together for the rest of our lives. “Yes, I am.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’d like to thank the folks who brought The Taker Trilogy to life. First and foremost, my thanks to the family and friends who have been so supportive during the whole adventure. Special thanks once again to Eileen McGervey, and Terry and Lelia Nebeker from One More Page Books; fellow Washington-area authors Allison Leotta, Rebecca Coleman, Kathleen McCleary, and Rebecca York for reading pages and generally keeping my spirits up; Janet Cadsawan for her sage advice; and all the wonderful, enthusiastic book bloggers—especially Jennifer Lawrence and Swapna Krishna Lovin—who have been behind the books from day one.
Thank you to my fearless editor at Gallery, Tricia Boczkowski. To Louise Burke and Jen Bergstrom, my gratitude for their commitment to The Taker Trilogy. My thanks to everyone at Galle
ry for taking care of these books every step of the way: Alexandra Lewis, Mary McCue, Natalie Ebel, and Elana Cohen. Thanks also to Liz Perl, Jennifer Robinson, Wendy Sheanin, and Stuart Smith at Simon & Schuster for their incredible support.
Thanks to Anna Jean Hughes and now Georgina Hawtrey-Woore for seeing The Taker Trilogy through at Century/Random House UK. My sincere thanks to Giuseppe Strazzeri, Fabrizio Cocco, Valentina Fortichiari, and Tommaso Gobi at Longanesi for the wonderful time in Milan for the launch of Immortal (The Taker). Thanks to Milla Baracchini, Ana Prado, and Julian Cunha of Novo Conceito for the spectacular rollout of Ladrão de Almas (The Taker) in Brazil. I am grateful, as always, for Intercontinental Literary Agency work on my behalf, especially that of Nicki Kennedy, Sam Edenborough, and Katherine West, and to Gray Tan of the Grayhawk Agency.
And as always, I thank my husband, Bruce, for his love and support.
GALLERY READERS GROUP GUIDE
* * *
THE
DESCENT
ALMA KATSU
INTRODUCTION
For Lanore McIlvrae, immortality has been more of a curse than a blessing. It has distanced her from the rest of humanity and left her lonely and unhappy. Too, she has been haunted by guilt for the things she’s done in order to survive. She’s especially haunted by what she did to Jonathan, the first man she ever loved.