by Damien Love
“What? Alex, the last thing I want is to ever have to hear his voice again.”
“But that night, on the bridge in Prague, he tried to talk to me,” Alex broke in. “He wanted to talk to me.”
“And say nothing worth hearing. Alex, whatever’s gotten into you? You sound almost as insane as he is.”
“But don’t you want to at least try? I mean, he’s . . .” Alex’s voice dried up. He was suddenly close to saying it, and suddenly close to tears. Finally, here it was, boiling up and out. “He’s . . .”
“What, son? What are you trying to say?”
Mouth moving. No words. Alex felt like he was choking. Through his watery eyes, the unknown road outside wavered and winked, lights forming into a shimmering string. His grandfather laid a hand on his shoulder. Alex blinked and caught a momentarily sharp sight of the old man’s concerned gaze in the rearview. He swallowed and forced himself on.
“He’s . . . my dad.”
The hand was gone from his shoulder. They swerved sharply as horns started screaming in an outraged choir. Alex looked up to see a chaos of cars blurring around them while his grandfather cut across traffic in a reckless diagonal, streaking straight for the hard shoulder. He bounced in his seat belt as the old Citroën lurched into a long, skidding stop, tires squealing in protest. A deep silence settled.
“My dad,” Alex eventually whispered again, still amazed he’d said it. “I’ve known it all along, Grandad. He’s my dad. That’s what you wouldn’t tell me. That’s why you wouldn’t tell me.”
“Suffering cats.” His grandfather slumped over the wheel, burying his face in his forearms. Alex resisted the urge to reach out and touch his shoulder. Now that he’d opened this door, there was no going back. They had to go through this.
“Good old Harry,” the old man muttered quietly after a moment. “He said as much. He told me you were thinking that. And I told him he was wrong. Rarely wrong, is Harry. I should know that by now.”
He sat back and turned to Alex. “But, Alex: really? That’s what you’ve been thinking? Now: no. You listen very carefully. That . . . thing is not your father. Your father died.” He broke off and cleared his throat before going on. “Your father died. Thirteen years ago. If anyone knows that, it’s me. I was there, son. I . . . You know all this. You know it—”
“But I saw him,” Alex broke in, surprised how calm he sounded. He felt sorry for what his grandfather was going through. The old man had carried this secret alone for a long time, shouldering the burden to protect Alex and his mum. Now, even after Alex had told him he knew the truth, his grandfather seemed desperate to keep up the pretense. But Alex was more determined to get it out in the open.
“I saw his face,” Alex pressed gently. “It’s obvious. And the girl. Zia. Her face. His daughter . . . my sister. Little sister. Half sister.”
“Alex, for the love of— Do you honestly think I would’ve kept something like that from you? From your mother? Yes, there are things I’ve not told you, but this? Get it through your head: that man is not your father.”
“Well, who is he then?” Alex heard his voice explode as patience evaporated. “If he isn’t my dad, what’s the big deal? Why the big secret? If he isn’t my dad, what’s it matter? Because he is, isn’t he?” He folded his arms and stared out at the traffic streaming by.
“Alex. Okay. Listen. He isn’t.” His grandfather chewed his lip. “Look, I was going to tell you all of this. One day.”
Alex refused to look at him.
“Alex. He’s not your father—he’s . . .” The old man trailed off, looking around as though searching for help, or a way out. Finally, he hung his head, spread his hands in a gesture of defeat, and said something.
One word. It coincided with the angry scream of a horn from a truck rattling past outside. Alex was certain he had misheard.
“What?”
After another heavy pause, his grandfather said it again:
“Mine.”
“Mine? What do you mean, mine? Your what?”
The old man looked up, smiled sadly.
“He’s not your father, Alex. He’s mine. He’s my father.”
X.
FLOWER POWER
They had been driving again for some time before Alex spoke. He had been thinking carefully about precisely how to frame his next question:
“Whu?”
“Hmm?”
“But.” Alex heard his own voice as if from the end of a long tin tunnel. The only word he seemed able to get hold of was but. “But. Okay . . . But he looks about forty-something. But you, you must be . . . Right. Grandad: how old are you?”
“Hah. Interesting question. I seem to remember you asked me that once before.” Alex’s grandfather nodded, then fell silent and became very absorbed in his driving.
Alex felt a scream racing through him. He managed to grab its ankles and drag it back so it came out as a strained whisper:
“So what’s the answer?”
“Well, now, you see,” the old man said, “this lies in the whole area I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, Alex. I mean, Harry, he’s been pushing me to fill you in, y’know. You need to tell the lad, ’e deserves to know . . . Good old Harry. So, let’s see: what age am I. Well, let me think, where are we, this is the end of April now, isn’t it? The cruelest month, as they say, so . . .”
He lifted fingers from the steering wheel as though counting. “That makes it, give or take . . . I mean, not precisely on the nail, but rounding things up . . .”
“Grandad!”
“Hundred and ninety. Well, closer to a hundred and ninety-eight. Say two hundred. Far as I know, I was born in 1821.”
Another little while passed. Alex had the sensation of his mind folding itself smaller and smaller, packing up to leave. His mouth was open, working slackly, getting ready to speak. He wondered what it was going to say.
“1821.”
“That’s right. Don’t know the exact date. That’s why I decided to make January the first my birthday. Keeps things tidy. And it means I can celebrate it the night before, y’know, two birds with one stone. Although, I’ve been thinking about changing it to summer, to balance the year out. Party-wise.”
After another long silence, Alex heard himself saying: “That’s impossible.” He had probably tried to make it sound decisive, but he was aware that his voice faltered and more painfully aware that, given the amount of impossible things he had experienced, this was hardly an adequate response.
“Impossible, is it?” His grandfather’s eyes reflected red lights from the road. “And why is that?”
“Because.” Alex gestured at the physical laws of the universe around them, trying to catch the last before they all skipped away. “It’s just impossible. A hundred and ninety-eight years old. It’s stupid.”
“Is that so. Well, tell me this, Alex. Did you know that within a couple of hours’ drive from your house, you could put your hands on a living tree that’s over four thousand years old?”
“What?” Alex screwed his eyes shut. “No, but—”
“Yes . . . but. The Llangernyw Yew, in Wales. Magnificent thing. It was already a couple of thousand years old when Caesar invaded—”
“No.” Alex cut the old man off before he got started on what sounded like becoming an enthusiastic talk on the natural history of the British Isles. A four-thousand-year-old tree seemed unlikely, but it could wait. He did his best to rally.
“Okay, maybe. Maybe there are trees that are thousands of years old. I don’t care. That’s trees. That’s different from—”
“Well, take the Greenland shark, then.”
“The what?”
“Greenland shark. Somniosus microcephalus. Ugly-looking brute but quite the fellow. It’s been estimated the oldest one swimming about today is between three hundred and six hundred ye
ars old. Just think: it could’ve attended the first performances of Shakespeare’s plays! Well, if it wasn’t a shark. And, you know, there are whales and tortoises around that are easily getting on for two hundred. And, I mean, the Loch Ness Monster, she’s at least—”
“No, but . . .”
“But when you consider all that, Alex, is there not just the smallest part of you starts to think, Well, the principle is there? Life can be sustained in some creatures for several hundred years, so why not in others? Why not in us? Why not longer? That maybe there are things science has yet to learn about aging? That perhaps it’s possible to slow it—maybe stop it?”
His grandfather paused, offering another opening. Alex had nothing except the roaring between his ears.
“Now, the further you go down that line of thought,” the old man went on, “the more dangerous it becomes, if you ask me. But, I guarantee you, there are scientists right this moment spending billions trying to crack the code. Just as there have always been people trying to unlock the secret, in different ways, for thousands of years. Well, my father is one of them. I told you before: eternal life. It’s his obsession. I just didn’t tell you he’d already gone some way toward achieving it.”
The old man fell silent, as though he had explained anything.
Alex sat trying to pull his tattered thoughts together. Rain hit the windscreen in scattered points of light. The wipers ticked back and forth with a steady, comforting chunk-clunk, spreading the light out in brief, shining, vanishing arcs.
“You know,” his grandfather said happily, “I’d been positively dreading telling you about this, Alex. I mean, I would’ve put it off forever. But now I’ve actually done it, it’s not half as bad as I’d feared. It’s a real weight off the shoulders. There’s a lesson there: don’t keep things bottled up.”
Alex barely heard him. He was wondering how much his mind could take before it finally snapped. Maybe it had already happened.
“Right.” He grabbed the first question he could, just trying to keep the conversation moving before his thoughts seized up or ran away screaming. “So . . . you’re immortal.”
“What? Good lord, no. I mean, that’s the kind of madness he believes in. No, I’m just old, Alex. Just old.”
“So, but . . . well, how old is he?”
“I can only really guess at that. Always did look young for his age, even before. I’ve made efforts to find out when he was born, but he’s always covered his tracks carefully. I think I can narrow it down to somewhere between 1785 and 1795. Let’s say he’s about two hundred and thirty. And my sister is around a hundred and eighty-four.”
The car shivered as the old man moved out to overtake.
“Sister?” Alex failed to understand. Then he felt his brain buckle and his skin creep as the moon face zoomed in his memory. “The girl. Zia. The little girl. She’s your sister.”
“Sadly, yes. Ah, are you okay, Alex?” The old man was watching him in the mirror. “I mean, are you okay with me, son? I’m still me, you know. Still old grandad. Just because I’m maybe a little older than you thought, it doesn’t change anything about that.”
“No, I’m okay. I think . . .” Alex fell silent, trying to figure out what he thought. It felt like trying to balance at the middle of a seesaw. On one side, the weight of everything he used to think he understood. On the other, his equally heavy certainty that every word the old man had just said was true.
“Right,” he said, trying to adjust. Once again, he was struck by how calm he sounded. “But how? And I don’t understand. You look old. I mean, not . . . a hundred and ninety . . . but much older than . . . your father. And Zia, she’s just a kid.”
“Oh, that’s simple enough. I stopped taking the potion when I went away from them. To keep the biological age frozen, you have to keep using it, you see. It’s not a one-off thing. You need to top up regularly.”
“Potion.”
“Brew my father concocted. Elixir. You know how he operates. Combination of science and magic and, ah, other learning. He’s from the school that doesn’t recognize dividing lines between any spheres of knowledge: ancient wisdom or modern developments; science, philosophy, or religion; magic or black magic, or whatever else you might care to call it. What they used to call a magus during the Renaissance, and what we might call a Renaissance man today, ha. Shame he’s insane.
“It took him years, but he found his recipe by deciphering various obscure books and manuscripts. He’s amassed thousands of rare works, Alex, dating back to medieval times. Some earlier. Strange books. Lots of Latin and runes and astrological symbols. Instructions on communing with angels and demons. Accounts of opening doorways to other places, with handy woodcut illustrations. You get the idea. You’ve seen some of it yourself. This Shadow Gate business is right up his street.
“That’s where I heard that story, of course. My father mentioned it once or twice when I was young: a puzzle he was trying to solve. I’ve been trying to remember, but I don’t think he told me much more. He was already suspicious of me by then—or, rather, he knew I was growing suspicious of him.”
“What potion?” Alex prodded, after his grandfather fell into another thoughtful silence. “What’s in it?”
“Hmmm? Oh, well, certain elements, gathered at certain times, combined in certain ways, certain words said, certain signs made. Then, y’know: fire burn and cauldron bubble. Whiz it all up, leave it to simmer with a sprig of thyme, and Bob’s your uncle. And you’ll outlive him by several generations. Unless Uncle Bob is taking it, too, of course.”
The old man fell silent, apparently studying the road, but Alex saw he was debating how much more to say. He decided staying quiet was his best bet. He tried to remember where he knew fire burn and cauldron bubble from. Shakespeare. A play they’d been reading in school. Macbeth. Witches casting spells.
“There are several ingredients,” his grandfather suddenly continued, straightening his shoulders. “Ah: magnesium, right? Pinch of that. A nip of snake venom. Some others. But those are all trifles, really.”
The old man hesitated again, clearly loath to go on. “But the essential element is a particular plant. Ah, a flower. It’s the center of it all, Alex. My father keeps it and uses an extract it produces. A ghastly flower. There’s only ever been one like it, and getting it was perilous in the extreme. Potentially fatal. Potentially worse. I was with him the night he went into the forest to take it. The Black Forest, Alex. I’ve been wary of the region ever since. A horrendous night. 1836, that would have been.”
The old man shivered at some phantom and checked his mirrors again.
“I think we should stay off the autoroute. I don’t see anyone following but pays to be careful. Be easier to tell out there.” He took the next exit off the highway. They were soon in dark countryside, steering a dim network of smaller roads. Alex’s grandfather seemed to know the way instinctively.
“As I said, Harry had been on at me to tell you about all this,” the old man resumed. “He was right. You deserve to know, Alex, there are reasons you . . . But I didn’t know how. And I suppose part of me never wanted to. I just wanted things to be normal between us as long as possible.”
Mention of Harry reminded Alex where they were heading, what he had to do. The thought of his grandfather’s friend being held in the tall man’s clutches somehow seemed even more awful now. But in turn came a memory of the strange photograph Harry had shown him.
“I still don’t understand, though. About your age, and—”
“Ah, if you wouldn’t mind, Alex,” his grandfather said, rubbing one wrist wearily across his forehead, “I need to concentrate on driving. We can talk more, I promise. But I’m a little tired now, and these small roads can be difficult in the dark. We’ve probably had enough to chew on for the moment, anyway. Is that okay, son?”
“Okay.” Alex nodded. He felt exhausted himself.
“Good man. Maybe you could try more with the tablet? I’ll let you know if you, y’know. Disappear. Ha.” The old man flexed his left hand repeatedly on the wheel, as if trying to ease a cramp. He sounded his cheerful self, but Alex caught the uneasy undertone.
“I’ll try.”
The toy robot on his lap grinned through the gloom. Alex took a breath, tried to put everything else aside, and forced himself to consider the problem calmly. He had done it before, as the old man had said. He could do it again. He focused on the empty eyes.
He gave up after a minute. His simmering brain felt close to boiling over. The madness of his grandfather’s conversation was one thing. But there was something else. For months, Alex had lived with the belief that the tall man was his father. It had been practically the only thing he had thought about. There had been fear, confusion, and guilt in it, but also one sharp, solid truth: that, just for a moment, they had spoken.
Now, if he were to believe his grandfather’s story, he would have to go back to thinking about his dad the way he used to. But when he tried to remember quite how that had been, he realized all he could find there now was an empty space. The distant figure had been pushed farther away. Meanwhile, the tall man loomed larger, even more hideously strange.
The engine hummed as they crested a rise. Everything felt eerie. Shadowy trees brooded along the roadside, framing enormous flat fields, vague vineyards. Ghost clouds hung frozen in the towering black sky. No stars. It seemed they were the only vehicle on these roads.
Alex rested his head against the window, hoping the coolness might calm the buzz of his thoughts. As he looked down at the old robot again, something else his grandfather once said drifted across his memory. The best advice the old man had ever given him.
Sometimes you just have to accept what’s happening and get on and deal with it.
Deal with it. He rubbed his fingers over the tin toy and yawned, barely aware he was doing it. He let his eyelids close. He just had to find a way to focus his thoughts.