Luminosity

by Alicorn

  I wrote another note. I had a little stack of fifteen cards after I added it to the pile. That might be enough. Dealing with my impromptu public speaking issues was on my to-hack list anyway; going on sparser notes would be a potentially useful step towards that. I was rationalizing, of course - I just wanted to be done with homework. But I really, reallywanted to be done with homework, and so as long as there was some way it could be made not to bite me in the rear later, I might as well give in to that want.

  "Right, I'm done," I muttered to myself, and started putting school supplies away.

  "What would you like to do with the rest of your day?" Edward asked, smiling. I looked at him. Radiating from his face was the undiluted desire to see to it that I got exactly the Tuesday I wanted. It was gratifying, mostly - and still a little weird, but I was getting used to it.

  "So," I said, sitting back in my chair and recalling a note to myself from the previous day, "witches and werewolves, hm?"

  * * *

  "Witches and we- Oh. I mentioned those when I told you about Carlisle," remembered Edward. "Well - yes, they exist. There are actually two kinds of werewolves that I know about, and every witch is different."

  "Besides two kinds of werewolves, witches, and vampires, is there anything else mythical that I should know about?" I asked.

  "Not as far as I know," said Edward. "But I might not have seen everything. Anyway, witches. That's the technical term for a human with a power - the kind that turning into a vampire generally intensifies."

  "I didn't know witches were the sorts of things that would have technical terminology about them," I said, and then I sat up suddenly. "Wait a minute, that would make me a witch, wouldn't it?"

  "It would," agreed Edward. "Although you wouldn't have been the sort of witch that used to be burnt at the stake if you'd lived earlier - your power seems only to protect you from mine, and maybe others. It doesn't seem to do anything otherwise detectable."

  "Were you a witch? Jasper?"

  "I don't think either of us would have qualified. Extra vampire powers don't have to be preceded by witchcraft. My ability to read people and Jasper's charisma proved useful, but were quite natural when we were human. Alice was probably a witch, but we don't know."

  I nodded. "And the two kinds of werewolves? Do they have other names, to tell them apart?"

  "The Eurasian variety," said Edward, "are sometimes also called Children of the Moon. They're much closer to myth than the other sort. Silver won't do anything - that's a human myth to make it sound to one another like they'd have a fighting chance, if they ran into one. But they do infect humans by biting, and change during the full moon. They're fierce, solitary creatures in wolf form, not at all the sort of animal you'd want to meet."

  "Are they normal humans during the rest of the month?" I asked.

  "I think so. I haven't actually encountered any of them. They're extinct now, or close to it - Caius doesn't care for them a bit and had them hunted down. I only know what Carlisle's told me, and he learned it all from the Volturi."

  "Hunted to extinction with, not silver, presumably - what?"

  Edward tilted his head back a little and laughed. "With members of the Volturi guard, of course. I'm sure there were casualties on their side. Werewolves - either sort - can give vampires a run for our money in a fight. But a transformed Child of the Moon isn't very intelligent. That is, they're smarter than normal wolves, but they don't retain their human intellects. A group of vampires bent on hunting one down could accomplish it. Especially if they managed to work out who it was as a human. Then it would be quite easy." He kept switching tenses - I supposed that made sense when talking about the traits of a species that might or might not be extinct.

  "Okay. What about the other kind? Where do they live?" I prompted.

  "Not far from here, actually," Edward said, "but I doubt there are any of them left, either. We were here seventy years ago and met a pack of them. They don't like vampires, but we were able to convince them we didn't prey on humans, and made a treaty - we stay off their land and don't bite anyone, and they don't attack us unless we're on their turf. But it takes vampire presence to activate the genes that let them shapeshift. The pack that was active seventy years ago is likely all inactive now, or dead. And we haven't been close enough to their land to trigger any new changes."

  "Where do you mean by "not far from here"?" I asked, aware that vampires might easily conceive very differently of distances.

  "The Quileute reservation, La Push," Edward said. "They probably still tell the stories, even if the actual wolves are all gone now."

  "That's quite close," I said. It was just over a half an hour away - driving like a normalperson. "I know some people from La Push."

  "You do?" Edward asked, looking interested.

  "Charlie's old friends with a guy from there called Billy Black. He sold Charlie my truck. I used to play with Billy's daughters sometimes, Rachel and Rebecca, when I was little. I've been out of touch with them lately, though. I think they had a younger brother. I can't think what his name was, though."

  "I don't know either," shrugged Edward. "They might be descendants of one of the wolves we met, though - same surname."

  "So how do the - do they have their own name besides "wolves"?" Edward shook his head. "The Quileute wolves, then, how do they work?"

  He explained. They were indistinguishable from normal humans until the gene was activated by vampire presence. Wolves were quite fast and strong enough to kill vampires, at least when they worked as a pack. They also healed with extraordinary rapidity, and retained some of these powers even in their human forms. When the gene woke up and did its work, a gradual buildup of emotion eventually provoked the first shift, which, while potentially dangerous to people around the wolf (as they expanded quite a bit in size very rapidly) was not harmful to its subject. Shifting continued to be provoked by lost temper until more practice managing both shifting and temper accumulated. After that, it was possible to "quit one's wolf" and go back to being a relatively normal human. A Quileute wolf who didn't quit, also didn't age.

  "What makes you so sure the ones you met seventy years ago aren't still alive, then?" I asked.

  "They have secrets to keep, too," Edward said. "If they're alive, they've probably faked their deaths and moved away. The tribe council likely knows, or at least has enough details to recognize the events if anyone should activate now. But arbitrary Quileutes, like your friends, almost certainly think of the wolves as mere legends."

  I nodded, and sighed, dropping my chin onto my arms where they lay folded across the table. "Why - why - don't people want to be immortal? Why don't people care that everyone is dying? Why do they want to curesome deadly things like cancer and malaria and then the Quileutes had a cure for aginghanded to them on a silver platter and they gave it up? Is everyone in the world but meactually suicidal and I just never noticed because they aren't all taking razors to their wrists?"

  "It's natural," murmured Edward.

  "Cancer's natural."

  "Cancer isn't inevitable," he said.

  "Neither is aging!" I cried, sitting up and gesturing emphatically at Edward. "You're going to be seventeen forever. I'm going to be seventeen forever once we've got everything sorted out."

  "What, do you want to turn everyone into a vampire?" asked Edward.

  "I told you already, I can't. I can't turn everyone or it'll be entirely counterproductive," I said, folding my arms and resting my head on them again. "The Volturi want to be immortal, I suppose, but they don't want to share, do they?"

  Edward reached out to stroke my hair. It was a soothing, regular motion.

  "I'm tempted to find Rachel and Rebecca's phone numbers. And their brother's. And call them all up, and demand that they come visit right away, and have you all sitting there when they show up, so they can live forever - it wouldn't be as bad as turning them without permission, I think, since if they were insaneand decided they didn't want superpowers and the ch
ance to live forever they could quit their wolves. If they were insane," I growled.

  He kept stroking my hair. I closed my eyes and tried to calm down, concentrating on the cool, careful touch. "Is there," I asked, after having managed some success at this task, "any reason I shouldn't collect all the Quileutes I can, here on "your turf" where you're allowed to be, and activate them?"

  "Immature werewolves are dangerous," Edward said softly. "The connection between their transformations and their tempers means the latter is unstable until they learn control. They aren't as likely to kill as newborn vampires, but it is not out of the question, and injuries wouldn't be surprising."

  I inhaled as deeply as I could, held the breath until it hurt, and then let it out slowly. "We could set up a werewolf summer camp," I said. "Put them someplace away from anyone who can't heal like they can, help them..."

  "The presence of vampires would not help them. They instinctively see us as enemies," Edward said. "Vampires and Quileute wolves do not smell pleasant to one another or serve as comforting presences for one another."

  "Jasper," I said, desperately. It was a sign that I was very serious, wanting to bring in Jasper... "He could activate them, then help them stay calm until they could do it themselves, until they were safe."

  "Maybe," said Edward, surprising me. He was still petting my hair. "That might work. But the Volturi don't know about the Quileutes, I think... and are unlikely to come to know about them, unless Aro reads one of us, which might not happen for centuries if we fly under their radar. At least, as long as they remain as unobtrusive as they presently are."

  I swore. Edward did not, apparently, share Angela's philosophical dislike of strong language.

  And then I swore again. "Edward, you said the treaty is that you won't bite a human. And seventy years ago, if you were rounding, could have been after Carlisle turned Emmett. He's the most recent turning. Was it?

  "Yes," he said. "Does rounding count as lying? I don't understand."

  "Have any of the slip-ups in the family been since then?"

  He shook his head, slowly.

  "Will it break the treaty if you turn me? Even if you don't do it here?"

  Edward was silent. "Technically," he said. "Yes."

  I thought quickly. "Does the treaty say bite - that exact word?"

  "It does," he confirmed. His hand had stopped moving over my head and was resting on the back of my neck.

  "Can you turn me without actually biting me? Alice said something about crying into an open wound..."

  "She did? That's a bit of a fanciful way of putting it. We have venom in our eyes... but we don't really cry. You'd have to collect it over a long time, and get it into the bloodstream indirectly. I can't think of anything less efficient. The mouth is the better source."

  "But it doesn't absolutely have to be a bite. You could fill a syringe and inject it, maybe."

  "Yes," he said. "Yes, that would work."

  "All right," I said, letting out another sigh. "So if I figure out a way to activate some wolves without getting the Volturi's attention, I won't necessarily have a war on my hands over my having been turned."

  "Ambitious, aren't you," he remarked in a soft, almost admiring tone.

  I lifted my head, and he drew his hand back to the table in front of him. "It shouldn't beambitious," I said. "It shouldn't be uncommon or special or rebellious or anything like that to want people to live. If I were holding down a job and giving half my income to oncology researchers or something, I wouldn't beambitious. Altruistic - plenty that - but notambitious."

  "You know, if you keep saying this sort of thing, eventually I might agree with you," Edward said lightly.

  "I can't help but see that as a good result," I said, fussing with the end of my sleeve. "It looks from here like you don't have any sound reasons for believing the way you do - just tangled-up emotions that won't let you hear what I'm saying as though I'm talking clear English. If I can get through to you in spite of that by saying that death is bad a lot, well, then, I guess I'll say it a lot. Death is bad. Death is bad. Death is bad."

  "It really bothers you, what I said about souls," he observed in a low voice.

  "It did, I guess, at the time. Now I'm just sort of generally bothered by everyone who wants to tolerate death like it's their annoying-but-harmless old uncle who comes round every Thanksgiving and without whom the family would be incomplete, or something. It's not harmless. And there's no ineradicable reason it has to exist at all."

  "Let's talk about something else," said Edward, breaking eye contact and frowning.

  "I'll dole it out in small doses, if you need me to, but I'm not apt to quit," I warned him. "Ask Alice. You'd have to stay away from me entirely to avoid hearing about it."

  "I could never stay away," he said, looking back into my eyes. "I thought at first that I should... but Alice was right, when she told me I wasn't strong enough to do that."

  "Good," I whispered.

  * * *

  I got home late - well after Charlie had already given up on a fresh dinner and microwaved himself some leftovers. "Hey, Bells," he said when I let myself in. He turned off the TV and turned half-around on the sofa to look at me. "Where were you?" He didn't say it accusingly or as though he were disappointed; he didn't think I'd been spraying graffiti on buildings or knocking over mailboxes, and wasn't upset that I hadn't been home to cook one night out of the week. He was taking an interest in my life.

  I had taken a little time to think through how Charlie modeled me, and accordingly, what the best way to convince him that I was plausibly going to elope with Edward in the summer would be. And so I had a script ready.

  "Oh," I said, with an absent sort of smile on my face, "I was with Edward."

  Charlie raised an eyebrow. "Edward Cullen?"

  I nodded rapidly. "Yes, you met him on Saturday when he came by..."

  "Studying Biology again?" asked Charlie, although he didn't sound like this was his first guess.

  I shook my head, carelessly letting a lock of hair fall into my face and then tucking it behind my ear again. "We did some homework," I said slowly (well, between the two of us, some homework had gotten done), "but mostly we were just talking..." I let my eyes fly wide open, and said, "I mean, I'm friends with his sisters. I hung out with Alice some too, that was the first thing I did when I got to his house."

  "I see," muttered Charlie. And he didn't pry. I hadn't expected him to. But I thought I'd pretty effectively planted the idea. Charlie would probably grill Edward a little bit the next time he was by the house to pick me up for some outing. Sometime during the ensuing week I would have to casually drop the word "boyfriend" in Charlie's earshot - possibly on the phone to Jessica or Angela.

  I smiled brightly at him, promised that there would be dinner at dinnertime on Thursday, and trotted up the stairs.

  * * *

  Sort-of-pretending with Edward was more fun than it had any business being.

  He was imaginative about it, never indulging the temptation to repetitiveness that could have given us away. He snuck up on me between classes one morning, dipped me, and planted a kiss on my forehead. He joined me and my human friends at lunch when I sat with them instead of the vampires, sending Jessica into such paroxysms that I thought she might need to be carried off to the nurse. He walked me from the cafeteria to the science building every day, linking arms or holding hands or putting his arm around me. He did all of this with a proud, smug expression on his face, to the point where onlookers must have thought he'd landed a movie star or a supermodel if they looked only at him and not at me.

  He sent a perfect little paper airplane towards me during Biology, timed so the teacher couldn't see - but Angela could, when it made its landing right on my open textbook. She didn't lean over and demand to see the note written on it, but I showed her anyway, with a not-entirely-affected grin on my face: he'd transcribed flowery poems onto the sheet before folding it up. Angela smiled and patted my hand in a sup
portive, friendly manner. I folded up the paper into a square and kept it in my pocket.

  I was not quite so creative, and found it much easier to play the part of the infatuated girl swept off her feet. I giggled more than I was accustomed to giggling, and leaned towards him when he touched me - which was whenever I was within arm's reach. I accepted and often wore his jacket. (He wasn't bothered by the February chill, and only owned the jacket for aesthetic and disguise reasons; but it was a visible token of his affection I could put on.) I spent a lot of time looking up at him through my eyelashes, admiring the planes of his face and trying to seem adoring.

  There was one omission: I hadn't quite had the temerity to ask about the finer points of vampire venom as it applied to kissing, and without that information wasn't prepared to attempt to kiss him on the lips. He was quite free with them elsewhere: my neck and forehead and nose and cheeks and the top of my head and my fingers did not lack for attention. But the longer he went without taking that liberty, or even asking if he might, the more I suspected that there must be some risk of premature infection associated with it - and so I let it lie. I was quite suffused with affection as it was and in a few months I would not be at any such risk.

  Away from school, it was different - although depending on how one counted, it wasn't necessarily any less romantic.

  Edward was the reason for the piano on the dais. Rosalie also played; actually, all of themcould play, the way anyone with perfect recall living in a piano-occupied house would pick up the skill. But Edward was the musician. He composed. He wrote a song for me. I suspected it might be about some more specific subject than me, Bella Swan, in my entirety - but he declined to specify, and I didn't press the subject.