The Eternals

by Richard M. Ankers

  “Why not?”

  “He's dead.”

  “He can't be! He's just asleep,” I protested, and gave the monk's wet body a shake. There was no response.

  “There is nothing you can do for him, my love. He knew what he was doing before he even left the monastery. No human could make the trip as he did, in the weather he did, and dressed as the monks insist, without consequences.”

  “He died of cold and exhaustion, Jean,” the clouded-eyed monk added. “This is the price of humanity, a burden the Eternals do not share.”

  I didn't know what to say; where to look; how to act, so collected our rucksacks as Linka disembarked. I followed with our two bags.

  Four monks stepped onto the rocking boat in our wake and collected the body of their brother. I watched in some discomfort as they carried the limp figure away.

  “You should partake of the contents of those bags, Jean. You do not appear well,” the clouded-eyed monk said with another bow. “Would you mind if I took your shoulder,” he added.

  “Why?” I returned, a little perplexed by his request.

  “I cannot see.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I am blind, honoured guest, another of humanities hardships. I view it as a gift not a hindrance.”

  “Your eyes, they do not work?”

  “Not for a long, long time.”

  “Then, how do you know how I look?”

  “I feel it, Jean, just as I feel your frustration.”

  “Then, you do not need eyes, my friend.”

  “Possibly not? Possibly not?”

  I took the monk's hand and placed it on my shoulder, as I pondered his words in silence. Holding the two rucksacks out in front, despite the offers of help by two other Sunyins, we made our way around the perimeter of the cavern and out through a tunnel at its furthest point. A stiff breeze and gentle slope met us, which had a withering effect on my new companions, although I felt no different. The gusting air extinguished the monk's lanterns with a shushed breath and our world darkened. Not that it mattered to Linka or I, but I worried about our guides and the sizeable drop that developed as we ascended to the monastery.

  “I bet you get a good view of the French from here,” I said to no one in particular.

  “I wouldn't know,” replied the blind Sunyin.

  “Oh…I…I meant nothing by that,” I stuttered.

  “Best you keep that wit of yours under wraps,” Linka chuckled.

  “I wasn't being funny. You know my feelings towards the French.”

  “And, they are?”

  “Well, they're just very French, aren't they? All show and no go.”

  “How many French people do you actually know?” Linka laughed louder this time.

  “Discounting my parents, not many. It's more the people who model themselves upon them rather than the French themselves.”

  “Well, by my calculations, that's France, Britannia, most of the Rhineland and all peoples east of the Volga/Tigris divide off your list. Is there anyone you do like?”

  “I like you, my little pumpkin seed.”

  “Charmed to be in your good books.”

  “For now, anyway.”

  “You have such a knack with people.”

  “I'm a people person.”

  “Really?”

  “Certain ones.”

  “And how do you find us, Jean?” the blind Sunyin asked.

  It startled me, as I'd quite forgotten he was there, so quiet were his footfalls. “I think you and your brothers are the most honourable, decent men, I have ever had the pleasure to meet.”

  “Then we are honoured indeed to be spoken so highly of by someone who favours so few.”

  I wasn't sure how to take the monk's comments unsure as to if he meant it, or toyed with me. But, as fortune would have it, the simple entrance to the monastery was upon us, a single, small door. I assisted my blind friend over a wooden step and into the place. It was not a moment too soon. Like a terrible weight had descended upon me, my whole frame shook and rattled from the strain of too much time without sustenance.

  Linka saw my discomfort, hurried to the rucksacks, reached in, and removed a blood bag.

  “I do not want it,” I protested.

  “You must, my love, or you shall perish.”

  “It is a dishonour to the monks. I cannot drink it.”

  “You must, Jean,” said the blind Sunyin, who returned to my side with unerring accuracy. “The dishonour would be in not accepting a gift freely given.”

  I'd have still resisted, but Linka had already removed the seal to the blood bag and the iron, sweet smell of the cherry liquid was one intoxication too many. By the time I'd finished gorging myself, the blood ran down my face to my ruined shirt. I looked more demon than man.

  A demure Linka pretended not to have noticed and turned away to avail herself of some refreshment. I, on the other hand, couldn't help noticing the sympathetic looks that crossed several of the monks' faces. Their pity shamed and disgusted the beast I was.

  When Linka finished her own drink and mopped at her face with the corner of a shirt sleeve, we continued into a large open square, through an aisle of colonnades, and into the monastery true. Linka did not appear to need any guidance as she plunged ahead with renewed vigour.

  The monastery's corridors were devoid of embellishment other than the natural stone. What a place of ennui to grow up in. If the whole building was the same, then it was easy to imagine Linka's attitude to its revisiting. I could only guess how a child, which in Eternal terms covered a great many years, felt towards so underwhelming a past home. Even the monks' presence would have done little to improve the ambiance and sterility of such a place.

  The Sunyins faded into the background, one by one, leaving me to follow a relentless Linka. Up stairways, across halls, and through numerous corridors we paced until reaching an uninspiring and bland doorway.

  “You are the only immortal who will have ever seen inside here, my darling.” Linka spoke with a solemn look on her face. “Please do not mock me.”

  I was about to answer, but she'd opened the door and stepped into the room before I could get the words out. She walked straight over to the rectangular, leaded windows and flung them open. The sea breeze caught hold of the clear, lace nets, which hung either side of the glass and gave the room an almost spectral charm. Twin ghosts danced towards me in billowing form and at their centre stood my dark angel.

  “Do you like it?” she enquired.

  “Sorry, something distracted me.”

  “What?” a coy response.

  “I think you know what.” I strode over and encased her perfect body with my own.

  “This was my refuge from the world, my sanctuary.” Linka whispered the words as though from the other side of the world.

  I skimmed the stone walls covered in pictures of pressed flowers all the colours of the daytime, or so I imagined. There was little furniture other than two immense oak wardrobes and a matching sideboard. The only other adornment, if it could be termed so, was the simple single bed that stood in the middle of the room. I checked twice for a coffin, but presumed it shed by the monks at the same time they'd removed the room's curtains.

  “I like your flowers.”

  “Well, I never thought I'd hear a strapping young thing like yourself say that,” she laughed and pulled from my grip.

  “Hardly young,” I retorted.

  “Young enough, at least, compared to most of the relics who inhabit this world.”

  “You have a magnificent view,” I said, walking to the window.

  “Oh, it's just water in varying states of unrest, and a lot of sky.”

  “It's relaxing. I could gaze at the stars forever from somewhere like this, if the clouds weren't doing such a good job of obscuring them, that was.”

  “I spent many hours alone at that window doing just that.”

  “I am not one for asking questions, Linka, I believe the past is the past and the f
uture will soon become it, but might I ask why you were sent here?”

  “To be educated by the monks,” she answered a little too quickly.

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. It was just a good place to stash me when my mother died.”

  “I never met your mother, at least, I don't think so.”

  “My father was very jealous of her. She was extremely beautiful, Jean. My father, as you have seen, is not. He kept her under lock and key and only brought her out at social gatherings, not that anyone was ever the wiser, other than Albert and a few of the other longer serving staff, or so she claimed.”

  “What happened to your mother to make Rudi, I mean, your father, act so?”

  “Don't worry, call him what you like. I do.”

  Linka joined me and I felt a tingle of electric current surge through my body as the wind whipped about her.

  “You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.”

  “Did you say that to Chantelle?”

  “I've never said that to anybody except my Alba.”

  “Will you tell me of her?”

  “It is hard.”

  “As it is for me. But I will tell you of my past if I can hear a little of your own. We have all eternity to tell them.”

  “We have until the sun dies,” I corrected.

  “If you say so. Now, tell me your story, I'm all yours for the regaling.”

  Linka wrapped her arms about my chest and stared out to sea. I joined her in the view as storm clouds amassed overhead and the first rumbles of fury echoed in the distance.

  I believed in that moment even heaven sensed my disgrace and grumbled its complaints.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  -

  Calm

  The wind whipped my shredded garments, tousled dark hair, and for a moment I thought myself unable to speak. When the call of a lone, distant gull who'd somehow survived the world's meagre pickings broke my reverie, only then did I find my voice. I didn't know where to start, so I chose the beginning. It seemed as good a place as any.

  * * *

  “My life began when first I saw Alba Santini. An angel amongst the damned, she was my ray of sunshine, a light in the darkness of a world I had only passing fancy for. We met whilst I visited New Washington, I forget why, perhaps destiny? Alba walked along the promenade which ran alongside the blue Danube, long before they butchered its colour, and I thought my heart to beat. She was stunning, charming, intelligent and everything I'd ever desired. Our courting was like capturing moonshine, intangible, yet beautiful. She loved me with a passion I thought it impossible for a single person to contain, one I tried to reciprocate. We married within weeks and set up home not far from where we met. And, I was happy for a time, Linka. I cannot stress that enough, for I am a man who has rarely known joy. We were the perfect couple. Nothing pleased us more than a stroll arm in arm along the promenade, a quiet drink at a blood tavern before a lack of clientele saw the last closed, and the simple things others had forgotten. But that ended almost as soon as it had begun.”

  * * *

  I paused there and took a deep, moist breath, the tang of salt and seaweed permeating my skin. I was one with the coming storm, a supernatural force unbothered by nature. As if reading my mind, lightning flashed across the sky illuminating the features of the angel beside me; she smiled back, serene.

  “And then what, Jean? What turned you from so happy a man to one so troubled?”

  “Death, my dear, the plain and simple ruination of both future and past.”

  * * *

  “My life ended with my parents' suicides. They were scientists, and I their proud son. It was their amassed studies into the patterns of the earth, their presentation of an end to a race who thought themselves beyond death that sparked silent hysteria. If not for their work the Eternal race could have faded into obscurity in ignorant bliss. Like all visionaries, the populace decried what they did not wish to hear. Despite reams of evidence from declining natural populations to the complete extinction of humanity, the Eternal Hierarchy refused to believe the inevitable. That hurt, Linka,” I said, maintaining my focus on the heaving waves. “This determination by the Hierarchy, not least your father, to ignore what was an unavoidable truth, drove my parents to do what they did. Ridicule was a dagger to their hearts.”

  I paused then, my fingernails clawing at the window-ledge, my teeth grating within my mouth, until Linka placed her hand on my own and I felt at ease again and continued.

  My parents, with scant regard for their only son and daughter-in-law, decided it would be better to die together in a way of their choosing rather than continue in the fashion they'd grown accustomed to. They sickened of the scorn heaped upon them, grew too tired to care. A letter to the leaders of The New Europa Alliance explained their deaths and shook it to its core. Disillusioned, was the word that echoed over and over. Everything changed in the space of a breath, not least, my life.

  Linka squeezed my hand again, but remained silent.

  As you can tell, my love, I hold a festering bitterness over those events to this day. It rankles and twists in my gut. For although my parents made plain their actions to everybody else, they did not to their son. Devastated, betrayed by my kin, I changed. The good Jean, the loyal servant who'd done his parents' bidding without question, the good husband, became a fractured vagabond. I couldn't bear to be around anyone I cared for, most of all Alba. Like a coward, I left her a note as my parents had me and never returned, until recently. I'll come back to that.

  I attended the functions that sprang up everywhere; the Hierarchy intending to go out with a bang, so to speak, and became a wanderer. I bristled with contempt for all and showed it at every opportunity, picking fights with anyone, although needing to do so only a very few times. When seekers of fun see a violent man performing violent acts it scares not just they, but those they tell. One garners a reputation which is soon expanded upon and reimagined. They saw me as a dark ghost, an unfortunate guest, a showpiece if you will, best kept at arm's-length, an entertaining sideshow. Men learned to avoid me. Women, I'm ashamed to say, did not. Dalliances with the fairer sex, became my sole distraction. I cared not who I was with, nor who knew. I think I yearned for punishment, for pain to snap me from my malaise, but it never did. All I required was a coffin to sleep in and a way to forget. I never returned to my parents' home and still haven't.

  “Do you not miss it?” Linka asked, her tone a soft caress.

  “No. I could never go back there after what they did. Too many bad memories for this son to handle.”

  “How did they die, Jean?”

  “They wished to see the sun before it killed them whilst sleeping. Nothing remained but their heaped clothes and the letter.”

  Linka frowned and looked even more troubled than I. After a great deal of consideration, she asked, “And then what?”

  “I met you and everything changed.”

  Linka beamed so sweet a smile I thought I might melt on the spot. But she regained her composure and asked the question I'd dreaded. “And, what of Alba?”

  I blew out my cheeks enough to extinguish the mounting storm. My ribcage expanded to so great a degree I thought it may burst from my chest: it didn't, and I had no excuse but to continue.

  “After your sister's death, when in the Comte's catacombs, someone came to me and informed me the Hierarchy would have my head.”

  “Who informed you?” Linka interjected.

  “Merryweather. Knowing him as I do, I suspected ulterior motives, but his admitted love for your sister seemed genuine, as did his desire to help. At his advice, I ran like a scalded dog fleeing into the mountains. Whilst there I happened upon Shangri-La and via the Marquis, Crown Prince Vladivar.”

  The storm clouds cracked in approval of the prince's name. Lightning criss-crossed the skyline and night, for a second, was as I imagined day. The sea, whipped up to something wicked, smashed across the monastery's rocky promontories and spray spatte
red my face. I cared not. I deserved the wrath of God for what I'd done. Wiping my face with a tattered sleeve, I looked to Linka her wide eyes gazing and felt my tears merge with those of the storm.

  “What then, my love,” she breathed.

  “I escaped Vladivar with a Sunyin monk, and then Worthington's men, but at great loss. They attacked and murdered my companion, I barely escaped with my life. And so I staggered into New Washington. With nowhere else to go, I headed for old haunts: Alba and mine's old home. She was there.”

  “Was that not good?”

  “She was not the woman I had left behind. Alba was…changed. She'd waited for me through all those too many years to count. She'd never lost hope in my returning. When I did, and she realised how she must have looked, she took her own life. I…I could not prevent it,” I stammered. “But what is worse, my dear girl, I'm not sure I wanted to?”

  Linka said nothing, but hugged me tight, as I sobbed into the mounting storm.

  “I am a killer it is in my nature…our nature, but never did I think I should kill those I loved. Maybe now you understand why you mean so much, dearest Linka. Truly, you are all I have left in this world. Even so, I recommend your being rid of me for I do not think I could live with your blood on my hands, too.”

  “You must not think so, Jean.” Linka burrowed her face into my rags. “These things are not of your doing.”

  “People say lightning doesn't strike twice. They are wrong, my love. Lightning has struck me many times and I still seem to attract it.” A crack of thunder and shooting of jagged, blinding light confirmed all I had said.

  I watched in a daze as the skies lighted up in ever-shortening breaks. The world heaved, and I wondered if it was the start of the end. Had my disparaged parents been correct all along? I'd never had reason to doubt them. I knew from reading their notes and snippets of overhead conversations, they believed the world would end with one final, cataclysmic hurrah. Let it end, I thought. I'd have died happy in the arms of the woman I loved. I knew it with an assuredness that had manifested just once before when I first met Alba. Such thoughts disturbed me greatly.

  A blaze of lightning lit Linka's room illuminating the walls. For an instant, we stood in a glade of wildflowers alive and free, but then I remembered, nothing was alive in this wretched world, least of all the flowers, or I.