by Ramy Vance
It is no understatement that to a once immortal being, death is terrifying. It is terrifying to humans, but at least we’re born knowing that we will one day die. For Others, their birth came with the promise of forever. And now that their forever was gone, the threat of something they hadn’t yet come to accept as a given was crushing. Others rarely burn time, even a second of it, unless they are trying to escape immediate death.
For them to burn time otherwise is out of great personal cost. And should they do so for you, then you must understand the gift they bestow on you. For you.
To burn a second is to invite death. And as I thought back on all the times Others had burned time for someone else, it humbled me.
‘Deirdre, Mergen, Cassandra, Aelfric and Remi … they’ve all burned time to help others. We do not deserve them.’
Egya grunted in agreement.
Another fireball, followed by three more. Aldie wasn’t just burning a bit of time—he was giving a lot of it. His message was clear: You are worth it. You are worthy.
The cynical part of me wanted to temper such offerings with the fact that they were paying him to make all this. But that was tempered by the realization that Aldie could have created a spectacle without burning any time, and it would have been just as grand.
He was giving up a part of himself on purpose. This wasn’t the selfish narcissist I remembered.
To see it done here and now, and so blatantly, too—the sacrifice for the spectacle—well, even I was moved. And I was just about as cynical toward Aldie as humanly possible.
A black arrow big enough to slay a dragon flew from the back of the audience, striking the stump of a massive oak tree that probably took a couple of giants to hoist on stage. The arrow was tethered to a rope that hung taut from the back of the stage.
As soon as the arrow embedded itself in the hard wood, Aldie ziplined over the sea of adoring fans, landing on the stage with a superhero tumble that would have made Black Panther cringe with CGI envy.
GoneGodDamn! I forgot how graceful elves were.
And just when I thought Aldie’s entrance couldn’t be any more over the top, he did a black flip before landing not on his feet like a normal acrobat, but rather—no friggin’ way—his pinky finger.
Boy oh boy, Aldie had learned some new tricks.
OK, maybe not as selfish as he once was, but still the planet-sized narcissist, I see.
Pushing off with his one finger, Aldie finally got to his feet, turning around and around with arms outstretched as he soaked up the audience’s adulation.
Seeing his face for the first time, I saw that the impossibly youthful face he’d once had was replaced with one that possessed not worry lines, but wrinkles that screamed wisdom. Just like the pictures, he had little flecks of gray in his beard, far grayer than four years of mortal aging should have given him. A small part of me had doubted that Aldie was the one actually burning time to create those fireballs, but finally seeing him here, I knew for sure.
It wasn’t someone else burning magic … it was Aldie.
He was literally giving a little bit of himself with every show.
↔
ALDIE STOOD PERFECTLY STILL on the stage in that way I’ve only known the fae to be able to do. So still that they basically become statues. If his energy had been infectious, then so was his complete stillness.
The audience slowly began to mirror him, their cries of adulation quieting under the weight of Aldie’s tranquility. Mutterings turned to whispers that blossomed into complete silence. The sea of moving bodies bore the tension of undisturbed water.
But it was more than silence and stillness. There were no soft murmurs typical of such a large space—no creeks, gusts of wind, those indefinable sounds you’d hear in a full auditorium. In the absolute silence, I listened for breathing and heard none, and I wondered if everyone truly held their breath or if this was more time being burnt to give the illusion of perfect nothingness.
I honestly could not tell, but sensing my own held breath, I wondered how long we all would stay like this until some of us started passing out from lack of oxygen.
A part of me wanted to start laughing, to pierce the overblown grandeur with my mockery. But another, more evolved part of me knew that was just my discomfort at being connected to so many all at once. It was unnatural for thousands of lost souls to be united like this.
And this foreign feeling both gave me the peace of belonging and discomfort of being a part of something that I ... what? … shouldn’t be a part of? Didn’t deserve?
No. Part of something I wasn’t doing enough for …
That last thought hit me in a way that only suddenly realized truth could, but before I could explore that feeling, I shook my head, chasing away the severity of my thoughts. This was a self-help seminar. It was fifty shades of self-affirmation bullshit, and just because I was thrown off-kilter by Aldie’s presence, I wasn’t about to let myself spiral into whatever self-loathing crap was swimming around in my head.
Now I really was going to laugh, to pierce this facade with a chuckle. But before I could, Aldie beat me to it with four simple words that, instead of being uplifting, only pulled me further down into the depths.
“We do not belong.”
A strange beginning to a self-help pep talk.
Aldie took a step forward, his hands outstretched like he was trying to embrace the entire auditorium.
“We do not belong,” he repeated.
Doubling down, eh?
“We are the alien invaders, the barbarian hordes at the gate, the unwanted masses at the doorstep of a world that is not ready or capable of having us. It’s in our name: Others. As in, not them.”
OK, now I’m getting depressed. I thought these things were all ‘Live your potential,’ ‘Awaken the giant within,’ ‘Love yourself and the world will, too.’
“So let me say it again: We do not belong. Not a single one of us. I need you to understand this, because that is the truth. We do not belong. And the moment you truly understand that will be the moment you stop feeling sorry for yourself …”
Here we go.
“… stop expecting this GoneGod World to help you out and …”
Give it to us, Aldie.
“… start getting off your ass and doing something about it.”
There we go! Hold on, folks, we’re going full self-help now.
“Did you ever expect humans—humans!—to welcome us with open arms? Come on, Others! You knew better than that. Humans do not even like their own kind, so why would they embrace ones such as us? Look at my funny ears.” He pretended to prick his pointy ear with an “Ouch.” The audience chuckled.
“Or your ridiculous eye.” He pointed at a cyclops. “Do you save extra at Spec-savers because you only need one lens?”
Lame, but the audience chuckled their approval.
“And what about you?” He pointed to the middle of the audience, and the giant jumbotron screens focused on a kappa. “You look like an extra in Super Mario Bros.”
The bipedal turtle slapped his shell with chortles of laughter.
“None of us belong, because we don’t look like them … and they don’t like anything or anyone that doesn’t look like them. I mean, look at their most popular version of God. He made them in his image. Or perhaps they made Him in their image.” He rubbed his chin in mocking reflection. “So I guess Anubis, Ganesh, Raijin and Baron Samedi didn’t get the memo. Then again, they all left, so …”
He let those last words hang in the air.
“We may be different, but that doesn’t make us less. It doesn’t make us unworthy. But it does mean we have to work twice as hard, twice as long and twice as diligently before they’ll finally accept us …
“So, my fellow Others of the GoneGod World, are you ready to embrace your destiny?”
If the audience was energized before, they became positively electric after that little gem. It took every ounce of my willpower to not roll my eyes, and eve
n then I didn’t have the strength to hold in the give-me-a-break sigh that escaped my judgmental lips.
Aldie was always a showman, but this was over the top, even for him. Then again, he was burning time to make these extravaganzas extravangadizize.
And as for genuine, I wasn’t sure. Aldie had always been the over-the-top optimist who could get a death row inmate excited about tomorrow while they strapped him to the chair. His gregarious nature made Bacchus look shy. He was an extroverts’ Superman.
But being so out there also meant that he lost interest in things just when you thought it was getting good. I mean, the bastard lost interest in me after only eighty years.
I know eighty years might sound like a long time, especially now that we’re all mortal, but eighty years to someone who lives forever is barely a summer fling.
Of course, back then there was a lot of pressure for us to break up. The entire UnSeelie Court was literally against us. A half-breed like me and a prince of the fae was a big no-no. Fae are many things, and arrogant is probably at the top of that list. They saw my human nature as disgusting and my demonic nature as animalistic. To them, I was no better than a chimpanzee.
So imagine a human and a chimpanzee rocking up to city hall, demanding a marriage certificate, and you’ll start to get a sense of how they viewed us.
Not that Aldie cared. He defied his realm, relishing in the scandal. At first I saw it as romantic. It wasn’t until much later that I realized it was part of his narcissistic nature. Better to be talked about and reviled than ignored.
And Aldie hated being ignored.
Of course, it didn’t help that his parents were overachieving, domineering crusaders who were credited with negotiating peace between the Seelie and UnSeelie courts. I mean, there were history books written about them.
But it was more than that. Fae, like most Others, cannot have children on their own. They must petition their gods for a child. As a reward for brokering peace, Danu—goddess of fertility, wisdom, wind and the Celtic people—granted them Aldie, the only child to be born in the UnSeelie Court in a millennium. A lot of expectations were pinned to him.
Because of his intelligence, grace and charisma, those expectations weren’t just from the world outside him. Aldie had those expectations of himself.
Trouble was, when the expectation is that of general greatness, and there’s nothing defining what that greatness could be … it becomes impossible to fulfill.
And seeing him prance around the stage, inspiring hope in these hopeless Others, I wondered if he had finally found the greatness he so desperately desired.
I watched Aldie prance around the stage, hugging chupacabras, slapping the backs of banshees, high-fiving carbuncles, and I couldn’t help but wonder when he’d lose interest in this crowd.
Given how they hung on his every word, I hoped he wouldn’t. Those Others looked up to him, full of something very rare in the GoneGod World … hope.
I felt a hand push my shoulder. It was the sphinx, gesturing for me to get on stage. The other animal handlers were already entering the stage, and I heard Aldie say, “We are different. But there is so much difference already on this planet. Take a look at the eagle, the llama, the platypus.” As he spoke, me and Egya were being pushed out onto the stage. “And it’s not just them. Join me in welcoming the zoo of the bizarre and—”
“—Kat?”
“Ahh, Hi Aldie,” I said.
Gulp.
BACKSTAGE ISN’T AS GLAMOROUS AS YOU’D THINK
“K at,” he repeated.
“Ahh, hey,” I said again. Egya’s hyena form snickered in an all-too-human way.
The audience, still and confused, waited for Aldie to do or say something. But instead he just stared at me, his eyes narrowing as he tried to comprehend what was happening. I suddenly felt very selfish for bursting in on him this way. A part of me wanted to give him a wee jab for how he’d ended things. Payback served publicly.
I didn’t consider the thousands of Others staring at us now. Nor did I consider how the sight of me would affect him. After all, he broke up with me. He ended it in the most callous, hurtful way imaginable, and I figured that because he didn’t care for me then, seeing me now would just throw him off.
What I didn’t expect were his stormy gray eyes softening as he stared at me that way he used to when we … um … how does Ella Fitzgerald put it? Made whoopee.
I also didn’t expect my own heart to flutter under his gaze. Damn, he was beautiful … but it was more than that. My heart also chorused with a thousand memories of when things were good. I wanted to go to him—no, that wasn’t right. I wanted to go back to a time when things were good between us. I wanted to go back to him.
My brain, however, managed to jump in and remind my stupid, traitorous heart what Aldie did to me. How he did it.
That was enough.
I gave Aldie that smile I used when saying, “Nice try.” That look used to send him into a rage, and I figured it would wake him up from whatever fugue state he was in now. But it didn’t. He just sighed, and I saw that his hands trembled ever so slightly.
Shit.
OK, time for me to get a little less subtle. “Hello everyone,” I said. Not that anyone who wasn’t sitting in the front row could hear me. I wasn’t miked up.
I looked around for a microphone, and the only one I could see was currently pinned to Aldie’s shirt. I stepped forward, and leaning close to his chest, said, “Hi everyone. Sorry to burst in like this, but I thought I’d surprise Aldie here. We’re old friends.”
It was awkward leaning in so close to him like that. It was even more awkward being so close to his chest and trying to make whatever eye contact I could with the audience.
Hearing me say that must have done the trick, because Aldie caught himself, remembering where he was … and who he was in front of. He cleared his throat. “That is true, but incomplete.” He turned to the audience. “And what is a half-truth but a …” He lifted his hands like the conductor in an orchestra, and the audience chorused out, “lie.”
“And lies are good for …”
“Nothing but pain.”
“And there is enough of that in this GoneGod World without us adding to it. I made a promise to you, but more importantly to myself, to always be the best version of me. Now, if I were immortal and an endless parade of tomorrows were still laid out before me, I might make some quip, dismiss the gravity of this reunion. After all, when there is always a sea of time to run from such encounters, why does anything hold importance? But there is no more time to turn the significant into a distant memory. And without that time, the only thing we can do is face it.”
He turned to me, angling his body so that the cameras picked up his face. Always the showman. With eyes that expressed endless empathy, he said, “And so to complete the truth, we were friends, but also lovers. And that affair ended so very, very horribly. How fitting. For what do I always say?”
“Your fate did not end with the gods.”
“And it seems that my fate is to face the horribleness of my past.” He sighed, looking back at me. “I suspect that such an experience will be something I shall share with you all.”
A chuckle sounded from the audience.
“But first thing’s first. I promised you an event you will not forget, and although I believe I have delivered on this already, this life-changing seminar isn’t over. Not nearly.” Aldie turned to me. Getting on one knee, he took my hand. “My dear Katrina, as you can imagine, your presence is distracting. If you don’t mind waiting for me backstage, I’ll be out soon.”
I nodded. “I waited for you for a couple hundred years. What’s a few more hours?”
“Ouch,” Aldie said to the laughing audience. “I’d say that was uncalled for, but that would be a lie. That was very much called for. Very much indeed.”
↔
THE SPHINX who had earlier mistaken me for an animal handler escorted me backstage, where she insisted I hand ov
er Egya to Deirdre. “Wait for me here,” I said as I followed the sphinx to Aldie’s dressing room.
Once inside, the sphinx unceremoniously huffed before waddling away. “I’m sorry,” I called after her. It was the least I could do.
Alone I looked around the room. It was surprisingly bare given how lavish the Aldie I knew liked to live. Sparse with only a dressing mirror, some makeup and three changes of clothes.
An open suitcase sat on the couch. In it was a hair dryer, some spare clothes, sunglasses and the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Next to it was another book with Aldie’s face on it: The 13 Rules for Being Mortal.
Oh brother, he was an author, too.
It was probably full of useless tripe. Then again, I did have a couple hours to kill before he wrapped up so, I picked it up, looked at the ridiculous smile on his face and groaned as I opened it up.
**(If you’d like a summary of Aldie’s book, click here and join Mortality Bites FB Group. Aldie’s principles can be found inside!)**
↔
FIRST I SKIMMED HIS BOOK. Then I read it. Short, but surprisingly good. And not just for Others. For anyone mortal, really. Practical advice, moving stories … there were even a few stories about his ex-girlfriend (well, technically his ex-vampire ex-girlfriend. But so many clauses were a mouthful, so a forgivable omission, given that my demonic past wasn’t the point).
I had just finished reading about habit nine—Time Well-Burnt is Time Well-Spent—when I heard applause.
The changing room had been fairly insulated from the auditorium, but I still heard the explosion of cheers and clapping that told me Aldie had just finished his grand finale. I took a deep breath as I waited for my ex-boyfriend and the first person I ever truly loved to make it to the dressing room.
I heard the tapping of shoes on linoleum coming from the hallway. The steps echoed in a rhythm that implied someone was running, and before I could slow the frantic rush of my heart, Aldie burst into the room, slamming the door behind him.
“Before you say anything, I just—”