by Daryl Banner
I wonder if that man ever learned from his wrongs, pulled apart limb by limb as I had ordered, wonders Aardgar with a hint of stinging, dark irony.
Fool.
Had his ageless age made him cruel? Cold King Aardgar stopped counting days, years, decades. He’d even forget how old he was. No one thought him to be any particular age, since he appeared to be perpetually thirty human years old. The truth was, he did age, but it was slowly, and in spurts. When he was apart from Evanesce, his immortality fled him. Only when away from her was he vulnerable to the cold passage of time. So he made sure to be near her, always.
But Evanesce was not merely a hundred years old. She was thousands of years old, as it turned out. Countless. Even she wasn’t certain how long she and her sisters had existed.
A life that unthinkably long was a life far more weary of the universe than even he was, and Aardgar could tell that there was something missing in her eyes.
Perhaps it was the same thing missing in his own.
Still, he caught that look of longing one night when they sat in their garden under the glittering stars, and so he decided to finally voice his concerns. “Evanesce.”
She didn’t respond, simply staring into the vast, starry nothingness above them.
“Evanesce,” he tried again. “Something is wrong.”
“When I came to you,” she stated, “I took the form of a little girl. I thought if I was your age—your human age—then we could connect to one another more easily.”
Aardgar hadn’t given that thought. Still, it didn’t explain what was wrong. “Evanesce …”
“Sometimes, I wonder where these feelings come from. I have felt so human over these years, growing with you, but I am so often … not myself. Like this is a game of minds. A game of thoughts.”
“So what is wrong?” Aardgar persisted.
“It is no matter. Nothing can be done.”
“Tell me.” She shook her head, tired of his pursuit of the truth before he’d even properly begun. “Tell me. I will not give up. You’ve not been yourself.”
Still staring into the sky, she said, “Atlas is well.”
“Quite well. What of it?”
“Atlas is … thriving, in fact.” She smiled right then, a wistful glint in her vibrant eyes that seemed to reflect every constellation at once. “Everyone is at peace.”
Aardgar was about to agree when suddenly he realized her train of thought. “You mean that all your work is done,” he murmured, detached. “You mean that you …”
She brought her eyes to his. She didn’t have to answer him. He didn’t have to finish the sentence.
Aardgar swallowed, worry chiseling its way down his chest. “Humankind is saved. Your work is done. You … You will leave me.”
“I don’t want to,” she said quickly.
“But you do. You will leave me so that you can reunite with your sisters at long last, and—”
“Please, Aardgar. I … I can’t.” She shut her eyes.
He clung to her suddenly, pulling her close. They had spent more than a lifetime together, yet suddenly he felt they hadn’t had any time at all. It had all gone by in a blink.
“My sisters,” she murmured against the side of his face, returning his embrace.
He knew already. “You miss them. They call to you. You have been a human among humans for too long. You yearn for the way you were …”
She slipped from his arms at those words and moved through the garden, gown fluttering in the cool night air. Just the short distance between them seemed to grow like a canyon. Aardgar, though he knew it to be an illusion, felt the prickle of time on his fingertips, felt his body aging second by second, felt his life drawing out of him just from her walking away.
“You’ve done so much for me,” he heard himself say as he watched her smooth back, her beautiful hair in the wind, her slender arms. “I’m lucky to have lived as long as I have.”
She spun around, alarmed by his words. “Aardgar.”
“It’s time for you to go,” he agreed with a short nod, despite how his heart hammered with protest. “I will live out the rest of my short years as this great city’s King. I will name a successor at long last, and—”
She shook her head suddenly. “I … I can’t leave you. I’ve changed my mind. Humans are fickle beings, and I shall be fickle like them.”
“You’ve been empty without your sisters at your side. I would be a selfish man to keep you all to myself. We lived a life, you and I. Many lives.” He didn’t want her to leave, not truly, but he knew she would be happier among her own kind. “I’ve lived longer than any human deserves to live.”
She rushed at him just then and took his lips with her own. He drowned in her kiss and basked in the cool, inviting taste of her tongue. When they pulled away, the tears in her eyes looked like tiny gems glittering in the moonlight. It was in this moment, of all moments, that he saw her for what she was: a creature too beautiful for this world.
“I will miss these feelings,” she confessed to him. “I’ve only recently grown used to them. I hope I can hold them to my heart forever. This feeling of love. This feeling of trust. This feeling of …” She searched for a word she couldn’t find.
Aardgar kissed her to save her the trouble, then pulled back to stare upon her face. “Find your sisters,” he urged her. “If my life has expired by the time you’ve returned …”
“I will come back,” she promised him.
“Then just know that I was happy,” he went on as if she said nothing, “and that you saved not only all of humanity, but also my own humanity. You saved me from my grief.”
“I will come back,” she repeated.
Each time she promised it, Aardgar believed it a bit less.
He knew this was goodbye.
He embraced her again, memorizing the feel of her body against his own. He would need this memory for every night forward. “When you find your sisters, tell them about me. Tell them what it’s like to be a human.”
“I’ve never loved another being before,” she admitted to him. “You see, my kind, we … don’t love. We don’t feel the way humans feel. This has been the greatest gift, my time here. And I will be back to cherish it even more.”
No, you will not return, he thought as he kissed her again with his feeble, human lips, but I will love you just the same, now and always.
“All of my heart is yours, Aardgar.”
“All of my mortal heart, yours, Evanesce.”
The moment she disappeared, it marked the beginning of the end to Aardgar’s long life—the end of which he would welcome like a friend.
After Evanesce left, Aardgar felt like he forgot how to breathe. Many times, he caught himself in the garden staring up into the stars and seeing nothing. He had already lived an eternity with one woman. Everyone around him lived and died and lived and died. And now all that remained of his life was a sliver of nothing and a handful of years as the King of Atlas.
It would go by in a blink, he would grow old at long last, and then he would die. This, Aardgar knew.
Ten tiny nights had passed without her. He was alone. Truly alone. Then ten weeks passed, which felt no longer or shorter than the ten nights did.
Then ten years. Then ten more.
He could not focus on his responsibilities as King of Atlas. Each time a citizen was brought to him for counsel, he helped them with the strength of a wingless fly squirming in a saucer of honey. Inside, he yearned for a thing he’d never again have. He entered every room of his Sanctum Keep and expected Evanesce to be there. Each time his door opened, he wondered if she would be on the other side.
He noticed the wrinkles on his face. Mirrors betrayed him. Who was the middle-aged man staring at him now? It wasn’t the Aardgar he had known for over a hundred years.
The Aardgar he knew had died when Evanesce left to rejoin her own kind, wherever they were.
And his advisors knew as much. Soon, they took it upon themselves to rule the
Last City of Atlas, knowing that Aardgar was simply not in the right place to rule it himself. He spent most of his time in the garden, sometimes for days, sometimes without food, and he watched the stars become the blue sky of day, become the dark starry sky, become the blue sky of day again, over and over.
It was the morning after a great rainstorm that Aardgar faced his counselors of women and men, wise from the burden and experience of managing a realm that was once twelve villages, now grown to twelve functioning wards with overflowing citizens, trade, and prosperity. It was ripe with luxury that Aardgar could not, in his ruined state of mind, appreciate.
“It’s time to name a successor,” he told them. “You have suffered the burden of my mood enough, and I have worn this crown for too long. Did you know the neck becomes permanently bent by its weight?” he asked them dryly. His question was met with blank stares and concern. The men and women of his council weren’t certain whether he was jesting or not. “No, of course not. Only my neck has worn it. No one would know the cost of its weight. But one will. One must. The crown must pass to a woman or a man who is worthy and wanted, one who will cherish this city the way one cherishes their … their own son … or daughter.”
The words were quite hard to say. Son or daughter. He thought of his father, whose face he hadn’t been able to recall for decades now. He thought of his mother. Son or daughter. And two brothers he only briefly saw in a vision that wasn’t even his own, two brothers who don’t know of his existence, two brothers who are lost to him forever.
Son or daughter.
Evanesce could not bear him any children, but not because she was infertile; it was that she was unwilling. Unlike human women, her kind became susceptible to pregnancy only when they wished to have a child. Aardgar had asked her again and again why she wouldn’t allow herself the experience of birthing a daughter or a son with him that they could call theirs, and her only answer was that she feared she couldn’t love anything more than she loved him. Despite his protests, her mind never changed, and a child between them did not come.
Was she always prepared to say goodbye to him?
Forever, as it turned out, never truly lasts forever.
“As I have no direct heir or remaining members of my bloodline,” he went on to his counselors, “I think it wise to, perhaps, develop a means by which all future Kings and Queens of the Last City of Atlas may be chosen. Perhaps a vote of the people. Or a vote of counselors such as yourself. Allowing succession to only happen through the lineage of blood or name may be susceptible to corruption in time, and so perhaps even in the case of my having a son or daughter, whether he or she were to rule after me should still be decided by a group of wiser women and men who see Atlas’s precious interests in a clearer, more objective light.”
“Most wise,” agreed one of the counselors, a woman with big, curious eyes and heart-shaped lips. “King Aardgar always speaks it true.”
Aardgar turned his eyes to her, the woman who had been on his council for five years, yet in his grief of losing Evanesce, he never took the time to look upon her face. She returned his hardened gaze with a soft smile that she was surely intending to look innocent as a breeze. Aardgar knew better. Hundreds of years of observing people made it clear to him how deeply this woman desired him. It would only take a flick of his hand and a narrowing of his eyes, and she would be at his feet.
But his heart was owned by another, and no gentle batting of eyelashes could claim it again. He nodded to his council. “I would like a list of suitable candidates brought forth that we may interview. A new King or Queen will be found to follow my rule, which will soon come to an end.”
In the days that followed the big meeting, Aardgar spent his time in the garden and stared up at the stars, as if he might find Three Sister somewhere up there. Indeed, he had given in to the most dangerous hope he could have: that Evanesce might actually return … like she promised she would. Would she still recognize him with the crow’s feet that have appeared at the corners of his weary eyes? Would she see past the creases that have formed upon his wide forehead? Would she be frightened by the specks of salt and pepper that now seasoned his mighty beard?
“You miss her.”
Aardgar was startled by the voice of the woman from his council. It was not often that Aardgar found himself startled. He faced the woman with the heart-shaped lips and big eyes. “Of course,” he answered her. “I would be a fool to say otherwise. She was my Queen … my companion.”
“She is immortal, like you.”
King Aardgar’s real Legacy was forgotten over the long century. His knowledge of things past was simply explained away by the fact that he lived for a thousand years—which of course was a gross exaggeration, but few knew precisely how long King Aardgar had lived, and not a single soul was alive anymore from the time when the Last City of Atlas was founded. He was now merely regarded as the one whose Legacy allowed him to live forever, even if it was a bit of a lie. The Immortal King, he was called among the people. The Forever King. The Once And Always King.
He batted away the lie like a bothersome bug. “What brings you to my garden at this hour?” he asked her plainly.
She folded her hands over her waist and bowed slightly. “I am sorry if I have disturbed you, my King. I merely wished to check upon your wellbeing. I …” She hesitated. “I am … concerned for you.”
So often, men and women only checked with him about the welfare of the great city; never did they seem to concern themselves with Aardgar’s person. Though he knew the sweet deception that could come from lust and love, it still warmed him, hearing her caring words.
“You are kind,” he told her, “but I am quite fine.”
She bowed again. “I’m ever so happy to hear it. Truly. Immortality must be … such a great and terrible burden at times. I cannot stomach just the one life I am given.”
Aardgar’s eyes grew sad. Her words carried a wisdom she may not have even realized. He tightened his jaw. “Let me know when the list is ready. A successor is needed.”
“Why have you decided to end your rule,” she persisted, “if I may be so blunt to ask?”
He really admired her courage. There weren’t many in Sanctum who dared to speak to him so directly. “I’ve grown too old for it. I am too tired. I do not have the … spirit in me anymore to rule. There is someone out there far wiser, far stronger, far more innovative than myself. He or she shall make a great King or Queen. It is time for Atlas to know its second ruler.”
The woman nodded once. “Thank you, my King.” Then she gave another bow and turned to leave.
It was then when Aardgar fought a sudden instinct to call out to her that he realized her name had slipped his memory. “C-Counselor.”
She stopped and turned, surprised. “Yes?”
He took a few steps toward her. “Forgive me. In my old age—”
“You are not so old,” she said back, her voice light. A tiny smile found her lips and she blushed.
Aardgar could not help but feel relief in her lightness. The absence of Evanesce made him disposed easily to a woman’s warmth, it seemed. “In my not-so-old age,” he amended, “I … seem to have forgotten your name.”
“It is Charma,” she murmured with a little curtsey.
He nodded. Charming indeed, this special lady who has been under my nose and giving me counsel. “I know it now, Charma.”
She wished him a goodnight, bowed again, then dismissed herself from his garden, though her scent and the sight of her sweet smile lingered long after her departure.
Feeling human was something his Evanesce had to learn. Being human, however … Aardgar looked one last time up into the night sky. He felt the sweet embrace of Evanesce somewhere beyond the sheet of glittering stars—and he took it for the true and final goodbye he should have known he was getting when Evanesce kissed him that last time.
It really was goodbye, he thinks to himself in the eternal darkness, recalling that day he looked up into the stars. To
me, it was the end of it all … when she kissed me goodbye.
Weeks later after a list was produced, Aardgar and the counselors began the long, arduous task of discussing each candidate. A proper Queen or King was to be found.
“Everyone is an equal in my city,” Aardgar explained after eliminating one of the candidates on the list. “Sanctum is not an elitist capitol, and it will never be. When we rule, we look our citizens in the eye; we do not bend our necks to look down upon them.”
“So, so wise,” murmured Charma, her eyes glimmering with admiration. “So humble.”
“Humility is the one and only virtue with which to rule a people,” returned Aardgar, his heart softening at her words. “I ought to know. I’ve been doing it for … for a thousand years.”
The exaggeration even humored Aardgar, and upon the smiles of everyone in the council, he felt his first flicker of hope. Atlas would endure.
With the list being cut, rewritten, names added and taken off over and over, it seemed their selection process for a successor would take a thousand years in and of itself.
A thousand years Aardgar didn’t have anymore.
One midnight at the edge of Sanctum when he was staring down the road that cut through a forest leading to the prestigious, beautiful, and lofty twelfth ward, he was joined by Charma. She sat by him on a bench beneath a great oak tree hugged by tall orange lanterns.
After several minutes of sweetness and small talk, Charma’s tone changed. “What is it like?” she asked.
“What is what like?”
“Living forever.”
Aardgar hadn’t considered describing it before, yet the answer came to him as if he’d prepared it for this very conversation. “Well, it is much like sitting on this bench doing nothing at all … nothing but staring into the woods.”
“That doesn’t sound awful exciting.”