Namesake

by Kate Stradling

  “Anjeni! What are you doing?”

  My breath spasms in my chest. I whirl to discover Demetrios bounding from the hilltop, alarm on his face. He stops several paces short of me, his huge eyes moving from me to the rippling portal and back again.

  “It’s open,” I say—stupidly so. The Gate casts a daytime scene against the night around us. Obviously it’s open.

  Demetrios steps forward as though to intercept me, but he stops himself. A pained expression crosses his face. “You were going to leave without even saying goodbye?”

  “No! I was here and it opened. I didn’t know—”

  “Don’t go.”

  This plea strips my senses. “What?”

  “Don’t go, Anjeni. Stay here. Stay with me. Please.”

  An iron belt binds my lungs. My breath, shallow and constricted, comes in small gulps. “If I stay, Etricos cannot rise to his full potential.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t care.”

  “But I do,” I reply.

  “We can go elsewhere, you and I, just as Aitana and the others have today.”

  “You would leave your brother and your people?”

  Demetrios waves aside this concern. “Cosi will understand.”

  But others would follow us, possibly more souls than left in this splinter group today. Wherever I go in this land, I will be the goddess Anjeni, and wherever the goddess dwells, that will be the recognized seat of power. Leaving would undermine the strength of Helenia in its infancy.

  I look once more through the rippling membrane. The city of my upbringing flutters in and out of sight—the trees, the skyline. It’s close enough for me to touch. I can step back through to the world I know, to the conveniences of a modern society where magic is a novelty instead of a necessity, to indoor plumbing and hot water on tap and telephones and electronics and everything easy.

  I can return to my family.

  Or, I can stay with Demetrios and seek another avenue to elevate Etricos from hero to leader.

  Is it worth it? Is it worth the risk of failure, the sacrifice of a difficult life?

  I must be crazy, because I think it is.

  I brush tentative fingers against the portal’s opening, a silent farewell to the world of my youth as my decision solidifies—

  And a weight slams into me, propelling me through the gap. Light and flame erupt. Daylight envelopes me, and so, too, does a strong embrace. I tumble down the hill tucked against that second body, my senses jumbled.

  Somewhere on the way down, the hold upon me releases, and one falling projectile becomes two. I slide to a stop at the base of Monument Hill, the ornamental fence looming above me, and the figure beside me lifting up on his elbows, bewildered.

  Demetrios.

  He tackled me.

  Through the Eternity Gate.

  “What… did… you… do?” I ask through gritted teeth. The sky above dazzles with blue behind a stretch of puffy white clouds. I arch my neck to view the Gate. The air within its gap has no shimmer.

  Demetrios’s breath heaves in his lungs. “If you will not stay, I must come with you. How can I live where you don’t exist?”

  That’s incredibly sweet. And ridiculously stupid. He knows nothing of this world. He’s just given up everything familiar to him to follow me. My insides roil and panic swells in my throat—

  His hand clasps mine in the space between us. He lies flat, staring upward at the sky, at the clouds, at the fence and trees. “I was gone half a day and you were set to abandon me. What am I to think of that?”

  “You shouldn’t have done this.” My voice quivers, my anxiety held at bay by the thinnest of restraints. “The Gate won’t open again. You’re stuck here.”

  “With you,” he says.

  I swallow a sob. “What if you regret it?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Demetrios, I was going to stay.”

  He turns his head, his gaze a caress upon me. “I know. But I realized I had no right to ask it of you. And because you have never thought to invite me to come with you, I made that choice on my own. The fates have aligned, Anjeni.”

  How am I going to handle the intensity of this man for the rest of my life? “They didn’t align. You forced them into place.”

  “Then I have done well.”

  With a self-congratulating smile, he rolls over and kisses me—or I kiss him. Regardless of who instigated it, we tangle together at the base of Monument Hill like two shameless lovers who have jumped the fence to engage in a public display of affection on government land.

  Which is how the security guards find us.

  Their shouts strike my ears like a song played on an untuned violin. Demetrios, ever the warrior, bolts to his knees and grips the weapons he always keeps at his belt.

  I forestall him from drawing them. “Don’t panic. This is my world. Hold my hand, and whatever you do, don’t let go of it.”

  He interlaces his fingers in mine. Together we rise. A circle of guards converges on us, handguns raised in warning. Recognition flashes across their faces as they meet my gaze. Weapons lower in wonder.

  I smile an awkward, crooked smile, my native language rusty on my tongue.

  “Hello. I’m back from my spiritual journey.”

  The guards quarantine Demetrios and me within a holding cell at the security base. They would have split us up, except that I persuaded them not to.

  Like, with-a-threatening-fistful-of-magic persuaded them.

  The quarantine is a precaution, but a good one. There’s no telling what germs we’ve brought back with us, and Demetrios has never been inoculated against the diseases of this era. The less contact he has prior to vaccination, the better.

  (How do I explain to a warrior from seven hundred years past that he needs to let someone stab him repeatedly with a series of needles? We’ll manage, somehow.)

  The Eternity Gate, as it turns out, shot out a magnetic flare both times I passed through it. In the ancient world, with no electronic devices to worry about, this occurred without notice or difficulty. Here in modern day, it has caused havoc. They’re still trying to pull the security system fully back online. A glass wall separates us from the rest of the room in which we wait.

  Demetrios has obeyed to the letter my instructions to keep hold of my hand. We sit together on a low couch facing the glass panel, his fingers still interlaced with mine. Twice I have tried to withdraw, but he only tightens his grip.

  If he’s content, I have no complaints.

  He gapes at the room with its electric lights and unfamiliar materials. The most menial of modern technologies awe him. I rest my head on his shoulder as I watch him take in his surroundings. I half wait for the moment when regret will strike him full force.

  Surely it will. I’m a mass of writhing insecurities over its impending advent.

  As if sensing my fears, he squeezes my hand again. He dips his head to whisper, “Anjeni, I do not understand your world. Are you sorry I’m here?”

  I straighten in my seat. “No.”

  “Good. Because you’re stuck with me.” He plants a kiss on my cheek.

  Voices carry from another room. The door beyond the glass wall opens, and two security guards usher in on either side of it, followed closely by my grim-faced father. He looks like he has aged ten years since I last saw him, with gray hair at his temples and deep-set lines around his mouth. He stops short just within the threshold.

  Will he scold me? Disown me?

  Does he even recognize me? I am not the same jaded daughter who quarreled with him on that night so long ago.

  “Anjeni.” My name falls from his lips in a strangled whisper. In two steps he crosses the distance to the glass wall, and presses his palm flat against it.

  Homesickness surges within me, but I remain on the couch, my hand clasped in my love’s. “Hi, Daddy.”

  My father searches my face as though he cannot believe his own eyes. Perhaps he can’t. Not only my scars but my clothes and my
companion present a foreign picture. He glances questioningly at Demetrios and then back at me.

  A breathy laugh escapes my throat. “I brought back a stowaway.” I switch dialects and address Demetrios. “This is my father.”

  His eyes widen. “Tell him we ask his blessing to marry.”

  I almost choke. There’s no way I can lead with that request.

  “Anjeni,” he says, his voice reproving, “we should have married already, long ago. Your honor and mine both demand it now.”

  His sense of honor is adorable. I can only imagine the massive culture shock that lies ahead for him. I turn back to my father, who has watched this interchange with fascinated attention.

  “We’re getting married as soon as we’re out of quarantine,” I say. “Or you could send for a priest now and we’ll perform the rite here, since we’ll be staying in this room together. How’s Mom? Tana? How long have I been gone?”

  The final question jars him from his critical inspection of my betrothed. “Eighteen months. Anjeni, where did you go?”

  It was closer to ten months for me on the other side. Does that mean I’m younger than I should be? Did I lose more than half a year coming back? Am I that much nearer to Tana in age?

  “Anjeni,” he says, pulling me from my speculation, “where have you been?”

  “I…” My voice falters. “I don’t think you’d believe me.”

  He eyes Demetrios again. Perhaps, deep down, he knows the truth. Whether he can accept it is another story. Even I might wonder if I had dreamt the whole interlude were it not for the flesh-and-blood warrior at my side.

  A commotion at the door draws our attention. My mother passes through, takes one look at me behind the glass wall, and promptly bursts into tears.

  “My mother,” I whisper to Demetrios, who nods his understanding. His grip on my fingers tightens.

  “Jen,” she sobs, her forehead and one hand against the glass. She stares at me in disbelief, tears tumbling from her cheeks to patter at her feet. “How could you vanish like that? Do you have any idea how sick with worry we’ve been?”

  She too has aged, though not to the same degree as my father. Renado has kept any new gray hairs nicely hidden, at least.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. It’s true, and at the same time, it isn’t. If I hadn’t quarreled with my parents, I would never have caused them such grief. But it had to happen. It put me where I needed to be. It brought me to this point with this man by my side.

  Speaking of Demetrios, “She’s complaining that I disappeared,” I tell him under my breath. “She says they were worried.”

  He wears a studious expression, already contemplating the foreign dialect.

  My mother catches my string of what, to her, must sound like gibberish. Her tear-streaked face agape, she examines us beyond the glass wall.

  “She brought a man back with her,” says my father in an audible aside. “She says they’re getting married.”

  Mom’s eyes grow rounder. I suppress an instinctive laugh, and she takes umbrage at my good humor. “Where have you been, Anjeni? How did you open the Eternity Gate?”

  “I didn’t open it. It opened itself.”

  Mom thumps her fist against the glass. “But what could have possibly induced you to pass through it?”

  I start to reply, but the words strangle in my throat. They don’t know the truth.

  “Where’s Tana?” I ask, an edge to my voice.

  Dad glances toward the door behind him and looks quizzically to Mom. She shakes her head, a tiny movement. “She was right behind me,” she whispers, and then she turns on me. “Your sister has worried herself into a terrible state over you, Jen.”

  “Is that so?” I can’t say anything more. My emotions have thoroughly detached. My parents think I passed through the Eternity Gate by choice, which means that in my eighteen-month absence, Tana never confessed her part in my “spiritual journey.”

  A shadow moves in the open door. My sister sidles up to the jamb, one hand clutching it tight, her cheeks hollow and dark circles beneath her eyes. Across the gap, her gaze meets mine. She flinches and looks away.

  I teeter halfway between rage and laughter.

  In eighteen months, my sister has wasted from worry not for my welfare, but for her own. She pushed me through the Gate, but she never told anyone. She has borne the burden of her guilt alone.

  For the first time in my life, I pity her—truly and surely pity her.

  “That is my sister, Aitana,” I say to Demetrios.

  He studies Tana with a frown. “The goddess Aitana?”

  “I sincerely hope so.” If the Eternity Gate ever opens again and she’s nearby, I’ll certainly give her a shove. If she’s lucky, her spiritual journey will yield as many blessings as mine has. “And if you abandon me for her,” I add with a note of wry humor, “I’ll curse you and your children to the seventh generation.”

  He spares me a sidelong glare, refusing to dignify my jest with a verbal response.

  I laugh and settle closer to him. “Hey, golden child, are you coming in, or do you plan to skulk in the doorway?”

  A spark lights her eyes. Perhaps she realizes that I’m not going to rat her out here. With a stir of confidence, she slinks into the room, but she cannot meet my gaze as she joins our parents.

  “Eighteen months,” I muse. “I guess you’ve graduated high school and started college, then. Just another place you’ve surpassed me, Tana.”

  She tips her head and sets her jaw in a defiant line.

  “Jen, how can you be so flippant?” Mom asks. “I told you your sister has worried herself sick over you. She hasn’t even been able to concentrate on her magic studies, let alone her schoolwork.”

  Surprise darts through me. Before I can utter any smart remarks, my father hits on a tangent.

  “Speaking of magic, the security guards told me you threatened them with a fistful of flames. Is that true?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply, all innocence.

  “Anjeni,” he says in a warning voice.

  I plaster a smile on my face. “It’s so nice to be home, to see my family again. None of you has changed a bit, and neither have I. ‘Stubborn as a mule,’ you might recall.”

  Dad glowers. I shouldn’t stonewall him, but it’s awkward to tell the people who always knew me best that their insistent training finally paid off. Magic is a novelty here, sure, but it was life or death in the past, and this quarantine room seems too trivial to summon it.

  “Does this man of yours have a name?” my mother asks. She studies Demetrios with mingled apprehension and awe.

  I start to answer, but on impulse I change directions. “His name is Dima.” Demetrios looks to me in surprise. I can’t explain it to him, but my time in the past is suddenly precious to me. The moment I disclose his full name, their speculation will multiply. The truth will worm its way out, and everything will change. Will my parents broadcast that their daughter is the legendary Anjeni? Would the citizens of Helenia even believe such a tale? All I can think of is endless news cycles, demands for interviews, panels of “experts” opining on things they know nothing about.

  “His name is Dima,” I say again, firmly. I squeeze his hand. “He is mine, and I am his.”

  My father bucks his head at the declaration. “You must know we can’t just set someone from another world loose in ours, Anjeni. A doctor will examine you both, and you will be released, but he—”

  “Where I go he goes,” I interrupt. “We’re a matching set now.”

  “Anjeni, we can’t—”

  “You’re the president of Helenia. You can order his release alongside mine.”

  My father’s mouth sets at a stubborn angle. They want to keep Demetrios for what? Inquiries? Testing? Dissection? Over my dead body.

  So much for keeping my magic to myself. My eyes slide shut and my astral projection rises in a billow of blackened flames. I glide toward the glass wall—through the
glass wall—and confront my swiftly retreating father face to face.

  “Know this,” I say. “We have submitted to this quarantine as a courtesy. I have earned every last battle scar on my body, and I can destroy this entire building with a flick of my wrist. Your stubborn, defiant daughter has returned, and she will have her way in this matter. Do you understand?”

  I have backed my family up against the wall. My father gibbers, nodding quickly. If Mom and Tana gape any wider, their eyes will fall out of their sockets.

  Demetrios summons me back to my body with a pinch on my arm. I open my eyes and look quizzically up at him.

  “You menace your own father and mother? Shame on you.”

  “They want to separate us and keep you here,” I reply.

  His grip tightens on my hand, and he seems suddenly less condemning of my deed.

  Across the room, my father huffs as he straightens his tie. “I’ll see what I can arrange, Jen.”

  I offer him a smile and a sunny, “Thank you.”

  Modern clothes seem strange upon Demetrios, but he looks good. I pause in my walk to appreciate how well the crisp button-up shirt fits against his shoulders. A passing car honks and we both jump.

  “Why is everything here so loud?” he asks.

  I sigh. “I know. I’m sorry. I have just this one last errand, and then we can leave.”

  After a week of quarantine, my father arranged for our release, complete with an identification profile for Demetrios to use going forward—not that he has the first clue what to do with it. During our time cooped up in that glass room, I took the opportunity to reacquaint myself with this era and to make some decisions.

  We’re leaving the city. I miss the stars and the quiet tranquility that I took for granted. Demetrios, unaccustomed to this hectic alien lifestyle, yearns for simplicity. We might try our hands at farming or ranching. We might become vagabonds. Whatever we choose, it will be away from the hustle and lights and cacophony that surround us at present. And we will succeed because we have each other.

  A security detail dogs our footsteps, just like old times. Word has spread that the president’s oldest daughter, who disappeared under exceedingly mysterious circumstances, has returned. Reporters and photographers alike seek me out, hoping I’ll grant them an exclusive. They can settle for taking pictures of my fire-scarred neck and arm.