He Who Cannot Die

by Dan Pearce

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  Dishon laughed. “Would you have wanted anything to do with me when I first was cursed?”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Is it not the same for this woman? I should hope that the cruelty of her curse will alter the woman, and who is to know but that she will one day be a woman worth knowing.”

  I nodded in pensive agreement. “I think I was a man worth knowing when I was cursed,” I said.

  “No Cain, you were not.”

  I was immediately offended. “I was. How can you think you know such a thing to declare it so carelessly?”

  He ignored my bothered tone and began walking under the assumption I would join him. “A man worth knowing would never have killed his own brother as easily as you did,” he said. I looked at him in disbelief that he would say such a thing, and he continued on not giving a shit. I became furious when he didn’t stop but said nothing more. The mental walls I spent thousands of years building out of my own rationalizations suddenly felt so frail with just a few carelessly spoken words. I didn’t know why my friend would be such an asshole.

  I caught up to Dishon and gave him the silent treatment for a good many hours as we walked. With each hilltop we summited, my thoughts softened a little more and I begrudgingly acknowledged to myself that there was at least some truth in what he said. I also knew him enough to know that he didn’t say it in a judgmental or accusatory way. He said it in a way one friend caringly tells another to quit living in so much damn denial already. I still didn’t fully agree, but I could forgive him for it.

  By the time Dishon broke our silence and asked if I felt our location was good to make camp, I had surrendered to the notion that the original version of me was actually a much different man, and that he wasn’t all goodness. That man had indeed murdered his own kin when better options were available. I still felt fine about Abel’s death coming to him when it did, but I didn’t like that it was my hands who plunged the spear into his chest. I didn’t like that it was me that lost control so easily and in such a finalizing way. I really didn’t like that I had to carry that part of my history with me for life and find some way to still believe I was a good man. Could I still be a good man having done such an atrocious thing?

  It was the first time I gave truly integral thought to the part of my past I thought about so fucking often. It was the first time I acknowledged the murder to myself without a list of reasons why it was okay. “I did that terrible thing. Nobody else killed Abel. It was me,” I mumbled quietly to myself at one point. I loved and hated the feeling of finally admitting it.

  I knew I couldn’t change the fact that it happened. I also knew it was a much younger, less educated, and hastier version of me that had done it. That man was just a shadow of the man I now was. That man did his best. He messed up, but he did his fucking best in the world he knew. And that man deserved to be given redemption from his fuck-up. That man needed forgiveness. Since everyone involved was gone, the forgiveness needed to eventually come from myself. That was perhaps the most enlightening realization I had that day.

  It wasn’t what he intended, but it was Dishon’s words that somehow helped me understand those things for the first time. I’ll forever be thankful to him for hanging an unfixed part of me up to my face the way he did. He never said another thing about it, either. Dishon was never one to linger on what was already said or done.

  I am sure he noticed the enlightened variation in me after that day. My step became lighter, and the idea that I could exist in actual goodness – no matter my past – became an idea I latched onto and used to help myself develop from there. I never realized before that just how much I was holding myself back from my own greater potential by refusing to acknowledge the gravity of my past. It wasn’t until I could accept my darkness that I could then acknowledge my actual light, as well as the areas in my existence where light was still missing.

  I also realized that day what a humble and good man Dishon had become. It is easy to assume one is only good or humbled by his ongoing circumstances, such as those I found Dishon living in. But even when life got easier for him with me as his companion, I never heard him speak from a place of bitterness or resentment for his hard life. I never heard him cast blame elsewhere or cry out about the unfairness of it all.

  Even when we eventually met Honoria, and I side-railed things with Dishon by unexpectedly falling in love with her, he was humble and understanding of it clear until I chose staying with her over continuing our search for Tashibag with him.

  I didn’t expect to love Honoria, or any woman soon, for that matter. Dishon and I were fully dedicated to our task of finding Tashibag and bringing an end to our curses, if such a thing was possible or grantable. There was rarely a time when all the leads dried up, and so we always had great plans of where we would travel and how we would narrow our search next. It was a great adventure, which lasted hundreds of years and somehow always kept us moving and motivated.

  Honoria was the eldest daughter of a shepherd named Vorn. She was probably 18 or 19 years old when we happened upon her father as he herded his sheep toward a different watering hole. The man seemed too old to handle the task efficiently on his own, so we offered to help the struggling sheep herder in exchange for a meal. He spoke a language I only partially understood, and which Dishon didn’t understand at all, but the basics got us through. Delighted with our company and with the succor we provided, Vorn invited us to return to his home with him. We happily accepted since he lived in the village we were slotted to visit next.

  We helped him corral his sheep for the night and followed him to his village which included only a handful of modest huts. They were nestled peacefully in a wide valley at the base of tall, rolling, tree-covered hills. The land was so green, and wet, and saturated with vegetation.

  The shepherd introduced us, one by one, to each of his six daughters and his youngest, his son. I had never seen any man father so many offspring. The children’s mother had passed two winters prior, and now the family worked in a chaotic but harmonious fashion to keep everything going.

  Honoria was the oldest of his daughters. Having lived in her tiny village since birth, she was overly fascinated with us foreigners, and by me especially. As Dishon and I sat with wooden bowls filled with mutton soup atop our laps that evening, Honoria’s increasing wonder kept her stare fixed mostly on me. She commented repeatedly about my magic blue eyes, which was a singularity she didn’t know was possible.

  Dishon had never known romantic love, so he did not immediately see the red flags of what was forming between Vorn’s daughter and me. He asked me before we retired that night if I planned to know her, and then shrugged his shoulders when I informed him that she was too beautiful a woman to know so quickly. She was one I couldn’t simply fuck and leave. It had been a long time, but I knew those same feelings from my past. Every love before that started with the same feeling, and it always transcended my carnal desire to simply spill my seed and move on.

  Honoria lay beside me all throughout the night, giggling and greatly humored as I attempted to speak her language. She kept poking at me and looked upon me with increasingly larger eyes. Her skin was dark, almost black even, and barely an imperfection could I discover upon it. She had her thick and curled hair pulled behind her head, stuffed full of tiny twigs to keep it in place. She laughed more than she spoke. Any time she smiled, her beautiful and giant white teeth seemed to fill the room with more light than the fire alone provided; white teeth on any person were a rarity indeed. They reminded me of Annia.

  Each time I realized how fond my thoughts had quickly become for this woman, I forced them back down. I made sure to remind myself that I could not, and must not, love again until my curse was broken. Those reminders usually worked. That time they didn’t.

  As Honoria and I lay amusing one another, we took turns playfully running our finger tips up and down each other’s limbs in alternating attempts to tickle the other. My feelings
of affection grew stronger, and again I pushed them out in an attempt to replace them with reason. Our playful tickling turned into playfully touching each other’s faces and necks. The affection became greater and pushing it away became difficult. Many hours into this, we kissed and held our kiss for some time. One final wave of caution attempted to stop my heart from feeling, but I finally surrendered to what was happening and let the thought of love and companionship with Honoria harbor just a bit longer than it should.

  She was wrapped tightly in my arms the next morning when Dishon kicked the bottom of my foot to wake me. “Come, let’s take our journey, Cain,” he said. “These people know nothing of our witch.” His sudden worry was apparent as he looked at Honoria and me with cautious scrutiny.

  She wore nothing from the waste up, which was still quite normal for the time. Her bare back was nuzzled firmly against my chest, her warm left breast and soft nipple cupped tenderly in my hand. Nothing about the previous night had taken a sexual turn, but we had snuggled and hugged and fallen asleep entwined with one another as the beginnings of what would be an incredible love took hold. “Give me the rest of the morning, Dishon,” I said to the man who was now very anxious to get the hell out of there. “Allow me to enjoy this woman’s warmth. You and I are in no great rush.”

  He rolled his eyes and sulked back to his own sleeping place. “Do not enjoy it too much, Cain. I have never loved, but I have seen the beginnings of it more than once. You are in danger, friend.”

  Love. Just hours before, the idea of new love seemed so far distant from entering my life that I would have scoffed at the idea and told anyone it was absurd. Now, as I inhaled the scent of Honoria, love seemed inevitable and for some reason I welcomed it. In a quarter-hearted attempt to appease my friend, I tried to allow myself the thoughts of how wrong this was for me and our plans. It didn’t work. I didn’t want it to work. The part of me enjoying it too much pushed my thoughts out with force, and they never again did find place in me.

  Dishon was hesitantly supportive of it, though less than pleased. My request for the rest of that morning turned into the desire to spend another night with her. Dishon could not do that, and so he setup camp outside. The desire for that one extra night turned into two, which turned into another and then another. The more time I spent with that woman, the more I simply could not find the will to leave her behind.

  Eventually, Dishon was forced to setup new camps so many times that a decision on my part had to be made. The day came when he made me choose between continuing with him or staying with Honoria.

  In less than a half moon’s time I had fallen in love with her and she had fallen for me. I knew I could not bring her with us. As I looked at her six younger siblings, I knew how vital her daily role was to their survival. I knew that only selfishness would drive any request I would make for her to leave her family behind. There was also too much danger for two cursed companions on a witch hunt.

  “I can always hunt Tashibag,” I told Dishon when he asked me to choose. “I cannot always find a woman like Honoria.”

  He knew where my decision was inevitably leaning, and his agitation began to swell. “You know you will lose this woman just as you have lost every other woman if we do not find the witch,” he snapped.

  “I know,” I said. “And this thought haunts me, but what is the actual truth of it, Dishon?”

  “What truth?”

  I lifted my hand and placed it against his shoulder. “It is too late for me. I love Honoria already. If I must lose her, I must lose her either way. And so perhaps I will take a short rest from our hunt to enjoy the love of a woman one time.”

  Dishon looked displeasingly at my hand and shook it from his shoulder. “I know, Cain. And you know I will not stay, yes?”

  I sighed. “I know you will not. I know you cannot. I know it is something I cannot ask.”

  “This is your decision then? You choose the girl over your only true friend?”

  “Don’t say it like that.”

  “It is what it is. Just tell me if this is your decision.”

  I gave it a moment before officially committing. “Yes. It is.”

  Deeply hurt by what he surely knew my answer would be, Dishon had little to say to me after that. My repeated attempts to assure him that we would find each other after my time with Honoria filtered past his disheartened ears. He knew I was past the point of persuasion, and we both knew that finding each other after ten years would prove easier to promise than to actually do.

  “Stay and love your woman,” were his final words to me. “My curse, unfortunately, comes with no periods of reprieve.”

  A thorough sadness steeped me as I watched my best friend disappear over the nearest hillside to continue our search alone. The sadness was followed with guilt for my betrayal. The guilt wrestled uncomfortably with the excitement I felt in loving Honoria. She was currently approaching me from the opposite direction with a smile pinned high on her cheeks. I watched her for a moment, wondering if I made the right decision. I turned back and Dishon was gone.

  I knew how much more difficult life would be for him without me there. I wanted so badly to run, and join him again, and be the support he needed. I turned back to Honoria. I wanted to run to her, and hold her, and be the support she needed as well. I turned back to the hilltop. It wasn’t too late. I could catch up.

  In the end, I chose a two-week-old love over a three-hundred-year-old friendship. That is love. It is a force so powerful, I don’t know that I actually ever had a say in my decision.

  As mentioned, Honoria wasn’t my first love after Annia. She was simply the first woman I loved after Dishon and I became friends and travel companions. I didn’t doubt that I would see him again, hopefully sooner than later, but love for me was rare. “Take care of yourself, friend,” I whispered. Honoria called out to me. I nodded toward the empty hilltop and turned back to her. “I am staying.”

  I have come to understand that not all hearts beat the same way. I know many exist who might not ever understand the intensity of the love I was somehow born capable of feeling. I often think my heart was my original curse, as it has caused me more grief than anything else in my life. That damned beating organ within my chest can only handle so many foundationless connections with women, however exciting and fantastically sexual those connections may be, before it becomes desperate and thirsty for something far more powerful and enduring.

  Each and every woman whose portrait made its way onto the skins of my book was a woman I loved fiercely, and perhaps sometimes to a fault. I have always been quick to love and slow to let it go. When loyalty and commitment sink their anchors into my chest, I cannot loosen them again until the forces of time or nature force those anchors to release once more. This is just my nature, and it has always been my nature.

  I suppose losing love hurts more for me than it will for many others because of all this. I suppose I suffer more than I sometimes must when that love is taken from me. I also know that the more pain I feel, and the longer the pain lasts, the more worth it that love had to have been while I had it. One simply cannot hurt and grieve for that which was never of great value.

  The love between Honoria and me was only budding when Dishon left. It developed and grew, and it wasn’t long before those anchors took firm hold in both of our hearts. I lived with her in the home of her father during a time spanning two autumns. Once the youngest was old enough to care more for himself, and the second oldest was mature enough to take care of the others, Honoria and I built a home nearby where we could both make love and fuck in private, while still remaining close enough for her to provide care for her ever-weakening father.

  Her village was far from the mountains of my youth. They existed somewhere out there, in some far-off place, but it would be several months’ journey to reach them at best. We made our home amidst a sea of bright hills, which rolled as far as a man’s eyes could see in every direction. Each autumn those hills became saturated with incredible new
shades of pinks and oranges and yellows, but snow never appeared in the distance. Autumn was easy enough to spot, but winter was different there. Bitter cold never set into the region completely, and it didn’t take long to realize that I had no way of knowing just when my mountains would become capped with snow for the first time each year.

  Those ten years with Honoria came to their end, as the time I’m given always does. When the leaves changed colors to mark our tenth autumn together, I made the mistake of assuming I had more time left with her than I actually did.

  Having nowhere to go to somehow find a way out of our relationship ending, I accepted that it would indeed end, and I made a plan to say my goodbyes and leave her as I had come accustomed to doing with the loves of my past. I intended to journey in the direction I hoped Dishon might currently be, hoping to find him, renew our friendship, and continue our search for the witch together.