He Who Cannot Die

by Dan Pearce

  I thought I had several more weeks before the curse would take me away from Honoria.

  I had carefully sealed my Book of What Once Was deep within a cavity that I carved into the wall of a hillside cave near our home and planned to go and retrieve it before departing.

  In the end, my sense of timing was off, my procrastination was ruinously rewarded, and I never was able to say goodbye or fully prepare myself to lose Honoria. She lay beside me one seemingly normal night, her leg draped over mine as we found sleep together. I awoke the next morning staring up at the dripping canopy of a loud and chaotic rainforest, which I know now was somewhere deep in South America.

  I was in an alien land, surrounded by screeching monkeys, squawking birds, and terrifying serpents. Just as had happened the first time, I awoke naked. I had nothing apart from Annia’s necklace, which I was quite thankful somehow traveled with me.

  It took quite some time, which included plenty of injuries, accidents, and usually self-inflicted poisonings, along with many animal attacks, before I learned how to efficiently live in such a difficult place.

  Of all the places I have had to survive, I hated the jungle most, especially at first. It was agonizingly hot, and the air was so wet and thick. Journeys of even insignificant length took much longer than I was accustomed to, since I often had to labor ferociously just to cut a path for myself through the dense jungle growth. Many of the paths I cleared led me to very dangerous ends, and I was frequently forced to double my way back in the search for a better way through. Food and water were plentiful, though it took great trial and error to learn what I could eat and what I could not.

  Many of the animals were far more ferocious than I would have expected them to be, especially when they lived in numbers. I pissed off the wrong troop of howler monkeys on more than one occasion, and let me just say… Those things are anything but cute when they are desperately trying to scare you out of their territory. I had nightmarish run-ins with other animals as well, which included a couple of different crocodiles, predatory river fish, electric eels, venomous snakes, poisonous frogs, caimans, and even one overly aggressive anaconda.

  When I first was displaced there, I didn’t know whether it was being thrown into the sudden and terrifying land that now surrounded me, or if it was the officially calloused heart of a man who had found and lost love one too many times, but I never felt that same heartbreak which had previously accompanied loss of love. Perhaps I had just mentally prepared myself well for losing Honoria, and so when it happened, it wasn’t such a shock to my system. I often sadly thought of her, and wondered what ever happened to her, but I never deeply mourned losing her. I was bothered by that and thankful for it. It was what it was.

  What I did know was that the rain forest was no place I wanted to make my permanent home, and so I spent every waking moment, in which I wasn’t hunting or sleeping, trying to find my way out of it. I had promised Dishon I would find him when my time with Honoria was done, and I was quite aware that I had a long way to travel if I were to keep good on that promise.

  What I didn’t know was that I had been displaced somewhere on the opposite side of the Earth. I didn’t know just how long it would take to find my way North again. At that point, I had no clue just how big the world actually was. I didn’t foresee that those months I hoped it would take would turn into decades, which would then turn into centuries, which would turn into millennia. I certainly didn’t know that I wouldn’t happen upon another human again, or evidence of another human’s co-existence, for many hundreds of years. I just toiled my way through the jungle, one exhausting day at a time, and never stopped hoping that that day would be the day I would find people again.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Aweh,” I responded to Ashwin, while he seemingly took forever to type whatever was coming next.

  A new Facebook message finally popped onto my phone’s screen. “All recent signs still point us to Peru. Dishon sent word Friday. He is in a town named Ocongote, and it seems his new leads there are solid. He thinks Tashibag is somewhere on Ausangat. If not there, Dishon is certain she is living somewhere nearby in the Willkanuta mountains.”

  I was ecstatic to hear there were new developments in the search for Tashibag. I was a bit hurt that I hadn’t heard about them firsthand from Dishon. Finding the witch had consumed a good portion of our lives, after all. Tashibag had always been our thing.

  I was a bit petty with my reply to Ashwin, querying him as to why Dishon wouldn’t have bothered sharing such news with me as well. Ashwin assured me that he had messaged Dishon weeks before, and our mutual friend was only responding back.

  I forced away a new twinge of guilt that crept in. I set aside my pettiness as I realized just how long it had been since I personally reached out to Dishon. The last message we exchanged was nearly two months ago. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. I cared about and loved the man very much. I suppose life just had a way of always pushing those good intentions to tomorrow. There was no slight on Dishon’s part, and I reminded myself of that. Ashwin was just better at checking-in on Dishon. In truth, he had been a much better friend to Dishon in recent decades. It was always Ashwin who kept up with the details surrounding Dishon’s relentless obsession.

  I exchanged several messages back and forth with Ashwin, our mutual friend who was currently and quietly living out his perpetual life in Soweto, South Africa. He was cursed by Tashibag only 1400 or so years ago, so he hadn’t seen nearly as much of the world’s history take place as Dishon and I both had. Ashwin was born in the 7th century, somewhere in the country that is now Ethiopia. With the exception of a visit with us to the Middle East around the turn of the first millennium, he had never left his home continent to see what the rest of the world had become.

  With the invention of ships a few thousand years back, which could finally journey people across entire oceans to established and well-civilized lands none of us knew existed, Dishon and I had both independently hopped continents. I made shore in Africa. He landed somewhere in Europe. Eventually it was Bulgaria where we found each other again, just a few years after she cursed Ashwin. It took Dishon and me another decade of clue grubbing and witch hunting before we tracked down Ashwin in the Congo.

  After Tashibag placed the curse, our friend gradually made his way South to escape escalating violence and harsh African living conditions in the region. He finally landed in South Africa some 400 years ago and has called it home since.

  Ashwin preferred staying in one spot, mostly due to the physical agony his curse caused him to persistently suffer. Tashibag had tracked him down after word reached her that a man in Egypt had developed the nasty habit of violently punching or kicking the women of his tribe in their bellies any time one was discovered to be with child. This would, of course, cause them to miscarry their unborn babies. Ashwin told us later that one woman died from internal bleeding as a result of it.

  After the death of his father, Ashwin had inherited the position of “Great Village Leader of Asella.” It happened in a time and part of the world where many suffered from starvation. Ashwin felt it would hurt his people should there be any new mouths to feed or children taking their mothers away from their duties, and so he took it upon himself to ensure the population of his village couldn’t expand until the Earth could sustain them more fully. He didn’t know the exact number, but he told us at least ten women lost their unborn children because of what he did to them.

  Just as with all of Tashibag’s curses, Ashwin’s curse was to live upon this Earth without ever dying. His personal curse was to always know “the equal struggles and pains of a large woman ripe with twins.” Ashwin’s belly became heavy and enormous with his curse. Every five to ten minutes since that day, his body has suffered through the excruciating equivalent of a major contraction. He once told us the words Tashibag used when she cursed him, but I can’t remember them specifically. I do remember thinking just how much fun Tashibag seemed to have coming up with that one. It almost see
med cursing people had become entertainment for her.

  Ashwin’s curse contained a few parallels to ours, but it differed greatly for the most part. He was allowed to remain with any person indefinitely, and he wasn’t forced to keep moving from place to place the way Dishon was. Like us, he also could not tell any other of the curse, or they would rapidly meet a terrible death. Unlike Dishon, who couldn’t father children, and unlike me, who would have to abandon any child if I were unfortunate enough to be fertile, Ashwin’s curse made his seed overly potent. His curse required him to father at least one new child before the great sands blew into the city on the tenth year of every decade. If he failed in this requirement, each of his living decedents would be displaced to somewhere in the world after the fourth night they each slept. Since Ashwin had only once allowed this deadline to lapse, he had quite the local family tree going. Because of that, the weight of it all for him has always grown. He was allowed love, and he married dozens of women over the centuries. Most of his wives and children had long ago grown old and died, but he currently was raising a 4-year-old boy with a new wife he met some years back on an internet dating service.

  When we first met Ashwin, more than enough time had passed for him to be humbled and changed by the consequences of his curse. We became immediate friends with the improved Ashwin. Discussing much of anything together has always been difficult with how often he must stop mid-conversation and grit his teeth through the pain of his contractions. It is no wonder he always preferred staying inside his own home where he could suffer in peace and avoid the stares of strangers who took easy notice of his giant belly and abnormal behavior.

  We remained in the Congo with Ashwin for six years, then Dishon and I took our journey elsewhere to continue our search for Tashibag. We would bump into him from time to time in our travels, but eventually lost touch with Ashwin as our journey took us back out of Africa. It was the Internet that finally reunited us all again.

  Most of those cursed by Tashibag, or at least those we’ve had the displeasure of meeting, became far worse versions of the shitty people they originally were. If I’m being honest, most of them scare the bejeezus out of me. Ashwin was one of the rare few who found some sort of redemption from his original sins and became a better human to all. His goodness now seemed without end. He became a great supporter for the arts and for education in his community, and still gives much of the wealth he collected over the centuries to support causes he holds dear. It always saddened me that his curse kept him stuck at home. I know that man would do many more incredible things if he were able.

  Ashwin could always be counted on for support. He was the friend who we could count on to care. He was the friend who kept us all stitched together. Now, on the eve of the next heartbreaking loss in my life, he was there again, telling me what might be solid evidence of Tashibag’s current whereabouts. According to Ashwin, a woman matching our witch’s description was seen by several who traveled the dangerous road leading through Ausangat. Dishon was in Ocongote, gathering clues to narrow her exact location before he went looking for her.

  After so much time being unable to find the witch before now, the timing of this seemed far from serendipitous. Perhaps this was the very moment in time I was meant to find Tashibag. The thought of that made gave me sudden hope that it might just be possible to keep from losing my Samantha. Perhaps this time was the time it all would turn out differently. “Are you up for a trip to South America?” I asked Ashwin. He informed me he was in no state to travel but would be available night and day to offer whatever support he could from afar.

  “Send me your flight details and message me if you need anything. There may be times you need something quickly, or information you do not have. I can help from here wherever I can.”

  I told him that would be most appreciated. He said this was a trip I must make for Samantha and for all of us. I thanked my friend, promised to keep him updated as things progressed, and clicked-off my phone’s screen.

  My first instinct was to immediately sprint to the loft and purchase the tickets to Lima. This thought was quickly shadowed by the real fear that Dishon’s lead could actually lead us to the same place every lead before had taken us… Either a dead end or a place the witch no longer was and from which we wouldn’t be able to track her.

  Was it really worth risking the final precious days I had left with Samantha? I checked my phone again. Still no word from Dishon. It would be so much easier a decision if I could talk to him in person before deciding on the trip, but I knew that conversation was highly unlikely. I would have to make the decision based on the fairly small amount of information Ashwin had about it, and hope nothing had changed in the last couple days. Dishon had tracked Tashibag to a very specific place this time, though. The clues Ashwin had accumulated did make sense. There was a reasonable chance Dishon was right.

  Peru. Was it possible? Was it worth the risk? My gut said yes. My heart cried no.

  I made my way to the loft and began pouring over whatever information and maps online I could find of the area Dishon most likely was. I pulled up the mountains and the villages on Google Earth and researched what it would take to get there in a hurry. It would be into the next day just to get there, and then who knows how long to find Dishon, and then to find the witch, and then to hopefully work our curses out with her once we did. I let out a heavy sigh. If things went wrong, I likely wouldn’t get to see Samantha again before the curse made it impossible. Would the witch even give a shit? I didn’t know why I had any faith in her at all. I always had, though. I always saw some strange goodness in her. I always felt the day would come that she would feel we had paid enough of a price for our offences.

  I clacked my fingernails against the desk. Three more days. Three more days. Wait. My heart lifted a bit. It was not just three more days. It was three more days plus however long I could stay awake. Thanks to modern drugs and obscene doses of caffeine available on every corner, it really meant I could go six or even seven more days. I would be a walking zombie, but I could do that. I could go to Peru. I could find Dishon. I could hunt for the witch. I could likely make it back home to Samantha if things didn’t pan out. Yes, this trip was worth the risk. It was definitely worth the risk. Three days plus however long I could stay awake. If there was a chance, I could find the witch in time, it was worth it.

  I had purchased the one-way ticket to Lima and called a taxi to pick me up when Samantha arrived back home. I also purchased ten individual return tickets, all departing Lima at different days and times, so that I would have a guaranteed seat on whichever plane I needed to be on to get back here as quickly as possible. I wasn’t going to take chances with this. Money was just money, and I had plenty of it. Seeing Samantha again if this didn’t work was worth just about any amount of it.

  And what the hell. It could work. This could be it. Perhaps it was fate, or something like fate, that I could never find the witch or release myself of the curse before now. Perhaps it was Samantha whom I was meant to be with until we both grew old together. This all had to be lining up to actually work for us, right? Why not? Was it such an impossible thought?

  These were the thoughts I kept exchanging in and out with all the negative internal voices that harped on me for what I was doing and what might happen if I leave. I was flustered and emotional when Samantha walked into our bedroom and found me stuffing a giant handful of clean underwear into a duffel bag.

  “Going somewhere?” she said nervously. I hadn’t heard her arrive home, and so I jumped with surprise. What she walked-in on couldn’t have been a comforting sight for a woman who was already cognizant that something distressful was going on. Aside from finding me frantically packing a travel bag, my passport and a gangster roll of cash had been tossed clumsily onto the bed. I had printed off the plane tickets, which were halfway exposed beneath my iPad.

  “I have to leave for a little while,” I said. I hadn’t really prepared functional excuses for this moment. I didn’t actuall
y think through what I would say to help her feel better about any of it. Assuming I might not even see her before leaving, I had only gotten as far in my thoughts as wondering whether a quick note or a call on the way to the airport would be better. I wasn’t prepared for a face to face, or I would have planned it out much better. Instead, it turned messy in a hurry.

  She snatched the plane tickets free from where they were pinned and held them up to get a better view. I tried to grab them away from her, but she was too quick for me. “Peru?” she demanded. “You bought a ticket to Peru?” I couldn’t tell if she was more worried, more pissed-off, or more hurt that I was keeping something big from her, but it was an evident concoction of all three emotions that currently controlled her look she was giving me.

  “Do you trust me?” I asked. I hated the words as soon as they came out of my mouth. Just as with Annia, I didn’t actually know that everything would turn out okay. I was simply riding the same wave of extreme faith that for the first time, they just might.

  “Of course, I trust you. Is there a reason I shouldn’t?” She was definitely leaning more to the pissed-off side.

  I grabbed the tickets from her before she could see that they were more complicated than a simple round-way trip. This action made her even more angry and understandably frantic. “Tell me what the hell is going on, Anthony.”