Immortal Beloved

by Cate Tiernan

  Far above, Boz stopped. My four friends peered over the edge of the cliff, watching the car. The girls had their hands over their mouths, their eyes lit with adrenaline. Boz and Incy looked shocked but forced nervous laughs. They had killed those boys. Boz and Incy and the others had actually killed those boys—murdered them. It made the paralyzed cabbie look like a schoolboy prank. Even in my dream, I felt a sick coldness in my stomach.

  Incy turned to Boz. “We have to find Nasty,” he said, the words not really audible to me, but clear nonetheless. “Don’t you see? She shouldn’t be missing this.”

  The idea of once being the Nasty who they thought shouldn’t be missing that—it was sickening, repulsive.

  “Okay, Incy,” said Cicely. “Enough’s enough! Let’s find her.”

  Boz nodded, still looking over the cliff, his face solemn. Then he looked straight ahead, it seemed directly into my eyes, as if he could see me, right then. “Yes,” he said. “It’s time to find her.”

  I bolted upright, gasping, and flicked my light on. I was alone in my room. I was in West Lowing. If that had been another vision, then it showed that they still didn’t know where I was. But I had recognized those hills, that twisting road.

  Boz and Incy and the girls were in California. They’d come to America.

  CHAPTER 24

  I could feel Solis’s barely concealed impatience.

  Which only made it worse, of course.

  I tried again. Releasing a breath all the way out. Trying to calm my mind, to empty it of thoughts. To achieve a perfect, centered stillness—which was about as foreign to my life as growing wings and flying. When I felt ready, I looked once again into the large, flat bowl of water. Breathe in, breathe out.

  “What is water?” Solis’s voice was so quiet I could barely hear it.

  I remembered his words and murmured, “Water is life and death, light and dark, hard and soft. Water is past and present and future. It is liquid and solid and gas. It is gentle as rain and terrible in its force. It is all knowing; it holds the deepest secrets.” I breathed in and out, trying to move as little as possible. “Water, reveal my truths to me.”

  I waited. This was my third attempt. Scrying with water is, supposedly, easier than other methods of scrying, but it’s still a skill. And I needed to master it. And I kept screwing up.

  I waited, watching the still surface of the water. So far what I had seen was: water. A wet bowl. I was kneeling and my feet were freezing and falling asleep. I was hungry. I realized my brain wasn’t empty and my thoughts weren’t still. And of course, there were so many things I didn’t want to see. Solis was gonna kill me.

  Suddenly I blinked. Shimmery images were forming in the bowl, as if reflected in a mirror. “There’s a picture in the water,” I whispered without moving my lips. Solis said nothing. I kept watching, focused now on this spell. The image shivered and resolved itself: It was me, looking happy, holding a baby I didn’t recognize. I looked unnaturally normal, like a regular person. The image fogged up and faded, then changed. I drew back, my breaths shallow: It was a castle burning. Then I had a split-second image of someone dead, a girl, lying on a cold stone floor, her dark eyes open and unseeing, her fair hair soaked in blood. I could see the big empty space between her head and her neck, the dark pool of blood spreading out around her.

  No, no, my mind shrieked. Time rewound more, and suddenly I was back in that night, that night of terror when my mother had woken us and gathered us in my father’s study. We heard the raiders trying to break down the door with a battering ram. We smelled the smoke from the bailey, where they’d set fire to our servants’ homes, to the stables. Animals were screaming in panic; men were shouting.

  My mother was holding her amulet and singing. I’d never heard this song. I always loved it when she sang. She sang on the spring equinox, to welcome the earth’s fertility in the coming months. She sang on the solstices, praising the balance of the wheel of the year. She sang over our villagers if they were injured or having trouble in childbirth. But this song was different—there was a thread of blackness in it, like a pulsing umbilical cord, and the thread thickened and grew. The blackness was all around us. The five of us watched her, our eyes wide. Sigmundur and Tinna looked solemn, but not shocked. The three of us younger ones were slack-jawed.

  The main castle door crashed open below us. Acrid smoke seeped in through the arrow slits and burned our noses. My mother’s voice was now haunting and terrible, huge and dark and powerful. The light in the room seemed to dim, and it was hard to breathe, hard to see anything else except my mother’s face, drawn white, suddenly scary, almost unrecognizable.

  They started trying to break down the study door. The door was two inches thick; the lock was forged iron. The beam across the door was another three inches thick.

  My mother paused for just a moment and focused her gaze on my older brother. “Remember, Sigmundur,” she said, and her voice didn’t even sound like her. I was frightened, clinging to Eydís and crying, and Háakon was clinging to me and trying not to cry because he was a big seven-year-old boy. “Remember what I told you, yes?”

  My brother nodded grimly, both hands holding his sword. “I will, Móðir,” he said.

  The room shook with the crash of the battering ram at the door. Delicate glass globes fell off the stone mantel above the fireplace. The room’s one torch was flickering; the fire in the hearth was dancing crazily.

  Two things happened at once.

  I saw the scene from a shorter height, the height of a ten-year-old. I felt the linen of Eydís’s nightgown ripping under my hysterical grip. I was the daughter of Úlfur, the wolf, and I should be strong and brave. But my sword had dropped out of my numb hands, and all I could do was watch my mother.

  The fire in the hearth leaped, then spit out toward the room, showering sparks onto the hearth rug. Something as big as a cabbage fell down the chimney, bounced on the fire, then rolled out into the room.

  It was my father’s head, cut off at the neck, with eyes and mouth partially open, still bloody.

  The high-pitched sound that filled my ears was my own screaming.

  At the same moment, the door finally burst in, the wood shattering, iron rivets popping. Two men stormed through, tall, broad, wearing chain mail, their faces painted in primitive streaks of black, white, and blue. One of them roared and raised his axe. My mother shouted harsh words, words that made me cringe, that hurt my ears to hear them, words of blackness and power and fury. She snapped her hands open at the man, and suddenly the room was sprayed with rings of metal chain mail and blood.

  The other man stood thunderstruck, staring at his companion, who reeled a bit, dazed, looking down at his body of bloody meat. My mother had flayed him alive, with magick, and he had no skin, no hair, no clothes. Just round, bulging eyes and a muscled skeleton’s head. He dropped forward onto his face, and my brother Sigmundur shouted a battle cry and leaped forward, swinging his sword. He lopped off the man’s head with one blow, then kicked the head across the room.

  I was going to faint. I peeled away from Eydís and Háakon and ran to my mother, standing behind her, grabbing on to her skirts. Out in the hall, other raiders were shouting, breaking things, setting fire to our home.

  The other man bellowed, staring at my mother, and raised his heavy longsword.

  Gasping, I jumped back, swallowing convulsively, my foot accidentally knocking into the scrying bowl. I was here again, the gray winter light slanting through the window. I looked around wildly, seeing Solis’s face, the classroom, the bare treetops out the window. My stomach clenched and roiled. I was gulping breaths, fighting the tunnel vision that came before a faint. The spilled water seeped up the leg of my jeans and I clawed at my eyes as if to erase what they had seen.

  “Nastasya, what’s wrong?” Solis cried.

  On my hands and knees I threw up, hitting the scrying bowl. I heard myself howling as if from a distance. Solis put a cool hand on me, but I shoved it away and cl
ambered gracelessly to my feet. I was weaving, unable to walk straight, sick with nausea and horror. Somehow I staggered to the door, flung it open, and threw myself down the hall. I raced out into the cold afternoon air, not knowing where my jacket was, scarcely knowing where I was.

  Way across the field, a tall, thick hedge of holly stretched, separating the field from the goat pen. I ran to it, going around the back, out of sight. I was breathless but still keening, my heart pounding in my ears like a drum. There my legs gave way and I dropped to my knees on the cold ground. I was shaking. I would never be warm again. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to unsee the images, as I had tried so many times before. They were burned into my memory—not just the pictures but the sharp crackling of fire popping in my ears, the coppery smell of blood, the awful smell of wool rugs burning, the shouting of men’s voices, the screaming of servants. My father’s sightless eyes. A man made of bloody meat.

  I huddled next to the hedge, my fingers scrabbling in the dirt, drenched in such raw, burning pain that I felt as though I’d go crazy. My throat closed abruptly, my nose started running, my eyes burned, and suddenly I was wailing, tears flowing down my face, crying now as I had been unable to cry then. I felt I’d never be able to stop.

  I don’t know how long I was there. At some point I crumpled sideways and lay curled on my side, sobbing, my face wet and cold where the wind chilled my tears. I kept my eyes wide open so I wouldn’t see anything but leaves and sky, the occasional hawk wheeling overhead, the heavy clouds moving in from the southwest. I sucked in heavy, painful breaths, wondering how I had gotten from that time to here, how I had survived, not just physically but emotionally.

  I had turned off my emotions. Not all at once, not overnight, but slowly, over a matter of decades. By the time I was fifty, I was a hard shell.

  Gradually my sobbing lessened, turned to quivering gasps.

  Eventually I heard voices, and then two dark figures walked toward me.

  “She’s here,” one called, and they came quickly.

  River knelt on the ground near me and pushed my hair away from my face.

  “My poor child,” she said. “My darling. I’m so sorry. Please come now—come in and get warm.”

  Slowly my eyes shifted sideways to rest on her face. Could she know? She couldn’t possibly know. No one could know. I was the only person alive who knew.

  “Nastasya. You’re here now; you’re not there. Do you understand?” River looked intently into my eyes. She drew a soft white handkerchief from her pocket and dried my face.

  Solis knelt also and draped my coat over me. The immediate warmth was shocking. They waited patiently, kneeling in the cold grass, River holding my hand, which felt like ice. I wanted to lie here forever, letting leaves cover me, being slowly buried by time. Then, I don’t know why, I pictured Reyn, the Reyn of today, standing over me, the chilly wind tousling his hair as he frowned down, arms crossed.

  Slowly, every breath painful, I sat up, then stood up on shaky legs. The adrenaline had leached out of my blood, leaving me exhausted and empty. River and Solis helped me push my arms into my coat, as if I were a child. I felt a thousand years old.

  “My dear,” said River, stroking my hair. “I can only imagine.”

  “You can’t,” I managed to croak.

  “Nastasya,” said Solis sympathetically, “I’m afraid no one gets to be our ages unscathed. Each of us here has a horrific story, or two, or five, or twenty. Each of us here has hit rock bottom in some way, endured the unendurable, seen things that no human should ever see. And we keep the memories forever, for centuries. You’re not alone, and you’re not the darkest aefrelyffen on the planet.”

  His words trickled into my ears, into my brain.

  “And how much worse it is for the people who actually committed such atrocities,” River said, sounding almost distant, off in her own thoughts. “As bad as it is to be a victim—and believe me, I know how bad it can be—the inescapable truth is that it’s even worse to be the perpetrator. To have to live with that…” Her voice trailed off as my mind whirled.

  We walked back to the house, the sun behind us snuffing out quickly. Inside, it smelled like cooking food and floor wax and the evergreen boughs that had been cut for Yule decorations. I wanted to lie down on my hard bed and never get up.

  River and Solis walked me to my room and stood as I opened my door and went inside.

  “Do come eat something,” said River, in her lovely, melodic voice. “Or shall I bring you up a tray?”

  I stared blankly at her as if she was speaking nonsense.

  “I’ll bring a tray,” she decided, and they left me, silently closing my door.

  No one knows, I told myself again. I never had to tell anyone, and no one would ever know. I was the only person alive who had seen that, seen my mother and my brother kill a man, seen my father’s head roll across the floor. I was the only person alive who knew that I was the last survivor of my father’s house, that his magick was buried somewhere deep in me. As long as no one knew, no one would come after me, no one would try to take my power from me by force. It was my secret.

  CHAPTER 25

  Somehow I kept on with the daily rhythm of my new life. My chores gave me purpose and structure—I knew where I had to be and what I had to be doing at any given time. I could perform all my duties without much thought: sweeping leaves off the porches, cleaning the stove, gathering firewood, sowing winter rye in the kitchen garden. I moved mechanically, and people seemed extra kind to me, except Nell and Reyn, who both avoided me.

  “My mother had been sold three times before my father bought her,” Brynne said one day while we were beating rugs outside. We both wore scarves tied over our mouths; the fine, silty dust powdered the air all around us. Her voice was muffled, but I heard her. “They split her apart from other children she’d had, not immortals. Some of them she never found, and one she found only when the child was very old and about to die.”

  I took the story in.

  “But now she’s… content,” Brynne went on, looking off in the distance. “Still in love with my dad. Loving everything she does. Loving all of us so much. She really enjoys it, being an immortal.”

  Everyone had stories, both horrific and beautiful. Each story was taken out, examined, told, and then put away. They were things that had happened; they weren’t happening now.

  As my brain began to wrap around all of these weighty concepts, my daily life got a few rocks in it. I forgot to move the sodden quilts and blankets from the washers into the dryers, so they got mildewy. I had to wash those suckers three more times, because the expensive, ecologically sound detergent that River bought worked like crap. I mean, the invention of bleach was a step forward for mankind, you know? It would have worked immediately. It was such a relief to be irritated and swearing about that, instead of roiling in misery over something else.

  The next day, I was in one of the pantries, knee-deep in glass containers, tidying and dusting and trying to focus on being in the now, since as we’ve all seen, being in the past was clearly a freaking nightmare. Through a crack in the pantry door I saw Reyn and Nell, both washing the simple iron chandelier that hung over the dining table. Nell said something, and the side of Reyn’s mouth quirked in a half smile, their earlier tension forgotten, forgiven. It made my heart burn.

  We had turnips at three dinners in a row.

  The devil-hen pecked my hand again, drawing blood. I almost throttled her.

  Solis gently asked me to try scrying again. I guessed he was from the “get back up on that horse” school of thought. Being from the “hell no” school of thought, I said hell no. He assigned me extra chores.

  After the floor-muddying incident with Nell, she avoided me, but pretty skillfully—I doubted anyone else noticed. But she did little things: My coat pockets were full of dirt, my boots soaked in water, my food covered with salt. I didn’t see her do any of this, and some of it would be so hard to pull off that she must have done it
with magick. But I knew it was her—her tiny, superior smile and knowing glance said as much. I wanted to throttle both her and the hen. Together. Maybe beat her with the hen.

  My sleep was heavy and dreamless, thanks to River’s nightly tea.

  One night I was out cold, and someone grabbed my shoulder, shaking hard. I was awake in an instant, bolting upright and opening my mouth to scream—when Reyn said, “Quiet! Don’t wake anyone else!”

  I grabbed his hand with both of mine and tried to bite it.

  “Stop that!” he said, sounding annoyed and not, say, filled with battle-stoked bloodlust. I looked from him to the door, and realized that I had completely forgotten to do my lock-door spell. This was maybe the second or third time I’d forgotten. I was an idiot.

  Pushing his hand away, I shrank back, remembering the dark spells in my room, my memory of the raider, the feelings of someone being after me, someone hating me—but then I thought that if he’d wanted to hurt me, he would have done it while I was still sleeping, and not woken me up for it.

  “What do you want?” I said, trying to sound strong and angry.

  “You’re on the board for haying the horses.” His voice was low.

  I stared at him. “So?”

  “You didn’t do it,” Reyn said.

  The door to my room was still open—could I make it past him and out the door if I needed to? Probably not. What in the world was he doing?

  “I guess I forgot,” I said. “Solis assigned me extra chores. I’ll do it in the morning.”

  “You should have done it after dinner,” he pressed.

  “Okay, Mr. Chore Monitor.” I actually was angry now, and it was superseding any fear. “I’ll do it tomorrow. Get out.”