Immortal at the Edge of the World (40 page)

Hsu was standing a few yards distant, talking to one of his faery men, when he spotted me and came running. Mirella dropped into a defensive stance.

“Relax, he’s a friend,” I said to her. To my left Clara had raised the gun, so I put my hand on the barrel and lowered it. “Everybody calm down, we’re okay.”

“My God,” Mirella said. “It’s Hsu, isn’t it? Your dead partner.”

“He got better.”

“But how?”

“You get used to this sort of thing around Adam,” Clara said.

“
The battle is won!
” Hsu shouted, sticking to the same dialect I’d used before. He put away his sword and then we embraced for several seconds while the women stood around looking awkward.

“
My friend, how are you still alive?
” I asked.

“
I have lived in their world. Time is different. The further you travel from this land and into theirs the greater the difference. I am an old man now, but not near as old as I should be by your reckoning.
”

“
I saw you fall to a Talus blade.
”

“
That you did. But, though near death, I did not pass. I was saved by my love. He and three of his brothers are who saved you and yours on this day.
”

I had no particular urge to ask him for an introduction, as my last close-up encounter with the faery folk was plenty terrifying enough. I was also alarmed to learn that only four faeries had just wiped out a hundred armed men all by themselves. I didn’t think I really wanted anything to do with them if I could help it.

Not that I wasn’t grateful.

“
How did you know to come for me?
” I asked. “
Was it because of the astrolabe?
”

“
You used the star map and you spoke the word. This was enough. And well you did. They have another name for you, and it is not a name of someone they like. When you crossed into their world it set off different alarms, for different reasons. You know the name Bres.
”

I did. It was the name being shouted at me when I had stepped into the faery world. I couldn’t place it then, but with Hsu standing before me I was able to connect it to where I had heard it before. I’d heard it from him.

“
I am Bres to them?
”

“
You did not know? I assumed you were being coy.
”

“Adam.”

I turned. Clara had been standing by impatiently, waiting for me to get through this conversation.

“Does he know where she took him?” she asked.

“No but I’m sure now that the danger is over—”

“Ask him.”

“
The red-haired one is with you, I am sure,”
I said.
“Do you know where she took the child?
”

He looked confused. “
I don’t understand.
”

Clara understood not a word of what we were speaking, but she could read body language just fine. “Oh, Jesus,” she said.

“
You know this woman,
” I said. “
She stepped out of the faery land, just as you did. She is pale of skin and with bright red hair. Earlier she appeared and took a young boy out of danger. We need to find her to get the boy back.
”

Hsu looked afraid. No, more like awed. “
I have
never
seen her
,
but I know of whom you speak. They have a great number of names for her
,
and many claimed to have met her but she is not with us. She is more legend than truth. Much like you.
”

“
Can you not simply return to your faery land and find her? She disappeared from a locked room with the child. She had to have gone through that world to do it. She must be there now if she is not here.
”

“
It is not so easy to do, nor to explain to one who has never walked the shadow realm. Time there is a physical space. It would be as if searching an ocean without knowing the proper depth of what you seek. If she does not wish us to find her then I have no more chance of doing so than you.
”

“Goddammit, Adam, what is he saying?” Clara asked.

“Eve didn’t come here with him,” I said.

“But she . . . why would she take him?”

“She saved him,” I pointed out. “That was good, right?”

“Not if she doesn’t bring him
back
, no.”

“Excuse me, are we talking about the woman with the red hair?” Mirella asked.

“Yes,” I said. “From the video.”

“She has Paul.”

“Yes.”

“I’m not asking, I’m telling you,” Mirella said. “She’s standing over there.”

We all turned around, and there she was.
 

She was dressed in a long flowing gown of a style I associated with Greece, although I’m sure it had a modern equivalent. She was barefoot. Her bright blue eyes almost glowed with a wildness I took for passion most times, but which could easily be taken for rage. She had Paul in her arms. He was unconscious, which I hoped meant only that he was sleeping.

Clara saw her son and started forward. “Paul!” she shouted.

“Stop where you are, Clara,” Eve said levelly. She put her hand on the back of Paul’s neck.

“Hello, Urr,” Eve said to me, using the oldest name I had. “I see you have a son. I’m going to break his neck in front of you.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

“
What
did she say?” Clara screamed. Mirella had already disarmed Clara, which was good thinking, but now she was having quite a time holding her back without also hurting her. Next to them, Hsu had turned as pale as I’d ever seen him. He fell to one knee. The faeries that had just recently finished chopping down everyone that wasn’t a satyr or goblin materialized behind him and also took a knee before her.

“
She is a god to their kind
,” Hsu whispered out of the side of his mouth.

“
I don’t suppose I’m a god, too? That would be helpful.
”

“
You are, but not the good kind of god.
”

Eve hadn’t moved an inch since she’d made the threat. She looked at me with those amazing eyes and dared me to make the next move.
 

“All right,” I said. “Everyone, let’s calm down and . . . have a seat. Let’s sit down. And talk. Would that be okay?”

Eve nodded.

Slowly, I lowered myself to the ground and sat cross-legged in the dirt. The ground was a little muddy, and it would have been nice to imagine that was due to rain but I was pretty sure it was more because somebody had been killed on the spot I was sitting.

Eve matched my actions by lowering herself to the ground as well. She still held Paul firmly.

“He’s only sleeping, right?” I asked.

“Yes, just sleeping,” she said. “I haven’t harmed him yet.”

Clara let out an unpleasant noise.

“Can we have some privacy?” I asked everyone behind me.

“Adam?” Clara shouted.

“Mirella, please get her out of here. It’ll be okay.”

Mirella looked at me and at Eve, and then back at me again. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She nodded, and whistled to Lorgus. The satyrs were some distance off, having kept mostly together and not taken up a weapon, which was probably a good idea since there was really no way to know for certain how the faeries distinguished between the ones they should kill and the ones they shouldn’t.
Anything holding a gun
seemed like a good bet. And since the faeries were now standing next to me, the satyrs didn’t look interested in coming any closer. But when it became clear that Mirella had to get Clara away, and that Mirella had no clean way of doing that without also damaging Clara, Lorgus ran over and helped by throwing the screaming mother over his shoulder and running with her as if fleeing from a fire.

I was kind of glad Paul wasn’t awake.

“
Hsu, leave us,
” I said. “
She and I
have much to discuss. Tell your faeries the gods have to convene in private. Maybe they’ll buy that.
”

He smiled. “
A soldier needs no explanation to follow an order
.”

Standing, he gave a silent hand signal, and they all melted away, which was a really creepy thing to witness, I’ll be honest.

“Now we’re alone,” I said to Eve.

“Yes, now we are,” she agreed.

“Would you like to tell me why you’re going to snap the neck of a seven-year-old?”

She smiled, and eased her hold on Paul, lowering him until he was cradled in her lap. It was a maternal gesture that made me think we were okay for at least a little while. I still took the threat seriously, though, because when it came down to it I knew next to nothing about the woman in front of me, even after ten thousand years.

We sat in silence for a long while. I was waiting for her to begin and it seemed as if she couldn’t quite figure out the best way to do that.

“For the longest time,” she said finally, “this was about you remembering. That was what I kept waiting to happen. One day you would look into my eyes from afar and I would see something different from all the other times. Not hope, or excitement, or lust or any of the other emotions you displayed when you saw my face. I wanted to see your expression after you remembered what had happened. But after we spoke last I realized that I was never going to be having that moment, because you were never going to remember.”

“You wanted to see shame,” I said.

“
Nearly
that, yes.”

I am ashamed of a lot of the things I’ve done in my very long life. I get that everyone has done things they feel bad about in hindsight, but I’m not talking about the time I pulled a girl’s hair and made her cry in second grade, I’m talking about murder and pillage and rape. It had been a tumultuous sixty thousand years, let’s say. And the fact that I was still alive meant only I was very good at these things. I have mostly sworn off that degree of violence—there’s not much room for it in the modern world, and I really don’t have the stomach anymore. But I know how to do bad things, and I know what to say to get other people to do bad things. I may not look like much, but I’m Darwin’s fittest.

I’d known for a little while that Eve had a problem with some act I had performed in the distant past, but she never gave me much of a hint and there’s just too much history to go through. After a few years of thinking on the problem I decided there was no way I would ever recall the exact event she was holding against me. Then I drank a lot and passed out, which is how I seal most of my major decisions.

“It’s been a pretty weird couple of days already,” I said. “I learned there was such a thing as a faery kingdom yesterday, and then an actual faery tried to kill me. Today, four of them, along with a friend who should have been dead for the past thousand years, rescued me. An hour or so ago I learned that while Paul is my son, he is
not
my first child, and that I was just about as wrong about not being a father as it is possible to be. And now you’re here, after a ten-thousand-year chase, to punish me for a crime I don’t recall committing. Kafka appears to be scripting my life right now. So why don’t you tell me what I did to you and I can add it to the long list of things I feel bad about, maybe without any kids dying today?”

“You should watch your tone, Urr. I still have your son.”

“I don’t doubt your sincerity. I’m just tired. Once again I’m sitting in the blood and viscera of a stranger who died because I am still a part of this world, and I don’t want to do this anymore. It has been too many years. So if you want to let him go and take my life instead, go ahead.”

Eve took all of that in, nodding slowly.

“It has indeed been too many years,” she said. “But if your life was what I wanted, I could have had it a long time ago. Death is peace, and I don’t want you to experience that.”

She brushed the hair off Paul’s face and thought for a while about what she wanted to say next, while I wondered exactly how many times she had resisted the urge to murder me in my sleep.

“There used to be more of us,” she said finally. “More like you, more like me.”

“Immortals.”

“Ordinary people with long lifespans. People who didn’t know what aging was. Not many of us, but some. We lived together for many, many years.”

“I don’t remember this.”

“No, you weren’t a part of it. This was before you came to be. We had our own little tribe. For how long, I don’t know. Our children, though . . . our children knew old age, and disease. The first any of us experienced death was with a child’s death—from a sickness, or from an accident, or just growing old and infirm. And we didn’t understand. Aging was a curse visited upon our families, not a normal thing at all. In some ways I still think this is true. And we begged . . . we begged to our gods for an explanation. They didn’t answer, or they were not there.”

“How many were you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Not many. Enough to produce one or two children a year. Enough to make their suffering—and aging was suffering—unbearable to us. And when it was clear the curse would not be lifted by our silent gods, we settled on exile instead. If a child came of age without falling to sickness or predation we held a celebration for them, something like a funeral but where the deceased was invited to participate in the mourning of their own demise. And then we would banish them into the world, to go and start a tribe of their own, or join a tribe that already was.