Spanners - The Fountain of Youth (5 page)

“‘
These are the angels whom we seek
,’ said Juan. ‘
These are the immortals. We will take their power from them
.’”

/***/

Diego took another glass of the cloud-white tea.

“I asked Juan how we could proceed,” he said.
“‘How can we defeat angels who cannot themselves be killed?’

“Juan stood up and smiled,” said Diego. “He was cruel to his captives, but to us he showed nothing but calm.

“‘
Indeed, angels cannot be killed
,’ said Juan. ‘
But angels can always be controlled
;
that is their purpose
.’

“‘
Control an angel?
’ I asked. ‘
It can’t be done.
’

“‘
The only angel to escape control was Lucifer, and he was banished to Hell by God
,’ said Juan. ‘
Angels have been put on earth to serve us, so let’s fight these immortals until they share their powers
.’

“‘
I care not to fight a group of immortals
,’ I said.

“‘
I’d rather face an immortal army ten times than a mortal army once
,’ said Juan. ‘
The mortal army fights for their own survival, but what does the immortal army fight for? Tell me this!
’

“
There was a moment of silence before the steward Balthasar spoke.

“‘
We don’t know, sir
,’ said Balthasar. ‘
Please inform us.
’

“‘
It’s not a real question
,’ said Juan with a smile, ‘
for an immortal army doesn’t fight in the first place. They have no need to battle if they can just wait for their opponent to die. So they keep to themselves, tucked away in the swamp until eternity comes
.’

“‘
But how can we get what we want?
’ asked Santos. ‘
How can we defeat them and get what we want?
’

“‘
We can’t defeat them
,’ said Juan, ‘
but we can get what we want. For though they can’t be killed, they can feel pain. And the prospect of an eternity of pain places more fear in the heart of an immortal than we could possibly imagine. This is how you control an angel: through pain
.’”

/***/

Diego drank more of his white tea and looked somberly at Adam. Adam motioned for Diego to go outside with him, mouthing the words
alone
, and Diego left the hut, leaving the child behind. The moon was bright enough to see Diego clearly, and Adam calmed himself before speaking.

“I understand that this is an emotional story, but your brother is a very dangerous man,” said Adam. “He has come back
, and I need to know what his plan is and how to
stop
him. Are you sure it’s necessary to tell this dark tale in front of your child?”

“It’s
beyond
necessary,” said Diego.

“Why?”
asked Adam.

“Because he’s the
future
,” said Diego. “I don’t know what spanner power he has, but I do know that he
grows
. He’s not like your Phoe, trapped in an infinite loop of love, fire and rebirth; he grows, and one day he’ll leave this island and join the world. I need him to know the truth about what I’ve done.”

“Immortality gives you time to do bad things,” said Adam. “We’ve all done bad things.”

“You’ve not done bad things, Adam,” said Diego. “At times you’ve been misguided or fought on the wrong side, but you’ve not done the things I’ve done.”

“He may grow up to hate you,” said Adam.

“And I pray that he does,” said Diego. “I pray that he takes in the naked truth and that, when he enters the real world, he undoes some of the damage I’ve inflicted. I’m immortal, yes, but I’m too broken to re-enter the world myself. Do you know that I’ve heard their screams every night since I left? Do you know what it’s like to have a century of nightmares?”

“Yes,” said Adam. “I know
precisely
what it’s like.”

“Then you must also understand the power of having a child who
doesn’t
have those bad dreams,” said Diego, “and you must realize why I’m doing everything in my power to ensure that he never does.”

“All right,” said Adam, nodding. “I get it.”

“Then let me tell you the whole story,” said Diego. “And let my son see me for the monster that I was. For only you can lead the battle against Juan when he closes in on the Fountain of Youth. And only my son can reconstruct the world after the battle is over.”

“The battle?”

“There’s a much larger story going on than my brother and the Fountain,” said Diego. “Let me tell the whole story to both my child
and
you.”

/***/

Diego sat down and sipped his white tea once more. Adam followed suit; the tea was just as good as it was the first time that he had drunk it.

“They were easy to conquer,” said Diego. “They were like immortal lambs. We stabbed them through the heart and they fell to the ground; their eyes glowed for a moment
, and their wounds healed over. They survived, but they stayed down, cowed in fear.

“‘
We have not yet found the Fountain of Youth
,’ Juan told us, ‘
but we have found the scent of its water. You have extracted truth from the naturals that has led us to this place, and you must use your skills to extract more. We extinguished the tribes of months past in days or weeks, but these angels cannot be extinguished, so we have time to learn their secrets, and we will take the time necessary to learn what we need
.’

“We annexed their village by chaining the women and children, and shackling their males into stocks,” said Diego. “We took
a boy who collected birds, his name was
Koriuaka,
and we taught him our language so that he could translate. He picked up our tongue quickly and gave them commands as we tormented them for days, but they wouldn’t relent. None of the psychological tricks worked; they had no fear of death and no concept of honor. We cut children in front of their mothers, and neither child nor mother would give in to our torments.”

“Did their class feel pain?” asked Adam.

“Undoubtedly; we could see it in their eyes. We had wrung more tears from them in a fortnight than had been wrought during our entire previous rampage. But they resisted our methods with steadfast resolve, much like you resisted your own torment during the Inquisition; do you remember that, Adam?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” said Adam, “though I’ve tried to forget.”

“We didn’t know it at the time, but we were outmatched; their class doesn’t respond to momentary discomforts like ordinary humans do. Perhaps they were your class specifically; I believe your immortal class is called a
tree
?”

“Yes,” said Adam. “We
’re slow to pick up new technology, but we absorb wisdom and don’t respond to physical distress.”

“Indeed,” said Diego. “These angels resisted our blades, and no threats would sway them. After weeks of failed intimidation, Juan tried a different method
, and it worked. These Indians were highly sensitive to
claustrophobia
.”

Adam’s heart skipped a beat, but he tried not to show it.

“We locked them in small, dark boxes and they gave in,” said Diego. “They told us the secret dwelt within one of their own—a pale girl who lived far away. She held the power of both life and death; her blood gave life and her body brought death.”

“Was this the Fountain?” asked Adam.

“Indeed,” said Diego. “This girl was the Fountain of Youth.”

“I didn’t know the Fountain of Youth
was a girl, and that she also brought death,” said Adam.

“
The Fountain of Youth can kill, and she’s more than just a girl,” said Diego. “She’s both life and death, power and destruction wrapped into one. They kept her in the far, far north; the cold muted her powers.”

Adam drank another sip of the white tea
, and Diego shook his head.

“Juan, of course, was determined to find her,” said Diego. “So we increased our to
rment, doing things that shouldn’t be done, things that would make Lucifer himself beg us to stop. They still wouldn’t reveal the location; it was sacred to them, so Juan brought the claustrophobia to the next level. He had us cut off their heads, and put those heads in a box. He did this to many of the villagers and showed what he had done to young Koriuaka, who immediately started to cry.

“‘
The heads of your parents are very much alive
in these boxes,
’ Juan told the young boy. ‘
The only way to cease their suffering is if you show us where the Fountain is; do you know her location?’

“The boy nodded yes,” said Diego. “And that was that. We prepared for a journey north, cutting the heads off the old and placing them in boxes, and shackling several of the young and taking them with us. We trekked north for months, hunting animals along the way and wrapping ourselves in furs as the cold set in.
Our young Arawak guides wouldn’t escape; they were too loyal to their elders.

“And months later, we found her, trapped in a cave with eyes glowing and skin devoid of pigment.
She had great powers, but in the cold she was just another girl, so she was easy to overtake and soon she was shackled to a post, completely under our control.

“The naturals had said that her power
lay in her blood, and Juan had prepared for this; he had brought great vats on our journey as well as leeches to prevent our blood from clotting. He then proceeded to sever her veins and let her blood drip into a vat. It took a week of cutting her skin to gain enough blood to fill the container, and when it was filled, Juan cut his own veins on his inner elbows and put his arms in the vat. He soaked it for an hour and soon developed a horrible fever; two days later he emerged and his eyes glowed, albeit faintly. He stabbed his own leg and it healed quickly. Despite our objections, he pierced his own heart, and that didn’t kill him either. So we followed suit, cutting our veins, soaking in the vat, developing fevers and then emerging as immortals.”

Adam smiled.

“Spanners are rare,” said Adam, “but humans that become spanners are even rarer still. I don’t think anyone would gain my powers by soaking in my blood.”

“Perhaps,” said Diego. “We didn’t know at the time the
uncommonness of what had happened to us, and if we had known the ramifications of immortality, we wouldn’t have let those leeches go.”

“Spanner leeches,” said Adam with a smile. “I don’t think I’d ever want to meet them.”

“Nor would I,” said Diego. “But at the time, Santos, Balthasar and I were ecstatic. We thought we had found the
Fountain of Youth
. We could live forever; what more could we want? We were excited, but Juan would have none of it.

“‘
Immortality is nothing
,’ said Juan. ‘
We have not the powers of angels; we
are merely the undead. We need to spend the next few years extracting
ALL
of the Fountain’s power, not stopping until
everything
that she has is exhausted and we become like gods, destined to rule the world.
’

“Juan was convinced that the power of the Fountain was limitless, and in retrospect, he was right,” said Diego.

“A world under Juan Ponce de León would have been a dark place,” said Adam.

“I had an inkling of that back then,” said Diego. “I saw the look in my brother’s eyes, and I knew that he was going to succeed and that bad things were going to happen. I didn’t quite know what to do, so I spent the evening praying by myself, begging for guidance.”

Diego looked at his son and smiled just a bit.

“I was at a loss as to what I should do, but that night the Lord answered my prayers and I was visited by an angel of my own, and he told me what we were doing was wrong,” said Diego. “It was then that I grew a conscience, my son.”

Diego took his son and had him look at Adam.

“God sent me an angel that night,” said Diego
. “An angel in the form of Adam Parr.”

/***/

“I remember when I found you like it was yesterday, Diego,” said Adam. “But I was only in the New World because I’d fallen afoul of Henry the Eighth, and he’d put a price on my head. I wasn’t sent by God; I was on the run, and finding you was pure luck.”

“This is the fatalistic mantra that you’ve spouted your whole life
, Adam,” said Diego. “You do this to protect yourself from the harsh realities of life, perhaps? Regardless, I needed guidance that night, and you came to me. If you were sent by God, fate or luck, it didn’t matter; you ran into our camp and saw that my brother’s actions were wrong.”