The Mortal Fringe (14 page)

"Take care of him" Jay's voice is
broken, he looks at me, still so devastated that he clearly makes
me believe that what is happening is burning inside him.

"I will" She says holding my hand
strongly.

I do as she asks, and I know what's
going to happen. This time I'm prepared when the ground disappears
and everything around me goes blurry.

This time all sorts of feelings come
to my mind. I don't know if I should be more scared now that I know
that my ending is as certain as the sunrise of tomorrow morning. I
have signed my own death date. I keep my hands on Elizabeth's but I
can't help to think that perhaps it would be easier for me to let
go, right now, just like that, and end all this in a matter of
seconds.

When I feel the cold wind caressing my
face I know where we are. The building where she took me the first
time we went out together.

"Are you ok?"

I laugh, skeptically. How am I
supposed to be ok? Everything is so strange that even the sight of
the city beneath us does not take me back to reality. I have been
here before, it should be easier to go back. But what just happened
changes everything. Nothing will be like it was before. Had I had a
choice, I would have chosen not to know so much.

"Were all those people Gods?" I ask,
keeping my eyes on the horizon.

"Not all of them, no. "

"And you know them all?" My voice
trembles.

"Alex this is difficult for both of
us. Our worlds are too different. I know all the people you have
just seen, I have spent centuries with them, and we are like a
family."

"But Constance did not include you in
that family did she? She did not treat you like the
others."

She gasps.

"You are special" I say, turning my
head to her for the very first time. "Who are you?"

"I come from one of the oldest
dynasties of Gods. The Great Council is led by three families, mine
is one of them."

I don't answer. I don't want to know
why she is allowed to have a family, and destroy another one —mine—
at the same time.

I slowly turn back to the city,
holding the rage tears I have in my eyes

"Why are we here?" I finally ask,
looking over the blinding lights from the world below, because
that's what it is to me know, a world in which I no longer belong
in.

Elizabeth takes a step forward and
with her gentle hand on my chin makes me face her again. She looks
at me in the eye and smiles.

"Green does look good on
you"

Her words make me blush, and the urge
of looking away makes me move my head, but she stops me. Her eyes
are still fixed on mine. She is holding my hand and for the first
time, I hold it back as strongly as I can. I don't want to let
go.

"You wanted to know why I brought you
here again" she says, calmly. The sweetness of her voice lightens
the darkness inside me. "I brought you here because here is where
we started, and because I want us to start again."

CHAPTER 20

If it's been hours, I can't tell. I'm
still holding her hand when she looks at me for the second
time.

"Well?" she asks in her softest
voice.

"What?"

She smiles again and sits down, I do
the same. She is looking straight at the horizon, the endless sea
surrounding Barcelona is the only thing before us.

"She told me what happened" she says,
in a soft gentile, almost shy voice tone.

My first instinct is to close my eyes.
I don't care about the bonding ceremony anymore. I am not myself
now, she can't see me like this. I feel her hands on my face,
touching me softly and trying to make me open them.

"Please, don't" I say, in between
horror and sadness.

"It's ok Alex, I'm with
you."

Slowly, our green eyes intentionally
meet for the first time. I feel closer to her than ever. I don't
want this feeling to go away, but at the same time, there's
something inside me that wants to keep me from that thought. The
effects of the ambrosia are fading away, and what happened earlier
today is coming back in a harmful way.

My expression must have changed,
because I can see in Elizabeth's look that she knows something is
going on. She won't let go of me, I know it. I'm not
alone.

"Maybe you should get it out, Alex.
It's been far too long."

"You already know, there's no need for
me to tell you."

Every single word Constance said is
hitting me back, harder and harder as the words repeat in my head.
I can feel my body tremble, and the only thing I can do is wrap
myself with my arms and hope for it to stop.

Elizabeth looks at me and I know that
she has no idea of what happened that day, everything Constance
used to tear me apart is unknown to her. I can't understand
why.

"
She doesn't say much"
I hear her voice in my head
"Whatever it is, she wants to keep it to herself, in case she needs
to break you."

"Lovely woman, isn't she?" my voice
isn't at all understandable, but I think she got the message
because my eyes can make out a tiny smile on her face.

"Well, in my world she has to put up
with a lot, and it's not easy to do what she does. We are in
different societies. "

She just opened a door that I could
cross to keep my thoughts away for a while. If I listen to her
voice I know I won't have to remember all the darkness in me. I
will be safe.

"Tell me about it" I
whisper.

"What?"

"Just make the thinking stop" I am
almost begging.

"Oh" I notice she wasn't expecting
that, she grabs both my hands and tries to talk fluently. "Well,
Constance tells us that we don't have anything like a Government.
We live in peace without one, the Council makes it happen. As I
said, we are in very different societies, that's why she tries to
keep us away from mortals."

"Unless we are…"

She puts a finger on top of my lips.
She does not want me to say it.

"How does the Council
work?"

"Alex, you don't need to do
this."

"Please."

The council looks all around the
world, protecting all Gods from harm, and hiding the souls that
make them Immortals. They are the ones Gods turn to in need of
advice and guidance.

I can hardly believe such level of
organization and self-control exists, I am used to a world in which
crime and corruption are the most common things in society. Still,
I think it would be too hard to maintain order in such a situation,
because it is virtually impossible that every god is friends with
the rest. Their world must have conflict, something worth fighting
and killing for. If not, there wouldn't be any point on becoming a
God, they would just be Immortals, and I would not have to
die.

"I can't believe that" I
say

"Well, if something happens
underground, something that is not allowed or should not happen,
whoever is to blame is considered a tartar by the Council, and of
course is cast away."

"And you say that you live in
peace?”

"It's our system, and it works. We
have Orders within the Council that make sure that everyone living
down below deserves to be there. As much as Keepers are there to
make sure Gods follow a right path, we have people in charge of
order."

"So you have jobs."

"Not really, it's specialization.
Immortals need three souls to become a God, his or her own, the one
from the sibling, and the mortal one. If not, you either become a
Keeper, a Leader, an Order member… "

I don't understand why would they need
the soul of a sibling, but as she puts it, a God is supposed to be
a pure being, and a new born can't hold such a pure soul, so it is
divided in two, and later on, after the millennia, the soul is put
back together. However, she is not giving me a reason for the
mortal soul.

"I know what you are thinking, Alex.
Constance was right, you know? When she told you that Gods
themselves created their own stories, they wanted humans to think
they were being ruled, that they were expendable, just tiny insects
that they could crash without hesitation or much effort. What
happened was that Gods became jealous."

"Of humans?"

"Yes. Humans die, and for that reason,
every moment in their short lives is lived as it were to be the
last. A God could not experience that, unless they willingly chose
to destroy themselves, so, after a while, they decided that a
mortal soul would make Gods capable of feeling the importance of
little things."

That's it then, Gods are superior to
us in every single aspect one could think of, all but one, living.
And it is for such an unimportant thing, that they punish
us.

She has managed to keep my thoughts
away, but now my head is full of new wonders. I just don't
understand why they still do it, history has proven that humans are
not even ready to live in society. If we were, there wouldn't be
constant wars, killings, or rapes. Yet they still want to be like
us. What is even worse is that their only concern is to feel like
us, momentary, but none of such mighty creatures has done a single
thing to help us live longer, be healthier or find cures to
illnesses that keep killing the new born, teenagers, and adults.
They are not only selfish, they are willing voyeurs of
destruction.

"I understand your
feelings."

"What?"

"I can read you, remember? I know what
you feel, and you will know what I feel once you accept all
this."

"I don't want to accept all this,
Elizabeth."

"I know, you are a mortal
fringe."

And again I hear that word. But this
time I will not leave this building without knowing what it means.
Not again. Apparently, she is reading me again, because she is
already talking when I make up my mind an open my mouth to ask the
question.

"The mortal soul can't be taken by
force, it must be given willingly, that's why, if in the end you
are not willing to do it, I won't become a God. I'm on the verge of
being accepted in The Atlas, or being a cast out, a Tartar for the
rest of my life. That's what we call, the mortal
fringe."

Now everything comes down to what I
will do when the time comes. I obviously don't want to give my soul
away, or maybe I do, I thought I did some time ago, but after what
happened today my thoughts have utterly changed. Does it mean I am
condemning Elizabeth to a life of misery and loneliness? Or maybe
not only her, I remember that Constance told me that my family
would pay the consequences of my acts if I was the reason for
Elizabeth going the wrong way. I close my eyes again, because if I
do I forget they are as green as Elizabeth's, as dangerous as
Elizabeth's, as bewitching as Elizabeth's. I can hear her move
towards me, she is getting closer, her lips are on my chick and I
don't move, she gets closer and now her lips are on my ear, and
with a whisper, she frees me for an instant.

"We'll be together."

I look at her, I don't know what she
means but the warmth of her voice makes my heartbeat slow. I don't
feel the cold wind anymore.

"Before, during and after. We'll be
together, no matter what happens."

I don't know what to say. Am I ready
to give my life to someone else? To literally do it? I don't
know.

-Say something.

I want to, and perhaps I should say
lots of things right now because there are lots of things in my
head that need to get out, but none of them would be appropriate,
because she is not to blame. She has not created that terrible
world of hers that for some reason doesn't look to be hideous in
her eyes. But then again, of course, mine doesn't look as terrible
as it is either. No, I don't really think I should say anything.
She is expecting me to say something that would make this whole
thing easier, but I don't think I could do that.

After a long pause, she looks at me
and stands up.

"I want to show you
something."

"What?"

"I know you have been wondering what
"down below" means.”

She is right.

"Do you trust me?"

I'm silent, my mouth doesn't move, no
matter how hard I try. She closes her eyes in disapproval and comes
right at me and kisses me. My senses are all gone, I don't know
where I am and the only thing I feel is her warmth and passion. I
wouldn't mind dying right now. This is the first time I've been so
close to someone, and it seems ironic that the closest I get to
her, the closest I get to our eventual separation.

"Do you trust me?" she
repeats.

"I do" I say, in the end.

She takes my hand and walks me to the
edge of the building.

"Do you want to do it nosily or
calmly?"

"Calmly. Please"