A Tiny Bit Mortal

by Lindsay Bassett

  Vidar laughed.

  “Life is strange.” I said, talking up towards the stars. “Where we are right now, hiding away in the country. I thought that I’d be someplace like this with Tim. I never expected to end up in a cell and then running away with my prison friend.”

  “I didn’t see this coming either.” he said. “During the first years in my cell I thought for sure my brothers would come for me. I didn’t think it would be hundreds of years and a little woman that would come for me.”

  “I don’t know where to go from here.” I said.

  “Here.” he said. “Just be here.”

  “I can’t help but think of my mom, Tim, my dad, my cat, and the man who’s heart I broke.” I said. “None of them are here.”

  “Exactly.” he said. “None of the people that would chase you down, try to sway you, or pull you in a million directions are here. We both chose east at the summit.”

  “Is that why you chose east?” I asked. “Your brother?”

  “My brother,” he said, “and you. I’d follow you to the ends of the earth just to make sure no one stomps on that light you have inside you.”

  I thought about his words when we were in prison, and how every one of my kind fell to darkness in the end. “My kind.” I said, “You said that all of them in history fell to darkness in the end.”

  “It is true.” he said.

  “Did any of them have someone as great as you following them to the ends of the earth?”

  “No.” he said. “I don’t think they did.”

  The next morning I awoke to the sound of a whistling kettle. I had fallen asleep out in the yard with Vidar, yet I was in the cabin. He must have carried me in my sleep.

  Rubbing my eyes I sat up in the cot. Vidar handed me a cup of steaming coffee. It smelled heavenly.

  “Thank you.” I said, blowing into the cup in an attempt to cool it down.

  “You’re welcome.” he said, putting down his coffee and stepping into his boots. “I’m going to get to work. I’ll meet you out behind the house.” The front door squeaked and slammed.

  After finishing the cup of coffee, I headed out the front door and wound my way around the house. I passed by the goats along the way and stopped in to check on them. “Behhhh.” they said, as I went in to their pen.

  “Well hello little stubborn guy.” I said to the stubborn male goat, crouching down and folding my dress under me. He came up to me and I instinctively scratched him behind the ears, like I used to do with my cat George. He didn’t purr like George, but he leaned his little body into mine. I took it for affection returned.

  When I left the pen I made sure the door was secure behind me. As I stepped around the house and the rear of the it came in to view, I saw Vidar bent over the yard slamming a hoe into the ground.

  Vidar saw me and stopped to wipe his brow. He smiled and walked across the yard to the house, grabbing a second hoe. He approached and handed to me.

  “Why don’t you start down there.” he said, pointing to the other side of the yard. “If you look you can see where I have a rectangle marked off in the yard. We need to till the whole thing.”

  I looked around for the markers and the area was huge. I’d never tilled before, so I didn’t know what I was getting into. Grabbing the hoe from Vidar, I got to work.

  I watched the way he swung the till into the earth and emulated him. After about ten minutes I was in a full blown sweat and my arms were aching. “Vidar.” I said. “Can’t we just ask the soil to till itself?”

  “No.” he said, swinging his hoe into the ground. “We are farmers.”

  “The Amish guy wouldn’t notice.” I said.

  “The soil would notice.” he said, still swinging his till.

  I said no more and kept swinging the till. The morning turned into afternoon and my arms felt like they were going to fall off.

  I stopped when my arms felt like jello and I could no longer swing straight. Leaning on the hoe with my hands wrapped around the top I rested my chin there. The burning and aching in my body were overwhelming. Whispering, I asked to my body to release me from the aching.

  I didn’t hear Vidar approach. “No.” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  I opened my eyes to look at him.

  “You need to feel the pain.” he said.

  “I disagree.” I said, with my chin still resting on the end of the hoe.

  “If you put your body to work blocking the pain, your body will do a poor job repairing your muscles.” he said. “You will stay weak.”

  “I am not weak.” I said, feeling insulted.

  “Your abilities are strong.” he said. “But your body is weak.” He pinched at my tiny waist, where there was neither fat nor muscle.

  “Hey!” I said, stepping backwards and putting the hoe between us.

  “You sleep too much.” he said. “Like a little baby.” He grinned and rocked an invisible baby in his arms. Looking down at the ground, I knew he was right. I was suddenly feeling very sleepy.

  After dropping the hoe I stomped off. I could hear Vidar chuckling as I wound my way around the cabin. I stepped into the front door and listened to it creak open, creak close and slam shut.

  Flopping forward into the cot on my stomach, I put my face into the blankets. With boots still on my feet, and my blue floral dress riding up to the backs of my knees, I fell asleep like a baby.

  It wasn’t until the fall, when we were canning vegetables from our second harvest, that I realized what Vidar had been doing. I had spent most of the time focused on my back breaking tasks, working in the garden or preparing for the winter. I didn’t even have time to think.

  We had sawed and chopped wood, storing it alongside the wraparound porch of the cabin. When I wasn’t chopping I was out in the field with a bladed hook gathering long grass and weeds to store for the goats to eat in winter.

  I was standing next to the stove boiling water for the canning process. Just back from a chilly bath in the icy creek, any job by the stove seemed like a good one.

  I ran my fingers through my wet hair. It had grown longer and went almost to my waist. I had started wearing it in a single braid down my back, or to one side, because it always seemed in the way.

  While I stared into the nearly boiling water I wove my hair into a braid. After I tied a little ribbon tightly at the end of the braid, I put my hand on my waist to rest. Noticing that my waist seemed larger, I pinched it with my hands. It was tight with muscles.

  Running my hand across my stomach I felt a six pack rippling beneath my fingers. I felt strong. I had worked all day, and I wasn’t even tired.

  “Vidar?” I asked.

  “Emily.” he said, looking up from where he sat at the table.

  “You are an immortal, with a large amount of gold still buried nearby.” I said. “Why are we living the lives of poor farmers?”

  “We are farmers.” he said, repeating his same old line.

  “You could take us across the sea,” I said, “buy a nice house someplace, and we could sit all day drinking wine and eating grapes. You can’t tell me this is the only land on earth that would shelter us.”

  Vidar smiled and said nothing. He looked down to the table at the vegetables he was preparing and went back to work. I took it that he wasn’t going to say any more than “We are farmers.”

  Looking down to see that the water in the pot was bubbling, I stared into it in contemplation. I thought back to my time with Vidar in Muriel’s prison, and the time we’d spent through the summer.

  “Vidar and his riddles.” I thought.

  Standing up tall, I stretched my arms. As I stretched, I realized that being farmers with Vidar had made me stronger, not just physically. The time on the farm had healed the wounds of the sudden losses and changes I had faced over the year through the constant of repetitive hard work.

  Joining Vidar at the table I began pulling the silk off of some corn. Humming the same “This Little Light of Mine” song that
I had sang in the dark of Muriel’s prison, I focused on my work and nothing else.

  XVIII

  Winter

  A storm raged with whistling and roars that made it difficult to sleep that night. Curled up in the cot with Vidar, I appreciated his warmth more than ever. I had been sleeping in the cot, night after night, with his arm around me. He never once tried anything “funny.”

  The storm died down early in the morning and I knew I wasn’t going to get back to sleep. Leaving Vidar in the cot I stepped out onto the front porch, standing in my socks.

  Looking out at the tree-line I saw the trees with leaves had shed their few remaining leaves. They looked naked.

  I heard the door open and Vidar appeared behind me, placing his hand on my shoulder. “Winter.” he said.

  Standing quietly for several minutes, I wrapped my arms around myself and feeling the chill penetrate my dress. Vidar stayed, with his hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s almost been a year.” I said, speaking out towards the tree-line. “Since I walked into the jewelry shop and met Peter.”

  “You will have some time.” he said. “The winter will be cold and we will hide away in the cabin, burning the logs that we’ve gathered.”

  “Some time to think?” I asked.

  “And some time to decide.” he said.

  Turning to the west, I thought back to the decision on the mountain summit with Vidar. I studied the tree line to the west and realized that it was unfamiliar. I’d avoided looking that direction for all the months at the cabin.

  Before we ever saw snow, we had several weeks of clear sky accompanied by freezing temperatures. Each time I needed to go to the outhouse I ran back and forth and then jumped up and down by the fire on my return. Aside from that, I saw no other reason to go outside.

  The cabin had never seemed smaller, with my only landscape being four walls and the massive Vidar with his long, wavy hair and beard. I took to meditating like I did when I was stuck in the prison cell.

  Sitting near the fire, I crouched down and crossed my legs on a folded up blanket. Pulling out the necklace that I had tucked behind my dress, I felt the diamond under my fingertips. I thought about the day that Tim put the necklace around my neck and remembered the intensity of my feelings for him.

  With my hand still on my chest, my mind drifted to the silver necklace that Peter had placed around my neck almost exactly a year to the day. I had been in love with Peter.

  I got up and began pacing back and forth across the cabin. “What is wrong with me?” I said.

  Vidar looked up from the book he was reading and watched as I tensely walked back and forth across the room.

  “Everything alright?” he asked.

  I stopped and looked down at the floor. “Just thinking.” I said.

  “It looks painful.” he said.

  Sitting back down on my folded up blanket by the fire I put my knees to my chest, hugging them with my arms. My mind wanted to put Peter and Tim into neat little boxes.

  Peter would go into the box of good and pure. Tim would be the bad-boy that went into the box of The Corrupt. It would be simple to explain my betrayal of Peter as part of me being weak and falling to The Corrupt. I could see Peter forgiving me and still loving me like he said he did.

  I knew it was a lie. Life refused to be that simple. I risked everything to run away with Tim, and there was nothing corrupt in the feelings that drove me to that point.

  I thought back on the time that Peter had hidden me from my his mentor, my dad. He hid me and then left me to research, in fear that he would be caught, or that I would be taken away. Neither of those things involved fighting for me.

  I remembered exactly how that felt, how I’d tried and tried to explain it away with Peter’s good intentions. I couldn’t cover up the feeling and I wondered how long he would have stayed away if The Corrupt hadn’t hunted me.

  Tim had several hundred years ahead of me walking the earth, at least. He was in deep, far deeper than I had ever been. Yet he was willing to risk everything and run away with me.

  Goosebumps rose up on my arms as I remembered the look in Tim’s eyes when he had been struggling with his feelings for me. There had been nothing easy, or simple in our love. It challenged everything.

  Rubbing my arm where the goosebumps had risen, Tim’s words echoed through my mind. “You just turned away the love of your own father. How does that make you feel inside?”

  After taking in a deep breath, I exhaled slowly. I prodded at that empty part of myself and felt heavy inside my own skin. The feeling gripped me and I couldn’t shake it off. The emptiness felt vast and infinite.

  Rising from the floor, I looked down at my socked feet as I stepped towards the door. Opening the door, I felt numb inside and out as the chill burned against my skin.

  I heard Vidar’s voice, saying “Emily?” but it felt far away. The door creaked and slammed behind me, just a whisper in my ears. I watched my feet step from the wood of the porch down to the dirt pathway that was sprinkled with patches of newly fallen snow.

  As the cold bit through my socks my feet felt numb. I looked around at the air around me watching the snow fall slowly and weightlessly from the sky. Looking down at the long braid of hair that flowed down the right side of my chest, I saw little white flakes sticking to it.

  Closing my eyes I tilted my head up towards the sky. A cold wind slammed up against me, along with a wave of snow that stung everywhere it touched my skin.

  Breathing in through my mouth the burning erupted inside me. Looking straight into the void inside me, I felt heavier with each rise and fall of my chest. I sunk deeper and deeper within myself.

  With my eyes still closed, facing the snow falling from the sky, I felt fear wash over me. I didn’t want to fall to darkness, but the vast emptiness was calling to me and pulling me in. I felt myself fighting it, but I was numb inside and out and unable to move.

  I became conscious of being carried and then felt warmth burning against my skin. I felt wet, and numb, and then felt my clothes being pulled away. I opened my eyes to see Vidar holding a towel, frantically drying my skin.

  He wrapped a blanket around me and then wrapped his own body around me. He didn’t say a word as I began shivering violently in his arms. He just held me until I became still.

  “Winter,” he said quietly, and holding me tightly, “is the darkest time upon this earth.” His words seemed strange as I felt hotter and hotter. I felt feverish.

  “But the light will be reborn.” he whispered, holding me even tighter with his arms.

  When I opened my eyes I saw his icy blue eyes looking at me intently. I felt like I was melting inside, the burning from the cold giving way to a blanket of warmth. I closed my eyes, leaned my head on Vidar’s arm, and fell asleep.

  When I woke up I felt warm and recognized the sound of the fire crackling in the pot belly stove. I was wrapped tightly in my blanket, like a burrito. After struggling for a bit I finally broke free, sitting up in the cot.

  Vidar was sitting in a chair across the room, with his hands in his lap and his eyes closed. Swinging my legs over the side of the cot I walked over to the stove. Lifting the lid to the kettle, I waved my hand over the top to feel for heat. It was still hot, so I poured the hot water over a tea bag in a cup and began steeping it.

  “Tonight.” said Vidar.

  Whipping around, still steeping the tea bag in the cup, I gave him a questioning look.

  “We head back west.” he said.

  “Is that what you want?” I asked.

  “It is not about wanting.” he said. “It is about doing what is right.”

  “You think us staying here is wrong?” I asked, taking a sip of my tea.

  “This Hall of Elders is wrong.” he said, shifting in his chair. He stared past me at the wall. “My brother…”

  “You said when you came out west you had brothers and sons with you.” I said.

  “I did.” he said. “I also had a wi
fe.”

  “Vidar…” I said, wondering why he hadn’t said anything before. “Why aren’t we looking for them? Why are we sitting here?”

  “We both needed time to heal.” he said. “We were both too broken to face our pasts.”

  Standing with my back to the stove, I held my cup in front of me with both hands. I looked down to the floor. He was right.

  “So we leave tonight?” I asked, looking around at our ample supplies to spend the winter in the cabin. We had worked so hard. “We leave all of this behind?”

  Vidar got up out of his chair and walked towards me across the room. He stopped in front of me and put his hands on my shoulders. I looked into his eyes.

  “This isn’t just about my wife, my sons, or my brothers.” he said. “This isn’t just about your dad, or Tim.”

  I took in a deep breath. I knew it too.

  “The weeping in the prison.” I said, remembering the echoing sound of their cries.

  Vidar nodded and said. “That isn’t the only prison. So why does my brother sit on a throne and do nothing?”

  “It isn’t exactly a throne.” I said. “The chairs they sit in are plain and old.”

  “A throne doesn’t have to be decorated in gold and rubies to be a throne.” he said. “They are sitting in thrones. They set themselves above others and rule.”

  “My dad, and even Peter.” I said. “They all seem like they mean well. They mean to be good.”

  “Some have more goodness than others,” he said, “but to act like they know what is best for everyone is to set themselves on a high seat. There was a time when our people recognized that we are all fallible. We had the hearts of warriors and never stopped fighting because we recognized that corruption and suffering will eternally try to rise up to consume the world.”

  I thought about my dad and the frustration I had felt with him when my mom was kidnapped. I thought about how he had hung around Hollywood, trying “everything he could do” to get me back. No one rescued me from my prison cell, and none of them attempted to save mom.