Life and Death

by Stephenie Meyer

  I finished my circle, then closed the last few feet between us. I couldn’t stop staring, even to blink.

  “Edythe,” I breathed.

  “Are you scared now?” she whispered.

  “No.”

  She stared searchingly into my eyes, trying to hear what I was thinking.

  I reached toward her, deliberately unhurried, watching her face for permission. Her eyes opened even wider, and she froze. Carefully, slowly, I let my fingertips graze the glistening skin on the back of her arm. I was surprised to find it just as cold as ever. While my fingers were touching her, the reflections of the fire flickered against my skin, and suddenly my hand wasn’t mediocre anymore. She was so astonishing that she could make even me less ordinary.

  “What are you thinking?” she whispered.

  I struggled to find words. “I am … I didn’t know …” I took a deep breath, and the words finally came. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful—never imagined anything so beautiful could exist.”

  Her eyes were still wary. Like she thought I was saying what I thought she wanted to hear. But it was only the truth, maybe the truest, most uncensored thing I’d ever said in my life. I was too overwhelmed to filter or pretend.

  She started to lift her hand, then dropped it. The shimmer flared. “It’s very strange, though,” she murmured.

  “Amazing,” I breathed.

  “Aren’t you repulsed by my flagrant lack of humanity?”

  I shook my head. “Not repulsed.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “You should be.”

  “I’m feeling like humanity is pretty overrated.”

  She pulled her arm from under my fingertips and folded it behind her back. Rather than take her cue, I took a half-step closer to her. I could feel the reflected shine on my face.

  And she was suddenly ten feet away from me, her warning hand up again and her jaw clenched.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I need some time,” she told me.

  “I’ll be more careful.”

  She nodded, then walked to the middle of the meadow, making a little arc when she passed me, keeping those ten feet always between us. She sat down with her back to me, the sunlight incandescent across her shoulder blades, reminding me of wings again. I walked slowly closer, and then sat down facing her when I was about five feet away.

  “Is this all right?”

  She nodded, but she didn’t look sure. “Just let me … concentrate.”

  I sat, silent, and after a few seconds, she shut her eyes again. I was fine with that. Seeing her like this—it wasn’t something you could get tired of. I watched her, trying to understand the phenomenon, and she ignored me.

  It was about a half hour later that suddenly she lay back on the grass with one hand behind her head. The grass was long enough to partially obscure my view.

  “Can I … ?” I asked.

  She patted the ground beside her.

  I moved a few feet closer, then another foot when she didn’t object. Another few inches.

  Her eyes were still closed, lids glistening pale lavender over the dark fan of lashes. Her chest rose and fell evenly, almost like she was asleep, except there was somehow a sense of effort and control to the motion. She seemed very aware of the process of breathing in and out.

  I sat with my legs folded under me, my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands. It was very warm—the sun felt strange on my skin now that I was so used to the rain—and the meadow was still lovely, but it was just background now. It didn’t stand out. I had a new definition of beauty.

  Her lips moved, and the light glittered off them while they … almost trembled. I thought she might have spoken, but the words were too quiet, and too fast.

  “Did you … say something?” I whispered. Sitting next to her like this, watching her shine, made me feel the need for quiet. For reverence, even.

  “Just singing to myself,” she murmured. “It calms me.”

  We didn’t move for a long time—except for her lips, every now and then singing too low for me to hear. An hour might have passed, maybe more. Very gradually, the tension that I hadn’t totally processed at first drained quietly away, till everything was so peaceful that I was almost sleepy. Every time I shifted my weight, I would end up another half-inch nearer to her.

  I leaned closer, studying her hand, trying to find the facets in her smooth skin. Without even thinking about it, I reached out with one finger to stroke the back of her hand, awed again by the satin-smooth texture, cool like stone. I felt her eyes on me and I looked up, my finger frozen.

  Her eyes were peaceful, and she was smiling.

  “I still don’t scare you, do I?”

  “Nope. Sorry.”

  She smiled wider. Her teeth flashed in the sun.

  I inched closer again, stretched out my whole hand to trace the shape of her forearm with my fingertips. I saw that my fingers were trembling. Her eyes closed again.

  “Do you mind?” I asked.

  “No. You can’t imagine how that feels.”

  I lightly trailed my hand over the delicate structure of her arm, followed the faint pattern of bluish veins inside the crease at her elbow. I reached to turn her hand over, and when she realized what I wanted, she flipped her palm up in a movement so fast it didn’t exist. My fingers froze.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, and then smiled because that was my line. Her eyes slid closed again. “It’s too easy to be myself with you.”

  I lifted her hand, turning it this way and that I as watched the sun shimmer across her palm. I held it closer to my face, trying again to find the facets.

  “Tell me what you’re thinking,” she whispered. She was watching me again, her eyes as light as I’d ever seen them. Pale honey. “It’s still so strange for me, not knowing.”

  “The rest of us feel that way all the time, you know.”

  “It’s a hard life,” she said, and there was a forlorn note in her tone. “But you didn’t tell me.”

  “I was wishing I could know what you were thinking… .”

  “And?”

  “I was wishing that I could believe that you were real. I’m afraid… .”

  “I don’t want you to be afraid.” Her voice was just a low murmur. We both heard what she hadn’t said—that I didn’t need to be afraid, that there was nothing to fear.

  “That’s not the kind of fear I meant.”

  So quickly that I missed the movement completely, she was half-sitting, propped up on her right arm, her left palm still in my hands. Her angel’s face was only a few inches from mine. I should have leaned away. I was supposed to be careful.

  Her honey eyes burned.

  “Then what are you afraid of?” she whispered.

  I couldn’t answer. I smelled her sweet, cool breath in my face, like I had just the one time before. Unthinkingly, I leaned closer, inhaling.

  And she was gone, her hand ripped from mine so fast that they stung. In the time it took my eyes to focus, she was twenty feet away, standing at the edge of the small meadow, deep in the shade of a huge fir tree. She stared at me, eyes dark in the shadows, her expression unreadable.

  I could feel the shock on my face, and my hands burned.

  “Edythe. I’m … sorry.” My voice was just a whisper, but I knew she could hear me.

  “Give me a moment,” she called, just loud enough for my less sensitive ears.

  I sat very still.

  After ten very long seconds, she walked back, slowly for her. She stopped when she was still several feet away and sank gracefully to the ground, crossing her legs underneath her. Her eyes never left mine. She took two deep breaths, then smiled apologetically.

  “I am so very sorry.” She hesitated. “Would you understand what I meant if I said I was only human?”

  I nodded, not quite able to smile at her joke. Adrenaline pushed through my system as I realized what had almost happened. She could smell that from where she sat. Her smile turned mocking.
<
br />   “I’m the world’s best predator, aren’t I? Everything about me invites you in—my voice, my face, even my smell. As if I needed any of that!”

  Suddenly she was just a blur. I blinked and she’d vanished; then she was standing beneath the same tree as before, having circled the entire meadow in a fraction of a second.

  “As if you could outrun me,” she said bitterly.

  She leaped a dozen feet straight up, grabbing a two-foot-thick branch and wrenching it away from the trunk without any sign of effort. She was back on the ground in the same instant, balancing the huge, gnarled lance in one hand for just a second. Then with blinding speed she swung it—one-handed—like a bat at the tree she’d ripped it from.

  With an explosive boom, both the branch and the tree shattered in half.

  Before I even had time to shy away from the detonation, before the tree could even fall to the ground, she was right in front of me again, just two feet away, still as a sculpture.

  “As if you could fight me off,” she said gently. Behind her, the sound of the tree crashing to the earth echoed through the forest.

  I’d never seen her so completely freed of her careful human façade. She’d never been less human … or more beautiful. I couldn’t move, like a bird trapped by the eyes of a snake.

  Her eyes seemed to glow with excitement. Then, as the seconds passed, they dimmed. Her expression slowly folded into a mask of sadness. She looked like she was about to cry, and I struggled up to my knees, one hand reaching toward her.

  She held out her hand, cautioning me. “Wait.”

  I froze again.

  She took one step toward me. “Don’t be afraid,” she murmured, and her velvet voice was unintentionally seductive. “I promise …” She hesitated. “I swear I will not hurt you.” She seemed like she was trying to convince herself just as much as she was trying to convince me.

  “You don’t have to be afraid,” she whispered again as she stepped closer with exaggerated slowness. She stopped just a foot away and gently touched her hand to the one I still had stretched toward her. I wrapped mine around hers tightly.

  “Please forgive me,” she said in a formal tone. “I can control myself. You caught me off guard. I’m on my best behavior now.”

  She waited for me to respond, but I just knelt there in front of her, staring, my brain totally scrambled.

  “I’m not thirsty today, honestly.” She winked.

  That made me laugh, though my laugh sounded a little winded.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, reaching out—slowly, carefully—to put her other hand on top of mine.

  I looked at her smooth, marble hand, and then at her eyes. They were soft, repentant, but I could see some of the sadness still in them.

  I smiled up at her so widely that my cheeks hurt. Her answering smile was dazzling.

  With a deliberately unhurried, sinuous movement, she sank down, curling her legs beneath her. Awkwardly I copied her, till we were sitting facing each other, knees touching, our hands still wrapped together between us.

  “So where were we, before I behaved so rudely?”

  “I honestly have no idea.”

  She smiled, but her face was ashamed. “I think we were talking about why you were afraid, besides the obvious reason.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “Well?”

  I looked down at our hands, turning mine so that the light would glisten across hers.

  “How easily frustrated I am,” she sighed.

  I looked into her eyes, suddenly realizing that this was every bit as new to her as it was to me. However many years of experience she’d had before we’d met, this was hard for her, too. That made me braver.

  “I was afraid … because for, well, obvious reasons, I probably can’t stay with you, can I? And that’s what I want, much more than I should.”

  “Yes,” she agreed slowly. “Being with me has never been in your best interest.”

  I frowned.

  “I should have left that first day and not come back. I should leave now.” She shook her head. “I might have been able to do it then. I don’t know how to do it now.”

  “Don’t. Please.”

  Her face turned brittle. “Don’t worry. I’m essentially a selfish creature. I crave your company too much to do what I should.”

  “Good!”

  She glared, carefully extricating her hands from mine and then folding them across her chest. Her voice was harsher when she spoke again.

  “You should never forget that it’s not only your company I crave. Never forget that I am more dangerous to you than I am to anyone else.” She stared unseeingly into the forest.

  I thought for a moment.

  “I don’t think I understand exactly what you mean by that last part.”

  She looked back and smiled at me, her unpredictable mood shifting again.

  “How do I explain? And without horrifying you?”

  Without seeming to think about it, she placed her hand back in mine. I held it tightly. She looked at our hands.

  “That’s amazingly pleasant, the warmth.”

  A moment passed while she seemed to be arranging her thoughts.

  “You know how everyone enjoys different flavors?” she began. “Some people love chocolate ice cream, others prefer strawberry?”

  I nodded.

  “I apologize for the food analogy—I couldn’t think of another way to explain.”

  I grinned and she grinned back, but her smile was rueful.

  “You see, every person has their own scent, their own essence… . If you locked an alcoholic in a room full of stale beer, she’d drink it. But she could resist, if she wished to, if she were a recovering alcoholic. Now let’s say you placed in that room a glass of hundred-year-old brandy, the rarest, finest cognac—and filled the room with its warm aroma—how do you think our alcoholic would fare then?”

  We sat in silence for a minute, staring into each other’s eyes, trying to read each other’s thoughts.

  She broke the silence first.

  “Maybe that’s not the right comparison. Maybe it would be too easy to turn down the brandy. Perhaps I should have made our alcoholic a heroin addict instead.”

  “So what you’re saying is, I’m your brand of heroin?” I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

  She smiled swiftly, seeming to appreciate my effort. “Yes, you are exactly my brand of heroin.”

  “Does that happen often?” I asked.

  She looked across the treetops, thinking through her response.

  “I spoke to my sisters about it.” She still stared into the distance. “To Jessamine, every one of you is much the same. She’s the most recent to join our family. It’s a struggle for her to abstain at all. She hasn’t had time to grow sensitive to the differences in smell, in flavor.” She glanced swiftly at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine. Look, don’t worry about offending me, or horrifying me, or whatever. That’s the way you think. I can understand, or I can try to at least. Just explain however it makes sense to you.”

  She took a deep breath and stared past me.

  “So Jessamine wasn’t sure if she’d ever come across someone who was as”—she hesitated, looking for the right word—“appealing as you are to me. Which makes me think not.” Her eyes flickered to me. “She would remember this.”

  She looked away again. “El has been on the wagon longer, so to speak, and she understood what I meant. She says twice, for her, once stronger than the other.”

  “And for you?”

  “Never before this.”

  We stared at each other again. This time I broke the silence.

  “What did Eleanor do?”

  It was the wrong question to ask. She cringed, and her face was suddenly tortured. I waited, but she didn’t add anything.

  “Okay, so I guess that was a dumb question.”

  She stared at me with eyes that pleaded for understanding. “Even the strongest of us fall of
f the wagon, don’t we?”

  “Are you … asking for my permission?” I whispered. A shiver rolled down my spine that had nothing to do with my freezing hands.

  Her eyes flew wide in shock. “No!”

  “But you’re saying there’s no hope, right?”

  I knew it wasn’t normal, facing death like this without any real sense of fear. It wasn’t that I was super brave, I knew that. It was just that I wouldn’t have chosen differently, even knowing it would end this way.

  She looked angry again, but I didn’t think she was angry with me. “Of course there’s hope. Of course I won’t …” She left the sentence hanging. Her eyes felt like they were physically burning mine. “It’s different for us. El … these were strangers she happened across. It was a long time ago. She wasn’t as practiced, as careful as she is now. And she’s never been as good at this as I am.”

  She fell silent, watching me intently as I thought it through.

  “So if we’d met … oh, in a dark alley or something …”

  “It took everything I had—every single year of practice and sacrifice and effort—not to jump up in the middle of that class full of children and—” She broke off, her eyes darting away from me. “When you walked past me, I could have ruined everything Carine has built for us, right then and there. If I hadn’t been denying my thirst for the last … too many years, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.”

  She stared at me grimly, both of us remembering.

  “You must have thought I was possessed.”

  “I couldn’t understand why. How you could hate me, just like that …”

  “To me, it was like you were some kind of demon, summoned straight from my own personal hell to ruin me. The fragrance coming off your skin … I thought it would make me deranged that first day. In that one hour, I thought of a hundred different ways to lure you from the room with me, to get you alone. And I fought them each back, thinking of my family, what I could do to them. I had to run out, to get away before I could speak the words that would make you follow… .”

  She looked up then, her golden eyes scorching from under her lashes, hypnotic and deadly.