He Who Cannot Die

by Dan Pearce

  “Why is this woman of yours different than any other you have had before her?”

  I had no answer. A word for love didn’t even exist, let alone a concept others could latch onto. “When she knows me, and I know her, there is more there than what others experience. She and I become one, and we desire to remain as one, and we desire to know only the other.” Tashibag said nothing, and only listened with great curiosity, so I continued. “My chest is tight, and my heart pounds as I think of this woman. I feel something within that requires me to protect her and give honor to her.”

  Tashibag slowly stood and reached her hand out. “Burdo, my stick.” The white-haired man handed her a tall pointed staff, which she used to begin carving swooping trails in the earth. “Cain, you are not like any man. Your heart is soft, and lasting darkness does not somehow flow within you.” As she spoke, she began to step and maneuver around her drawing, the tip of her stick pressed firmly into the ground. The crowd moved back, giving her room to work. She etched two serpents, which came together to form a large open circle, each serpent’s head wrapped around the tail of the serpent in front.

  “I swear to you, witch. Those who know me, know that I am a man with honor,” I said, reinforcing whatever goodness she seemed to be seeing inside me. “I took my brother’s life, and for this I am heavy and troubled, but it was only done to protect others from the pain he would certainly bring to them.”

  Again, she didn’t reply, and continued focusing intently on her work as I stood in silence. I was unsure of what, if anything, I should say next.

  Inside of the two serpents she illustrated a cloud-covered mountain range. Above it, she drew four suns scaling smaller in size until the last of them was partially obscured by the mountains. The first three suns were hollow, the last was filled. She drew the skull of a bison atop the body of a naked woman, then surrounded this with ten smaller mountains, all pointed inward in a circle. Below that was a man with an arrow in his head, human skulls on both sides of him. She drew other symbols, which I did not recognize. Finally, she etched a man holding a spear on the far-left side of the circle. On the complete opposite side, she drew a woman. The man and the woman each had two heads, one looking toward the other, and one looking away. We all were spellbound by her work, amazed at her speed and incredible detail.

  Had I known she was preparing a curse, I would have run. If it were possible at all, I would have sprinted all the way to Racheele, and I would have gathered my lover and my daughter and immediately disappeared to a place we were not known and would never be found. Instead, I stood watching and curious, mesmerized and nowhere nearly apprehensive enough for what was coming.

  When the witch finished, she stood back and inspected her work, making small adjustments here and there until she was finally satisfied with it. “Your brother was an evil man, this I know. But he had only one life, Cain. No mortal man may decide when another man’s breaths must end.” I did not respond.

  Tashibag centered herself a few feet in front of her drawing and asked me to stand facing her from the other side. I had no reason not to do as she requested.

  She quickly slipped out of the loose and shiny robe that draped around her, leaving her body fully exposed and bare with the exception of the serpent which still hung around her neck. She handed her staff to the man with white hair and picked up a handful of earth from an empty space near the edge of her drawing. She then whispered into her hand some sort of incantation.

  She sprinkled the gathered dirt across the entirety of her carving, then firmly grasped her disrobed fabric with both hands. With one giant whip, Tashibag fanned a gust of violent air across her curse in the dirt. The gust of air hit me hard enough to knock me back slightly. Dust and dirt painfully hit my exposed skin and entered my eyes. I grunted in discomfort and reached up to rub the dirt from my eyelids. As I did, the area of my body between my chest and shoulder began to burn as if was being held against a fire. I screamed out in agony, still unable to fully open my eyes.

  I could make out the shadowed figure of the naked witch as she walked across her creation and approached me. The burning in my flesh grew so intense that I fell to the ground, my shouts growing louder as I flopped in agony like a dying fish. She loomed over me, and quietly snapped her fingers just as she had done with Seth. My screams of pain continued, though no sound was able to escape from me. “You must hear this and understand this, or you will suffer far more than you must,” she said, then snapped again.

  The burning sensation suddenly stopped and was replaced with a dull painful relief.

  Tashibag lifted her arms high above her and began dancing around me while she sang the words to my curse.

  “He took a life that was not his,

  and behind his valued woman hid.

  To be alone shall be his curse,

  and never taste of death with her.

  If 10 winters the mountains see,

  with no woman he shall be.

  When he sleeps on the fourth sun,

  he shall wake and find them gone.

  If his curse he shares with her,

  death shall come and take the girl.

  If she knows the end is near,

  Death shall be her least of fears.

  Any child his loins shall bring,

  Will suffer pain from the same thing.

  If any shall try to kill the man,

  He shall die by nature’s hand.

  And if this man should wish to die,

  This witch only can end his life.”

  When Tashibag finished the curse, she sat her naked self squarely on my abdomen, and focused on my face until I forced myself to become calm and lock my gaze onto hers. The witch’s eyes were blue, just like mine. Just like Abel’s. I hadn’t noticed it the first time I met her.

  “This curse is both a great punishment and a great gift,” she said so softly I almost couldn’t hear her, even as her words powerfully seemed to penetrate the depths of me. “You will learn what that means with time. And time… Well, dear Cain. Time is something you shall unquestionably have.”

  The witch reached down and lifted my right arm from off of the earth, placing it across my chest as she stood. The man with white hair draped her robe back over her and helped her mount the elk. I didn’t know what just transpired. I just lay in the dirt, eyes toward the sky, until crowds gathered around me signaling that she had departed. “Look, Cain,” someone said pointing to my upper chest.

  I tilted my head to where the burning had been and forced my vision to focus. An image of a multi-colored serpent wrapping itself around a perfect ring now marked me, as if I had been freshly tattooed with rich and colorful ink. Gasps dispersed repeatedly from the crowd as they shuffled in and out to see the result of the magic that had just occurred for themselves.

  Seth stood several feet in front of me, noticeably in shock. “Cain…” Any further words escaped him, and after multiple attempts to say whatever it was that he suddenly wanted to say, he gave up and disappeared behind the crowd. I never saw my little brother again after that. No one in the village knew the direction he traveled. I only remember what his eyes said to me in that moment that his mouth couldn’t say, as he was once again too flustered to stitch together his thoughts… His eyes said, “I am to blame for whatever it was that just happened to you.”

  CHAPTER 7

  It baffles me how quickly people forget how much they recently did not have, myself included.

  I remember ten thousand or so years ago, a man and woman several villages over came up with a way to build their home using stones. People traveled long distances to see it for themselves and learn their crude techniques. One year later, every intelligent and wealthy person lived in a structure built with stone walls and a stone ceiling. Fifteen years after that, just about every existing hut had been replaced, and the world seemed to quickly forget how much safer and warmer life had become compared to the days when arctic blasts and wild predators had much more of an advantage during t
he night.

  This morning I saw snow on the mountains, and now found myself cursing my smart phone. I was upset that the internet hadn’t delivered what I had come to immediately expect from it. I somehow didn’t remember that only a few years ago, this technology didn’t even exist. A few years before that was the first time people could easily send messages anywhere in the world. There was a time not long before that when it took days to receive a correspondence. Before that method of delivery was possible, it could take weeks or months. The majority of my life was spent without electricity, and this morning I sat in my nice apartment, on my nice couch, surrounded by nice things, waving my battery-operated smart phone, frustrated at how worthless it suddenly seemed to be.

  After I finished my current grumble about it, I checked my phone again, just as I had repeatedly done for the past three hours and twenty-one minutes. Nothing changed since a minute before; the message I sent to Dishon and the others were still marked as unread. “What good is being connected if people don’t answer?” I gruffed at Samantha, who pursed her lips and glared at me from across the sofa. She had been sitting with a book, attempting not to care about whatever it was she knew I wasn’t sharing with her.

  “It’d be nice to actually know why you’re freaking out if you’re going to want sympathy for it,” she said, followed-up by a defensive smirk.

  “I already told you I can’t tell you that right now,” I said, as I glanced at my phone’s screen again. Still nothing. “There is something going on that I’ve gotta deal with, and I can’t deal with it until I hear from some people. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “Whatever,” she replied, not hiding her annoyance. Samantha pulled herself up from the couch and half-stomped toward the front door. “I’m going shopping. If you decide you want to let me in on whatever is going on, I’ll have my phone with me.”

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Come back. I’m sorry.” My girlfriend stood in the entryway, waiting for me to go to her, as she rightfully should have. I stuffed my phone into the pocket of my sweats and joined her. “Sam, I know I’m being crazy. Have I ever kept you in the dark about anything?”

  “No. So why start now?”

  “I just… I just have to. Can you give me a pass and trust me just this once?” I asked. “I’ll let you in the loop soon enough.” I was lying. I could not tell her what was going on. These were the rules, and I am bound to them.

  “I don’t even get why there’s suddenly a loop at all,” she complained. “Last night everything was perfect. When I saw you out there this morning, I knew something was really wrong. What big, secret thing could have sprung up in your life so quickly?”

  I looked through our oversized windows toward the mountain peaks in the distance and sighed. “I love you, Sam. I just want you to know that more than anything right now. I love you.”

  “You’re being weird. And, duh. You know I love you, too,” she said. I attempted to kiss her but only got a defensive peck in return. “I’ll be back soon.”

  I willed her not to leave but didn’t try and stop her. Don’t go. Don’t be gone long. Can’t you see that we have such a small amount of time left together? “You mind grabbing some hummus? The kind with red peppers.”

  “Yep,” she said as she turned and opened the entry door.

  “Hey, stop.” She stopped.

  I stepped toward her again and scooped her completely off the ground with both arms. I pulled her toward me until our faces almost touched. Four days. That was all we had. “I love you,” I whispered into her ear. And I tried to kiss her.

  She turned her face away and my lips landed on her hairline. “God, you’re freaking me out,” she said. “What the hell is wrong with you right now?”

  “I’m sorry. I just need to hear that you love me. That’s all.”

  “Okay. I love you.”

  “Well, I need that and a real good kiss before you go.”

  Samantha’s voice became more methodical. “Why does it keep sounding like you’re telling me goodbye or something?”

  “I’m not.” I was, and I knew I better reign it in.

  “Well, kiss me then and put me down.”

  I laughed and went in for the kiss. Her muscles were tense, but soon loosened-up as our kiss became more sincere. We made out for a wet minute before she pulled away and laughed. “Okay, weirdo. I love you too. You know I love you. I’ve gotta go.”

  “Get out of here, lady” I said, as I put her down again, and then smacked her on the bum as she made her exit.

  As soon as the door closed behind her, I stopped pretending I had found my composure and frantically yanked my phone back into view. Still nothing. Really? From any of them?

  I expected not to hear from Dishon. He was the only one who wasn’t continually connected, a fact which irked me greatly in that moment being that he was the one most likely to know anything new concerning Tashibag.

  What time was it in Prague? Tereza should still be awake. Why hadn’t she replied or opened my message yet? Ashwin was what… 8 hours ahead in Soweto? There’s no reason he shouldn’t see my message before heading to bed. It was the middle of the night in Guangzhou. I should probably let Zhang off the hook.

  I became increasingly agitated as I stared at the visible snippets of the messages I sent to each of them earlier. Unread. Unread. Unread. Unread. Somebody look at your damned computer.

  I glanced at my watch. The day was already half gone. I grumpily tossed my phone across the sofa and tried not to think about how desperate I was suddenly feeling. It didn’t work. Every tick and tock coming from our clock just made me more aware of how helpless things were. Every moment my phone didn’t sound left me feeling more alone and more abandoned.

  Those people on my phone weren’t just any four people. They each had been cursed by Tashibag in the past. Two of them I only found at all because Facebook and Google came to be. I didn’t have any of their current phone numbers since we relied on Skype and Facetime to talk.

  I took a deep breath, knowing that I needed to divert my focus to finding any other possible way around the coming end to my relationship with Samantha. Was there any other cursed person I could possibly contact? Would anyone have any idea where the witch was? I couldn’t think of anyone with whom I was on good enough terms to ask.

  Over time, I’ve happened upon dozens of others also once cursed by Tashibag. Many of them I’ve met in person, and purposefully lost contact with the majority of them. Some were miserable and awful souls, desperate to die. Others had become unfixably corrupt. Most were obsessed with money and power, two things that are actually quite easy to obtain when one’s life never ends. I only kept in contact with those fellow-cursed who shared comparable values, as well as a similar desire to someday break whatever magic it was that bound us to this life. In the end, there were four who fit that bill.

  Tashibag had proven impossible to pin down, though. She seemed to slip through the thinnest of cracks any time one of us got close to her. I spent the equivalent of two months trying to track her down during the past decade. When all the current leads dried up, I more or less gave up and resigned myself to the idea that I would not be able to keep Samantha in my life once our time ended. Now that the end loomed, it seemed that there had to be answers, if I could just look a little deeper. And if I could just get anyone to login to their fucking Facebook accounts.

  I closed my eyes and envisioned what I thought Samantha might be doing at that very moment. I pictured her standing at the dairy section of our favorite grocery store, debating whether or not Greek yogurt was actually worth the hype and bloated prices. I smiled as I pictured her quietly huffing in defiance, as she placed a few traditional yogurts into her cart, only to put them back on the shelf and grab the Greek variety instead. How, I wondered, had I ever let myself fall in love again? How did I put us both into such a difficult situation?

  The last time I really loved – and lost – a woman was 138 years ago. Her
name was Grace, but I knew her as Gracie. Just as it did after losing every love before her, the pain of losing Gracie made me swear anew that I would never love again. It wasn’t really up to me, though. Time has a way of eventually healing the broken heart so efficiently that it fills with loneliness and opens itself up to love again. And when two people who were meant to love do finally bump into each other, little can be done to keep it from happening. Love is a force more powerful than a freight train. It is also more delicate than a dried dandelion.

  It took 128 years for my heart to forget the pain just enough that it had no choice but to go through it all again when I met Samantha. By the time I realized we had fallen in love, it was far too late to stop it.

  In twelve thousand years I have loved, and even more deeply it seems with each one of them, 86 different women now. When I say it aloud, it sounds like a lot. I have to remind myself that, on average, I have only fallen victim to the forces of love every 141 years. Sometimes more time spanned between finding love, sometimes less. Most those relationships met their ends because of the curse. Occasionally they ended because of accidents or disease. Only twice did they end because one of us fell out of love or we grew to dislike each other. I suppose when one knows he will have only ten years to be with someone, he tends to not fuck it up.