"Then prove it to me," he said. The woman looked at him, wearily. He smiled and felt the rush of power he always felt on these occasions. "Give me your hand."
She hesitated but only for a moment. Tristan took her hand under the coat and down his pants. He leaned back and let her do her job. It was just too stupid and wanted more. He removed her hand roughly and stood up, forcing her to stand with him.
“Time for the hotel,” he said.
As soon as they walked into the room, he pushed her face down on the bed. He ripped her underwear off. She was wearing a skirt since he would have never tolerated anything else. The hotel room door was still open. The perversion of it made it an even bigger thrill. He made sure he took his time to do what he needed to do. He had no intention she should finish. If she did, then the desperation would disappear. When he finished, he zipped up his pants and walked out of the room.
He took the elevator down to the street and headed back to the park. Two women looked cute at the park, and so he walked over to them, acting like the dumb tourist. They laughed at his attempts at French. A short while later, he was out on the town with two different women. The new adventure had him dancing away the night. Late in the evening, he returned with one of the ladies. The one with the husband at home waiting for her. The other one held no interest to him.
He had his room. The new woman went into the room and immediately began to remove her clothes. There was a knock on the door. Tristan opened it, and the jazz woman was standing there. He couldn't remember her name, and truthfully he didn't care.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?” She demanded.
“I think you should come and join us,” he said.
"Fuck you, Tristan," she answered, turning around to leave.
Tristan smiled at the naked woman in his room.
“I apologize for this,” he said. “I’ll be back shortly.”
He took the woman outside and pushed her against the wall. He kissed her hard enough to taste blood. She didn’t fight it.
"Look, I brought you to Paris. This is who I am. Do you want me? You have to have all of me. That means the woman in that room, understand?" He whispered into her ear as his hand gently came around her throat. The woman nodded.
Tristan came back into the room, caressing the jazz woman. He called the other woman over to him.
“Take her clothes off,” he said.
Later that night, he looked at the two sleeping women in his bed and decided he'd had enough of Paris. He packed his bags quietly and walked out of the room.
EB26392
Journal 1
Geoffrey extended his arm and grabbed a bloody towel from a broken-down desk. He cleaned up his face and hands and forced himself to stand and disappeared. When he returned, they looked as perfect as they had that morning. Geoffrey extended his hand to her, took it, and stood up. They walked in silence back to the main house. He opened the door for her and went straight to the kitchen. Emily stood watching him. He came back with two cups of chamomile tea, and she took the cup and had a sip. It just added to the bizarre world in which she landed. He took his cup and sat down on the couch.
“What are you?” She asked.
“Human,” he laughed a bitter laugh. “This isn’t some gothic romance.”
"Then, how?"
“Maybe mostly human,” he said. “I was born both human and a little bit more.”
Emily waited for more instead of asking the obvious cliched questions running through her mind.
“I can’t get hurt. I can’t die.” He answered.
“It still doesn’t answer how.”
“That’s much too complicated to explain right now. I am not sure I can even fully understand it myself. I just know that this is what it is.” He answered. “It has been a long time since I have been in the world, and even longer since I’ve been alive.”
Emily laughed. She couldn’t help herself.
“You noticed?”
“The moons are pretty obvious,” she said.
He nodded.
"If you have been around as long as I have, you see how profoundly small and insignificant the planet earth is. We are part of a much larger and more complex universe. I have done my best with the time given to me to learn what I could from those worlds."
“How old?” She asked.
“Three thousand years?” he answered.
She laughed again.
“You don’t believe me.”
“Sorry,” she said.
He shrugged. "It is irrelevant. Eventually, you, more than anyone else, will understand how profoundly true this is."
His eyes met hers. Was he feeling sorry for Emily? Was it pity? She couldn't interpret the expression. It was not "a moment," and there was no romance in it. She looked down.
“What do you want from me?” She asked.
“It is not the time or place for it.”
“I need to know,” she said.
“No,” he said. “You should get to bed. It is late.”
He stood up and put on an old t-shirt. He waited for Emily to get up. He was dismissing her. Rage filled her, but she held it back. Suddenly, she wanted nothing more than to be in her little hole full of her stuff in the warehouse in Los Angeles. She didn't want to be in this dream. She wanted to have the life she had. An image of Tom came into her mind. She would have loved to have the life she had before Tom died. That was beyond her.
“I want to go home,” she said.
“To what? To the dingy warehouse? To begging?” He asked.
“Have you been spying on me?” She demanded.
“It is not that simple,” he said.
“Stop being so condescending. I don’t know who the hell you are, but I want to go home.”
She stormed out of the room.
Chapter 6
EB26392
Journal 1
Breakfast the next morning was awkward. Silence filled the kitchen as Geoffrey prepared food. Emily wondered if she was making the right choice, but she hadn’t changed her mind. She was not here to be another woman like the ones that had owned the clothing in the closet. Emily was not going to be the companion to some ancient man. She was aware there wasn’t much for her in Los Angeles, but she missed her home, the streets, the metro, the ocean. It didn’t make sense where she was or what this was about, but she felt claustrophobic in this house.
“I haven’t changed my mind,” Emily said, breaking the silence.
Geoffrey nodded.
He placed the plates on the table, and they continued to eat in silence. As soon as he finished, he stood up and walked out of the house. Emily sat finishing the food, wondering how she would get away if he didn’t take her. He walked back into the house shortly after carrying camping supplies.
“I could use some help preparing for departure,” he said.
“What can I do?” Emily asked.
“I’ll bring stuff in, and you can pack it. We have a lot of walking to do,” he said quietly.
“We will walk from one planet to the other?”
He smiled, and her heart melted a bit.
“If you know where to walk,” he answered.
By midmorning, two backpacks sat next to the back door. Food and water were packed in larger quantities than everything else. Emily looked down at her clothes.
“I’d love my old clothes. I can’t walk too far dressed in a 1930’s frock. Besides, the underwear suck.”
Geoffrey laughed as he went into a room in the back of the house and came back with clean clothes. Even the jacket had was washed. They were stiff. They had been hand washed and dried. Somehow the concept of this man washing her underwear made her embarrassed. She took her clothes with less ceremony than they were presented and went to change.
As she stepped out of the house, she wondered if she was doing the right thing. She was locked in the house with a man with severe anger issues and a peculiar past. Emily would take her chances in Los Angeles. At first, the walk wa
s pretty easy. It was all small hills and gentle paths. As time progressed, they went up mountains. By the afternoon, she was exhausted. She felt like she had walked twenty miles.
“It will get easier once we are back in the desert,” Geoffrey said. “The atmosphere is a bit different here. Not dangerously so, but just enough to feel the change in oxygen levels. As we get closer to the bridge, the tension will be more acute.”
“A bridge?”
“Of sorts. A gate,” he continued. “Gates between worlds exist if you know how to find them. Not everyone can find them, and even fewer people can open them.”
“Did I find it?” Emily asked.
“Yes,” he said.
By early evening, Emily was sure she could not take another step. She felt her body breaking in half and was using any support she could to take each action. She was stopping to rest every ten steps. Geoffrey, unfazed by the walk, patiently waited for her.
“It gets easier with time.”
“I need to stop,” she replied.
“You will feel much better after the gate. It will be better if you go through it, exhausted. It can be intense.” He said, and continued to walk.
The double shadows of the two moons now illuminated everything around her. It gave a weird color tinge to the trees and grasses. In the distance, she saw the abandoned building where she had lost consciousness. She knew the gate must be close. How would a gateway between worlds look? She thought about the movies she had seen and figured they had probably gotten it wrong. They walked past the ruins and kept going.
Emily was feeling sick. They had stopped to eat, and now that food felt like it would come up at any moment. It was hard to focus on anything. Geoffrey observed her. He was waiting for something. As she stepped into a small grove, the world shook. She fell to her knees. He grabbed the backpack off her back and carried it. Then he forced her back on her feet.
“Sorry, love, but this is something you have to walk through,” he said.
She pulled away and threw up, and she held on to the tree for support. Geoffrey took her arm and forced her to keep walking. Weird images flew through her mind: Geoffrey screaming, destroying everything around him. Emily tried to pull away, but she couldn’t fight his strength. Then Emily looked again, and he was perfectly calm. She felt she was walking blindly, and the world felt as if it was melting away. She saw people. Faces she had never met. She felt utterly alone. It was Geoffrey’s hand grabbing on to her arm and grounding her. Without his hand, she would float away. She could barely walk. It was so frightening, and she wanted to scream. The pain filled her. She screamed.
Geoffrey was forcing her forward. The pain appeared to be his. She couldn’t tell the difference where he ended, and she began. She was fighting to let go of him, and fighting to hold on to him. Emily was crying from the pain. More and more images flew through her eyes. She forced her eyes to open, and she saw the world as if underwater. She shouldn’t be able to breathe. It felt thick and burned her throat. He kept pulling her along.
As she was about to pass out, she stumbled one more step, and it all disappeared. She was standing on a mountain top in the middle of the desert. The images in her mind stopped so suddenly, and she felt disoriented. She stumbled a few steps forward and sat down hard. Geoffrey walked towards her and sat on a rock. It was nighttime. She looked up at the sky and saw the familiar stars and the one moon. She sobbed.
“It is hard the first time,” he said. “When you went through before, you were dying. You did not have enough in you to experience what the gate becomes. Conscious, it is very hard.”
He waited on the rock until she stopped crying.
“We should make camp a bit away from here. Take a few deep breaths. It will help you feel more stable. A good night’s rest, and you will be right as rain.”
She looked up at him through the tears. She felt like she had gone through hell. “Who are all those people?”
“Each person has different and very personal visions. I don’t know who or what you see.”
“How did I find it before?” She asked.
“You were looking for it,” he said.
Geoffrey walked away. She forced herself to her feet and followed. The air felt so much better. Her brain and her body were returning to normal. She still felt nauseous—questions and more questions. Every time Geoffrey attempted to explain something, she felt more confused.
Geoffrey found a sheltered space behind some rocks on the side of the mountain. He brought down both backpacks with ease and set up camp. She saw a sleeping bag on the ground, and without much ado, she laid down on it and closed her eyes. Geoffrey laughed and handed her a bowl with food. She sat up to eat.
He lit a fire and sat down against the rock wall. She saw his hands were trembling a bit.
“It wasn’t easy for you either,” she said.
“Some things get easier with time, and other things become more difficult.”
“You have lived through all of history,” she said.
He nodded.
“What was your favorite time?” She asked.
He looked at her curiously.
“When would you have liked to have lived?” He asked her in return.
“Medieval times were awesome. I would have liked to have been a knight. Or maybe an illustrator of ancient texts. I used to love seeing those texts at the Getty.” She answered.
“I have spent so many years bouncing from one place to the other. I take thorough notes of my life to remember. Things seem ephemeral, superficial after a while. It is hard to be around people. I have gone through long periods where I don’t have contact with anyone. Maybe several hundred years.
“The middle ages were not as romantic as they seem in history books. There was so much illness. You would have been middle-aged. A couple of your children would be dead. The ones that lived would be teenagers. The monasteries making the books were places of learning, and there were some beautiful people within those walls. They created some incredible art, and all had strict guidelines, strict beliefs. The church was followed as absolute law.
“I lived for a bit in a village in France. I farmed and had a beautiful wife. I raised several children. It ended.”
“You had children?” She asked.
“Yes, I had children. Many. None biologically. That is impossible for me.” She tried not to look surprised.
He guessed what she interpreted and laughed, “Biologically, I function perfectly well. I am unable to reproduce. I have been alive for a long time, and I am very human. I need love, companionship, family. The problem is that they die; I do not. Eventually, it takes its toll.” He said.
“But wouldn’t you have grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren?”
He nodded. “I am sure I do, but I can’t let people know that I exist. They wouldn’t understand it. I fake it for a bit. Maybe twenty years and then I have to disappear. It would be obvious there is something wrong with me when I begin to look younger than my children. I have never been around long enough to see grandchildren, much fewer great-grandchildren.”
She looked at him with horror. “You leave a trail of single mothers with starving children?”
“Of course not. First of all, most of the children I parented belonged to the mother since I can’t be a biological parent. Death rates were immense for most of history, so there were plenty of mothers alone. Also, the women know who and what I am. It is impossible to hide that I can’t get hurt. I make sure to provide for my partners and my descendants. I just have to be careful about how I do it.”
He went silent again. Emily waited to hear if more would be forthcoming, but he had gone back to the almost unanimated state.
“You can’t die,” she asked. “But you do feel pain?”
“And joy and grief, and anger, and everything else. I am human. Just a wee bit more.”
“How?” She asked.
“That is a story for another time,” he said and laid down, facing away from h
er confirming that the conversation was over.
She laid back on the sleeping back and looked at her familiar stars. The anxiety she left behind came back full force. She was sure Tristan left her to die. Geoffrey returned her to her world. She was now back in the desert. Emily still had no idea how she would get to Los Angeles, but she trusted Geoffrey to help her. He had kept his promise.
She turned to her side and watched him. He was not asleep. He was also looking at the stars. Would he also see a home in them, or had he been away for too long to register them as home? An unwanted thought crossed her mind and made her heart stop. She knew that her curse made it impossible for her to be with anyone. Tom had been the second. She would never risk a third. Emily didn’t want to hurt people, and if she were dangerous, she would keep others safe from her.
Dance of Life: The Belief Chronicles: Book One (Chronicles of a Planet's End) Page 5
