Immortal Beloved

by Cate Tiernan

  One morning my job was to gather eggs from the henhouse. River kept about thirty hens. They ran free in the yard, pecking up insects and being annoying. At night they roosted in their boxes, locked in to protect them from weasels, foxes, hawks, stray dogs, and so on. Our own dogs held them in contempt, naturally, but never attacked them.

  Anyway, every morning some poor sap (today, me) had to muck through the low henhouse, always warm, humid, and smelling of feathers and straw and chicken poop. Not even I could stand up in it, and by the time I’d stuck my hand into every nest, sometimes under a determined hen who wouldn’t leave her roost, my back was killing me.

  “You, shoo!” I said to one brown hen. These chickens were big and fat, with glossy feathers and bright eyes. They looked healthy and happy, like the other animals. But this hen was a pecker. She really, really wanted to sit on her eggs and not have them stolen out from under her. She tended to attack whoever came near, and this morning I had forgotten my leather gloves, just like every other morning. Which was why my unmanicured hands looked like they belonged to Jess.

  “Look, if it were up to me, you could keep your stinking eggs,” I told her. “But up at the big house, they have different ideas. They have a total hard-on for your freaking eggs. So get out of my way.” I flicked my fingers at her several times, but she just bawked indignantly and started to get a wild, pre-peck look in her eyes.

  “Goddamn it.” I looked down at my basket. It was pretty full. No one would notice, probably, if I was a couple of eggs short. And then whoever gathered eggs tomorrow would do a better job of it and surely get this hen’s holdout stash.

  The chicken looked at me, like, Yeah, run.

  Maybe I should try just once more, very slow and easy.…

  “Hello?”

  I jumped several inches at the unexpected voice, hitting my head on a low rafter. My sudden movement panicked the brown hen, so she sank her hard, sharp beak into the back of my hand, causing me to shriek and swear, stamping one foot up and down while I rubbed the rapidly swelling knot on my head.

  “Goddamn it!” I roared again.

  “Uh, sorry—are you okay?” An ash-brown head looked into the henhouse and saw me thrashing around in the semidarkness.

  “Goddamn chicken!”

  “I’m sorry,” the voice said again. “River said to come out here. I usually get our eggs from here? Usually they’re up at the house.”

  I was apparently running late.

  I gave the brown chicken the evilest eye I could, then ducked out of the henhouse. To hell with her eggs.

  Outside, Meriwether stood waiting, tall and gangly, a recycled egg carton in one hand. She looked at me, probably trying to remember why I seemed familiar.

  “Oh,” she said. “You were passing through, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah. I bought some maps at your store. How many eggs you want?”

  “A dozen.” She fished a dozen still-warm eggs out of my basket, placing them carefully in her carton. Suddenly I felt like it was two hundred years ago and this was a totally normal, everyday scene. I didn’t like it.

  Meriwether straightened up, closed her carton, then handed me two dollars. I sighed heavily and pushed them into my jeans pocket. Not exactly high commerce. I remembered the day I had bet my third of the Trans-Siberian Railroad so I could stay in a high-stakes poker game. Now I was in mud-stained jeans selling eggs for two bucks.

  “Thanks,” said Meriwether. Again she seemed washed out, kind of dull and lifeless. Well, who could blame her, with that jerk father? She turned to go, and I said, “How’s your store doing?”

  She turned back, startled. “Um, it’s doing okay. I guess. Things are harder all over town since the textile mill closed, over in Heatherton.”

  “Oh.”

  “They used to make sheets and pillowcases,” Meriwether said, brushing some hair out of her eyes. “We were the only drugstore around, and we did a great business.”

  “Is that why your dad’s such a putz?” I asked as we walked to her car. “ ’Cause business is bad?”

  Meriwether swallowed uncomfortably, seeming unwilling to admit her dad was a putz. “Um, well, he’s not happy,” she mumbled, fishing her keys out of a pocket. “My mom… died four years ago, and he’s just… he never got over it.” She got into the front seat and popped the parking brake.

  “Oh.” Many immortals become attached to humans, of course, myself included. Fall in love or befriend them. After my Robert-the-Soldier had died in India, the inevitable bad conclusion had prevented me from getting close to anyone else. And among my friends, we tended not to dwell on problems or pain—just pretended they didn’t exist, and found something to distract ourselves or dull our perceptions. So I was unused to someone confiding in me about painful personal issues, and I had nothing intelligent or helpful to say. It was too bad, is all. But I guessed she was pretty used to it.

  “Thanks again,” said Meriwether, putting the little car in reverse.

  “No prob. See you.”

  “Nastasya? Come with me,” said Anne. “Meditation class. Your first time with a group.”

  I stood, my spine slowly uncoiling from hours of bending over. Here I was, picking up walnuts off the ground. A line of about ten large walnut trees bordered the front yard, and harvesting the nuts was an ongoing fall chore. It was cold, tedious, backbreaking work, and because I’d once again forgotten my gloves, my fingers were now stained brown from the shells. It would take weeks for the color to fade. My knees were muddy and wet from kneeling on the damp ground, my nose was running, and I felt chilled through.

  “Rock and a hard place,” I complained, and Anne grinned. So far meditation had seemed to be nothing but soul-crushing, endless sitting still, coupled with the fun of reliving past horrors. No, thanks. Last week I’d done it alone, with just one other person guiding me. Now it was time for the full group experience. Oh, joy.

  “Come,” she said again, pointing to the house. “At least you’ll be warm.”

  I looked at my burlap sack—it was about three-quarters full. Sighing heavily, I got up and went with Anne.

  “Today we’re going to use a candle to help us focus,” Anne said soothingly, ten minutes later. I sat cross-legged on a small, hard pillow filled with buckwheat kernels. There were five of us, each sitting at one point of a pentagram drawn on the floor with chalk. We were upstairs at the house, and I could see the slowly darkening sky through a wavy-glassed window. I wondered if I could possibly sneak down the hall, back to my own room, once everyone was really under. I didn’t want to do this. I especially didn’t want to do this with Lorenz and Charles, though they were both perfectly nice. And the dream team of Nell and Reyn.

  “Everyone, let’s focus on our breathing,” Anne said, her voice low and melodic. She pressed a button on a CD player, and some kind of chime-y, Enya-type whale song chanting started playing softly.

  “Pay attention to your breath,” she continued against the backdrop of the music. “Feel it fill your lungs, feel it leave your body. You’re breathing in energy, breathing out that which you no longer need.”

  Like carbon dioxide, for example.

  “If it helps, you can count to four as you take in a breath and four as you exhale. Then count to six on your next breath, taking six beats to completely fill your lungs. And breathe out to the count of six. You can close your eyes, if you’d like.”

  I immediately closed my eyes. Without seeing Nell’s tight face and Reyn’s stony one, maybe I could just daydream for a while, embellishing my latest romantic fantasy, the one with Reyn, some almond oil, and a hot tub.

  “Now, starting with your toes, I want you to relax each muscle, one at a time. Feel your toes, feel them relax. Now your ankles. And your calves. If you’re holding any tension there, let it go.” Anne’s voice seemed dreamy, floating on the music swirling around us like wood smoke.

  My chest felt achy, my stomach hurt, and my nose was still running from being outside in the cold air. Thanksg
iving was in a couple of weeks, here in America, and I wondered if River observed it and if I could hope for a non-healthy dessert on that day. I thought back to my town shopping trip and how I had neglected to stock up on contraband junk food. Oh, God, I could use a Ding Dong.

  Anne’s voice was a low constant in the background of my mind. I settled into my seat, felt some tension leave my shoulders. Stupid walnuts. My hands were going to be stained brown for weeks—it never washed off. That’s why people used it to dye fabric, and wool—

  I looked up and saw my family’s washerwoman, Aoldbjörg Palsdottir, stirring the huge cauldron with her wooden paddle as big as an oar. The day was cold, but not bitter; the fire beneath her pot licked the sides and brought a flush to her weatherworn cheeks. The bitter smell of walnut-shell dye mingled with wood smoke and filled the bailey. It was cozy here, safe. Sometimes my next-oldest sister, Eydís, and I climbed to the top of Faðir’s keep. We’d look out past the castle walls and see the wide swaths of black forest all around. Far in the distance were the bare, rocky lands of the mountains, where nothing grew. To the other direction lay the sea. The world outside the castle was dark and forbidding, but here in the bailey, with the goats bleating for straw and the stableboys brushing the horses and Faðir’s steward shouting orders, it was full of life.

  My younger brother, Háakon, and I were playing a game with pebbles. He was three years younger than me, no longer a baby or skirt-clinger but an actual boy who could run and play games and keep secrets. We sat carefully out of the way of everyone, on a pile of sheep shearings, maybe twenty high, each thick woolly mat in the shape of a stretched-out sheep. The wool was dirty, full of twigs, but still oily and soft and good to sit on.

  “I hate that smell,” said Háakon, wrinkling his nose.

  “It’s not as bad as rock moss,” I said, and he nodded, remembering the smell of boiled lichen gathered from the shore. It had made a deep green dye.

  A flash of scarlet made me look up, and I saw my oldest sister, Tinna, and Eydís running through the bailey, laughing, heading for the keep. They held their aprons up in both hands; the fabric pillowed out. I wondered what they were carrying—winterberries? Bark to make tea from? Their fair hair, shades of sun and burnished bronze, flew behind them. Next year, Eydís would have to start wearing her hair up, like a grown-up, as Tinna had started doing last year.

  I smiled at Háakon, and he smiled back at me. We had a good life.

  Die.

  The word popped into my mind like a bubble on a pond surface. I slowly took in a breath, wondering why my butt felt numb. What was I sitting on? For a moment I didn’t know where I was, and wondered why I no longer smelled the washtubs in the bailey. Then it came to me: I was a grown-up, and everything I had remembered happened 450 years earlier. None of that, none of them, existed anymore.

  I don’t know why I didn’t open my eyes, why I kept my breathing calm and shallow. I just sat very still, opening my mind to this room, these people, feeling my senses tendril out around me.

  That bitch—I hate her.

  It was a thought, not a memory, coming from someone here.

  No, no, forgive me, I didn’t mean it.

  Her neck… kissing her neck, the heat there…

  It took everything I had to not react. I was picking up on all kinds of stuff, and suddenly saw the peep-show appeal of group meditation. These thoughts came from males and females but weren’t recognizable as voices, per se. Just as distinct personas.

  Want her.

  Her eyes. Her mouth. Her mouth on my skin, my chest.

  Oh, I hate her! I can’t help it!

  No, no, I can’t.

  My breaths were coming faster. I was intensely aware of my stiff fingers, curved on my knees, my numb butt on this hard cushion, my dry mouth. Were these thoughts coming from everyone or just two people? And who was thinking what? I knew Charles had a crush on Lorenz, but Lorenz was straight, so that was a bummer. There were obviously Nell and Reyn, of course, the tortured soap opera of her unrequited love. Anne actually had a husband, but he didn’t live here, and I didn’t know the full story.

  It was the most exciting thing that had happened since I’d gotten here. I was waiting breathlessly to hear more, but there was a chime, the music stopped, and my eyes reluctantly opened.

  Anne was looking around at all of us, and I thought she seemed more alert, more sharp-eyed, than someone just coming out of deep meditation. The others opened their eyes slowly, some of them looking so relaxed as to be practically asleep.

  The thoughts ceased coming to me, and I stretched and wriggled on my cushion.

  “Thank you,” Nell said, radiating sweetness. “That was lovely.”

  “Thank you all,” said Anne. “Goodness, it’s almost dinnertime.”

  I got to my feet, flexing to get some feeling back in my bottom, and had started for the door when Anne said, “Nastasya? Please stay a moment.”

  I felt like a student caught spitballing, but I waited while Anne shut the door.

  “What did you think of it?” she asked me. “Was the group experience very different?”

  “Oh, God, yeah,” I said with enthusiasm. “I had no idea I’d hear all that stuff. It’s better than Days of Our Lives.” I didn’t mention my childhood memory.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those thoughts,” I said. “Someone hating someone, someone wanting someone, someone who can’t do something. It was excellent. I can’t wait to hear what happens next!”

  Anne stared at me as if I had suddenly turned into a pigeon. “What?”

  Taken aback by her reaction, I said, “Well, you know, those thoughts. I had no idea that could happen. It was really interesting.”

  “You heard thoughts,” Anne said, looking intently at me. “About someone hating someone, someone wanting someone.”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling unsure of myself. Had I messed this up somehow? Was it not done to mention what one heard? Was I supposed to pretend I hadn’t picked up on anything? “Um, and you know, kissing her neck. Her eyes. Her mouth on his chest. That stuff,” I mumbled. It had been a funny coincidence, given how paranoid I was about my own neck. Mentioning “the heat there.” Like, from a burn, maybe? Ha ha ha. No. I mean, he hadn’t meant my neck, surely. Charles was gay, Reyn couldn’t stand me, and Lorenz had never given the slightest indication that he found my drowned-rat appearance a big turn-on.

  Anne just blinked.

  “Are you… okay?” I really, really hoped none of those thoughts had come from her.

  “How much meditation have you done? I thought you didn’t like it.” She didn’t answer my question.

  “God, no, I hate it,” I said. “It sucks. I haven’t done much of it.”

  Anne sat on the edge of the table, still looking at me.

  “Did I do something wrong? Next time I won’t say if I hear anything.”

  “No, no,” Anne murmured. “That isn’t it. Though I would keep what you heard to yourself. It’s just—I picked up on those feelings, but I’m very advanced. I’m very powerful. I’m quite sure that no one else in the room heard or felt anything besides what was in their own heads.”

  Huh. Had she heard my thoughts? Ugh.

  “I felt someone’s consciousness but didn’t know it was you,” she went on, and I thought, Whew. “I thought it might be Solis—he’s next door right now, teaching herbs.”

  “So… that doesn’t usually happen, with anyone else?”

  “No.” Anne’s gaze was steady and penetrating. “It never happens, not with students. Never, ever.”

  Huh. This episode seemed to suggest that… maybe I was really powerful. Right, Nastasya? You would be powerful, right? You’re the last powerful one. I felt the automatic shutting down of my thoughts, felt my mind skirting away from those implications like water dancing on a hot skillet.

  Just then there was a light tap on the door, and Solis came in. He looked around the room, saw it was Anne and me, and frowned slightly.


  “Are you the only two here?” he said.

  “Yes,” Anne replied. “Did you—why did you come in?”

  Solis shrugged and smiled. “Thought I felt something. Seemed odd.”

  “You did feel something.” Anne seemed unusually grave. “You felt her.”

  Solis paused, as if translating the words in his head. “What?” he said finally.

  “Nastasya sent her consciousness out during group meditation. I felt her touch my mind, and she picked up on what the others were thinking. She could hear them. Accurately.”

  When, when am I going to learn to keep my mouth shut? Now I felt like a zoo exhibit, with the two of them studying me.

  “I’ll try not to do it again,” I offered. I will definitely never say anything again.

  Solis actually cocked his head to one side. “Where did you say you were from?”

  Alarms went off inside my head. I was willing to do all sorts of dumb stuff to stay here, but revealing my past was not among them. “The north.”

  The dinner bell clanged then, making me jump.

  “Whew! I am starving,” I said, putting away my buckwheat pillow. “Thanks for the class, Anne. It was great. See you at dinner!”

  Clearly I was making a scared-rabbit escape, and they let me, though I felt their eyes follow me down the hall. I went downstairs and headed for the dining room.

  Could I still—have power? My inherited power? Could it actually be that strong, after all this time? I should hide it. But even as I had that thought, a new, fierce longing sprang up inside me, wanting to feel the power again, wanting to follow wherever it led, wanting to explore its limits.

  I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t dare. Nothing good would come of it—I had seen that with my own eyes. One had to be very, very strong to deal with that kind of power. I wasn’t strong enough. I would never be strong enough.

  I slid into a place on a bench, my mind still reeling. That feeling—it had been… magickal.

  CHAPTER 13

  What? Get a… job? An actual job? Why?” I asked.