Immortal Beloved

by Cate Tiernan

  She was becoming important to me. Meriwether and even Old Mac were becoming important to me, after decades of having nothing be that important.

  It was unusual.

  It was scary.

  I knew all too well how much it would hurt when I lost them.

  I really didn’t like it.

  CHAPTER 27

  Back at home, River, Asher, Solis, and Anne treated me incredibly normally. It was weird. I was expected to do chores. My name was on the board. Apparently all four teachers knew the whole sordid story, but none of the students seemed to treat or look at me any differently.

  I saw Reyn for the first time at dinner.

  He came through the kitchen door, holding a heavy tureen. My senses were exquisitely tuned to him and I examined him closely, trying to see him with long hair matted with blood, with a painted face. He saw me and his jaw tightened. My imagination pictured him standing, shocked and terrified, as a tower of lightning consumed his family and soldiers.

  He and I both looked very solemn, and we deliberately didn’t meet eyes again. Interestingly, when I glanced over to get some bread, I looked up and saw Nell’s eyes locked on me like blue lasers. I ignored her. Reyn sat where I couldn’t see him easily, and didn’t say a word during dinner.

  After dinner Anne stood and said, “I’d like to work with some of you, exploring gems and crystals. Rachel?”

  “Oh, I’d love to,” Rachel said.

  “Charles?” Anne asked.

  “Excellent, thanks,” said Charles, taking his plate to the busing table.

  “Reyn?” Anne said. “And Nastasya.”

  Silence.

  We each waited for the other to back out. And waited. And waaaiiiiited…

  “Good,” said Anne. “I’ll see you all in the green room in ten minutes.”

  “May I join you?” Nell sounded a little too eager. “I’ve been dying to work more with gems.”

  Anne hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Yes, okay.”

  Nell beamed.

  Glumly I met River’s eyes. She looked sympathetic, but also like she was daring me to back out. I got up and took my plate to the kitchen.

  • • •

  “You’re not focusing.” Anne’s voice was patient. Too patient.

  I opened my eyes. I was in a class with someone whose family had murdered my family. Someone whose family had been killed by my family. We were in class together, trying to bond with stones. I was sitting as far away from Reyn as possible, and of course, Nell was stuck to him like glue. It still seemed surreal, who he was, what he had been in my life. The very memories and experiences I’d tried to block out of my mind for the last four hundred years were sitting six feet away from me, in living color. It was like confronting the monster under my bed, only amped up a thousand times. There he was: the monster. My worst nightmare was wearing a dark green plaid flannel shirt and jeans and smelled like laundry detergent and fresh autumn air.

  We were sitting in a row at a long table. Anne had a black velvet bag of different stones and crystals, and we each had to close our eyes, put our hand in, and choose the one that seemed to want to be with us. Yes. That was the actual instruction. This was even more personal than the metalwork we’d done, and what stone we chose would influence how we made magick.

  Charles had gone first and had chosen a tiger’s eye. (Or was chosen by it.) “Ah yes,” he said. “Tiger’s eyes are all the rage this season.” The rapidly dimming afternoon light shone on his red hair, and his green eyes glinted with humor. He wrote something in his leather-bound journal, his neat handwriting slanting to the right.

  Rachel had picked out an amethyst, its deep purple color contrasting nicely with her olive skin and black hair. As usual, she didn’t smile—she wasn’t a smiley gal—but simply handled her stone, looking at it seriously.

  “Reyn? Now you. Just set your mind free and concentrate, at the same time.” Anne held the bag open in front of him. Reyn’s strong hand was almost too big to fit into the bag’s narrow neck. Those same long fingers had slid under my sweater last night. And had also helped to break in my father’s door so they could kill everyone in our house. My worlds, my past and present, were colliding with a horrible force, and I had to sit here, expressionless.

  Moments went by. We all waited. Reyn closed his eyes, and I was able to gaze on his face without his knowing, trying to see bloodlust, trying to see desire. I looked away.

  Slowly he pulled his hand out and opened it. In his palm was a dark green stone, flecked with red.

  “A bloodstone,” Anne said, while I thought, How appropriate. “And what are its qualities? Anyone?”

  “It promotes… honesty,” said Reyn, and it occurred to me that Nell thought he was 267. She didn’t know the truth about him, and I did. “Integrity. It calms anxieties. People believe that holding a bloodstone against a wound will stop the bleeding. A long time ago, warriors wore bloodstone amulets to staunch blood in battle.” He sounded distant, thoughtful, turning the stone over and over in his hand.

  “Very good,” said Anne. “Nastasya? Your turn.” She held the bag open in front of me.

  I put my hand in and felt around. Stone. Stone. Crystal. Possible stone. Crystal? Oh, who the eff knew? I just grabbed one and pulled it out—a rough emerald the size and shape of an almond.

  “No, that’s not it,” said Anne, quiet but definite.

  I looked up at her. How could she tell?

  “Close your eyes, concentrate, focus,” Anne said. “There is a gemstone just for you. It wants to be with you. Try again.”

  Feeling self-conscious, I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind of any thoughts. Which didn’t make sense—wasn’t I supposed to be thinking about stones and crystals and stuff? Like, Here, stoney, stoney, stoney… come to mama…

  I wanted to just take another stone out of the bag, but Anne would probably say it was the wrong one again. How did she know? How was I supposed to know? This was yet another example of the airy-fairy, witchy nonsen—

  I felt vibrations. Tiny, quivering, subtle vibrations as my fingers only barely brushed over something. I touched another stone—it was cool and smooth but still, dead. My fingers drifted back, and there it was again, a stone trembling ever so slightly under my touch. Was Anne doing something? Was this a trick?

  I opened my eyes and frowned at her. Her clear blue eyes were on my face, intently. Her hands, holding the velvet bag, were solid and unmoving. “Yes?” she asked.

  The stone now glowed with warmth under my touch. One side was polished and rounded; one side was broken and jagged. Its vibrations were almost imperceptible, like the beating of a hummingbird’s heart. My fingers closed around it, and a surge of joy struck me like a splinter.

  I pulled it out. It was about the size of a big cherry, and seemed like… milky rain, solidified. It was the same as the stone in my mother’s amulet. A moonstone. It was beautiful, mysterious. I loved it. And it loved me.

  “Yes,” said Anne with satisfaction. “That’s it. You can feel it.”

  I nodded without saying anything, kind of freaked out. I mean, I was here because I desperately wanted to believe in what they were selling, and yet part of me kept being surprised when what they were selling turned out to be true.

  “Nell? Now you.”

  Smiling, Nell immediately closed her eyes and put her hand into the bag. She made a couple of little “hmm” sounds, as if to demonstrate how hard she was concentrating. I watched her, wondering what her story was. She was only in her eighties, from England, and so was born in the twenties sometime. So she’d been in her twenties during WWII. Why was she here? Why did she want Reyn so much? Wait till she found out he was a berserker, the Butcher of Winter. Would she even care?

  Nell drew her hand out, holding up a marbled blue and white stone. “Oh, it’s pretty,” she said. “And it goes with my eyes!” She held it up next to her face and batted her lashes. Charles smiled.

  “Do you know what it is?” Anne asked
.

  “Yes, of course,” Nell said quickly. “It’s…”

  Silence. More silence. Tick, tock…

  “Sodalite?” I said, mostly guessing.

  Nell looked at me with actual venom in the back of her eyes. “Right, right, sodalite.”

  “Yes,” said Anne. “And what are its qualities?”

  Nell paused again. I was still reeling from the lists of stones, crystals, gems, metals, oils, herbs, stars, elements, animals, plants, blah de blah blah that I’d been hit with since I came here. I had learned maybe one-half of one percent of what they wanted me to know. But Nell had been here for several years already. She had asked to be here tonight.

  She smiled slightly, blushed prettily, obviously searching for an answer. She slanted her eyes at Reyn, as if hoping he would bail her out. He was turning his bloodstone over and over in his hand, not looking up. He had razed village after village. I’d seen the bodies of the people his horde had killed. His father had killed my father. My mother and brother had killed his brother. His father had killed everyone else, except me. And yet this man, sitting a few feet from me—I could still recall the way he tasted, how his weight had pressed me into the sweet-smelling hay, the feel of his warm skin beneath my fingers. Too many realities.

  “Nastasya?” Anne turned to me. “The moonstone chose you. What are its qualities?”

  Nell was embarrassed and trying not to show it. I dragged my mind away from Reyn and tried to focus on the now, scrambling for every bit of moonstone lore I could recall. Um, it’s smooth? Whitish? I looked at the stone in my hand. It felt heavy and warm. It was silly, how much I loved it. Had my mother felt the same way, about hers?

  “It’s always cut into cabochons, to display the cat’s-eye,” I said slowly. “Rather than faceted.”

  “Yes. What else?”

  My mind blanked on its chemical composition, or how it was formed, or even where it was from. Ceylon? Was that sapphires? Um, um…

  “It’s attracted to the moon,” I recalled, the words seeming to come to me out of nowhere. “People believed its cat’s-eye, or shiller, would wax and wane according to the moon’s cycles.”

  “What else?”

  Crap. My mind was whirling with bits of facts and figures. I felt the stone in my hand and looked at it. Tell me your secrets, I thought. Tell me why you are mine.

  “It’s considered a more feminine stone than most.” I don’t know where I pulled that from. “It’s used to connect and attract feminine energy—especially for dreams and intuitions.” I closed my eyes to let the thoughts settle down inside my mind. “It’s used to help balance feminine and masculine energy, and to aid in healing, especially women’s ailments related to our cycles and childbirth. It aids intuition. And, um, prophecy. Like, if you’re scrying, and you hold it, it will help clarify what you see.” Huh—that’s interesting, I thought.

  “And, um, it… reunites lovers who have parted in anger.” Where the hell had I read that? I hoped it was true, and not, like, a movie quote or something. “It protects those who travel by water. It helps clarify decision making.” Now I had no idea if I was talking about moonstone anymore. I shut up and opened my eyes.

  Anne was smiling at me. “Very good, Nastasya. Have you worked with moonstones before? It seems particularly well suited to you.”

  “No. I mean, I haven’t.”

  “Sodalite,” said Nell, as if she couldn’t bear to have the attention on me. She gave a light laugh. She was the one who should be working with moonstone, I thought—she was a thousand times more feminine than me. “Is it—for attracting love?”

  “No, not particularly,” said Anne mildly. “Basically, it helps to clear your mind, so that you can identify your feelings. It helps clear out old patterns of anger, guilt, and fear, so that you can see your path more clearly.”

  “It’s grounding for people who tend to be overemotional,” said Charles helpfully.

  Nell’s face was becoming stiff. I kept a carefully neutral expression on, but inside I was cackling meanly.

  “It cuts through clouded thinking and illusion,” Anne went on, “to reveal truths, and to make the user more grounded and confident.”

  Nell didn’t say anything.

  “Now, I’d like us to focus on charging our stones with our energies, our vibrations,” said Anne. “Every crystal, stone, and gem has its own uses, its own character. Working with one can be very powerful. Working against one can be pointless at best, and dangerous at worst. So we’re going to sit in a circle, bind ourselves to our stones, and see where that takes us.”

  Anne got a small silver bowl and filled it with sea salt. “Put your stones in here,” she instructed us. “Stones retain the vibrations of energies around them, their former owners, and the residue of spells they’ve been used in. We’ll purify them first.”

  Next she drew a circle on the floor with salt, simply walking in a circle, holding a box of sea salt upside down. I guessed immortals and other magick-makers were keeping the salt industry alive and healthy. The circle was as perfect as if it had been drawn with a compass. We all went through its “door” and sat down. I hoped we weren’t going to do anything big. I felt fragile, on edge, and I really, truly, totally couldn’t take any more memories or visions or reality right now. And yet part of me realized that, in fact, I’d already, and recently, seen most of the worst of it. The stuff I had suppressed for centuries—it had gotten dragged out into the sunlight. There weren’t that many skeletons left in the closet. Still, I could use a break. What would happen if I simply stepped over the line of salt? Would my head explode? Would the room catch on fire? What?

  I was careful to sit between Rachel and Charles, and Nell was equally careful to sit next to Reyn, bumping Anne slightly to get the spot. I saw Anne glance at Nell. The circle was so small that our knees touched one another’s.

  Anne set a fat white pillar candle on the floor next to the stone bowl and murmured a few words. She seemed to snap her fingers on the candle’s wick, and it sparked into flame. So cool.

  “I don’t need to borrow your energy for the purification—you guys can just watch,” said Anne. She closed her eyes and started chanting. The words sounded like old Gaelic to me—very fundamental and beautiful. Also kind of scary and unworldly. She gestured with her hands toward the candle flame, as though she was wafting its energy toward her face. Then she opened her hands again, spilling that energy onto the silver bowl.

  I almost gasped as the salt in the bowl was licked with faint blue flames. Salt is completely nonflammable—Brynne had put out a kitchen fire with it. Yet there it was, burning, but not being consumed. After just a few minutes, Anne’s chant wound down, and the salt flame flickered out. Immediately, Anne slipped her fingers into the salt and brought out Reyn’s bloodstone.

  “Careful,” said Anne. “The salt is okay, but the stones are warm.”

  We each got our stones back. To me, mine looked more beautiful, its colors more reflective, as if a tiny star were encased within it, glowing brightly. Hoo—listen to poetic me! Anyway, I wanted to hold it to my heart, cradle it in my hand. Like, no one has ever loved a stone the way I did this one. It was pretty… freakish.

  “Now we’ll bind our stones to us,” said Anne. She took out her own stone, a piece of jagged obsidian, half as big as her finger.

  “Um—are we actually going to do a circle?” I asked unenthusiastically. I glanced around the room, wondering what I could barf in.

  “Yes,” said Anne. She leaned over and quickly traced runes—maybe sigils?—on my forehead, my throat, and the backs of my hands.

  Nell looked at me condescendingly—the newbie with the delicate stomach.

  “I’ll lead the binding,” said Anne. “Hold your stone in your left palm, and cover it with your right palm, like this.” She showed us. “Simply—get in touch with your power, and when you’re ready, repeat the words I’m saying. Okay?”

  Each circle I had attended in the last several weeks had been
quite different, though their basic forms were the same. There had been the big group circle outside, the tiny, two-person circle I’d had with River, and a couple of small-group circles with classmates. Most of me still dreaded them, but a small part was now also starting to crave them—the rush of power, the beauty, the glimpses of cosmic truths that danced along the edges… and if the power-focusing spells held up, maybe it wouldn’t be a big upchuck-fest.

  “Close your eyes, hold your stones, and get in touch with your power,” said Anne.

  I still didn’t have a prescribed method of “getting in touch with my power.” Mostly I just sat there, thought about things, and hoped it would show up. I listened to Anne’s incredibly soothing voice, tried not to feel the acid in my stomach at the thought of Nell and Reyn together, reminded myself how—ridiculous wasn’t a strong enough word—it was to even care about the Butcher of Winter, and felt the warm weight of my stone in my palm.

  Eventually I started humming, an old tune that came to me, and I blended my humming with Anne’s voice. It had a distinct melody, and the melody felt thick and dark and old, like an ancient tree root that reached down to the earth’s core.

  I didn’t know where this stuff was coming from—all of a sudden I was a little magickal sprite, bonding with my stone, feeling my earth roots, la la la…

  All I can do is describe the way it felt. And that was how it felt. So sue me.

  Was I swaying? I felt like I might be swaying. I could no longer feel Charles’s knee, or Rachel’s, touching mine. No longer felt my bony ass going numb on the cold wooden floor. My stone was getting warmer and heavier, and the more I thought about it, the happier I felt. I opened my mouth now and actually sang my tune, letting it move up through the earth, through me, out into the air. It was thick and strong and filled my chest, flowing out of my mouth with ease. Without my even noticing, it had become quite beautiful and quite powerful. Now I felt like I knew it, recognized it, and with a blinding flash I suddenly saw my mother, singing the same song, performing some rite. My mother.