Eternally Yours (2 page)

Likewise, questions I hadn’t asked Helgar, things I’d wondered about, uncertainties that had simmered in my brain for years now boiled to the surface, and I could hardly get the words out fast enough.

“Do you know many other—people like us?”

Mistress Henstrom smiled. “Yes, of course. Quite a few. Certainly the ones who live in Uppsala—which was why I was so surprised to come across one I’d never seen.”

“Your husband?”

“A mortal, I’m afraid. A dear man.” Sadness swept over her lovely, porcelain face, and I understood immediately that one day he would die, and she wouldn’t.

“Are all the ones you know like you?” I waved my hand at the damask wallpaper, the furniture, the house. I meant rich, fancy.

She tilted her head to one side, looking at me. “No. We’re at all classes of society, at each level of birth, education, breeding.”

I’d been born to wealthy, powerful parents. We’d had the biggest, most luxurious castle in that part of Iceland—made of huge blocks of stone with real glass in the windows; at least fourteen rooms; walls hung with tapestries; servants, tutors, musical instruments; even books. When I lost my childhood, I’d lost everything about it.

“The nature of the thing is,” Mistress Henstrom said, “that when one lives quite a long time, one has quite a lot of time to fill. With educating oneself, in whatever way you can. With meeting people—influential people. With taking a small occupation and being around long enough for it to grow. Money grows over time. Or it does, at least, if you’re not silly about it.”

“I don’t have any money.” I hadn’t meant to say that, but I had absently given voice to my thoughts. I blushed because it must have been glaringly clear that I didn’t have money.

Mistress Henstrom nodded kindly. “Have you never been married?”

“Twice. But they had no money, either.” I didn’t want to think about them, not the sweet, uneducated Àsmundur I was married off to when I was sixteen, or the awful man I’d thought I could make a life with, some forty years later. They were both dead, anyway.

“Perhaps you married the wrong men.” Mistress Henstrom wasn’t being sarcastic—it was more like a suggestion. She waved her hand toward the room, much as I had done. “I have money of my own, but I also take care to marry wealthy men. And when they die, their money becomes mine alone, do you see?”

I gaped at her. “Do you mean… I should try to marry a wealthy man?”

“I think marrying poor ones did nothing to advance your position,” she said, stroking her little dog. “You have a lovely face, my dear. With different clothes, a hairstyle au courant—you could catch the eye of many a man.”

“I have no family, no connections,” I sputtered. “I’m an orphan, with nothing. Who would want to marry me?” Not to mention I never wanted to get married again.

Again Mistress Henstrom tilted her head to one side. “My dear—if I told you I was the fifth daughter of a wealthy English landowner, how would you determine it was true? The world is so big—there are so many people. No one knows them
all
. Letters, inquiries, take months and months. Create a family for yourself, a history, the next time you’re scrubbing a floor… or dusting bolts of fabric. Then
be
that
person. Introduce yourself that way. Become a new person, as you’ve no doubt done before—don’t just be the same person with a new name.”

Her words tore through my brain like a comet, leaving room for new ideas, new concepts. Then my limited reality set in again. My hands plucked at my rough cloak, my plain skirt with its muddy hems. It was all too much. I didn’t know where to start. It was frightening. “I don’t—” I began.

Mistress Henstrom held up her hand. “My dear—it’s November. Stay at Master Svenson’s while you think of who you want to be, if you could be anyone—anyone at all. I’ll send for you in March.”

“Yes, mistress,” I said, overwhelmed and scared and… exhilarated.

And in March Mistress Henstrom did indeed send for me. I left Master Svenson and took the money I had scrimped and saved in the last six months and went to the Henstroms’ country house, a good ten miles out of the city. Her personal seamstress was there, and under the lady’s direction, three new dresses were made for me, indulging my particular whim of keeping my neck covered. They were much fancier and grander than anything I’d had before, but not so fancy as to arouse curiosity.

As I looked at myself in the mirror, my sunlit hair coiled in complicated braids, my blue dress so much nicer than anything I had owned since I was a child, I met Mistress Henstrom’s—Eva’s—eyes as she smiled with approval.

“May I ask…” I began hesitantly.

“Yes?”

“May I ask why you’re doing this for me? It will likely be years before I can pay you back.”

A thoughtful look came over Eva’s face. “Because… more than a hundred years ago, I was very like you. Twice the age you are now but no further advanced. I was ignorant, with no dreams for the future. And then I met someone. And she—took pity on me. She simply wanted to help me. She was the oldest person I had met—well over six hundred then.” Mistress Henstrom smiled, somewhat wistfully. “Anyway. She did for me much the same thing that I’m doing for you. I’ve always wanted to help someone myself, as a way of paying her back.” Another gracious smile. “This is my good deed. Take it and enjoy it, my dear.”

A lot happened after that, up and down, but a mere twenty-eight years later I was Elena Natoli, middle-class owner of a lace shop in Naples, Italy. I could have been much richer, with a much more leisurely lifestyle, but I just couldn’t bring myself to marry again.

I’ve never again seen the woman who called herself Eva Henstrom back in the early sixteen hundreds. If I did, I would thank her. She changed the course of my life, the way a storm can make a river jump its banks and surge ahead.

WEST LOWING, MASSACHUSETTS, USA, PRESENT

O
kay, raise your hand if you’ve ever (1) dropped food or ice cream or a drink in front of (or on) someone; (2) realized you had a big stain on your clothes and it has apparently been there all day and people must have seen it but no one said anything (extra points if it’s related to a female cyclic event); (3) realized after an important dinner with someone that you had a big crumb on your lip and that’s what they kept trying to subtly signal you about but you didn’t pick up on it; (4) mispronounced an obvious word in front of a bunch of people.

I could go on. The point is, those kinds of things happen to everyone. I bet you’re still upset or embarrassed about it, right?

Well, you can
freaking get over your lame-ass, sissy-pants, drama-queen self
.

When
you’ve
run away from people who were only trying to help you; taken up with a former friend who everyone (including yourself) knew was bad news; hung out with him even as he showed signs of being certifiable; and then witnessed his complete meltdown, which, unlike some meltdowns, did not simply involve quaintly taking off his clothes and dancing in a public fountain, but instead featured huge, dark, horrifying magick, kidnapping, dismemberment, and death—well, when you’ve done that and then
gone back
to the people who were only trying to help you… you call me, and we’ll talk. But until you’re there, I can’t deal with whatever pebbles you’ve got in your shoe today.

“Nas? Nastasya?”

I blinked, focusing quickly on the face of one of my teachers, Anne. Her round blue eyes were expectant, her mink-brown hair in a shiny bob above her shoulders.

“Um…” I fiddled with the scarf around my neck. What was her question again? Oh. Right. “Marigold,” I said, naming the familiar orange flower on the card Anne was holding up. Flash cards, designed to help us students learn the endless facts about Every. Single. Thing. in the physical, metaphysical, and spiritual world. For starters.

Next to me, Brynne uncrossed her long legs under our table and recrossed them. I could feel her vibrating with the urge to jump in—she knew way more than I; everyone here did—but she managed to keep her mouth shut.

“Properties?” Anne was not as patient as River, and we were both starting to chafe at spending so many hours together, trying to funnel knowledge into my brain as fast as possible. I hadn’t been doing too badly—I was willing to learn—but today, focusing seemed out of reach. My cheeks started to heat as the silence swelled to fill the room. I was skin-tinglingly aware of Reyn, sitting silently next to Brynne, and Daisuke, who was studying by himself in the corner. Defeat was imminent: Searching my brain for facts about marigolds was like running around trying to catch lightning bugs. Turbo-charged lightning bugs. On coke.

“They’re used extensively in… Thailand and India, for religious purposes,” I said, trying to save face. I hated looking stupid, though by now it should feel as natural as breathing. But Reyn was here, and I hated, hated, hated looking stupid in front of him, of all people.

“Yes?” Anne said, prompting me.

Images flashed through my mind—wheeled wooden carts piled with musky-smelling bright flowers lining street markets in Nepal. No doubt they still did that today, but the memory I had was from the late eighteen hundreds. Going through Nepal on my way to Bombay to catch a merchant ship to England. And right now, let’s all give props to the
Suez Canal for chopping a good four, five months off that whole journey. Who’s with me?

“Nastasya.” Anne sighed and brushed her hair off her forehead. “It would help you to know things like this.”

“I know,” I said, trying not to cringe as I heard Reyn shift in his seat. “I want to. I know I need to. It’s just—my head is really full of stuff already.”

I mean,
obviously
, right? Four hundred and fifty-nine years’ worth of stuff. Identities, adventures, lifetimes and lifetimes lived, each one as full as the last. Part ’n’ parcel of the whole immortal gig.

Brynne was now wiggling like a greyhound that had spotted a rabbit.

“Okay,” I said briskly, sitting up straighter. I knew this. I’d learned it a million times. “Okay, mainly used for… protection. And strength. Like to strengthen your heart or protect you from evil. Oh.”

The point of learning about the marigold sank in, and I realized that it, along with a daunting number of other things (like frankincense, fleabane, vervain, nettle, iron, and onyx, to name
just a few
), was intended to help me protect myself from evil. Some people try not to catch colds. I try not to attract ancient evil to me. It’s all relative.

Ancient evil. How odd that it actually exists. But it does. And my most recent brush with it, the whole horror show in Boston with my ex-bestie, Incy, had demonstrated with
searing clarity how inadequate my mastery of magick was. If I’d known more that night, I might have been able to save Katy and Boz. Might not have had to witness their nightmarish deaths. I might have been able to save myself sooner, and without almost causing my head to explode.

I’d been back here at River’s Edge for a month now. I could have, probably should have, run off to a distant corner of the world, hidden in a cave, and licked my wounds for, like, an
eternity
. But I was far gone enough to admit that yes, I really did need help. I needed help more than I needed to be proud, or brave, or cool, or even just not gut-wrenchingly humiliated.

So far everyone here had been awesome about what had happened. No one rubbed it in, no one
tsk
ed, no one even looked at me funny. Because they’re all so much cooler than I am, right? So much more experienced, both in the ways of the world and the ways of redemption. By not giving me a hard time, they were advancing on their own karmic joyride. So, actually, they should thank me. For giving them so many opportunities to shine.

But it was clear that my centuries-old pattern of not learning anything was not, in fact, working well for me. So I’d sat pinned, a fish on a hook, and had lesson after lesson thrown at me: spellcrafting; the uses of stars in magick; magickal properties of plants, stones, crystals, oils, herbs, earth, sky, water—everything everywhere is connected,
and everything around me can be used for good or for evil. My head felt crammed full of facts and lore, history and tradition, forms and patterns and sigils and meanings—if I barfed right now, actual words would spill out onto the floor in a spiky, tangled heap.

“Nas?”

I blinked and tried to look alert, but Anne sat back and put the flash cards down. “Let’s all take a break,” she said. She looked tired—teaching me wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good day at the fair. Doing most things with me wasn’t a rockin’ good time; I know this, and traditionally I haven’t given a flying fig. Lately, with my gradual uphill meandering toward maturity, I’d started to feel guilty and a twinge embarrassed. But so far I’ve been able to shake that off.

“Okay,” I said, trying not to sound elated. I glanced toward the window; the early February sunlight was trying to be brave but not quite succeeding. I judged it to be around ten in the morning and couldn’t help flashing to just a couple weeks ago, when at ten in the morning I would have been tidying the shelves at MacIntyre’s Drugs. If I still worked there. If I hadn’t been fired twice.