I’m able to ignore how old you are, but sometimes I get a sense of the enormity of it…”
“Yeah. It’s not really the sweet carefree deal that it seems. There are dues and blues. And you can’t avoid it either. If you remove yourself from human relationships and all the baggage that comes with them, you’re removing yourself from humanity entirely. The pain and regret and embarrassment are all repaid in joy, however brief and infrequent that joy may be. I’ve seen what happens when you try to set yourself apart.”
There was silence while Granuaile considered this. Then, delicately, almost too soft to hear, she asked, “Can I ask what happened to Tahirah?”
“Sure.” Such an easy word to say. But I had to take a deep breath and divide my mind in order to answer, stripping away the emotions and memories until only the raw words were left. My voice was flat and toneless as I said, “We were ambushed by a Masai war party. Tahirah took a spear through her chest and died before I could even attempt to heal her. And when I saw her dead eyes-eyes into which I used to look and find peace-my reason fled and rage took over: I cast camouflage on myself and cut them all down. They thought they were being slain by a demon. It wasn’t my finest hour.”
For a time there was nothing but the soft, rolling rumble of the engine and the whistle of gusting winds. Then Granuaile whispered, “I’m sorry, Atticus.”
“Yeah. Me too.” I paused. “You know that saying about how time heals all wounds? It’s not always true.”
Granuaile nodded, acknowledging that I probably knew what I was talking about.
“I couldn’t bear to stay there after that, where every place and every person was a reminder of her. If you spend two hundred years in an area, every tree and every rock becomes familiar, and every step brings a new memory shaped like cut glass. I took my eldest son aside-his name was Odhiambo-and told him as far as the tribe was concerned I was dead too. Without his mother, there was no life for me there anymore. He was chief now; Tahirah had run the things that needed running, because I had no desire to lead. He tried to argue with me at first; I had been giving him, as well as the rest of my family, Immortali-Tea, and my leaving meant that they would begin to age normally. To me, that was all to the good. The eternal youth of my family had begun to wreak havoc on social structures that normal people take for granted, such as having children before the age of thirty or forty-or, indeed, having them at all. Tahirah and I kept having children, but they rarely married and had children of their own. And of our few grandchildren of childbearing age, none of them was the least inclined to start their own family. There was always time for that later, you see, because I was giving them all the time they wanted to be selfish.
“I had already decided some decades earlier that administering Immortali-Tea to my whole family had been a colossal mistake, but while Tahirah lived I never dared suggest we let nature take its course with her children and grandchildren. With her gone, however, it was abundantly clear that despite my family’s advanced age, their development had been severely stunted in crucial ways. They looked down on people who aged normally. They rarely took physical risks, or even wished to exert themselves. A sense of entitlement had bloomed within them. And so I thought the best gift I could give them at that point was a chance at normalcy, painful as that might be.
“Odhiambo disagreed vehemently. He wanted me to teach him how to make Immortali-Tea, even though he knew very well he’d have to become a Druid to do it and he was far too old to begin the training; then he wanted me to make a vast supply and leave it for the village. But he gave up soon enough, seeing that I was determined, and so I wished them all harmony, shifted away from there, and returned to Europe at about the time its monarchs were discovering that the world might be round and full of vast resources to exploit.”
“So, ever since then, it’s been a month here, a year there, then move on, like a rolling stone and all that?”
“Pretty much. This is the longest I’ve stayed in any one place.”
I waited for her to tell me I was selfish and irresponsible, or that I was the most epic deadbeat dad ever. I searched for signs that she was thinking it. Aside from looking a bit sad, her face was inscrutable; I lost some time as I focused on the freckles high up on her cheeks, and they blurred out and went wonky, the way things do when your eyes wonder what the hell you’re doing. She kept her gaze focused on the road, lost in her own thoughts.
“Ten years later I returned,” I continued, as if I hadn’t paused and stared at her for three minutes. “Though I took care to go in camouflage. By listening and inference, I learned that Odhiambo was dead, as were several others. They’d committed suicide, Granuaile. Couldn’t stand the thought of aging. And they were angry with me for leaving-not because they missed me, but because they missed my miracle elixir.”
“Well, that’s just…”
“Yeah. One of my daughters was out alone collecting roots, and I showed myself to her so that we could talk and catch up. At first she was glad to see me, but when I made it clear I wasn’t staying or reversing their aging, she turned sullen and never smiled. She made no inquiries into my welfare, and perhaps I deserved that. But then I learned I was commonly cursed by my own family, as was Tahirah, for together we had ruined their paradise on earth, their own land of ceaseless summer.”
Granuaile shook her head slowly and frowned, her judgment clear, but said nothing.
“That was when I decided I would never share Immortali-Tea with anyone again. To my children and grandchildren, I was nothing more than a tit engorged with the milk of eternal youth, and while I had Tahirah by my side, I’d been willing to ignore that unpleasant reality. It made me wonder, though, if perhaps that was all I had been to her as well. I don’t know now if she ever loved me, you see? Perhaps she only loved being young and keeping her kids young once they reached adulthood. I tell myself no, there was no way she could have fooled me like that for two hundred years, what we had was real-but the doubts won’t go away. There will always be a blemish on the memory.”
“Don’t doubt it, Atticus,” Granuaile said. “Never doubt that she loved you.”
“Why?”
“Well, because I-” She stopped abruptly, unsure of how to continue. Her hand flailed at the air to brush that attempt away, and then she began again. “Because you’re right. She couldn’t have faked it for two centuries. Nobody could. You would have seen it in her eyes if she was faking, but you never saw that, did you? You said yourself you found peace in her eyes. I know it turned to shit eventually-if there’s anything I learned from studying philosophy, it’s that everything turns to shit-but you had two hundred years of bliss before that, and you might be the only guy who ever got that. Ever.”
That was a comforting way to look at it, and I nodded to indicate that she’d made a good point.
We exchanged one of those cheerless, halfhearted, tight-lipped smiles where your eyes apologize for the past and your upturned mouth indicates hope for a better future. It’s an odd way to reassure someone, but somehow it seems to work across cultures and outlast dynasties. It works well in the cab of an SUV too.
After a few more miles of silent driving, Granuaile opened her mouth to speak, made a tiny noise, and then closed it again. Uncertainty.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I have something to share with you, but I don’t want you to be angry with me.”
“No one ever wants their sensei to be angry with them. It tends to lead to dire punishments, like being forced to read Candide.”
She smiled nervously, unsure if I was joking. “Right. Well. In the interest of not hiding anything…”
“Yes?”
“My stepfather is an oil executive in Kansas.”
“I know, you’ve mentioned it before.”
“I hate him,” she spat, fingers tightening on the steering wheel.
“I had surmised as much. Where’s the hidden part?”
“While you were in Asgard, I underwent the Baolach Cruatan.”
That got my attention. The Baolach Cruatan was a test of courage and cunning administered to new initiates by elder Druids, and not everyone passed. Those who failed died. I hadn’t been sure when or even if it would happen to her, but the fact that she was sitting next to me meant she’d passed it. “Congratulations on your survival,” I said. It was a practice of Druidry that had made Saint Patrick’s job of converting the young much easier; as far as initiation ceremonies go, a short dunk in some cold water was a much more attractive option than an uncertain trial in which you would undoubtedly be scared shitless and perhaps die. “Who tested you?”
“Flidais and Brighid.”
