infection-my baby had been taken away from me so thoughtlessly. “What did you do… how did you keep me from dying? You said you were not a doctor…”
He rose from the bed and slipped on a silk robe. He grabbed my wrist, and before I knew what was happening, whisked me out of the room and down the stairs. “What has happened to you cannot be explained. It can only be-shown.”
He dragged me to the common rooms in the back of the house. As we passed Dona in the hall, Adair snapped his fingers at him and said, “Come with us.” He took me to the room behind the kitchen where the giant cauldrons used to cook for crowds and the other pantry oddities were kept: fish grills, shaped to fit a fish like an iron maiden; cake tins and forms; and the half barrel of water drawn from the cistern for household use. The water glinted, black and cold, in the barrel.
Adair shoved me into Dona’s arms and gestured to the barrel with a toss of his head. Dona rolled his eyes as he yanked up the sleeve on his right arm and then, as swiftly as a housewife snatching up the chicken that is to be the evening’s supper, he grabbed the back of my neck and plunged my head into the water. I had no time to prepare and swallowed a lungful of water immediately. By the strength of his grip, I could tell he didn’t mean to let me go. All I could do was thrash and struggle in the hope I might knock the barrel over or that he’d relent out of pity. Why had Adair saved me from infection and a fever if he meant to have me drowned now?
He shouted at me; I heard his voice through the splashing but couldn’t make out his words. A long stretch of time seemed to pass, but I knew this must be an illusion. The dying were said in their panic to experience each of their last seconds clearly and distinctly. But I had depleted the air in my lungs; surely death would come at any moment. I hung from Dona’s hand in the water, numb with cold and terror, waiting for my end. Wanting to join the lost child, wanting-after all that had happened to me-to give up. To be at peace.
Dona yanked my head from the barrel and water coursed from my hair, down my face, and over my shoulders, spattering all over the floor. He held me upright.
“So, what do you think?” Adair asked.
“You tried to kill me just now!”
“But you didn’t drown, did you?” He handed Dona a towel, which he used to wipe his wet arm, disdainfully. “Dona held you under for a good five minutes, and here you stand, alive. The water didn’t kill you. And why do you think that is?”
I blinked the frigid water from my eyes. “I-don’t know.”
His grin was like a skeleton’s. “That’s because you’re immortal. You can never die.”
I crouched by the fire in Adair’s bedchamber. He gave me a glass and a bottle of brandy, and lay on his bed while I stared at the flames and avoided the hospitality of his alcohol. I didn’t want to believe him and I didn’t want anything he might give me. If I couldn’t kill him for taking my baby from me, then I wanted to run away from him and out of the house. Again, however, fear kept me from thinking clearly, and the last shreds of my common sense warned me that I shouldn’t leave. I had to hear him out.
Next to the bed was a curious instrument, with tubes and chambers made of brass and glass. I now know it to be a hookah, but at the time it was only an exotic contraption that bellowed sweet smoke. Adair drew on the pipe and exhaled a long stream toward the ceiling, until his eyes grew glassy and his limbs were languid.
“Do you understand now?” he asked. “You are no longer mortal. You are beyond life and death. You cannot die.” He offered the hookah’s mouthpiece to me, then pulled it back when I didn’t take it. “It doesn’t matter how someone might try to kill you-neither bow nor rifle, knife nor poison, fire nor water. A mound of earth piled on top of you. Neither disease nor famine.”
“How can that be?”
He took another long draft on the pipe, holding in its narcotic smoke for a moment before releasing it in a thick cloud. “How this came to be, I cannot tell you. I’ve thought on it, prayed on it, tried to dream on it using all manner of drugs. No answer has come to me. I can’t explain it and have come to stop looking for answers.”
“You’re saying you cannot die?”
“I’m saying I’ve been alive for hundreds of years.”
“Who in God’s universe is immortal?” I asked of myself. “Angels are immortal.”
Adair snorted. “Always the angels, always God. Why is it that when one hears a voice speak to them, they always assume it is God talking?”
“Are you saying it’s the work of the devil?”
He scratched his flat stomach. “I’m saying I have searched for answers, and no voice has spoken to me. Neither God nor Satan has taken the trouble to explain to me how this-miracle-fits into his plans. No one has commanded me to do his bidding. From this, I can only deduce that I am no one’s minion. I have no master. We are all immortal-Alejandro, Uzra, and the rest. I have made all of you, understand?” Another long draw on the pipe, a gurgle of water, and his booming voice lowered. “You have transcended death.”
“Please stop saying that. You’re frightening me.”
“You will get used to this, and very soon, you’ll never be frightened again. There will be nothing to be frightened of. There is only one rule for you to follow now, one person you must obey, and that person is me. Because I have your soul now, Lanore. Your soul and your life.”
“I must obey you now? Does that mean you are God?” I snorted, too, being as brazen as I felt I could be with him.
“The God you were raised on has given you up. Do you remember what I said before you received the gift? You are my possession now and forever. I
By then, I had let him lead me to the bed and didn’t protest as he lay beside me. He fed me the mouthpiece and stroked my damp hair as I sucked in the heavy fumes. The narcotic wrapped around me, cradled me, and my fear collapsed like an exhausted child. Now that I was worn down and sleepy, Adair was almost tender. “I have no explanation to give you, Lanore, but there is a story. I’ll tell you that story,
NINETEEN
As soon as Adair saw the stranger, he knew with the unmistakable chill of premonition that the old man had come for him.
The end of the day was the time when they celebrated, the nomadic laborers with whom Adair’s family traveled. As night descended, they built giant campfires to enjoy the one piece of the day they could call their own. Their long hours working in the fields were over and so they gathered to share food and drink and entertain one another. His uncle would not yet be drunk and so would play folk tunes on his peasant’s violin, accompanying Adair’s mother and the other women as they sang. Someone would bring a tambourine, another would bring a balalaika. Adair sat with his whole family, his five brothers and two sisters, along with the older brothers’ wives. His happiness that night was complete when he saw, on the far side of the leaping fire, Katarina approach the circle with her family.
He and his family were wanderers, as were Katarina’s family and everyone in the caravan. Once upon a time they had been serfs to a Magyar lord, but he had deserted them, leaving them to bandits. They fled from the villages in their wagons and had lived in their wagons ever since, following the harvest as itinerant workers, digging ditches, tending fields, taking whatever work they could find. The Magyar and Romanian kingdoms were fighting then, and there were too few Magyar nobles spread over the countryside to protect the vagabonds, should they even be inclined.
Still, it hadn’t been so long ago that they had been forced from their home that Adair couldn’t remember what it was like to sleep inside a house at night, to have that small bit of security. His brothers Istvan and Radu had
