After hearing Adair’s story, I withdrew to my room in fright. I crawled onto the bed and tucked my knees under my chin. I was afraid to recall the things he’d told me and I tried to push them away.
Alejandro knocked, and when there was no answer, nudged the door back so he could slip in bearing a tray of tea and biscuits. He lit several candles-“You can’t sit in the dark, Lanore, it’s ghoulish”-and then placed a cup and saucer quietly at my elbow, but I wanted none of his hospitality. I pretended to look out the window, but in truth I could see nothing, still blinded by fury and despair.
“Oh my dear, don’t be so sad. I know it’s scary. I was scared when it happened to me.”
“But, Alej, what are we?” I asked, hugging the pillow to my chest.
“You are yourself, Lanore. You are not part of the magic world. You can’t pass through walls like a ghost or visit God in his heaven like an angel. We sleep and wake, eat and drink, go through our day like anyone else. The only difference is that another person might ponder, from time to time, which day will be his last. But you and I, our days will never end. We go on, bearing witness to everything around us.” He said all this dispassionately, as though the endless shuffle of days had washed all the excitement out of him. “When Adair explained what he’d done to me, I wanted to escape from him, even if it meant killing myself-the one thing I couldn’t do.
“But to lose your baby on top of it… well, it is too terrible to contemplate. Poor Lanore. Your sadness will pass, you know,” he continued in his singsong English, accented with Spanish. He took a sip of tea and then looked at me through steam rising from the cup. “Every day your past drifts farther and farther away and life with Adair grows more and more familiar. You become part of this family. Then, one day, you will remember something from your other life-a brother or a sister, a holiday, the house where you used to live, a toy you used to cherish-and you realize you no longer mourn its loss. It will seem like something from long ago. That’s when you know the change is complete.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. “How long does it take for the pain to go away?”
Alejandro lifted a lump of sugar from the bowl with a tiny pair of tongs and dropped it into his tea. “It depends on how sentimental you are. Me, I am very tenderhearted. I loved my family and missed them for ages after the change. But Dona, for instance, he probably never looked back. His family had abandoned him when he was a little boy, for being a catamite,” Alejandro said, dropping his voice to a whisper on the last few words, even though we were all sodomites in this house. “His life was full of deprivation and uncertainty. Lynchings. Starvation. Imprisonment. No, I don’t imagine he has any regrets.”
“I don’t think my pain will ever fade. My child is gone! I want my child back. I want my life back.”
“You can never have your child back, you know that,” he said gently, stroking my arm. “But why, my dear, would you want your old life back? From what you have told me, you have nothing to return to: your family threw you out. They abandoned you in your time of need. I see nothing to regret leaving behind.” Alejandro stared into me with his dark, gentle eyes, as though he could summon the answer from my heart. “In times of trouble, we often want to go back to the familiar. That will go away.”
“Well, there is one thing…,” I murmured.
He leaned forward, eager for my confession.
“A friend. I miss a particular friend.”
Alejandro was, as he’d said, a tender soul who loved nostalgia. He squeezed his eyes shut, like a cat sitting in the warmth of the sun on a windowsill, eager to drink in my story. “It’s always the people you miss the most. Tell me about this friend.”
Since I’d left St. Andrew, I tried as hard as possible not to think about Jonathan. It was beyond my ability not to think of him at all, so I allowed myself only short indulgences, such as a few minutes before falling asleep, when I’d recall the feel of his warm, flushed cheek pressed against mine, the way my spine tingled when he circled his hands around my corseted waist, claiming me for his own. It was hard enough to control my emotions when Jonathan was only a ghost on the fringes of my memory: to recall him directly was painful. “I can’t. I miss him too much,” I told Alejandro.
Alejandro leaned back. “This friend means everything to you, doesn’t he? He is the love of your life. He was the father of your child.”
“Yes,” I said. Alejandro waited for me to go on, his silence like a string tugging at me, until I obliged. “His name is Jonathan. I’ve been in love with him since we were children. Most people would say that he was too good to end up with me. His family owns the town where I lived-it’s not big or wealthy, but everyone there depends on Jonathan’s family to survive. And then there is his great beauty.” I blushed. “You must think me a terribly shallow person…”
“Not at all!” he said amicably. “No one is immune to the sway of beauty. But truly, Lanore, how beautiful could he be? Think of Dona, for instance. So striking that he enchanted one of the greatest artists in Italy. Is he more beautiful than Dona?”
“If you met Jonathan, you’d understand. He would make Dona look like a troll.”
That made Alejandro chuckle; none of us liked Dona very much-he was so vain he was nearly intolerable. “You must not let Dona hear you say that! Very well, then-what about Adair? Is he not a handsome fellow? Have you ever seen eyes like his? They are like a wolf ’s…”
“Adair has a certain charm.”
Alejandro patted my hand. “Don’t say that. You don’t know-you may.”
“I can’t imagine going home, not now. Isn’t it as Adair said in his story? How would I explain it to them?” I scoffed.
“There are ways… You couldn’t live among them again. No, that would be out of the question, but a brief visit… if you stayed only a short while…” He toyed with his lower lip, contemplative.
“Don’t raise my hopes. It’s too cruel.” Tears pressed at my eyes. “Please, Alejandro, I need to rest. I have a terrible headache.”
He pressed his fingers to my forehead briefly. “No fever… Tell me, this headache, does it feel like a constant prickling in the back of your mind?” I nodded. “Yes? Well, my dear, you’d best get used to it. That is not a headache: that is part of the gift. You are connected to Adair now.”
“Connected to Adair?” I repeated.
“There is a bond between you two, and that sensation is a reminder of that bond.” He leaned toward me conspiratorially. “Remember how I said that you were changed only in one way, that you were not magical? Well, we are a bit magical, just a little bit. Sometimes I think we are like animals, you know? You must have noticed how everything seems a little brighter, how you can hear the tiniest noise, how every odor stings so sharply at your nose? That is part of the gift: the transformation makes us
“The second thing you must know is that you will no longer feel pain. It has to do with the ability not to die, I think. You will not feel the sharpness of hunger or thirst. Oh, it takes time for the reflex, the expectation that one must eat and drink, to go away… But you could fast for weeks and not feel hunger gnawing at your stomach, or become weak and faint. You could be run over by a charging horse and feel little more than slight discomfort where you might have a broken bone, but the pain will go away in minutes as the bone heals itself. It’s as though you are now made of earth and wind, and can repair yourself at will.” His words made me shiver with recognition. “And this connection to Adair, the needling in your brain, is a reminder of this power because only he can make you like a mortal again. At his hands, and only his hands, you feel pain. But any damage he causes you to suffer will be temporary, unless he chooses otherwise. He can
I put a hand to my abdomen; he was right about pain. The muted throbbing I’d felt in my purged womb had disappeared entirely.
“He must have said as much to you. Believe him: he is your god now. You live or die at his whim. And”-his
