“Had you asked, I couldn’t have lied. I can withhold information, but I can’t straight up lie.”
Niahm shakes her head again. “So you can lie, just not when you’re directly answering a question.”
“Nor when I’m volunteering information,” I say. She looks doubtful. “I didn’t expect to love you, Niahm. I knew I was bound tightly, especially since it was so fast. Love, though, should never have come into the equation. I personally don’t know any other immortals who have loved their bind, though there are some who are rumored to. Even if I weren’t bound to you, Niahm, I would still love you.”
She sighs.
“This is all so weird and confusing.”
“I know,” I say. “Imagine being me, thinking I was dead, then thinking it was a miracle that I was alive, never suspecting what I had become. Eventually it became impossible not to notice that I was not aging, even as my wife grew old.”
“What?” Niahm shoots to her feet, at the same time I realize what I’ve said. “You’re married?”
I quickly gain my feet, mentally beating myself for my usual stupidity.
“Of course not,” I say then qualify, “Not anymore.”
“What does that mean?” she demands, hands on hips.
I remind myself of my newfound resolution to not withhold information from her, no matter how much I’d rather not share this with her.
“Can we sit down again?” I say, indicating the grass. She seems about to refuse, so I say, “It’s a long story.”
She debates internally—it’s as if I can watch the entire argument she has with herself while I wait. Finally, she drops back down. I slowly join her, take a breath, and begin.
Chapter 42
Ireland, 1563
Sorley Ó Clúmháin swung his axe down in a final, powerful arc. The blade remained buried in the stump as the two smaller pieces of wood fell evenly to the side. He rubbed his bicep before bending to retrieve the pieces. He added them to the rest, tying the twine tightly before hefting the entire bunch over his right shoulder. He leaned forward against the weight, hoping it would be enough to keep her while he was gone.
When he arrived at their small hut, he neatly arranged the wood against it. He went inside to see her as she squatted in front of the fire, stirring the pot of soup. She turned as he entered, a wide smile lighting her face.
“A ghra mo chroí, Padraig,” she said as he pulled her into his arms for a thorough kiss. She was the only one who called him by his middle name.
“I’ll miss ye, wife.”
“As I’ll miss ye,” she said. “At least ye won’ hafta worra’ for me as I wi’ worra for ye.”
Sorley shook his head sadly. He wanted nothing more than to stay in their little hut, raising babies—though he was beginning to wonder if that was a possibility. They’d been wed two years, and still no bairn had blessed them.
“Go now,” she commanded, “before I refuse to let ye.”
He scooped up his small pack and slung it over his shoulder, the weight much less than his previous load. With his sword strapped to his side, and his battle axe in hand, he began the long walk, glancing back once at the edge of the forest. He had the sudden feeling he might never see this place—or his beloved wife—again.
“Go dté tú slán,” she called. Sorley swallowed over the lump that had formed in his throat as he lifted his axe in farewell.
The battle had been raging for nearly half a year. Sorley was cold, wet, hungry, and exhausted beyond what any man should have to withstand. The fact that every man within eyesight shared the same misery stayed his tongue from complaint. At least he wasn’t wounded—much. He dipped the filthy rag into the water that wasn’t much cleaner and retied it around his thigh, not looking too closely at the slash the English scum had put into him three days prior.
He downed a mug of brew, cringing at the bitter taste. He hadn’t had anything of substance to fill his belly for too long. Weakness dragged at him.
“Deifir! Deifir! Siad ag teacht!”
Sorley jumped to his feet at the warning cry and bolted from the thatched hut housing the wounded before the words had really registered. His sword had been lost a fortnight past, so he ran toward the fray, axe raised high as the first Englishman came into view. With a cry upon his lips, he swung his weapon down.
Pain, deep within his side, roused Sorley from his sleep. He didn’t remember laying down. He got his fists beneath him and pushed himself slowly away from the icy wet ground. He must’ve been exhausted as he didn’t even have his thin blanket over him. When he gained his knees, he lifted his head and froze at the sight before him.
Men lay slaughtered as far as the eye could see, the ground stained red. Not just men—Irishmen. Men he’d been fighting side-by-side with for so long. He glanced to his right to see FitzGerald, his closest mate, lying with his eyes wide, the gash in his neck telling why. Sorley’s stomach heaved at the sight, his empty stomach having nothing to expel, his gut wrenching sobs and loud wailing cries reaching for the heavens.
He pushed away from FitzGerald, stumbling over the dead man to his left. He refused to look and see who it was. He stumbled across the massive field, his anguish growing at each man he passed, their numbers seemingly endless.
Three days later he crested the hill above his thatched hut. He dropped to his knees at the sight of the thin tendril of smoke rising from the chimney. It felt like lifetimes since he’d last crested this ridge. Overcome with emotion, he couldn’t move, couldn’t stand and make the last three hundred meters it would take to put him back into her arms.
The door to the hut pushed open from within and Sorley’s stomach lurched at the sight of her walking out into the yard with a bucket. She walked over to the edge of the river, dumping the contents, then refilling it with clean water. She turned back toward the hut, stopping to stretch her back before picking the bucket up again. The flatness of her belly was obvious even from this distance, and Sorley was suffused with a mixture of both regret and relief.
As she walked back to the hut she glanced up to where Sorley knelt. In panic she dropped the bucket and ran inside. He painfully pushed himself to his feet and began the long walk toward his home. Moments later she emerged again, axe raised high. Sorley groaned with a mixture of amusement and exasperation as she came his way. Did she really think her questionable skills with the heavy weapon would protect her?
“Who are ye?” she called. “State yer name, now.” Sorley wanted to call to her, take the fear from her face, but words locked within his throat. “Me ‘usband will be right behind me, so I tell ye again: state yer name.”
“Grá,” was all he managed. Her face changed at the sound of his voice.
“Padraig?” Her voice was hesitant, disbelieving.
“Aye.”
She stepped cautiously closer. Sorley knew how he looked, six months without a shave or haircut, thin and emaciated from the constant hunger, his clothing hanging like rags, covered with blood.
As she reached him, she bent down, axe still raised in preparation, and peered into his face. As she caught sight of his unusual eyes, her own widened. She gasped and flung the axe to the side, launching herself at him.
“Padraig!” she screamed, her enthusiasm knocking him back. It was only with great effort that he was able to keep them from falling to the ground. “A chuisle mo chroí. Buíochas le Dia. Fáilte ar ais, céad míle fáilte, mo shíorghrá.”
Sorley simply held her, crushing her against his chest as tears of gratitude slid down his face.
Chapter 43
Niahm
I have no words as Sam tells his story. It’s as if he’s telling me a fairy tale, something not real, and yet the emotion on his face as he speaks of the fighting, of leaving his... wife... and then returning to her when he should have been dead, speaks of the truthfulness of his words.
His wife.
Immortal.
; I hug my knees to my chest. I feel as if I’ve been lifted out of reality and plopped firmly into an alternate reality full of pain and fantasy. I wonder idly if I can find my way back to my reality, if my parents will be there waiting, and Sam and Jean will be nothing more than my imagination.
“For several years we lived hap—” He cuts himself off with a glance my way. “We lived gratefully, without knowing what I was. I stayed away from the fighting. I felt that I had done my duty and that God had spared me for a reason, among all those men who’d died around me. The wars raged on, especially when the Deasmumhain—uh, the Desmond’s, began their rebellions. But I didn’t care about politics anymore, I just wanted to stay home and raise children, and try to erase the horrors of war from my mind.”
“Children?” I gasp. His tortured gaze comes to mine.
“We didn’t have children. I could no longer have them once I was immortal, but of course I didn’t know that at the time.” I feel the suffocating panic beginning to rise again at his words. He can’t have children? I manage to push the panic back to a manageable place.
“You can’t have children? Ever?”
“No, I can’t,” he says, watching me closely at the disclosure of this information. I can’t decide if I’m more upset for him for this loss... or if this should be the deciding factor for me of what to do about him. I always knew I’d get married and have kids. If I stay with Sam, I won’t have babies, or even anything resembling a normal life. I can’t think about that right now. It’s too much on top of everything else.
“So, when did you... know?” I ask.
He looks away again, lost in his memories, and it occurs to me that he’s lived a whole lifetime—several lifetimes—before now. He isn’t seventeen.
“I can’t really pinpoint an exact when. There just came a time when it became clear that she was aging, and I wasn’t. We went to see my parents when they were quite old, because I hadn’t seen them for many years.” He pushes to his feet, and I jump involuntarily at the abrupt movement. He paces back and forth in front of me. “They thought I was a ghost, an evil spirit. They called me the devil.” I wince at the deep hurt behind his words.
“What did you do?” I breathe.
“I convinced them I was my own son.” He laughs, but there is no humor in the sound. “They believed me, or at least convinced themselves that that was the truth. We returned home after a time. We lived far from anyone, so it wasn’t that hard to keep the secret, even if we didn’t understand it.”
“Then how did you know? I mean, didn’t you just think you weren’t aging?”
He looks at me again, and I can see a flush of humiliation climb his cheeks.
“After she... died,” his voice catches on the word, and I’m filled with a mixture of deep sympathy for his pain, and burning jealousy that she can inspire such feeling from him, even now. “After she died, I—” He swallows, but seems determined to tell me. “I tried to kill myself.”
I can’t help the small intake of breath as the remembrance of him turning the gun on himself in the motel room invades my mind, and panic tries to push its way forward again.
“It didn’t work, obviously, no matter how many times I tried, no matter how many ways.” He sounds bitter. “After some time, I realized that I couldn’t die, though I didn’t have a word for what I was.”
He comes and sits down near me again.
“What did you do after that?”
He takes a deep breath, and says, “I’ll tell you if you want me to, Niahm. I’ll tell you everything.” He looks away from me, a flush stealing up his cheeks. “I did a lot of things during that time that I’m not proud of. I was angry—no, I was furious. I didn’t know why I couldn’t die, which was what I wanted more than anything. I’d rather not give you the details,” he turns to me, “but I will if you ask it of me.”
I think about his words. Part of me wants to know, is desperate to know, but a bigger part knows that everyone has secrets, things they are ashamed of, things they don’t want anyone to know, ever—me included. So I decide not to ask.
“You refer to her as ‘she.’ Your... wife, I mean. What was her name?”
He hesitates as he gazes at the stream. I’m beginning to think he won’t tell me when he looks directly at me. “Niahm.”
“Yes?”
The slightest smile lifts his mouth. “No. I mean, that was her name as well. Her name was Niahm.”
Shock filters through me. I examine it, trying to decide if I should be angry or not. Is that why he was drawn to me?
As if sensing what I’m thinking, he shakes his head. “It has nothing to do with you, Niahm. I knew I was bound to you before I knew your name. It was a shock finding out you shared her name. I didn’t expect to find anyone here with such a name.”
I remember back to when he first knew my name, how I’d thought he was saying I couldn’t have such an exotic name. Really he was simply stunned to find it out.
“Do you think of her when you say my name?” I ask, bracing myself for the pain that will come if his answer is yes.
“No.” At my skeptical look, he says, “I can’t lie to you, Niahm. I don’t think of her. I did the first time I saw your name, of course. That’s only natural. But you are completely different than she was. And...” He leans slightly toward me, one hand reaching out but then dropping before touching me. “She never meant as much to me as you do. It might sound heartless, but it’s true. I loved her. I won’t deny that. But with her it wasn’t the same as it is with you.”
Not sure what to say, I blurt the first thing that pops into my head. “It probably just feels different because you’ve been alone for so long.”
“No, Niahm,” he says, shaking his head firmly. “I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel for you. Not my wife. Not my parents. Not even Shane. Only you.”
His words cause a funny tightening in my heart, but I’m still not ready for any of this... no matter how much I want to lean into his arms right now.
“How did you find Shane?” I ask, clearing my sore throat and changing the subject.
He watches me for a few moments, probably trying to figure out how I can let his words pass without reply. I feel a little bad about that, but I just can’t respond to him yet.
“He found me,” he says. “And a good thing it was, too. He saved me from myself. He’d been around for quite a bit longer than me, and knew what we were. He’d been trying to keep track of members of our family in case he found another who was immortal. It took him so long to find me because I had been so rural, and then had been on the move after realizing what I was.” He pulls his knees up, looping his arms loosely around his legs, looking at me with puzzlement on his face.
“What?” I ask defensively.
“You need to know...” He trails off, contemplating. Then, making up his mind, he begins again. “You need to know that there are immortals out there who aren’t... who like the fact that they can’t die, who feel like they are above the law, I guess, above morality or consequence for their actions.”
I shudder at his words as I recall my thoughts the night before.
“And there are others—mortals—who hunt people like me.”
His statement, given so nonchalantly, stuns me.
“What? What do you mean, hunt you?”
He blows out a breath.
“The call themselves the Sentinels. They feel, rightly so, that we are an abomination, and that it’s their duty to remove us all from the earth.”
I just stare at him, trying to process his words. There are people trying to kill immortals? Deliberately trying to kill Sam?
“But... I thought you said you can’t die.”
He looks away from me, watching the stream that flows quickly by.
“I can’t kill myself. There are ways,” he says, “that they know of. I can be killed, we all can.” He looks directly at me. “Please don’t ask me to describe how they can kill us.” I shake my head quickly, having no desire t
o hear of whatever horrible thing might have to be done to kill someone who can survive a gunshot. “They don’t care if you’re evil, or if you’re just trying to live a decent life.”
His words recall his earlier statement.
“What did you mean when you said they rightly believe that you’re an abomination?”
He shakes his head, tucking his chin against his chest. Just when I think he won’t answer, his voice comes, low and quiet.
“How can I be anything but, Niahm? How can I be one of God’s creatures, when I’m unnatural? I can only belong to the devil.”
As angry as I am at Sam, as shocked as I am by his having been married, I can’t let his statement go.
“Sam.” I reach out and lay my hand on his arm, and his gaze moves to my hand before meeting my eyes. “I don’t know why you are the way you are, but if there’s one thing I do know, it’s that you are not of the devil. You are good, and kind, and pure. I don’t believe for one second that you aren’t one of Gods children. Not you, not Shane... not even Jean.”
He watches me closely, and while I can see that my words don’t change his mind, I can see that he knows I’m not just trying to make him feel better.
“You honestly believe that.” It’s not a question, but a statement. His arm under my hand is warm even through his sleeve. I wonder if that’s some kind of immortal thing, how warm his hands and now arm always seem to be. Just as I move to pull back, he covers my hand with his own. “I’m sorry, Niahm, so sorry for the brainless way in which I went about telling you this. I didn’t fully consider how my actions would hurt you. At my age, I should have known better, I should have taken the time to think it through more thoroughly. Instead, I acted like the rash, reckless seventeen year old I pretend to be. And because of that, you’re suffering.”
Tears prick my eyes, and I don’t know whether I want to punch him, or throw myself into his arms. I don’t do either.
“If I could reverse time, I would take it back. Not the telling you,” he clarifies, “I would still do that. I’ve wanted to tell you for some time now. But I would definitely do things differently.”