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He nodded. “Very different from what you’re used to, I assume.”
“Extremely. But not in a bad way. It’s much more peaceful here.”
“Did Adam ever speak to you of his great-uncle Isaiah?”
He’d mentioned a lot of names since arriving on the farm, but that wasn’t one she recognized. “I don’t think so.”
“He was my uncle, brother to my father, Ezekiel. An impressive man.”
Adam had mentioned his grandfather several times. He often sought advice from him and apparently, he was part of the Council of Elders who made the rules. But she was pretty sure he never mentioned him having a brother.
“Adam mentioned taking me to meet his older relatives.”
“You won’t meet Isaiah. He was lost to our kind decades ago.”
She should have caught on that he’d been speaking in past tense, but she hadn’t been expecting an immortal to die. Her mind immediately wondered how.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Adam tells me you’ve recently lost your mother. I, too, am sorry.”
Her heart still stung over condolences. “Thank you.”
“The grief of losing my uncle pained me for a long time. The ache is still there, but somehow, I’ve learned to live with it like an appendage. I doubt the loss ever fully disappears.”
She doubted it as well. While she’d come to carry her grief without complaint or tears, the weight never left her. Sometimes it got lighter and sometimes it felt crushing, but it was always there.
“Will you tell me about him?”
Jonas rocked slowly, the planks of the porch giving a soothing, broken in moan with each sway. “He was kind, generous, and patient with the children. Adored by all. When I think back to my youth, he held an almost mythological presence in my life, sort of like the man you English call Saint Nicholas.”
“How did you lose him?”
His eyes never left the black horizon. “One day, he fell from a horse. It’s rare for our kind to suffer clumsiness, but he’d lost his balance and the fall knocked him unconscious. He was out for days, which is also rare. When he came to, his motor skills were impaired and his agility...”
“I thought your kind...”
“It’s true we have accelerated healing abilities, but when we are called, a sort of cellular mutation takes place, faster in some than others. Every immortal is different. Our human nature becomes diseased and our animal nature takes over.”
“Darwinism.” When he gave her a confused look, she explained, “It’s the natural selection of every species. No matter what we are, we all evolve in order to survive.”
Jonas gave a solemn nod. “Survival is the last remaining instinct.” His gaze focused on a faraway memory. “I had never witnessed such an extreme change in one of our kind. He could hardly walk some days and I waited for him to heal, but as time went on his condition only degenerated. It pained me to see him suffer. It pained me to see him go. But I knew by then, it was necessary.”
“How old was he when this started happening?” Her mind immediately went into fact checking mode. Maybe their definition for immortality was actually just an expanded life and a strong immune system.
“Isaiah was quite old, one of the first to settle here after living several lifetimes in Europe.”
His gaze remained pinned to the distant mountains, but he stopped rocking. Anna stopped as well. When he spoke again, his voice dropped to a near whisper.
“Abilene prepared a basket of food one morning. I was to take it to my uncle and check that he was managing on his own. He lived alone, without children or a mate, and since the fall he’d kept to himself more than usual.”
His fingers tightened on the arms of the chair, his voice sounding slightly haunted by whatever memory he saw.
“When I entered his dwelling, the house reeked of death. Moans echoed from the bedroom. I ran up the stairs and found him unconscious, tossing and turning as if in pain. Our kind only dream when we’re called. But these were not the sounds of a man receiving a blessing. These were the pained cries of a man without hope.”
Her skin prickled. “Were they nightmares?”
“No. He described them as glimpses of heaven.”
She didn’t understand. “But you said he made pained cries of a man without hope.”
“Sometimes love is cruel. When we covet something unattainable, the heart suffers a great deal. For reasons we don’t know, my uncle could not get to his mate. Perhaps he lost time, waiting for his injuries to heal. The signs were there for him to follow, but not enough. He went mad with his need to find her.”
He let out a long breath. “He became a recluse, forced inside by the sun as his body and appetite dwindled. Eventually, even a swallow of water would make him violently ill.”
Her mind flashed to a peach hospital cup, the straw pressed to her mother’s dry lips as she coughed and hacked, trying to keep a mere sip down. Her pain and struggle had always been so excruciating to watch. And she’d been helpless.
