Page 76 of We Were Eternal Once

It’s not as though you fostered a healthy way to work through my anger. Instead I push it down, let it simmer, let it fester. I become gangrenous with it, turning my organs black. When I open my mouth, it is to say things just as poisonous and cruel as I feel on the inside.

And now I’ve used it against Zora, my only friend.

“No,” I admit. “It is not.”

“Who, then?” We’re walking again, a slower pace now.

Who? Indeed. I cannot tell her of you. How do I explain centuries, millennia of devotion? Of the bond that comes from someone giving you eternal life? Of opulence, of famine, of war? Most of all, I cannot admit that I love you, because that is more dangerous than being an immortal creature. This new world with a singular god at the center did not understand that I could love you so, and that you could love me back. It was forbidden, punishable by death in some places.

It would be another several centuries before you and I could ever walk the streets together, hand in hand, or kiss in public.

But we will never know that, because what you did in Paris ruined it all.

“I cannot explain,” I say at last, because too much time has passed since Zora asked the question.

“Ah, a lover, then,” she says with a knowing nod. I test the edges of her words, looking for what she doesn’t reveal. There is no wistfulness, no disappointment. I do not love Zora as I love you. You take up too much space for there to be anyone else. I wonder about others, though. I sift through her words, her expressions, trying to understand what she sees in me. Is it a hope for the romantic? It would seem not, and for that I am grateful.

“Yes, a lover,” I admit.

“I’m afraid I’ve nothing to say to that. I know nothing of love.”

“Yet you know of sadness?”

“They are opposing emotions,” Zora says.

“They are not. Love does not erase unpleasant emotions. Sometimes it makes those unpleasant emotions all the more visceral.”

“Perhaps it’s best I do not know love,” Zora says. “I cannot imagine my unpleasant emotions with more depth.”

“I cannot imagine you with an unpleasant emotion.”

“Trust, Melinoë, I am capable of such depth. It is not just my personality that is unpleasant. I have my own moments of…melancholy.”

We’re near the garden in the Palais. It is quiet at night, filled mostly with robbers or women of the night. I fear neither, and I sit on a bench alongside Zora.

“My family…” Zora starts, then stops. She considers her words carefully, mulling them over. When she speaks again her voice trembles, and she swallows to steady it. It does not work.

“They are complicated. My entire family for generations has all worked the same trade. It’s a dangerous one, and not a very lucrative one, at that. They have many jobs to keep up the family work. They think my thievery lazy and immoral.”

“Why must they keep up the trade if it taxes them so?” I ask.

“It is in our blood. For as long as anyone can remember, it is what we did. Even if we do not seek out the work, the work will find us.”

“Do you not like this work?”

“It is…” She trails off, chewing her bottom lip. I do not know this side of Zora, and I long to understand it. “It is all I know, it is how I was raised. If I reject it, who will I be? Not just an outcast to my family, but a part of me will cease to exist.”

“You do not understand where you begin and end, because you are so entangled with it?”

“Yes!” she exclaims, her light returned. “That is exactly how it feels. There is this…inevitability. This internal drive, here.” She presses against her chest, to her heart that races as she speaks. “It is my guiding force. It’s kept me and my family alive—well, mostly alive. If I ignore it, I fear there will be nothing of Zora without…” She trails off, unwilling to say the word.

“My line is dying. The work is too dangerous, and I am beginning to think that…perhaps it is wrong? No, misled? Yes, like there are pieces of knowledge my ancestors did not have, so they invented something awful to justify their positions. It makes me question everything. Who am I? Was my entire childhood, what I was raised and taught to do, built on a lie?” She sinks to the bench, her fingers toying with the cuff of her sleeve.

“Is that why you left home for Paris?”

“No—Paris taught me these truths. Before Paris, I did not believe. I had to see it with my own eyes, I think. But even as I know my parents spoke the truth, it feels like it is a half-truth. That they were not entirely truthful. Now…” She trails off, sighing.

“Have you spoken to your family about these lies?” I ask.