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“You know what I’ll have to do after the two hundred years are up.”
She nodded. “It doesn’t matter. You’re all that matters.”
“I don’t know…” I stepped away from her. “I don’t know if I want to live forever when you won’t. Even if you’re not here, with me. When Yoli won’t… Lena and Stepan, as horrible as they were to me… Hell! Not even Paz and Sariel are immortal. They’ll live for a long, long time, but not forever. And what? Will I just end up with GC and Francis until… when? Until the next apocalypse?”
“What are you saying?”
“This whole immortality thing doesn’t make sense to me.”
She was silent for a minute. She wrapped her arms around herself, and I realized that even if she wasn’t technically here, in my world, she could feel the cold. I took off my cloak and put it around her shoulders.
“What if I told you there is a way…”
I cocked an eyebrow. “A way to… what?”
“Make Yolanda immortal. Make anyone you want immortal. Me, Sariel, Paz… your father from the other dimension.”
“Your husband is not my father.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“It’s impossible.”
“What if it’s not?”
“Mom… Yolanda is human. Humans die. It’s the order of things.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I found something. Not here, not in our inter-connected universes. Somewhere far, far away. Far outside most dream jumpers’ reach.”
My heart started beating faster, but it wasn’t excitement. It was apprehension. I could feel it in my gut. She was about to say something that would send my world spinning. Again.
She pulled out something wrapped in an old newspaper. As she unrolled it, pieces of mud fell on her shoes. It was a plant.
“Do you know about Gilgamesh?”
“One of the first Grim Reapers…”
She nodded. “There’s this story about how after he served his two hundred years, he went on a quest to look for immortality. He was a hybrid, the result of the love affair between a fay and a human woman. Neither fays, nor humans are immortal, so he found he aged rather fast for his liking. He didn’t find immortality, but he found the next best thing: a plant that could keep him young forever, if he administered it regularly.”
“Did he?”
“For a while, yes. But the batch he got didn’t last forever. When he was left with not a single leaf of his life-extending plant, he went to get some more. And never came back.”
“A hybrid. Hybrids dream.”
“Yes.”
“You went there, and you found Gilgamesh’s plant.” She nodded, but even though what she was telling me should have made me dance with joy, it didn’t. On the contrary. A chill ran up my spine. “Mom, where did you find this plant? What’s this universe that’s so far, far away that most dream jumpers can’t reach it?”
She smiled mischievously. “Well, why don’t you try to guess?”
“No.”
She took the plant in her hand and held it into the dim light. “This comes from a world where there’s no life, nor death. Only existence. Eternal, unbridled existence.”
“The home world of the Great Old Ones.”
She looked into my eyes. “Exactly.”
