Unbelievable - Chapter Ninteen

Chapter Nineteen: The past is a foreign country…

Maggie was making breakfast. I suppose it was her coping mechanism for dealing with extreme emotional upset. The trouble was that I felt no remorse, no guilt at making her cry. My family had been covering things up for long enough.

I stared balefully across the table at Arun as Elyssa hovered, pacing the room, ready to intervene again, should I push too far.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that you knew who I was?’ I asked, helplessly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you knew Maggie?’

‘And what would I have said?’ he shrugged. ‘Hi, I’m over two centuries old and I used to date your Grandmother, back when she was young? You’d have run, screaming, from the room, or dismissed me as crazy. You’d never have believed… you didn’t even know your own story, then.’

‘You could have told me that, too!’ I tried to remain calm, but all of my anger was bubbling close to the surface, ready to break through at any moment, volcanic.

‘No, I couldn’t. You can’t align your mind with this stuff overnight. It’s a process of discovery, which you had to lead. You had to push at those boundaries for yourself. Think about it. Think about what you’ve been through over the last few weeks; it’s a lot to handle, and it’s taken you time to adjust.’

I hated to admit that he was right. Still, the matter of Maggie was unforgiveable.

‘You dated my Grandmother!’ I spat. ‘How could you?’

He laughed. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Neo! You didn’t exist back then. Your mother didn’t even exist. It’s not as if you brought me home from school one day, introduced us and then it happened! It was decades ago!’

‘But you still love her!’ I accused. ‘I could see it, just now. Your little reunion!’

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I do, very deeply, very passionately. But it’s a hopeless cause; she pushed me away once, fearful that she would age and people would ask questions. She wouldn’t leave her life here and come with me, to live far away from society, where we could be happy. But then, she wouldn’t leave with Nathan, either.’ The thought seemed to console him.

‘Don’t you see?’ Elyssa prompted, softly. ‘It’s not you, or him, or love… Neo is right. It’s the thought of giving up her hold on humanity that’s the problem. Deep down, she still sees herself as predominantly human. And, compared to us, and Nathan, I believe she is.’

‘Nature versus nurture?’ I mused. ‘I wonder how her Mother brought her up?’

‘Probably the same way your Mother raised you,’ Elyssa pointed out. ‘The way she herself raised your Mother. Living as a human, trying to be normal; afraid of being caught out; afraid of fulfilling a destiny she did not understand or want.’

‘And what about me?’ I was beginning to understand, even if I couldn’t accept it and forgive. ‘I don’t have that choice, do I? For generations, it seems the White women have lived this way, masquerading as humans. But I don’t get to continue the pattern; I’m the one that changes it. And what of my own children? Will they be like me? I suppose they’ll have to be…’

Arun and Elyssa exchanged a long, deep look of anguish.

‘More secrets?’ I hissed.

Elyssa crouched down beside me, once again taking my hand. This time, I felt calmer the second her skin touched mine; I was beginning to associate the gesture with peace.

‘Neo,’ she started, exchanging another furtive glance with Arun. ‘There’s something you need to understand.’

I stared into her eyes, wondering how old she was, what she had experienced in her life. It was interesting that Elyssa should be the calm, collected one now when, at first, she had seemed like a whirlwind…

‘We don’t believe that I am capable of having children.’ She spoke slowly, the words dripping, slow like honey, across my comprehension. ‘You see: I’ve never been pregnant.’

I absorbed the words, savouring their quality, sweetness tinged with acid.

‘Have you ever slept with someone inhuman or immortal?’ my question was abrupt, to the point.

She exhaled, bit her lip, then proceeded.

‘Arun.’

He lowered his head, looking slightly shameful.

‘For years and years, we were lovers.’ She confessed.

‘After he tried to leave you for dead?’ I was astonished.

‘We discovered each other, you see. There were only two of us. Two of us that were hard and cold and immortal, forever destined to be eighteen. No more death. No more human lives ruined. It was obvious: we were meant for each other.’

I laughed. ‘And to think, when I first met you, I thought you might have been related! Brother and sister even, or cousins, perhaps. You were so alike… and yet, different. You just seemed to go together, somehow.’

‘Yes we did.’ She sounded wistful. Arun’s head was still lowered. I caught a tension in the air.

‘What happened?’ I inquired, carefully.

‘He found out about you. I didn’t know that he came back here, that he watched Maggie. One day, he confessed it. We moved back to the area. There was a rift forming between us; something slipping away. He’d known about your Mother, of course, but then he discovered that Maggie had a granddaughter. So I started coming with him on his missions. We even watched you, years ago, on one of your summer visits. He was jealous; the way that Maggie gave you her undivided attention. I suppose she must have given it to him, once.’

‘Explain.’ I wanted more.

‘There was something about you: you were different, somehow. I recognised it. Arun was oblivious, of course; he had eyes only for Maggie. I told him, but he dismissed it, wouldn’t listen.’

‘You were so right,’ Arun raised his head, gazed at Elyssa in a sort of admiring way. ‘She was the Third, even back then.’

‘After that, we fell out. You see, I could feel the way he still wanted Maggie. I wouldn’t be second best.’

‘But you love him, don’t you?’ I wasn’t sure how she could handle it. No jealousy?

‘That’s just it, Neo. I don’t. Not in that way; I never did. I just assumed that we were meant, because there were only two of us.’ She sighed. ‘You can’t force love. I’ve been in love, and there’s no way you can survive as… well, a vegetarian, on affection alone, when you’re used to prime, rump steak… if you catch the metaphor?’

I nodded. ‘So what now?’

‘We go back to school,’ Arun laughed. ‘You need to finish your A-Levels, spend time with your boyfriend and your friends while you still can. Elyssa and I… we can wait a few years. We can wait for you. We’ll wait with you.’

Maggie appeared, laden with plates of scrambled egg on hot toast. We hastily assumed our places, starving.

‘I think that’s a fantastic idea,’ she agreed. ‘Because you’re right, Neona. Your life isn’t going to be able to be like mine, like your Mother’s, or like my Mother’s, or those that came before her. You’re going to have to live a different way. But it won’t be alone. You’ll have company, at least. These two will look after you. The past, Neona, is a foreign country. We’ll leave it be. I no longer speak the language, and a different regime is in charge.’ Maggie ground fresh black pepper over her eggs.

‘Stop talking in riddles!’ I demanded.

‘All I mean is: you can’t go back. You must look forwards. Forget the past, and all that happened there. It’s too late to change things, now. Worry about tomorrow.’ She passed the pepper.

I ground slowly, the carved wooden pepper mill feeling uncannily like a twisted, brass pole. The carousel was spinning again; slowly this time, but spinning nonetheless. There was an inevitability about things. A new light had been cast; well, actually, a whole bloody Christmas parade of lights had been cast on everything and everyone involved: the car crash; my upbringing; the way that I was evolving; my Grandmother and her fixed ways; Elyssa and Arun; my Mother and Father…

Was I content, now, to just return to normal life? To let school become the most important thing, knowing as I did that the future it was shaping me for was an impossible dream? It was just over three weeks until my seventeenth birthday: eighteen hovered, ominously, only a year away. The last year of my human life lay before me. I’d better make the most of it.