An Evening at Joe's (10 page)

I found my way along a traveled path to a hidden settlement that would later be called Petra, the next place I settled, and began to live with the Nabataeans who camped there. I was so angry with the Bedouins for sending me away, that I swore an oath to return and kill them all for what they had done. That anger took a long time to disappear from my heart. While those years passed, I learned how to carve out caves from the sheer stone walls that protected their camp's location. I lived and grew stronger as I worked each day; I thought about who I was and what I was supposed to do about it. It eventually became apparent to everyone that I was not aging, and I knew that I could not stay there any longer.

It was in this way that I became aware that I was never going to be able to live among other people for very long. My life had become a journey between the cracks of civilisations in which I did not fit. I had already survived longer than anyone I had ever heard of; lived in many strange places and soon found myself wondering if there was anyone else like me out there. I was alone, confused and angry at a world that I didn't understand, so I resolved to continue searching in the hope of finding a family again, somewhere that I belonged.

As I made my way among Mortals, I noticed that certain people I met gave off a unique feeling; as though I somehow knew them: I could actually sense their presence and assumed that they could feel mine. We never took each other by surprise. At this time I was, by my best estimation, 603 years old, and the world had changed much for me in that time. I began to encounter more of these strangers who recognised me in this new way, one in particular—Elijah—with whom I finally broached the subject of this strange ability. He spoke of a man named Menahem, who told him a tale that attempted to explain much of what I felt. He was the first of those strangers that we eventually came to call the Ancient Ones: Menahem had lived for 750 years. Apparently we were far from alone. He had met many others like us, sprinkled throughout the known world, with some of them speaking languages that he did not recognise. They had each died at least once and returned from that event to the astonishment of their families. Menahem didn't know how to account for this ability, but he was confident that there was a simple answer, if we could just learn how to see it. He said that some of our kind that he discovered had inspired in him an immense feeling of anger, even though they had just met for the first time. He said that he had wanted to kill these ones as soon as he laid eyes upon them, for no reason that he could explain. There had also been a woman he met who made him feel this strange sense of recognition, but he had not wanted to do battle with her. Instead, they had talked of their experiences in an attempt to make sense of them, just as Elijah and I were doing now. Menahem mentioned that this woman had once encountered a man who she sensed before seeing him, whom she saw fall from a great height and have his head torn away from his body, an injury that he did not awaken from. She felt that she had absorbed something from him immediately after he died in this way, and seemed to understand many things about him and his life that had been unknown to her. She had stayed with his body, waiting for him to return to life again, but he did not.

From this information, Menahem surmised that we had to protect our heads from such damage in order to survive, for it was the only example of an accident to one of us that had resulted in a permanent death. Elijah and I did not know what to make of this information, yet.

In order to avoid more displays of alarm from Mortals, I continued to wander from village to village, never putting down any roots. But at the same time I started to resent these Mortals for their fear. I wondered if they so fear those of us who cannot die because their entire existence is so wrapped up in preserving their own, brief lives. Not that Immortals are fearless, but we certainly don't share their immediate concerns. I found that I was feeling increasingly alienated, less and less as though we had anything more than our bodily form in common. Certainly I preferred the company of other Immortalsl to Mortals; at least I had figured out how to use my ability to recognise them, and that was slight comfort to me.

Soon I had my first real battle with another Immortal. Everyone knew how to use a sword and I fortuitously recalled the thing that Menahem had spoken of while I was in combat with a particularly unlikeable Immortal named Joseph. During our confrontation, I recalled the way to stop him for good and decided to take advantage of his weakened condition in an entirely new manner.

Often had my fights with another Immortal ended with their death, but I had always quit at that point, never engaging beyond it. The fact that I had proved able to defeat them had always been enough to discourage a future engagement with any given individual, for I had grown quite adept at these acts of aggression. This time however, hatred was boiling inside of me, so when he fell to his knees I tried this new idea: I swung my sword deliberately at his neck. His head came off of his body in a single clean sweep. As I stood over those two separate pieces of him, amazed by the simplicity of the deed, I felt a great trembling arrive from all around me. It was as though the earth beneath my feet was shaking and rolling. I was grabbed, as if by another being, and thrown to the ground where I was thrashed about as though by a great wind. I became like an empty vessel having something flow into me with tremendous ferocity. My thoughts were confused and my memories did not seem to be my own; there were conflicts, experiences, pain and doubts swirling through my being. Visions of places I had never attended and people I had never known came into my mind, along with some things that were known to me, but not in any perspective that seemed familiar. Then, as suddenly as it began, the tumult around me ceased and my mind was quiet again. I recognised my own thoughts and collected myself and my weapon, leaving that place as abruptly as I could.

I went back to my home and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep from which I awoke feeling energised. Certain that I had been hexed by some type of magic or sorcery, I undertook to quit that place.

As I traveled far away over those next few days, I considered the possible implications of that event. I felt as though I had incorporated Joseph into myself. This was rather disconcerting to say the least, for my dislike of him was intense.

I wandered towards an inland sea that I had heard about from other travelers, where I sought solace from the thoughts that were swirling in my mind. I could not understand these thoughts of someone else's existence that felt like they were now my own. Something strange had been added to me, and I felt stronger than ever before. However, it would be some time before I would attempt such a manoeuvre again.

In the next location that I settled, my distaste for Mortals continued to grow even more vehement. I had started to inwardly reflect their distrust of me back at them. That is when I first met other Immortals who shared my sentiments for these despised beings.

Kronos was one of the new friends I met who shared my distaste for Mortals. He felt that they were in our way and should not be accorded any sympathy at all. It was his friend Silas who first had the idea that we could use our power over them to extract a price. Caspian was the last to join our little band. We got along quite well, the four of us, fusing together over the concept of acting like lords of the Earth. It was agreed that we had been given this control over life and death for a reason; to fail to use it would be a terrible waste of power. So we began to take by force whatever we desired for ourselves, confident in our birthright to do so, and wreaked havoc upon any who displeased us or possessed items we desired. We became known as The Four Horsemen and we ruled the countryside for several hundred years. Occasionally, we might allow a few Mortals to live so that they might spread the word of our existence and create more apprehension among them. We finally got out of control, sometimes killing Mortals just for the smell of their fear of us, leaving the spoils for whoever might wander across our handiwork. We wore full regalia that concealed our faces from those who we allowed to live, in case we ran into them again in a place where we were caught unprepared.

On one of our raids, we encountered an Immortal who had been living in a small village with Mortals who accepted him despite of his inability to age; he was their spiritual guide and protected them from outsiders. We had all sensed him there, and I had assumed that he would die along with the Mortals and revive after we left. As far as I knew, I was the only one who had ever received another Immortal's essence by intentionally separating him from his head. But as we swept through that village, Kronos met him before he could prepare a defense. He swung at him as he passed by on horseback, catching his throat with his sword, and the feat was done. Knocked off of his mount by the momentum of the exchange, the sky opened up and Kronos was enveloped in a display of lightning and fury that brought the other riders to a halt. So entrancing was this exchange of power that we watched wordlessly as Kronos received the stranger's essence, even as the Mortals were allowed to escape. There had been nothing in the world before to compare it to. Afterward, we helped Kronos back on his horse, for he was weakened, and returned to the site of our camp, breathless with discovery. I admitted nothing of my own previous experience with this transformation, and simply followed the discussion as it made its inevitable way to the realisation that we could kill other Immortals after all, accompanied by a reward whose purpose was not yet understood.

All things must come to an end, and this was to be ours. Now we had all seen and understood that there was much more to each other than our fraternity. As of that moment we all became targets, something else to be taken by force. As we listened to Kronos recount the sensations that he had experienced, my heart sank. I realised that Silas and Caspian were hungry to gain a similar amount of power, and I doubted the strength of our bond to keep me safe from them. Word of this transformation would spread quickly through our world. The balance had shifted from us together to our betrayal of each other.

Our attitudes toward each other had changed; nothing regarding our future was stable anymore. The thirst for individual power had corrupted our ranks, with Kronos declaring himself to be above any other and Silas and Caspian conferring about how to join in his ascendance and regain equality. All three regarded me as weak for not thrilling in the discovery of this new quest. Perhaps if I had not already experienced it myself, I would have been more open to its immediate possibilities. As it was, I searched my heart for answers: Was this what we were here to do, kill each other? Were we really above the Mortals we had slain? When would any of it end? With these issues in mind, I struck out on my own before I became fodder for the aspirations of the two new apprentices. I avoided all contact with other Immortals for the next few years, fearing the inevitable return of my brothers from the band and my own apparent weakness to oppose them.

I began to put some of the pieces of the puzzle together. I reasoned that if I was going to live for a very long time (hopefully), there must be issues of more substance than fighting each other to concern myself with. The exploits that I had willingly performed as one of the Horsemen were fundamentally wrong; we had claimed a justification for our acts without considering any greater purpose for Mortal existence. This denial of their right to exist without our subjugation is to consider ourselves to be much closer to a deity than I am now prepared to assume.

Although I have very mixed feelings towards Mortals because of the way I have been shunned by them, I understand that they are acting out of fear, not rational judgement. To gain insight into these layers of comprehension regarding our inhuman condition is a burden that Immortals must bear, in pursuit of its truth. We have the privilege of an enduring perspective that they do not. There is a difference between what is right and what is wrong; we are not sufficiently above such concerns to give us the right to dismiss them as irrelevant. We will probably be held responsible for our actions in the future.

I soon found myself living in Ur of the Chaldeans. It happened that I met another Immortal who I found to be most agreeable in temperament to mine and we became close friends. Abraham and I found work together, assisting in the building of the many new structures that were being created for King Ur-Nammu. We laboured for many seasons, finding solace in physical work being performed in the service of a fair and just ruler. Also, it gave us plenty of time to share the fragments of information about our kind that we had each gathered.

We compared our versions of those we had heard of, as well as partaking in extensive discussions about the true potential of our Immortal condition. I never brought up the subject of the centuries I had spent as a murderer, although he had heard of the Horsemen and believed that they still rode on, leaving horror and destruction in their wake. From time to time we met other Immortals, many of whom were newly formed and without malice toward us because they were just beginning their roaming ways, and had not yet learned how to live among Mortals. Abraham and I had already realised that it was necessary to move on every twenty-five to thirty years to avoid being identified as different for our failure to age. We shared what little knowledge we had with those who wanted to listen, but most of them ignored us and continued on their own way, to find things out for themselves, or die.

One of our favourite topics was the unusual way that we had to identify each other by feeling another Immortal's presence. We decided that it was a warning system that allowed us to avoid being caught unarmed by one who desired battle. It had now become well known among Immortals that we each carried a reward within us. Some had made it their obsession to try and capture as many of these trophies as possible in order to become stronger and further their individual purposes. Abraham and I had both fought others who sought to collect from us in this way, and those battles were always to that end. We had joined in this gathering of power because to do otherwise would have meant a very short life; there were many who carried much strength within them from their conquests and it became necessary to protect ourselves from joining the ranks of the fallen. In fact, it was during just that type of combat that we were made aware of another most interesting protective device that we had within us.