Immortal (2 page)

He wanted to die.

He felt dead already.

By the time the sun rose, Agios was an empty husk. Some blood seeped into the ground beneath his legs and mixed with the dirt on his hands, but he didn't know if it was his blood or Philos's. The climb down the ravine and back up again with his broken son slung against his back had been a nightmare that no man should ever have to endure. Agios could still feel the slight weight between his shoulders, though Philos now lay wrapped beneath an olive tree less than two strides away.

Agios glanced at Philos's body and wished to see the slight rise and fall of his son's slender chest. But there was no undoing what had been done. The boy lay as still as stone, and just as cold. Morning burnished the marble skin of Philos's arm where it had fallen out from the folds of the cloak that Agios had wrapped him in. It was an outrage, a cruel joke that sunlight could make even this small portion of the child look so beautiful and whole. Agios scrambled over and tucked the slender arm back into the cloak. With a tenderness that belied the taut muscles of his forearms and the stern slant of his dark brows, he lifted the body. He did not look like a compassionate man, but he stepped into the grave he had dug and placed his son in the center as gently as a mother laying down her newborn.

“My son.” His mouth formed the words, but Agios made no sound even though he tried again and again, his throat clenched with grief.

Still moving his lips, still groaning with the weight of all the yearning he couldn't voice, Agios touched the place where Philos's face was shrouded by the dusty cloak. It was a kind of blessing he offered in place of the words he could not say, a way to remember the feel of the boy's high cheekbones, the proud nose that he shared with Agios, and the fine mouth that was his mother's. It was good-bye.

The grave was small, but Agios bent his knees and back and lay beside Philos, his cheek in the grainy dirt and his hand resting on the body of his son. He wished he could have dug the grave larger, so large that he could creep into it with his boy and pull the earth in after them. He imagined dirt filling his nostrils, choking off the air, bringing death and peace—but how could he share the grave when he had allowed his own son to die?

No, he would leave his own bones elsewhere.

When Agios took up the spade and began to shovel the loose earth into the hole, his grief was already finding a new incarnation. He burned with sorrow, but the flames began to ignite a fury in his belly, an anger that grew with each spadeful of dirt. He filled in the grave and then lugged stones from the bed of a nearby stream with a strength that seemed inhuman after his loss and sleepless night.

He finished before the sun stood at noon. Agios looked at the fresh grave, the old grave, and the home that was no longer home, and then dragged his steps back into the cabin. Red embers of the fire still glared in the grate, and Agios blew them to life. He threw wood on, all the firewood left in the bin, and when that was gone the stools they had sat on, the short, crooked table he had made before becoming used to carpentry, and the olive-wood bowl his own hands had carved. What need did he have of these things now? Of the small bed he had shared with his wife? The pallet where his son had laid his head?

When the fire roared, he raked the burning coals out and scattered them across the floor. No vagabond would find the empty house and live there, where the memories of Weala and Philos and the nameless little baby deserved peace.

Agios didn't leave the cabin until it was a blaze that could be seen for miles, a funeral pyre. The smoke choked the sun-bright sky, belching a dark shadow over the mountain that spoke of evil things.

He left on foot with nothing in his hands. He didn't look back.

Agios had no destination, but he knew exactly what he wanted: oblivion. The village in the valley below his mountain home bustled with, if not friends, at least acquaintances. He didn't want to see them, didn't want them to ask about his son, and desired no commiseration or sympathy. He wished only to forget.

So he stuck to the mountain, following a path that he had worn smooth on his hunting trips, and walked along it until his legs would no longer carry him. Then, finding a crevice in a steep cliff, Agios pulled his cloak over his head and turned his back to the world. He didn't bother starting a fire because he didn't deserve warmth or protection. A part of him wished that he would never see another day, that the wolves who prowled the mountains would be hungry and bold.

Only a few short hours later, morning dawned crisp and gray, and Agios rolled over to face the faint light—still alive, whether he wanted to be or not, whether he believed he could bear it or not, weighted as he was with the burden of loss that hung like a stone in his chest.

Agios rose and kept walking because he didn't know what else to do. Grief moved him forward, away from the place where everything he had ever loved lay buried in the unforgiving ground. For two days he followed the mountain ridges until hunger and exhaustion drew him down to a village he had seen before but had never visited. He knew the kind of people who lived there, modest and hardworking famers, wary of strangers but slow to turn away someone in need.

The squat, square buildings of the humble homes stood pale in the afternoon sun, and white tendrils of smoke twisted lazily from cooking fires. His sandals skidded on the stones as he hiked down from the hill, but this was familiar land to Agios. Even half-starved and mad with grief, he was sure-footed.

It had been weeks since Agios had so much as spoken to anyone other than his son, and he approached the outskirts of the village reluctantly. The life he had carved out of the mountainside for himself and Philos was simple and solitary, but not lonely. Never lonely, for they'd had each other. But now the world seemed so barren and soulless that Agios wondered if he could trust his own mouth to form words. What was there to say?

In the end, he didn't have to say much at all. A girl who was drawing water from a well at the edge of the village pointed Agios in the direction of an inn before he even had the chance to ask. She also dipped a bowl into the cool, clean water and, with her eyes downcast, held it out to him. It was a customary offering, but Agios could tell it cost her effort. She was clearly shy in his presence. But that didn't stop him from drinking greedily, grateful for something other than the iron-flavored water he had sipped from trickling mountain springs.

“Thank you,” he said gruffly, his voice thick and unfamiliar in his own ears. She nodded and backed away, and Agios left in the direction she had pointed.

The villagers weren't unfriendly, but they hurried by as he made his way through the narrow streets. If they knew what he had sewn into the hem of his cloak they would have treated him very differently, but Agios had no wish to be known as a trader in precious frankincense. That would mean questions, greedy eyes, and prying. He wanted only to buy food and to leave immediately.

He found the inn, but the woman who let him in shook her head and said, “No room.”

“I can pay,” Agios said, and pressed a small golden nugget into her hand. “Please. I'm hungry and thirsty, and I'm not well.”

She looked doubtfully at his wild mane of black hair and his tangled beard and finally closed her hand on the offering. Without a word she went back into another room and soon returned holding a small bundle and an earthenware jar. “Here. Food. Drink,” she said.

Agios accepted the provisions without complaint, even though he knew the nugget should have bought much more. He sat on the steps of the inn and drank a mouthful of the sour wine, then rose and walked on. He had no desire to bargain with the woman for a bed in the inn. At least he felt free as he strode away from the village.

The road ahead might be unknown, but it was better than the hum of chatter, the faint sound of laughter from behind a stone wall. Villagers had each other. Agios had no one.

He felt like a ghost, as if all that remained of the man he had been was a wisp of humanity so thin he hardly existed at all. But his belly still ached for food, and he finally stopped and unwrapped the five flat cakes he had bought from the woman at the inn. He ate two without noticing their taste, and a handful of the dry, salty olives that she had put in a small muslin bag. He ate none of the smoked fish, but he drank deeply from the earthenware jug of wine. He thought the taste was odd, sour yet bitter—perhaps the woman had added herbs because he had claimed to be ill. The warmth spreading down his throat and deep into his belly promised a deep and dreamless sleep.

Agios had not been drunk for years, and the stupor came quickly. As his head fell back against the tree where he had paused to eat and drink, Agios felt momentarily grateful that he had at least avoided the main road. He should have climbed back into the mountains, but no matter. The sparse stand of pines a few miles from the village would do. The roads weren't safe, but he welcomed whatever the harsh and often deadly trade route had to offer. What could anyone take from him, after all, but his life?

Let them take it.

The days blurred into an endless weariness as Agios traveled on, never knowing or caring where his legs were taking him. But he couldn't outwalk memory, or the physical ache of his longing, or ease the feeling that something stronger than rope bound him to the mountain glen where he had buried his wife and sons. The cords drew tighter and tighter, a noose around his heart.

Agios dulled the pain with drink. Sometimes the homemade wine was premature and thin, the alcohol weak. Other times he could convince the merchant to lace it with something stronger. Occasionally the wine brought fleeting oblivion. A month went by, and then another, and still Agios could not sleep without wine—for if he tried, Philos came to him in dreams, silent but staring at him with reproachful eyes.

So Agios drank every night and woke every morning with wine still blurring his mind and pain throbbing in his temples. In a way, he wasn't at all surprised when one dawn he awakened to the cold sharp press of a spear point beneath his chin.