Spanners - The Fountain of Youth (29 page)

“He did worse than that, Adam. Women, children, even villages
—”

“But he was known for slitting Roman soldiers
’ throats in their sleep,” said Adam. “That was his legacy.”

“Misery begets misery, but it doesn’t get in the way of progress,”
said Yahíma.

“Progress?”
said Adam.

“Progress,”
said Yahíma, her voice shifting to a softer tone.

Adam realized that he was now alone with Yahíma in a graveyard, with cold grey mist all around them. The stone tombs were unmarked; the year, or even
the century, was unknowable.

“Humanity continues, Adam
,” said Yahíma without moving her lips. “Society progresses, and the individual pays the cost for it to do so.”

Adam realized that the dark child in Yahíma’s c
hest was now speaking the words, and her outer body seemed to be in a trance.

“The cost is deep; it might take a thousand lives to end an inconsequent
ial war,” said the child within Yahíma. “It might take a million deaths to reveal a single truth.”

“But why pay the cost?”
asked Adam. “Why? What will it reveal?”

The child inside Yahíma’s body
began to glow, and it smiled. It spread out its arms and light poured out of its body into its host’s bloodstream. The light became too bright and spilled outward, washing away the cemetery outside, until it was so white that Adam felt that he was flying through the air, bathed in warmth.

If being buried alive carries an opposite feeling,
thought Adam,
this is it.

Adam woke and he was in the room; there was no smoke, just him and Yah
íma. This was no longer a dream, Yahíma was no longer pale, and she no longer had a child in place of her heart. He was awake, and it was real.

/***/

“Though it may have felt like it, I was not with you,” said Yahíma. “So tell me what you saw, sparing no detail.”

Adam told her everything and she thought for a few minutes.

“You’ve experienced suffering in your life,” said Yahíma. “Is this true?”

“Not a great deal,”
said Adam. “I don’t feel physical pain like others and don’t think I’ve—”

“I said you’ve
experienced
suffering, not that you’ve suffered yourself,” she said. “There’s a difference.”

“How so?”

“You watch others around you endure torment and experience it secondhand,” said Yahíma. “You may enter a sacrificial pit with a group of martyrs, but you’ll not experience their exact agony as the lances tear through your bodies; their wounds won’t heal, but yours will. You’ll not escape the pit unscathed though, for though your body might emerge intact, you’ll forever hear their cries as they drew their last breaths, and you’ll always remember the tears of those near to them.”

Adam nodded; he’d seen countless atrocities and he’d remembered every single one.

“The rest of the world isn’t burdened with this secondhand experience of humanity’s anguish. When the realities of life get too great, people die and the new generation is there to take over, ever forgetful of the abominations that have come before.

“And that’s how the world can function. There’s been tremendous progress over the course of history, but humanity only sees what has been built, not the human cost to
have it built
. Only you have seen the
pain
behind the world’s achievements, whether it’s a slave killed to construct a pyramid or a hundred thousand families displaced by a war that yields a lasting peace.”

Yahíma thought for a moment and then looked at Adam.

“Has your memory returned?” she asked.

Adam nodded; his memory had returned in even sharper detail.

“Yes,” he said. “Completely.”

“Think back to the woman in your dream state,”
said Yahíma. “When she died, did you feel anguish?”

“Yes,”
said Adam.

“Do you still feel anguish?”

“Yes.”

Yahíma smiled
, went up to the far corner and came back with two flasks of brown liquid. Adam drank and it tasted of ashes, but it relaxed him.

“Both humans and spanners have deep emotions, but the emotions have hard limits,”
said Yahíma. “If someone’s parent or child dies, it’s devastating, but if a thousand children died in a mudslide overseas they’d say
it’s tragic
and then go about their day. If those children had perished a thousand years ago, even the most empathetic person in the world couldn’t shed a tear.”

Yahíma looked deeply into Adam’s eyes.

“You’re different, Adam; you still feel all the grief that has come before you, and your memory won’t let it go. Every tragedy, every death, every bit of sadness ever experienced registers with you and doesn’t leave. If I were to tell you a thousand children perished in a mudslide, let’s say two millennia ago, what comes to mind?”

“Antioch,”
said Adam, not missing a beat. “I was in Emperor Trajan’s troop and an earthquake destroyed the city, and we were near a school that collapsed.”

Adam shuddered when he thought back to that time; he remembered the children’s cries as they were trapped under the rubble, the parent’s wails as the school eventually fell silent, and the overwhelming bleakness of the city the next day.

“There’s a limit to human grief because it allows humanity to function in the wake of the surrounding chaos, but you are blessed with no such limitation. The collective pain of humanity is your burden, and every year it gets heavier.”

Adam nodded in agreement and drank some more of the brown liquid. It continued relaxing him, but not in the blunt way that
cognac helped him relax. The brown liquid seemed to bring the world into focus and didn’t leave him exhausted; he felt as if he could keep drinking it in this room forever. His mouth had gotten used to the taste too; it no longer tasted of ashes and instead reminded him of the white tea that he’d drunk on the Sentinel islands.

“Why was I given this burden?”
asked Adam.

Yahíma smiled as if he was asking just the question she had wanted to hear.

“You weren’t given this burden just to suffer,” said Yahíma. “Your burden and your powers are one and the same, and they were given to you for a much higher purpose than you’d ever considered.”

Adam looked at the woman but didn’t know what to say; in eight
thousand years, he’d never considered the big questions surrounding his existence.

“You look lost
, Adam,” said Yahíma.

“I am,”
said Adam. “I’ve never given much thought to my own purpose.”

“
Nor does anyone until mortality starts to show itself,” said Yahíma with a smile. “But let’s speak of purpose; not of yours, but of everyone else’s. Tell me, Adam, to what end is humanity headed? And what is the purpose of spanners? To what end is our kind headed?”

“I don’t know,”
said Adam.

“Nor do I; nor does anyone else.”

Yahíma looked at Adam as if he were supposed to take the next logical step by himself. He sipped the brown liquid, thought for a moment and then spoke.

“I am destined to understand everything,”
said Adam.

Yahíma smiled.

“You’ve experienced the entirety of human history and spanner mythos both, not just through study and hearsay, but you
have been here the whole time, and you remember everything
. One day, all the experience in your head will coalesce, and you’ll realize the big answers to the big questions.”

“Not me
—I won’t have the answers,” said Adam with a laugh. “I can barely navigate a subway station by myself and—”

“
All
the answers are within you, Adam,” said Yahíma, ignoring Adam’s self-deprecation. “If you find a way to cut through the pain, it will be
you
who holds the answers to everything we’ve been asking, namely
why have spanners been brought to this earth, and to what end will they bring humanity?
”

Adam nodded and thought about that for a moment.

“So you’re saying that I’ll understand the answer to
why we are here
,” said Adam, “spanner and human both?”

“
Given enough time, you will understand just that,” said Yahíma, “because at the end of time, both spanner and human histories will be one and the same.”

Yahíma took another swig of her drink and thought for a moment.

“Though the answers lie within you, they’ll not be answered now, because Juan is out to make his own path, a path that culminates in power for himself and nothing else,” said Yahíma. “This makes him dangerous; Juan’s not burdened by the past, and while you sit and wring your hands, he’s bringing an army to put your head on a pike. He’ll bring a blunt ignorance to this battle, and that’s a strength, so don’t underestimate him.”

“I won’t,”
said Adam. “I assure you of this.”

“Good,”
said Yahíma. “And though your burden of knowledge is an unwieldy tool in the realm of battle, it can still be used.”

“How so?”

“Adam, you must use it as motivation to
win
. If you fail this fight, Juan will find a way to destroy you, and the secrets to our purpose will find a way to die as well.”

Adam nodded, and the weight of his experience seemed to shift, as if
it was no longer a burden that weighed him down, but something important to be carried.
I’ve never considered the importance of purpose,
thought Adam.
Perhaps that’s why I took care of Phoe, lifetime after lifetime
;
she gave me a purpose.

“Thank you,”
said Adam.

“Of course,”
said Yahíma. “Is there any other way I can assist you?”

“Yes,”
said Adam. “Not me, though; there’s someone else with whom I’d like you to speak.”

“I hope he speaks French as well as you,”
said Yahíma.

“I’m sure he speaks it better,”
said Adam. “But even if not, he speaks your mother tongue of Arawak like a native.”

/***/

Yahíma didn’t have to give Mayfly the full oracle treatment. She simply took a draft of the brown liquid and offered Mayfly a glass. Mayfly drank it quickly and then asked for another, explaining his problems in Arawak. At first Mayfly translated what both he and Yahíma were saying for Adam, but being frustrated with that, Mayfly switched to the Old Norse dialect of her husband. Yahíma was surprised at his fluency.

“
I understand mayflies learn languages within an hour
,” said Yahíma in Old Norse. “
But still, Adam, this is impressive
.”

“He does a lot of things well,”
said Adam.

“Understood,”
said Yahíma, “and it’s clear where his pain comes from.”

“Where?”
asked Mayfly.

“Mayflies don’t live long, but this rarely concerns them, much as a twenty-year-old human doesn’t overworry about his death sixty years hence,”
said Yahíma. “But you, Mayfly, have now been imbued with duty, perhaps too much. You want to win the war and free your brethren back home, both of which you could do if given enough time. You don’t fear your own death, Mayfly; you fear leaving important things undone.”

Mayfly’s not been giv
en enough time,
thought Adam,
and I’ve been given too much.

“How can I solve this?”
asked Mayfly.

“You can be granted an
extension
, as it were,” said Yahíma, “from the Surgeon.”

“Santos de León?”
asked Mayfly.

“Yes,”
said Yahíma, “though you may think there are more important things for him to do, all the characters have a role to play in this war, and him giving you more time is just as important as him splitting the Fountain in two.”

Yahíma drank from her cup again and looked Mayfly in the eye.

“It won’t be easy; the procedure Santos will do on you will be extraordinarily painful.”

“I have no other choice,”
said Mayfly with a smile.

“Perhaps none of us have choices as the battle approaches,”
said Yahíma, now addressing them both, “but be assured that you’re headed in the right direction, even though it might not seem like it when you enter the Surgeon’s clutches.”

“The legends surrounding the Surgeon are dark,”
said Adam. “Can we trust him completely?”

“Yes,”
said Yahíma, “because though Santos and Juan are cut from the same cloth, there’s a fundamental difference in their motives: Juan seeks power, and Santos seeks knowledge. The Surgeon might not be friendly, but he’s not out to harm anyone.”