Unchanged (23 page)

He took a gummy from my hand and looked at it. "Food from your world," he confirmed. "Food you've offered me."

I nodded vigorously. He looked at the gummy a moment longer, then put it in his mouth. I watched the muscles in his jaw ripple as he chewed slowly. I handed him another and another until the entire pack was emptied. It was crazy and it shouldn't have worked, but I had witnessed the change in Merko and now it seemed Ahaziel had regained some color and vigor.

"Do you feel different?" I asked eagerly.

"Better," he said with uncertainty.

"I have to tell you something." I squeezed one of his hands and caught his eyes with mine. "I love you, Ahaziel."

He brought my hands to his lips and kissed the knuckles lightly. "I've regretted so much," he said. "Everything you've suffered I have felt with equal intensity. The years we lost were a constant ache in me. But all the pain becomes bearable just to hear you say those words to me."

A tear slipped from the corner of one eye, trailing down my birthmark. "I'm sorry if I ever hurt you. But we'll be together now. I want to prove myself to you. I want to make you see the years you spent waiting for me weren't wasted. We'll start anew, Ahaziel, and be worthy of each other."

A break in the clouds drew our gazes upward. A clean, pale strip of sunlight fell upon us. It felt like a sign, pure and good. Ahaziel smiled and closed his eyes peacefully. I rested my head on his chest and breathed.

Epilogue

September, 2005

I've sat on the back porch for hours. This morning I sketched the red and gold trees, distant across the well-kept lawn, but later I started squeezing out watercolors for my painting. The dripping sun began on my right and now it's on my left, slanting off my elbow onto the wooden slats beneath my feet. There's still plenty of light left, but I can feel the warmth beginning to leave the crisp, clean air.

I look at the easel angled before me. Taped to the top corner is the photo I've been working from, a photo of a girl smiling, her cheeks full and shining with happiness. She is unembarrassed by the large red mark on the left side of her face, the mark echoed in diluted alizarin crimson in the painting of her, a self-portrait.

The girl is me. She is a self I never knew until recently.

A shout and a laugh sound from the house behind me, followed by the front door slamming. With the approaching evening the artists will begin to abandon their palettes and cameras and clay for a rest. They'll emerge from their creative oblivion and drive to town for drinks or pizza. They'll share ideas and opinions before returning to the house to fall into bed, minds swirling with inspiration for the next day's work.

"Lilly?" a voice says. I turn to the smallish girl standing behind me, brown hair falling messily to her shoulders, green eyes friendly but remote. "Are you coming to town?"

"Not tonight, Mirain. Thanks though," I reply, smiling.

It was she who'd told me about this place, the Mountain's Edge Artist's Retreat. She'd mentioned it in Miss Bell's class earlier this year, how she'd obtained a government grant to spend a year here just creating. I remember how my eyes had gone wide at hearing of an opportunity I hadn't even known existed, an opportunity that sounded perfect for me. I haven't been able to get my own grant yet, but after graduation I worked all summer to contribute to expenses and my mom says not to worry about the rest of the cost. She's just glad I've found something that makes me happy.

Brandt's happy, too. He followed Chris to the state college and while he doesn't attend himself, he found a job in social work that he tells us fulfills him. He and Chris plan to get married after she completes her social studies degree. Joy, who rooms with them and is of course studying history, thinks they're crazy, but she says so with affection instead of derision. She and I aren't particularly close, but we've worked out a lot of our problems.

Austin's athletic scholarship took him across the country. We don't really talk to him anymore, but before he left he apologized to me ever so sincerely. I don't hold anything against him.

We've moved on with our lives. Everyone's tried to forget about the madness that happened last winter. Sometimes it still haunts me, but I don't dwell on the past. The present is everything to me. I'll never know if this, my third life, is my last one. At least not until sixty or seventy years from now, I hope. And not knowing doesn't matter because my life lacks nothing. I am happy, incomparably so.

I glance at the western sky, streaked orange and gold by the lowering sun. It's almost time. I set aside my watercolor brushes, deciding to clean up later. No one will bother my things. Wiping my paint-stained hands on my jeans, I step off the porch and start to cross the lawn, large as a field. A smile of anticipation tugs at my lips as I go but it isn't until he steps from the trees to meet me that my face erupts uncontrollably into a full-fledged grin.

The sight of him is breathtaking to me. His black hair catching the last glints of fading sunlight, his eyes crinkling with joy, the way his arms swing easily at his sides and remind me how tightly they hold me, and his smile, his smile,
his smile
. He is jaw-dropping.

Judging by his dirt-smudged hands and the streaks of mud on his dark jeans he's been hard at work today. It's tough, but not impossible, to secure proper identification for someone who never had any of these things, who never even legally existed. But a human usually needs ID to function in the world, of course. Once he got it, he was able to find a job at a science facility a few miles from here. He possesses a singular knowledge of a wide variety of plants and the hiring committee recognized this during his interview. For now he makes a living as a paid intern collecting samples from nature, but with help from his employers he's working on gaining the proper credentials. The possibilities of what he'll be able to do one day are endless.

Unable to contain myself any longer, I break into a run. Opening his arms, he walks forward to meet me with a grin wide enough to match my own and I crash into his chest. Laughing, we stumble against each other, stepping on each other's feet, until he backs me up against a tree and touches his forehead to mine. Our laughter fades until only the sound of us breathing remains.

"I missed you," I tell him.

"We just saw each other last night," he protests, but he is beaming, his eyes aglow with teasing me.

I give his shoulder a little shove. "I'll show you my work tomorrow," I promise, because he is always interested in seeing it. "I have plans for us today."

"All right. And you'll stay with me tonight?" he asks, as he has every night since I came to Mountain's Edge. That my answer is always the same—I have to sleep in the artists' house, according to the retreat's rules—doesn't deter him.

"I saw a map of the area today," I say. "There's a river northeast of here. I thought we could go see it."

"I know the place."

"Good. Because I don't have the map with me and I'd probably get us lost."

"I do not doubt it." He grins again and takes both my hands in his, pulling me away from the tree. "You know," he says as we walk through the forest, "I have always thought you look beautiful sitting beside a river."